Staff Picks - May 2018
By Alison Weir
Series Six Tudor Queens
Recommended By Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian
Henry VIII risks his marriage and the political strategies of Cardinal Wolsey in his obsession with Anne Boleyn, who does not welcome the king's advances and loathes the cardinal for breaking her betrothal to Harry Percy.
By Barbara Delinsky
The bond between a talented carpenter and her architect daughter is challenged by a career-shifting television network decision, a family death, sudden parenting responsibilities, and changing romantic prospects.
By Morgan Llywelyn
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
A tale inspired by the early Christian legend of Saint Brendâan the Navigator and his quest to find the Isle of the Blessed follows his leadership of a group of monks on a dangerous ocean journey in search of Paradise.
By Fiona Barton
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Investigating the discovery of a baby's skeleton in a redeveloped section of London, journalist Kate Waters discovers links to the kidnapping of a baby from a hospital decades earlier before she is targeted by someone who wants to keep their secrets hidden.
By Jim DeFede
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian, Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk
Shares the experiences of the citizens of Gander, Newfoundland, who were hosts to the more than six thousand passengers of thirty-eight U.S.-bound jetliners forced to land there in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
By Ali Land
Milly, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a serial killer, is given a fresh start with a new identity and placement in an affluent foster family, but wrestles with the decision not to follow in her mother's violent footsteps.
By Kathryn Stockett
Recommended By Isabel Zinman, Readers' Services Librarian, Megan Kass, Systems Manager
Skeeter returns home to Mississippi from college in 1962 and begins to write stories about the African-American women that are found working in white households, which includes Aibileen, who grieves for the loss of her son while caring for her seventeenth white child, and Minny, Aibileen's sassy friend, the hired cook for a secretive woman who is new to town.
By Yaa Gyasi
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
Two half–sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in eighteenth–century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations.
By Alice Adams
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
Four close friends who graduate college together in 1997 venture off to pursue their fortunes in the new millennium, but find themselves drawn back together twenty years later amidst broken dreams, lost jobs, and shattered relationships.
By Karen Dionne
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
A woman whose birth occurred as a result of her teen mother's abduction and imprisonment in an isolated marshland cabin risks the adult family that does not know her past when she uses survival skills honed in childhood to track down her murderous father.
By Lindsey Lee Johnson
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
Arriving as a replacement teacher in a privileged Bay Area school, Molly becomes intrigued with the hidden lives and challenging ambitions of her students, who are struggling with a tragedy from their middle-school years.
By Gabriel Tallent
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Enduring an isolated existence after the death of her mother, fourteen-year-old Turtle fends off every outside attempt to engage her before an unexpected friendship with a newcomer helps her realize the vulnerabilities of her life with her charismatic father.
By Susan Cain
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
“Demonstrates how introverted people are misunderstood and undervalued in modern culture... (From the Publisher).”
By John Grisham
Recommended By John Shea, Library Page
Three students who have borrowed heavily to attend a third-rate law school realize they have been caught in a scam when they discover that the school's owner also owns a bank specializing in student loans, and plot to expose the scam.
By Neal Shusterman
Series Arc of a Scythe series
Recommended By Sharon Long, Assistant Library Director, Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist
In a world in which the only way to die is to be killed by a scythe, Citra and Rowan compete to earn a position as a scythe’s apprentice, a competition that will see the loser die by the hand of the winner.
By Robert Galbraith
Series Cormoran Strike Novels
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
While investigating the brutal murder of a novelist who had just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knew, which would ruin many lives, P.I. Cormoran Strike must race against time to catch a killer unlike any he has ever encountered before.
By Jessmyn Ward
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk
Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip of danger and hope.
By Lauren Graham
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
A collection of stories about the author's experiences on the set of Gilmore Girls and her decision to reprise her role for Netflix's upcoming limited–series revival also shares insights into the realities of being an actress in Hollywood and New York.
By Ronald H. Balson
Series Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian
Reluctantly returning to Northern Ireland for the funeral of a murdered uncle, Liam is further shocked to learn that his uncle has left his estate to a secret trust that cannot be distributed until his killer, who may be targeting other family members, is brought to justice.
By Harry Brandt
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
Sequestered to dead-end positions for nearly two decades after accidently shooting a civilian, Sergeant Billy Graves joins a third-shift group of New York detectives and investigates a brutal case with ties to his early career.