Loss/Grief
By Clare Mackintosh
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
Disagreeing for the first time when their son falls ill and they receive conflicting doctor recommendations, a devoted couple finds a unique way for both of their preferences to become possible.
By Jojo Moyes
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
In the wake of an accident that leaves her back at home and in a support group, Louisa meets paramedic Sam Fielding, a man who might finally understand her, but she is forced to change her plans when someone from her past reappears.
By Judith Frank
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
When Daniel Rosen's twin brother and sister-in-law are killed in a bombing in Jerusalem, he and his husband Matthew are confronted with challenges that threaten their relationship as they try to adopt the couple's two children.
By Wallace Stegner
With Lisa Caputo, Assistant Library Director
Tuesday, May 24, 2011. 1 PM & 7:30 PM.
Retirees Joseph and Ruth Allston find their placid, rural California life disrupted by a hippie who builds a treehouse on their property and by a young married couple tragically affected by pregnancy and cancer.
By Caroline Angell
A young composer takes a job as a nanny caring for two young boys, but after a tragedy strikes the family, she realizes the children need her to face their loss and she must make a choice between her career and her love for them.
By Emily X. R Pan
With Meghan Fangmann, Librarian, Pam Strudler, Librarian
Tuesday, August 6, 2019. 7:30 PM.
A teen grieving the loss of her mother travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time and search for her mother's spirit while uncovering tragic family secrets and struggling to reconcile the truth about how her mother's life really ended.
By Hilma Wolitzer
With Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference, Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian, Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
The Afternoon and Evening Book Clubs unite for a special evening to celebrate a year of great books and discussions.
Tuesday, December 18. 7:30 PM.
“Inadvertently attracting several single women while mourning the death of his adored wife, Edward Schuyler is profiled in a singles ad by his stepchildren... (From the Publisher).”
By Amy Bloom
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk
Arriving in America alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian Leyb receives word that her daughter Sophie might still be alive and embarks on a risky odyssey that takes her from New York's Lower East Side to Siberia to find the missing girl.
Follows thirty years of joy, sorrow, triumph, and tragedy in the changing and enduring relationship of two very different women - the conventional Bertie and Cee Cee, a flamboyant actress.
Became the movie: Beaches.
By Dinaw Mengestu
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
In his run–down store in a gentrifying neighborhood of Washington, DC, Ethiopian immigrant Stepha Stephanos regularly meets with fellow African immigrants Ken the Kenyan and Joe from the Congo. They consider how their new immigrant expectations measure up to the reality of life in America after seventeen years and make keen observations of American race and class tensions.
By Anne Tyler
Sharing a happy marriage with the plain and outspoken Dorothy, Aaron, a physically disabled man who spent his youth avoiding a controlling sister, is devastated by his wife's sudden death and moves through the grieving process with the help of her apparition.
By Meg Wolitzer
Jam Gallahue, fifteen, unable to cope with the loss of her boyfriend Reeve, is sent to a therapeutic boarding school in Vermont, where a journal-writing assignment for an exclusive, mysterious English class transports her to the magical realm of Belzhar, where she and Reeve can be together.
Devastated by the death of his wife in a hit-and-run accident, Miles, deputy sheriff of New Bern, North Carolina, discovers new meaning in his life when he meets Sarah Andrews, a woman struggling to rebuild her own life.
By Kent Haruf
A terminally ill cancer patient is attended throughout his final days by his wife and daughter while the trio contemplates their relationships with an estranged son, a situation that stirs up painful memories for a new next-door neighbor who has recently lost her mother.
By Eli Gottlieb
A middle-aged autistic resident of a therapeutic community where he was sent as a young child rebels against changes in his environment by attempting to return to a family home and younger sibling he only partially remembers.
A young English soldier finds a new love interest when he stays with a family in Northern France.
Became the TV Mini-Series: Birdsong
By Joyce Carol Oates
Flattered by the attentions of a senator she has met at a Fourth of July beach party on Grayling Island, Kelly Kelleher accepts a ride from him, taking a first step toward her final confrontation with death.
By Jason Reynolds
Soon after his mother's death, Matt takes a job at a funeral home in his tough Brooklyn neighborhood and, while attending and assisting with funerals, begins to accept her death and his responsibilities as a man.
By Diane Chamberlain
When fulfilling her father's dying wish leads to a chain of unexpected events, including her husband's suicide, Laura begins to discover secrets in her family's past.
By Junot Diaz
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
Living with an old–world mother and rebellious sister, an urban New Jersey misfit dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and believes that a long–standing family curse is thwarting his efforts to find love and happiness.
By Stephanie Kallos
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Clare Badke, Principal Account Clerk, Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director, Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk
When elderly Margaret Hughes discovers that she has a malignant brain tumor, she refuses treatment and decides to take a nice young tenant into her huge, lonely Seattle mansion for company.
By Sarah Haywood
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Avoiding messy emotions in a perfectly ordered life, Susan tackles the unexpected double challenge of losing her mother and becoming pregnant and is challenged to ask for help while discovering herself in unlikely ways.
Presents a fictionalized version of real events in which John Hinckley Jr. becomes obsessed with a young actress before his assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and a young girl deals with the murder of her best friend, who is killed in her sleep by her socialite mother.
By Elin Hilderbrand
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
“Once again, Hilderbrand masterfully weaves an intense tale of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of endless summer island life (From the Publisher).”
By Steven Galloway
While a cellist plays at the site of a mortar attack to commemorate the deaths of twenty–two friends and neighbors, a woman sniper secretly protects the life of the cellist as her army becomes increasingly threatening.
By Ann Napolitano
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian, Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian, Amy B., Children's Librarian
12–year–old lone survivor of a plane crash investigates the stories of his less-fortunate fellow passengers before making a profound discovery about his life purpose in the face of transcendent losses.
By Bill Clegg
Surviving a disaster that kills everyone else in her family, June relocates West and settles into a directionless existence while other people impacted by the tragedy struggle with new circumstances.
After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to "live."
“Homeless and despondent after losing both his job and wife, the narrator begins a cross-country trip with his bulldog and faces the burden of failure and witnesses various tragedies along the way (From the Publisher).”
By Jill Santopolo
Recommended By Marie McLaughlin, Head of Circulation
Helping troubled students navigate personal losses, a university psychologist is forced to reckon with her own painful past when a tragic event compels her to reevaluate her goals, passions and sense of identity.
“By turns funny and moving, Tropper's warm, winning tale will appeal to both male and female readers and may draw comparisons to Nick Hornby and John Scott Shepherd (Booklist).”
By Celeste Ng
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tueday, July 28, 2015. 1 PM.
A story of the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family explores the fallout of the drowning death of Lydia Lee, the favorite daughter of a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio.
By Jonathan Safran Foer
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services
Monday, May 21, 2012. 7 PM
Oskar Schell, the nine year–old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind.
By Alice Hoffman
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
After walking away from an accident that robs her best friend of her future, Shelby Richmond struggles to fight her way back to her own future.
By Trish Doller
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian, Sharon Long, Assistant Library Director
Hiring a sailor to navigate the boat trip she planned before her fiancé’s death, Anna begins healing from a broken heart in the wake of an unexpected romance.
By Jojo Moyes
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk, Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk, Betty Petreshock, Reference Librarian
Unwillingly rendered an object of obsession by the Kommandant occupying her small French town in World War I, Sophie risks everything to reunite with her husband a century before a widowed Liv tests her resolve to claim ownership of Sophie's portrait.
By Francine Prose
Grieving independently after the drowning death of her sister, thirteen-year-old Nico, falls into a seductive and dangerous relationship with her sister’s enigmatic boyfriend throughout the course of a summer during which she realized that she has moved beyond the help of her parents.
By Robin Antalek
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
A novel spanning over a decade, told in the alternating voices of three friends, explores the indelible bonds between friends and family, and the challenges that threaten to divide them.
By Peter Heller
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
Trying to return to normalcy after a young life filled with loss, Jack takes a job as a guide for the elite Kingfisher Lodge where he, while guiding a well-known singer, discovers that this idyllic fishing lodge may be a cover for a far more sinister operation.
Years after the death of the family matriarch, a reclusive famous author who may have written a final manuscript, her daughter and two grown granddaughters share the secrets that have shaped their lives and loves.
By Jon Cohen
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
A 38-year old traumatized widow fortuitously meets an 11-year old girl who sets him on a feverish road to redemption.
By Jonathan Odell
Concerned about his wife's grief over the loss of their daughter and worrying about a mysterious illness that is afflicting his slaves, Master Satterfield purchases a slavewoman known as a healer only to be unsettled by her troubling predictions.
By Elin Hilderbrand
Gathering at a ramshackle Nantucket cottage, a late celebrity chef’s wives and children confront the sources of their bitter rivalries and slowly let go of resentments as they remember positive times and share long-held secrets.
By Nicole Krauss
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian
Sixty years after a book’s publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book’s characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother’s loneliness.
By Clare Mackintosh
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
Devastated by a hit-and-run accident that has ended the life of her young son, Jenna moves to the remote Welsh coast to search for healing while two dedicated policemen try to get to the bottom of the case.
By Jandy Nelson
A story of first love and family loss follows the estrangement between daredevil Jude and her loner twin brother, Noah, as a result of a mysterious event that is brought to light by a beautiful, broken boy and a new mentor.
By Karen Perry
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
“When the son they thought was lost in an earthquake in Tangiers five years earlier reappears on a crowded street in Dublin, Harry and Robin must find out if Dillon was actually alive the whole time (From the Publisher).”
By Ann Hood
After the sudden loss of her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days. The women welcome her and reveal their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope.
By Louise Erdrich
Horrified when he accidentally kills his best friend's 5–year–old–son while hunting, Landreaux Iron gives away his own young son to his friend's family according to ancient tradition, a decision that helps both families reach a tenuous peace that is threatened by a vengeful adversary.
By Walter Mosley
Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A Reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days—shortened now by the medical experiment—to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting death of his great-nephew, Reggie.