Staff Picks - July 2018
By Fiona Davis
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
Interior designer Bailey Camdenis leaps at a chance to renovate her heiress cousin's lavish apartment at The Dakota, and learns the scandalous history of a distant ancestor's connection to the murder of the building's architect a century earlier.
By Liane Moriarty
Recommended By Rosalia White, Library Clerk, Lisa V., Library Clerk, Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager, Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
An annual school Trivia Night ends in a disastrous riot leaving one parent dead in what appears to be a tragic accident, but evidence shows it might have been premeditated.
By Rene Denfeld
Hired to find a young girl who went missing three years earlier, private investigator Madison Culver embarks on a search in a remote Oregon forest, where she is forced to confront painful realities from her own past as a lost child.
By Bana Al Abed
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
A full-length account of the young Twitter activist's harrowing experiences in war-torn Siberia describes how her home was decimated by bombings and dwindling supplies before her family embarked on a perilous escape to Turkey.
By Shilpa Raj
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
When you are a female born into a poor Indian family, the odds are already stacked greatly against you. The human drama captured in this memoir is nothing short of amazing - a young woman's struggle between the two worlds of her existence. Saved by her grandmother from being killed at birth for being a female, and abandoned by her mother at a young age, Shilpa faces the formidable constraints placed on her by her family and the village elders. The values with which she is being brought up in a school for poor children started by a philanthropist come in conflict with those of her family, tearing each other apart. Just when all seems settled, an unforeseen death under mysterious circumstances shatters whatever stability remains in her life. Pulled in opposite directions, and torn between despair and dreams, Shilpa finally makes a choice for her escape. But is she strong enough to stand up to the people she loves, and pursue what she wants? At its heart The Elephant Chaser's Daughter is about hope, when all seems lost. Written with raw honesty and grit, this is a deeply moving memoir of a young woman confronting her 'untouchable' status in a caste-based society, and her aspirations for a good future.
By Louise Erdrich
A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows pregnant thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species.
By Chelsea Cain
Series Archie and Gretchen Thrillers
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager, Megan Kass, Systems Manager, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Nathalie Levin, Children's Services Librarian
Addicted to painkillers and still bound to Gretchen Lowell, the beautiful serial killer who had abducted and tortured him before turning herself in, Portland detective Archie Sheridan is caught in another deadly duel with a murderer targeting teenage girls.
By Graham Norton
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference
When the human remains of Tommy Burke are found on an old farm in the remote Irish village of Duneen, the investigation unearths anger, resentment, secrets, and regrets.
By Clare Mackintosh
Spotting her own picture in a classified ad referencing a mysterious website, Zoe discovers that other women who have appeared in the ad have become the victims of increasingly violent crimes.
By Nora Roberts
Series Chesapeake Bay Saga
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
Advertising executive Phillip Quinn joins forces with the beautiful Sybill to protect a young boy from his opportunistic mother.
By Lisa Ko
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
When his undocumented immigrant mother disappears, eleven-year-old Deming Guo is adopted by a family that attempts to make him over as an American teen while he struggles to reconcile his new life with memories of the family he left behind.
By Fredrik Backman
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, November 24, 2015. 1:30 PM.
A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.
By Victoria Thompson
Series Gaslight Mysteries
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
When a young mother who had delivered a new baby the day before is found dead and accusations fly between the girl's Irish mother and her Italian in-laws, midwife Sarah Brandt joins with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to unravel the truth.
By Alice McDermott
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, January 29, 2019. 1:30 PM.
A portrait of the Irish–American experience is presented through the story of an Irish immigrant's suicide and how it reverberates through innumerable lives in early twentieth–century Catholic Brooklyn.
By Galt Niederhoffer
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
Starting over after moving to Portland, Maine, a newly blended family forged by two seemingly happy career people becomes subject to small omissions and a series of denials that escalate in menacing ways.
By Patricia Lockwood
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
The author shares her memories of life with a Catholic priest for a father, and how as an adult, she and her non-religious husband were later forced to move back in to her parents' rectory for eight months due to a crisis.
By Noel Monk
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
The rock-and-roll veteran best known for his work with the Sex Pistols and Van Halen shares behind-the-scenes, previously untold stories about David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, and the legendary band that strongly influenced 1980s rock music.
By Matthew Inman
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
From the creator of the popular cartoon website The Oatmeal comes a humorous collection of comics and stories about running, eating and one cartoonist’s reasons for jogging across mountains until his toenails fall off.
Series The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
A collection of tiny stories and illustrations gathered online via the Hitrecord creative collective's web site.
By Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
After neurosurgeon Eitan Green hits and kills and African migrant while driving on a deserted road late at night, the victim's wife tracks him down and confronts him the next day and her price for silence shatters his safe existence.