Whistleblower by Susan Rigetti In 2017, twenty-five-year-old Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing the sexual harassment and retaliation she’d experienced as an entry-level engineer at Uber. The post went viral, leading not only to the ouster of Uber’s CEO and twenty other employees, but ‘starting a bonfire on creepy sexual behavior in Silicon Valley…
The Drowning Sea: A Maggie d’Arcy Mystery by Sarah Stewart Taylor For the first time in her adult life, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy is unemployed. No cases to focus on, no leads to investigate, just a whole summer on a remote West Cork peninsula with her teenage daughter Lilly and her boyfriend,…
Decimate by Christopher Rice Claire Huntley and her brother, Poe, were on a midnight hike in Montana when the woods went wild. A blinding, devouring light and a rumbling pulse that blasted them off their feet left both kids with little memory of what happened. Their father insisted it was a violent extraterrestrial abduction; his…
The Mozart Code by Rachell McMillan From author Rachel McMillan comes a richly researched historical romance that takes place in post-World War II Europe and features espionage and a strong female lead.Lady Sophia Huntington Villiers is no stranger to intrigue, as her work with Alan Turing’s Bombe Machines at Bletchley Park during the war attests. Her…
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother’s death and her hidden past–a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind…
The Secret History by Donna Tartt Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality…
Ordinary Monsters by J. M. Miro Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a lifetime of brutality, doesn’t have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When two grizzled detectives…
Steeped in Stories – Mitali Perkins “The stories we read as children shape us for the rest of our lives. But it is never too late to discover that transformative spark of hope that children’s classics can ignite within us. Award-winning children’s author Mitali Perkins grew up steeped in stories–escaping into her books on the…
The Sweetness of Water – Nathan Harris “In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping…
The Beekeeper Of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri “Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in…
The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir – Christopher Faulkner “Reinterpreting twelve of Renoir’s best-known works, Professor Faulkner attributes their qualities not to the director’s unified sensibility but to varying social and historical circumstances.” Mythologies – Roland Barthes “‘No denunciation without its proper instrument of close analysis,’ Roland Barthes wrote in his preface to Mythologies. There…
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present – Eric R. Kandal “At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs…
Hour of the Witch – Chris Bohjalian “Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he…
A Master of Djinn – P. Djeli Clark “Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most…
The Last Traverse -Ty Gagne “On a mountain somewhere above treeline, in some of the coldest and worst winter conditions imaginable, two men lie unconscious in the snow as explosive winds batter the nearby summits. In The Last Traverse; Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites, Ty Gagne masterfully lays out the events that led…
A Distant Grave – Sarah Stewart Taylor “Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy and her teenage daughter, Lilly, are still recovering from the events of last fall when a strange new case demands Maggie’s attention. The body of an unidentified Irish national turns up in a wealthy Long Island beach community and with little to…
One Last Stop – Casey McQuiston “For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving…
We asked our staff to list four books they planned to read over the summer – here are the titles they responded with: The Woman in Cabin 10 – Ruth Ware “In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been…
Heading to the beach one of these bright, summery days? Consider bringing along one or all of the novels in Roxanne St. Claire’s Barefoot Bay series. Our staff member thought these books would make for non-demanding and entertaining company. About Barefoot in the Sand, book one in the series: When all you hold dear is…
Summer is officially here. Here are a few beach reads you might want to take with you when you cool off by the sea. Beach House Memories- Mary Alice Monroe “In 1974, America was changing, but Charleston remained eternally the same. Lovie had always done what was expected—marrying the son of a historic Charleston family,…
Publisher’s Summary: “For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree…
First up is “Nancy Pearl Presents 10 Terrific Summer Reads“: “My office (a spare bedroom in my house) is strewn with books that I’ve gotten for possible review. There are books on the bookshelves, books more or less arranged on the floor and other books stacked high, waiting to be shelved. I probably start 15…
From O Magazine: “What’s your favorite flavor? No matter, because we’ve got ’em all: refreshing histories, nutty novels, and love stories that will make you melt.” See O’s list of summer reads here. From USA Today: “It’s summertime, and that means time to relax — and to read. And whether you prefer hardcovers, paperbacks or…
(CNN) — One of the best things about summer are the vacations (or staycations) that allow time for leisure reading. We’ve picked the bookish brains of editors from Entertainment Weekly, The Barnes & Noble Review and the social network site Goodreads.com to round up a collection of 12 books you can add to your list.…
There are so many great summer reading lists out there right now, and we will be featuring several of them here. But we thought we’d start out with some of the books that our staff are hoping to read this summer. Insignificant Others – Stephen McCauley Three Weissmans of Westport – Cathleen Schine The Bullpen…
I have to confess I put off reading this last (sob) book in the Percy Jackson series for about a week and a half because I just couldn’t stand to see it end. When I picked it up, I tried to read it as slowly as possible in order to savor each scene, but that…
If you’re looking for a good book for the final weeks of summer, here are some recommendations. When asked what book they would bring to the beach with them this summer, our intrepid staff offered up the following: Sisters ~ Danielle Steel The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken…
From the Marquis de Sade to Mad Magazine, sixteen authors share their picks for summer over at Time.
Perhaps you haven’t heard of the magazine called Seed. I hadn’t until I read an interview with their editor-at-large Jonah Lehrer who wrote a book called Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Lehrer’s book fits perfectly with the theme of the magazine which looks at the intersection of science and culture. The editors at Seed have come…