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Junah at the End of the World
by Dan Leach
In September 1999, twelve-year-old Junah Simmons enters his middle school classroom to find "THE END OF THE WORLD IS HERE" written on the chalkboard, kicking off his eccentric teacher's time capsule assignment: document your experiences amid Y2K fears. As an outsider with a speech impediment, Junah navigates challenges like his parents' divorce, bullying, his crush on punk girl named Sadie, and his mother's pressure to be more religious. Through vignettes, the novel explores Junah's struggles with youth and the anxiety of the world potentially ending.
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That's All I Know
by Elisa Levi
Nineteen-year-old Little Lea lives in a rural town bordered by a mysterious forest. When a stranger loses his dog, she warns him not to enter and distracts him with her experiences of loss, desire, and conspiracies. Distrustful of outsiders, she juggles responsibilities at her mother's grocery store while caring for her emotionally detached sister, with her longing for love. As the town prepares for an end-of-the-world festival, Lea grapples with her desire to leave for a more fulfilling life, even at the cost of being unloved. Readers will appreciate Levi’s exploration of how challenging caring for others can be, the fear of the unknown, and the courage to embrace one's true desires.
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People Like Us
by Jason Mott
"In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds."
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Make Your Way Home: Stories
by Carrie R Moore
"In eleven stories that span Florida marshes, North Carolina mountains, and Southern metropolitan cities, Make Your Way Home follows Black men and women who grapple with the homes that have eluded them. A preteen pregnant alongside her mother refuses to let convention dictate who she names as the father of her child. Centuries after slavery separated his ancestors, a native Texan tries to win over the love of his life despite the grip of a family curse. A young deaconess who falls for a new church member wonders what it means when God stops speaking to her. And at the very end of the South as we know it, two sisters seek to escape North to freedom, to promises of a more stable climate."
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Culpability
by Bruce W. Holsinger
"When the Cassidy-Shaws' autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident. During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash."
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Spectacular Things
by Beck Dorey-Stein
Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: the responsible and academically-minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young. While Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price. As Mia and Cricket grow up, they must grapple with the legacy of their mother’s secret past while navigating their own precarious future.
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My Friends
by Fredrik Backman
''Twenty-five years in the psat, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect."
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| The Accidental Favorite by Fran Littlewood"Vivienne and Patrick Fisher have done an excellent job raising their three daughters, Alex, Nancy, and Eva. They’re well-adjusted women with impressive careers, caring partners, exciting hobbies, and sweet children. So it’s with great anticipation that three generations of Fishers gather at a beautiful glass house in the English countryside for a weeklong celebration of Vivienne’s seventieth birthday. But when Patrick’s reaction to a freak accident on the first day of the trip inadvertently reveals that he has a favorite daughter, no one is prepared for the shockwaves it sends through the family." |
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Jamaica Road
by Lisa Smith
"South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down, preferably in a book. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed. Daphne’s attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small in every way: lanky, outgoing, and unapologetically himself. Daphne tries to keep her distance, but Connie is magnetic, and they form an intense bond. As they navigate growing up in a volatile, rapidly changing city, their families become close, and their friendship begins to shift into something more complicated. When Connie reveals that he and his mother “nuh land”—meaning they’re in England illegally—Daphne realizes that she is dangerously entangled in Connie’s fragile home life. Soon, long-buried secrets in both families threaten to tear them apart permanently."
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What We Leave Behind
by Sue Halpern
"Reeling after her mother's unexpected death, adopted high school senior Melody is left to work through her grief in the midst of school and college applications--and under the shadow of her own future. Suddenly reconsidering everything she once took as certain, Melody must piece together the fragments of her once happy family, and the future feels more uncertain than ever before. Meanwhile, Candace is an independent workaholic uninterested in relationships or children. Her quiet life is interrupted, however, when a casual Thanksgiving dinner turns into a rescue mission for a stranger and his dog. Through a tangled web of connections, she becomes acquainted with Melody's father, Eddie, and her once regimented life takes an unexpected turn."
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Bring the House Down
by Charlotte Runcie
"Alex Lyons always has his mind made up by the time the curtain comes down at a performance--the show either deserves a five-star rave or a one-star pan. Anything in between is meaningless. On the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he doesn't deliberate over the rating for Hayley Sinclair's show, nor does he hesitate when the opportunity presents itself to have a one-night stand with the struggling actress. Unaware that she's gone home with the theater critic who's just written a career-ending review of her, Hayley wakes up at his apartment to see his scathing one-star critique in print on the kitchen table, and she's not sure which humiliation offends her the most. So she revamps her show into a viral sensation critiquing Alex Lyons himself—entitled son of a famous actress, serial philanderer, and by all accounts a terrible man. Yet Alex remains unapologetic."
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Our next discussion
Tuesday, September 16, 6:30 pm
Library Meeting Room on Lower Level
If you're a regular reader of contemporary and historical fiction, consider joining our Fiction Book Club! The club usually meets on the third Tuesday of the month at 6:30, but we do recommend confirming details on our events calendar in case of changes. Copies of our next book are on reserve at the Circulation Desk. We hope to see you there!
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Trust
by Hernán Díaz
Told from the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction, this unrivaled novel about money, power, intimacy and perception is centered around the mystery of how the Rask family acquired their immense fortune in 1920s-1930's New York City.
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Our next meeting:
Tuesday, September 9, 6:30 pm
Library Conference Room on the Lower Level
If you're a fan of poetry, consider joining our Poetry Readers Discussion Group! The club usually meets on the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30, but we do recommend confirming details on our events calendar in case of changes. We hope to see you there!
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