Library Corner June 22nd
New Fiction
It's August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles away - while tending bar in New Orleans - Vale receives a call and is told that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look for her. Though the hometown Vale comes back to is not the one she left eight years earlier, she finds herself falling back into the lives of the family she thought she'd long since left behind. As Vale begins her search, the narrative opens up and pitches back and forth in time to follow three generations of women - a farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer, and an owl-loving hermit - as they seek love, bear children, and absorb losses. All the while, Vale's search has her unwittingly careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined. Written with a striking sense of place, Heart Spring Mountain, by Robin MacArthur, is an arresting novel about returning home, finding hope in the dark, and of the power of the land - and the stories it harbors - to connect and to heal. It's also an absorbing exploration of the small fractures that can make families break-and the lasting ties that bind them together.
When Eliza Fontaine is rescued from the bottom of a hotel pool just a few weeks before her first novel is going to be published, her family assumes that it's another failed suicide attempt. But Eliza swears she was pushed. The problem is she remembers little of that night, a result of the large quantity of alcohol she consumed and a worsening struggle with memory loss due to a brain tumor. Feeling ignored and vulnerable, she decides she must find the truth of what actually happened. As she searches for answers, something very peculiar begins to happen: The people closest to her start to confuse the events in her novel with those in her real life. The dividing line between fact and fiction seems to be dissolving, and even Eliza is becoming uncertain about where her protagonist's story ends and hers begins. She glimpses a shadowy presence hovering nearby, a mirror image of herself... but is it all in her head or is there really someone following her, studying her, wishing to do her harm? Perhaps the answers to all her questions already exist in the pages of her novel, if only she could put the pieces together in the right way. The Elizas, by Sara Shepard, is a heart-pounding, Hitchcockian double narrative composed of secrets, lies, false memories, and an unreliable narrator you'll never forget.
New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Mary's mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls' disappearance - but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing to reveal. Despite resistance from the community, who believe the girls to be dead, the family persists in their efforts to find the two sisters. When what happened to them is revealed, the uproar that ensues tears apart families, reputations, and even the social fabric of the city, exposing dark secrets about some of the most powerful of its citizens, and putting fragile loves and lives at great risk. Winter Sisters is a propulsive new novel by Robin Oliveira that is a gripping tale of suspense.
Dave Robicheaux is a haunted man. Between his recurrent nightmares, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. During a murder investigation, Dave Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he's investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave's beloved wife. As he works to clear his name, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves. James Lee Burke has returned with one of his favorite characters in his most searing, most prescient novel to date called, Robicheaux.
New Non Fiction
Craig Davidson has established himself as one of our most talented writers. But in his early thirties, before these successes, Davidson experienced a period of poverty, apparent failure and despair. In this work of timely and vivid non-fiction, Davidson tells the unvarnished story of one transformative year in his life and of his unlikely relationships with a handful of unique and vibrant children who were, to his initial astonishment and bewilderment, and eventual delight, placed in his care for a couple of hours each day-the kids on school bus 3077. This book called Precious Cargo is Craig Davidson’s year driving the kids on school bus 3077.