May 10, 2024
Library Corner
May 10, 2024
New Fiction
The Summer We Started Over by Nancy Thayer – Eddie Grant is happy with her life and her work as a personal assistant to Dinah Lavender, one of the most famous and renowned romance authors in the business. But being a spectator to notoriety and glamour isn’t as fulfilling as she once thought. Thankfully, Eddie has the perfect excuse for a vacation: Her hardworking younger sister, Barrett, is opening her gift shop on Memorial Day weekend, and could use all the help she can get. But going home to the beautiful island of Nantucket means facing the family’s difficult past. Shortly before the death Eddie and Barrett’s brother, their mother left them; afterward, their father made the spontaneous decision to buy a small farm. Eddie stayed there for only a year before her family’s grief threatened to consume her as well, and she has been living in Manhattan ever since. Now that she is back, Eddie must face all she left behind: her father’s increased eccentricity, which has led to a house bursting at the seams with books; her sister’s resentment over Eddie’s escape; and a past love connection, one that is still undeniable and complicated, all these years later. But the Grant sisters are nothing if not resilient and capable, opening a used bookstore in their father’s abandoned barn to manage his hoarding, and navigating the discovery of a long buried family secret that will change all of them forever.
Someone Saw Something by Rick Mofina - When six-year-old Gabriel vanishes from Central Park, his mother, news anchor Corina Corado, is desperate for answers. Who would take her son – and why? Detectives suspect there’s a connection to the barrage of hate mail Corina’s received over the years. In her line of work, it’s not unusual for agitated conspiracy theorists to send messages that threaten violence…or worse. But as the investigation deepens, the secrets that Corina, her husband, Robert, and her stepdaughter, Charlotte, have kept start to unravel. As the truth behind Gabriel’s disappearance emerges, Corina must race the clock to track down her missing child…before paying the ultimate price.
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl – When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading “Go to Paris.” Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a traumatic childhood has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. But when her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wish. Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store, where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella, and for the first time in her life Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress – and embarks on an adventure. Her first stop: the iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces Stella to a veritable who’s who of the Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, she begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life. As weeks – and many decadent meals – go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at famed bookstore Shakespeare and Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past.
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles – 1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this internation group of women helps rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front lines. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen – children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles, and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears. 1987: When aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson while working in the archives of the New York Public Library, she becomes consumed with learning about her fate. In her obsessive research, Wendy discovers that she and the elusive librarian have more in common than their work at New York’s famed library, but she has no idea that their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.