Book Lovers Recommendations October 2020 Part II

Recommendations by Sue Lipstein
 
 
Dear Child
By Romy Hausmann
 
A debut thriller.  A young woman is found who has been living in captivity for 13 years and has given birth to two children.  She claims to be Lena, a  student who disappeared, but Lena’s father does not believe she is his daughter.  So who is she?  Who are the children?  And what happened to Lena?
 
 
Devil and the Dark Water
By Stuart Turton
 
It is 1634 and lots of strange goings-on start happening on a ship bound for Amsterdam including a murder in a locked room.  This is an action filled mystery with a few dashes of horror, occult and paranormal.
 
 
Hollow Places
By T. Kingfisher
 
A science fiction horror story.  Kara, a young divorcee, finds a portal to alternate realities in the wall of her uncle’s house.  This is not just a sci-fi fantasy, but it also a coming-of-age novel.
 
 
Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
By Victoria Schwab
 
In 1714, Addie makes a desperate prayer to be saved from a forced marriage-and ends up making a deal with the devil.  She will never age, and live forever, but will always be forgotten by anyone who meets her minutes afterward.  She will be immortal and invisible.  She lives this way for 300 years, until one day, someone remembers her.  What does this mean?  Will she finally be able to connect to someone and be rescued from her isolation?
 
 
The Lost Shtetl
By Max  Gross
 
Kreskol, a little village in Poland, has been untouched for years.  It was never touched by the Holocaust, or the passage for time.   But when two residents, escape, the village fathers send Yankel, out into the world to find them and bring them back before the outside world discovers Kreskol. Things don’t work out as planned and the little village has to decide what to do next.  Told with love and humor.
 
 
Jack
By Marilynne Robinson
 
This is actually a prequel to “Gilead,” her prize winning novel about an aging pastor.  This is about Jack, his son, who has fallen by the wayside.  Jack’s life is made even more complicated because  has fallen in love with Della, his soulmate, who is a black woman.  It is 1957 and  their love is illegal. Robinson is a poetic and sensitive writer, and this is a beautifully written book.
 
 
Leave the World Behind
By Rumaan Alam
 
Amanda and Craig and their two children are vacationing in a remote Long Island cottage when the panicked owners of the cottage, who had been staying in Manhattan, show up at their doorstep because there has been a total black out in the city.  Now, without any means of communication to the outside world and the fear that something cataclysmic has happened, the two families are forced  to see if they can trust each other and  work together.
 
 
Night Portrait: a novel of World War II and Da Vinci’s Italy
By Laura Morelli
 
An historical fiction novel with two narratives.  One is the story of Leonardo DaVinci and the woman who posed for his Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine.  The other narrative occurs years later and concerns Edith Becker, an art curator, who inadvertently helps a Nazi get the DaVinci portrait and now teams up with a handsome  member of the Monuments team to get it back.
 
 
To Tell You the Truth
By Gilly Macmillan
 
Lucy Harper is a best selling novelist.  Now her husband Dan has disappeared.  Years before, Lucy’s younger brother, Teddy, also disappeared and Lucy’s story of what happened kept changing-to her parent’s dismay.  Has she hurt or even killed her husband and brother?  Now is the time for Lucy to tell the truth.  Will she?  Can she?
 
 
When We Were Young and Brave
By Hazel Gaynor
 
A World War II story. 
Elspeth is an Englishwoman teaching in a school in northern China.   When
Japan declares war on England and the US, she is sent to an internment camp where she provides support and instruction to children who have been taken from their parents.  Inspired by true events.

What to Read Next: YA Horror

Blood Countess by Lana Popovic
The Companion by Katie Alender
Contagion by Erin Bowman
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
The Glare by Margot Harrison
Horrid by Katrina Leno
House of Furies by Madeleine Roux
The Loop by Ben Oliver
Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer
Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
The Sacrifice Box by Martin Stewart
Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Blood Countess by Lana Popovic

In 16th century Hungary, Anna Darvulia has just begun working as a scullery maid for Countess Elizabeth Báthory. When Elizabeth takes a liking to Anna, she’s vaulted to the dream role of chambermaid. She receives wages generous enough to provide for her family, and the Countess begins to groom Anna as her confidante. It’s not long before Anna falls under the Countess’s spell—and the Countess takes full advantage. Isolated from her friends, family, and fiancé, Anna realizes she’s not a friend but a prisoner of the increasingly cruel Elizabeth. Then come the murders, and Anna knows it’s only a matter of time before the Blood Countess turns on her, too.

The Companion by Katie Alender

The other orphans say Margot is lucky. But it wasn’t luck that made the prestigious Sutton family rescue Margot from her bleak existence at the group home. Margot was hand-picked to be a companion to their silent, mysterious daughter, Agatha. At first, helping with Agatha – and getting to know her handsome older brother – seems much better than the group home. But soon, the isolated, gothic house begins playing tricks on Margot’s mind, making her question everything she believes about the Suttons… and herself.

Contagion by Erin Bowman

After receiving an urgent SOS from a work detail on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is dispatched to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission. But when the crew arrives, they find an abandoned site, littered with rotten food, discarded weapons…and dead bodies. As they try to piece together who—or what—could have decimated an entire operation, they discover that some things are best left buried—and some monsters are only too ready to awaken.

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

The dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. Jane McKeene is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, she is set on returning to her Kentucky home. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies.

The Glare by Margot Harrison

After ten years of living on an isolated, tech-free ranch with her mother, 16-year-old Hedda is going back to the world of the Glare-her word for cell phones, computers, and tablets. Hedda was taught to be afraid of technology, but now she’s going to stay with her dad in California, where she was born, and she’s finally ready to be normal. Then Hedda rediscovers the Glare—the real Glare, a first-person shooter game from the dark web that scared her when she was younger. As Hedda starts playing the so-called “death game”, she realizes the truth behind her nightmares is even more twisted than she could have imagined. 

Horrid by Katrina Leno

Following her father’s death, Jane North-Robinson and her mom move to the dilapidated old house in Maine where her mother grew up. As the cold New England autumn arrives, and Jane settles in to her new home, she begins making friends, but also faces bullying from the resident “bad seed,” struggling to tamp down her own worst nature in response. Jane’s mom also seems to be spiraling with the return of her childhood home, but she won’t reveal why. Then Jane discovers that the “storage room” her mom has kept locked isn’t for storage at all – it’s a little girl’s bedroom, left untouched for years and not quite as empty of inhabitants as it appears….

House of Furies by Madeleine Roux

After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house’s mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. The house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved. Louisa begins to fear for a young man named Lee who is not like the other guests. He is charismatic and kind, and Louisa knows that it may be up to her to save him from an untimely judgment. But in this house of distortions and lies, how can Louisa be sure whom to trust?

The Loop by Ben Oliver

It’s Luka Kane’s 16th birthday and he’s been inside The Loop for over two years. Every inmate is serving a death sentence with the option to push back their execution date by six months if they opt into “Delays”, scientific and medical experiments for the benefit of the elite in the outside world. But rumors of a war on the outside are spreading amongst the inmates, and before they know it, their tortuous routine becomes disrupted. The government issued rain stops falling. Strange things are happening to the guards. And it’s not long until the inmates are left alone inside the prison…

Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer

Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” But when her mom brings home a live specimen, Nita decides she wants out — dissecting living people is a step too far. But when she tries to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold on the black market in his place — because Nita herself is a supernatural being. Now Nita is on the other side of the bars, and there is no line she won’t cross to escape and make sure no one can ever capture her again.

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

It’s been exactly one year since Sara’s sister, Becca, disappeared. With her sister gone, Sara doesn’t know whether her former friends no longer like her or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to “play the game” and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca. And even though she’s hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends – and their cameras – following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive.

The Sacrifice Box by Martin Stewart

Sep, Arkle, Mack, Lamb and Hadley: five friends thrown together one hot, sultry summer. When they discover an ancient stone box hidden in the forest, they decide to each make a sacrifice: something special to them, committed to the box for ever. And they make a pact: they will never return to the box at night; they’ll never visit it alone; and they’ll never take back their offerings. Four years later, a series of strange and terrifying events take place, and Sep and his friends understand that one of them has broken the pact. As their sacrifices haunt them with increased violence and hunger, they realize that the box may want the greatest sacrifice of all: one of them.

The Wilder Girls by Rory Power

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. The Tox started slow: first the teachers died one by one, then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything. But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence.

Call for Submissions: Morristown & Morris Township Quarantine Experience

The North Jersey History and Genealogy Center, Morristown and Morris Township Library, would like to know how residents of Morristown and Morris Township have handled being quarantined or self-isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic.  This unique time is worth preserving in writing so that we can help future generations understand how to handle a quarantine and what it is like for us being quarantined in 2020.  

Please tell us in 1500 words or less what being quarantined has been like for you. We would like to know:

  1. What has surprised you the most during this quarantine?
  2. What is your biggest fear?
  3. Have there been any positive impacts of this quarantine?
  4. What is the most difficult part of the quarantine?
  5. What are your hopes for the future when this quarantine is over? And how have those hopes changed from before this quarantine began?

 

Please let us know if you are willing to be contacted by the North Jersey History and Genealogy Center well after the quarantine is over.

All submissions must include your first and last name, age, other information including occupation, level of education completed, and whether you reside in the Town or Township. Please email your submission to njhgc@jfpl.org as an attachment or via USPS to North Jersey History and Genealogy Center, Morristown and Morris Township Library, 1 Miller Rd., Morristown, NJ 07960.

 

* Only send this work if in agreement that Morristown and Morris Township Library has permission to share the words with the public as part of the historical record and no benefit, financial or otherwise, is given or implied for the submitted material.

Originally Published April 10th, 2020

Book Lovers Recommendations October 2020

Recommendations by Sue Lipstein

A Room Called Earth-Madeleine Ryan
All About the Story:  news, power, politics and the Washington Post by Leonard Downie, Jr.
A Room Called Earth
By Madeleine Ryan
 
This is a debut novel and tells a very simple story.  A young Australian girl goes to a party.  Things appear normal, but when we get inside her mind, see the differences in how she perceives the world, as she is autistic.  The author identifies as neurodiverse herself.
 
 
All About the Story:  news, power, politics and the Washington Post
By Leonard Downie, Jr.
 
Downie is the former executive director of the Washington Post.  He took over after Ben Bradless left, and Downie served from 1991-2008.  He spent 40 years at the Post, working his way up from intern to executive director.  So has lots of stories to tell.
 
 
Atomic Love
By Jennie Fields
 
Rosalind Porter worked as a physicist on the Manhattan Projects and had an affair with one of her colleagues.  Five years later, the FBI approaches her and asks her to spy on her former lover, as they suspect he passed secrets to the Soviets.  Rosalind soon finds she is torn between her old lover and the feelings she has for the FBI agent she is working with.
 
 
Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett
By Annie Lyons
 
Eudora is 85 and feels she is finished with her life and has even made an appointment with a clinic in Switzerland so she can choose to exit the world on her own terms.  Then she meets 10 year old Rose, who is so full of life that she drages Eudora back into the world.  And Eudora starts an unlikely friendship with her recently widowed neighbor.  Will she keep that appointment?
 
 
Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey
By Kathleen Rooney
 
The characters in this novel really existed.  Cher Ami is actually a British homing pigeon who was used during World War I and helped Major Whittlesey, an American soldier, save the battalion he commanded.  The story is told by both man and pigeon, and touches on both war and the challenges Major Whittlesey had as a gay man in the armed forces.
 
 
Dancing with the Octopus
By Debora Harding
 
This memoir deals with the childhood trauma of the author, who was kidnapped and assaulted when she was only 14 in 1978.  Year later, suffering from PTSD, she undertakes a search to meet her attacker and bring closure to her trauma.
 
 
Impersonation
By Heidi Pitlor
 
Allie, a single mother of a four year old, is happy to take on the job of ghostwriting a book about a high profile female lawyer who is considering a run for the Senate. She is also a single mother, raising a young child.  Because Allie has a difficult time getting the lawyer to give her material for the book, she starts to put in details of her own struggles.  Soon she will have to reckon with the impersonation.
 
 
Smallest lights in the Universe
By Sara Seager
 

The author was a MIT astrophysicist with two young children who depended on her husband to keep her grounded at home.  When he dies suddenly and leaves her a widow with two young children at age 40, she has to refocus her life.  No longer can she take solace solely in the stars-she connects to a Widows of Concord group which becomes a life saver.  A life affirming story of survival.

 
 
Thursday Murder Club
By Richard Osman
 
This is the debut of what the author hopes to be a series.  Four retires spend Thursday afternoon in their luxury retirement residence in Kent, England, examining old crime cases-until two new ones fall into their laps.  A fun and well written book.
 
 
What Are You Going Through
By Sigrid Nunez
 
This is not an escapist novel- the narrator, unnamed, as are all the characters, spends a lot of time listening to the experiences of others as she has found that most people want to talk about themselves.  Then a friend pulls her into a life crisis, where she needs to be more than just a passive reactor.  There’s a lot of stream of consciousness in this novel, but from the reviews, it sounds like another thought provoking book-a challenging read.

Online sources for Educators, Students, and Parents

With students and educators returning to the classroom both remotely and in-person this semester, they face renewed pressure to create innovative lesson material and locate sources for projects. The North Jersey History & Genealogy Center has made a variety of sources available both online and in our distanced reading room.

Online Sources

Materials include content for projects on topics as varied as the history of scientific discovery and engineering, retail and economic development, war, and land use and development. The History Center’s collections are particularly strong in telling the stories of local families, churches, philanthropic organizations, and businesses. They also document the changing roles of racial, ethnic, & religious groups.

Our collections tell the nation’s story through photographs and postcards, family papers, maps, historic newspapers, artifacts, and various ephemera. Materials document the breadth of New Jersey’s history; some predate the founding of the United States back to the colonial era.

Among the more than 10,000 items available online, the Historic Photograph Collection and Curtiss Photo Collection are some of the most frequently referenced resources. It includes documentation of agricultural development, and suburban growth in Morris County; commerce, manufacturing, retail, and labor; as well as education and medicine.

Online collections also depict the range of Morristown and Morris Township housing, from Gilded Age estates to modest 19th century apartments and modern suburban homes; in addition to commemorative events and monuments; extreme weather events; agricultural life; and the construction of municipal services such as libraries, water treatment, fire, police, and sanitation.

A recently digitized collection of oral histories allows over forty longtime Irish and African American residents tell their own experiences of living and working in Morristown, Morris Township, and the surrounding communities.

Our Historic Postcard Collection depicts many of the county’s historic sites, local businesses such as hotels and taverns, hospitals and schools, transportation systems ranging from canals to trolley lines, and some of the amusement parks and recreational facilities that no longer exist.

Onsite resources

The History & Genealogy Center Reading Room recently reopened to the public by appointment, and staff are available to assist visitors and supervise the handling of the collections. Appointments are limited to two parties at a time to encourage distancing and individuals are asked to limit their visit to two hours. Staff will retrieve all materials, which are placed in quarantine between use.

Onsite resources include over 60,000 published books and family histories, as well as state, county, and local histories. Archival materials consist of personal letters, diaries, scrapbooks; church and government documents, and records of local businesses and organizations. Visitors have access to historic newspapers from Morris County dating from 1798 to the present, as well as 10,000 maps depicting the County, New Jersey, and the United States.

Our selection of genealogy databases provide access to federal census records, immigration and naturalization information, military records, national historic newspapers, Revolutionary and Civil War era documents, city directories, agricultural and industrial schedules, Native American census rolls, and obituaries. Morristown and Township residents can access several databases from home with their Library Cards including HeritageQuest, MyHeritage,  and ProQuest Historic Newspapers – U.S. Northeast Edition.

The reading room is accessible by appointment, and due to reduced capacity guidelines researchers are encouraged to schedule their time slot well in advance. We also offer remote research assistance for those unable to visit in person and have temporarily waived research fees throughout the pandemic; however due to the volume of requests please allow two to four weeks for a response.