Book Lovers Recommendations April 2020 Part II

Recommendations by Susan Lipstein

 

Book of Lost Friends
By Lisa Wingate

Lisa Wingate based this historical fiction on actual advertisements she saw in Southern newspapers after the Civil War.  Three women from Louisiana head out for Texas.   Two are searching for a lost inheritance and one, a freed slave, is searching for her family.  Their story from the past combines with the story of a teacher who in 1987 begins to learn what happened to these three women. 

 

Conspiracy of Bones
By Kathy Reichs

Temperance Brennan’s newest adventure.  Temperance is receiving text messages containing pictures of a corpse.  When an unidentified corpse does turn up, she starts to search for answers but her new boss forces her to do it outside of the system.  After five years, the character of Temperance Brennan is back with a vengeance. 

 

Deep
By Alma Katsu 

A supernatural spin is put on the story of the ships Titanic and Britannic.  Irish maid Annie serves on the Titanic and survives its sinking in 1912.  Four years later, she then signs up to be a nurse on the sister ship, Britannic, now outfitted as a wartime hospital ship.  Annie encounters a handsome soldier whom she recognizes as a previous passenger on the Titanic.  Passion, mystery, supernatural and history all combine. 

 

Hidden Valley Road
By Robert Kolker 

Non-fiction which reads like fiction.  Kolker sympathetically tells the story of the Galvin family, a middle class, “all American” family of 12 children growing up in the 1950’s.  One by one six out of ten of the boys are eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic-the most mentally ill family in America.  The book is the story of their family, along with the history of psychiatric treatment, and the change in treatment of schizophrenia.  It is fascinating reading, but  always told in a sensitive, understated way.

 

Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: a true (as told to me) story
By Bess Kalb

Bess Kalb is a TV writer and this is her first book.  Kalb uses the voice of her scrappy and of course, know-it-all grandmother, Bobby, to tell the story of four generations of women.   Grandma’s story transcends death, and it’s funny, loving and just what we need right now.

 

Other Mrs.
By Mary Kubica 

A couple move with their two sons from Chicago to a small island off the coast of Maine to take care of the husband’s niece, Imogen, whose mother has committed suicide.  There are more family secrets-and then, when a neighbor is murdered, the townspeople become suspicious of the new couple.  The story is told from the point of view of 3 characters.   It has already been picked up by Netflix.

 

Redhead by the Side of the Road
By Anne Tyler 

Micah Mortimer is a man in his 40’s who lives a quiet, cautious life in Baltimore.  He is a self-employed tech expert with a business called “Tech Hermit.”  He likes his life-and then all hell breaks loose.  His woman friend is being evicted and needs a place to stay, a young man appears on his doorstep who believes Micah is his father-and Micah now has to reach out to others and change his life ways he never thought possible.

 

Two Lives of Lydia Bird
By Josie Silver

Lydia Bird has been with Freddie forever-until he dies in a car accident on her 28^th birthday.  In her daily life, she begins to take tentative steps to move into the future, but she is also taking a sleeping pill which transports her at night back into a world where Freddie is alive, well and where they can marry.  Lydia is forced to make a decision about whether to live in her dreams or reality, and how she does this in the heart of this poignant book. 

 

Untamed
By Glennon Doyle

This is the true story of Glennon Doyle, a wife, mother and author who fell in love with a woman four years ago, while still married to her husband.  She wrote this book to help inspire women to follow  a path to become their true selves.  This is both a memoir and a wake-up call. She currently lives with her wife in Florida and co-parents her three children with her wife and ex-husband.

 

Valentine
By Elizabeth Wetmore

This is a debut novel.   In 1976, the town of Odessa, Texas is on  the cusp of an oil boom-but all is not well in Odessa.  The plot is set in motion by the brutal rape and attack of a 14 year old Hispanic girl, and the novel tells the story through the eyes of alternative female voices. The story is also driven by its characters as well as  the time and place of the novel.