Book Lovers Recommendations December 2020

Recommendations by Sue Lipstein

 

 

By Michiko Kakutani

 

This is your holiday gift to someone special-or yourself.  It is an annotated  list of 100 books from all genres suggested by a former book editor of the New York Times.  Favorite classics, fiction, non-fiction, memoirs-new and old. Find your next read or plan your next year’s book challenge.

 

 

By Rose Carlyle

 

Trouble ensues when the inheritance of a fortune depends on which sibling in a family can get pregnant first-and that is made all the more complicated when twin sisters have to compete with each other.  What happens if one of them achieves pregnancy and the other does not?  A suspense and psychological thriller.

 

 

By Manda Collins

 

It is England in 1865 and Lady Katherin, who has become a notorious newspaper columnist, wants to try and solve a murder she has witnessed, only to be thwarted by a real Detective Inspector, who does not want the help of a woman.  She is smart and beautiful; he is handsome and competent.  So will they catch a killer? or each other? or both?

 

 

By Rachel Joyce

 

A sensible schoolmarm spinster decides to abandon everything and travel with a friend to go on her dream mission-finding the golden beetle of New Caledonia, which may or may not exist.  The journey is not just to New Caledonia, but it is a journey inside our heroine, as she changes her life.

 

 

By Nev March

 

An award winning debut mystery.  Two women have fallen to their deaths from the university’s clock tower, and the widower of one does not believe that his wife or her sister have committed suicide.  So he hires a British captain to investigate.  It’s a good chance to learn about old Bombay and enjoy a new writer.

 

 

By Michael J. Fox

 

Well loved Michael J. Fox continues the saga of his life, discussing his decades long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, and his fight to maintain optimism in the face of a disease that will slowly rob him of his movement and his life.  He is realistic about his prognosis but uses what he has-family, a purpose, to keep him going, even though so much of his life has been robbed by this disease.

 

 

By Ellen Cooney

 

The moving fictional account of a young hospital chaplain who has to spend so much time ministering to patients in the busy medical center where she works that she has had no time to minister to herself.  We watch her with her patients as she works over the course of one night, and how what she learns from her work can slowly be used to heal herself.  

 

 

By Becky Cooper

 

Non-fiction that reads like a novel.  As an undergrad at Harvard, Becky Cooper had heard the story of a female graduate student who was murdered in 1969.  Although everyone believed that she had been killed by a professor she was having an affair with, the murder was never solved.  Cooper spends 10 years finding the truth.  She uncovers  a lot about the culture of the time in academia, finds out a few secrets and brings some closure to the life of a woman who died too soon.

 

 

By Max Seeck

 

A new Scandanavian mystery writer!  Female investigator Jessica starts investigating a gruesome murder of the wife of a best sellling author.  At first she thinks the murderer is recreating  scenes from the author’s novel, but she soon finds it is even worse than that.  

 

 

By Anthony M. Amore

The true story of an heiress who pulled off art heists to help fund her political causes.  This fascinating story combines crime, art, politics and history while revealing a complicated, unique woman.