Recommendations by Susan Lipstein

Animals at Lockwood Manor
By Jane Healey

This is a debut novel set in England in 1939.  Hetty Cartwright, only 30 and single, is given the responsibility of taking care of the mammal collection of a London natural history museum when it is moved to an isolated manor house to be safe from the blitz.  Hetty soon finds mystery in the old mansion, owned by the mysterious Major Lockwood, who lives there with his troubled daughter.  A gothic novel with a few modern twists.

Big Finish 
By Brooke Fossey

A debut novel.  Two elderly residents of an assisted living center in Texas find their lives up-ended when the grand-daughter of one of the room-mates crashes into their room looking for a safe place to hide from her abusive boyfriend.  The two decide to help her out, even if it means they might be evicted.

Book of Longings
By Sue Monk Kidd

This is the fictional account of a young woman living in the time of Jesus.  In fact, in this novel, she meets Jesus when he is 18 years old-and she marries him.  They live for a time with his family, until Ana, who never conforms to the dictates of society, has to flee to Alexandria.  The author treats the life of Jesus in a respectful and reverential manner.  

Family for Beginners
By Sarah Morgan

Flora Donovan is a single woman in New York City who finally meets the man of her dreams.  Of course, he comes with baggage-he is a widower with two children, one of whom is a surly teenager who does not want a new mother.  Flora goes with them on a family vacation and finds that the future of her being part of this family is at stake.

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs
By Jennifer Finley Boylan

Boylan is a New York Times opinion columnist and human rights activist.  In this book, she explores the age old topic of giving and receiving love through her relationships throughout her life with seven special dogs.  

Henna Artist
By Alka Joshi

A debut novel.  This is set in India in the 1950’s, eight years after India’s independence from Britain.  Lakshmi has escaped from an abusive marriage and has made a life for herself as a henna artist.  When her younger sister needs to live with her, Lakshmi finds that she now needs to put her family first.  

It Bleeds 
By Stephen King

Four novellas from the legendary storyteller and master of horror and suspense returns with four novellas.  If you don’t like one, go on to the next.  And if you do like them, you’ve got four great stories to enjoy.  You really have nothing to lose.

Know My Name
By Chanel Miller

Chanel Miller wrote an anonymous victim input statement when the young man who sexually assaulted her on the Stanford campus was convicted but only given 6 months in the county jail.  There was such a tremendous reaction to her statement that it gave her the courage to come out of the shadows and tell her story using her name and face.  She is a wonderful writer with a painful story to tell.

Saint X
By Alexis Schaitkin

This is a debut novel.  When Claire was only 7 years old, her college age sister disappeared on the last night of their family vacation.  Her body turned up several days later.  Two local men were arrested, but eventually let go.  Years later, Claire meets one of them in New York City and decides to try to find out the truth about her sister’s death-and she learns some truths about her sister’s life as well.

Simon the Fiddler
By Paulette Jiles

23 year old Simon is conscripted into the Confederate Army in the waning days of the Civil War.   Because he is a fiddler, he gets a fairly safe assignment in a regional band.  He meets a beautiful Irish girl who is an indentured servant.  Their paths separate, but Simon is determined to find her again and make her his bride.  

Recommendations by Susan Lipstein

Afterlife
By Julia Alvarez

A return to adult fiction by renowned author Alvarerz.  Antonia Vega, an immigrant from the Domenican Republic, her sisters and an undocumented pregnant teen-ager all that center stage in this novel which explores the different immigrant experiences, and what people need to learn from the past in order to navigate the future.

Boy From the Woods
By Harlan Coben 

The protagonist is a young man named Wilde, who was found 30 years before living in the woods, with no memory of his past.  He has never fit into society and now leads a quiet, reclusive life on his own.  Then he is asked by a criminal attorney to investigate the disappearance of a local teen-age girl, who herself was an outcast at school.  His investigation will open up old secrets that could have dangerous consequences.

Darling Rose Gold
By Stephanie Wrobel

A debut novel.  Rose Gold Watts was 18 years old when she found out that the serious illnesses she always thought she had were really all in her mother’s mind.  Rose Gold was a victim of Munchhausen by proxy, and her mother is convicted on child abuse charges and jailed for 5 years.  When she is released with no place to go, townspeople are surprised when Rose Gold allows her mother to come to live with her.  Is  Rose Gold as sweet as she appears?  A psychological suspense.

Disappearing Earth
By Julia Phillips

Two young girls disappear in the tundra of Far East Russia, in a disappearance that mirrors the disappearance of a native girl that was all but ignored.  This is a great debut novel, utilizing intriguing characters, a complex story and a new setting.  The author spent a Fulbright year on the isolated Russian peninsula that is the setting for this story.

Honey Don’t List
By Chirstina Lauer

Melissa and Rusty Tripp are a celebrity couple who have made their fortune as home design and renovation experts.  Now they have published a book about now to have a perfect marriage-which unfortunately, they don’t have.  Two personal assistants, one male and one female, are hired to accompany them on the tour to keep them in line.  How is this going to work out?  It’s a sweet rom-com, just right to read when you need a little escape.

Ladies Handbook for her Mysterious Illness 
By Sarah Raney 

This is Sarah Raney’s memoir of her 17 year search for a diagnosis and treatment of a condition that destroyed her health and stumped one medical professional after another.  She refused to believe that her illness was “all in her head” and persevered until she found a diagnosis and treatment.  Her sense of humor, evident in this book saved the day.

Little Gods
By Meng Jin

Liya, a Chinese born American, is only 17 when her mother, Su Lan, dies.  Liya knows very little about her mother’s past.  What little she finds after her death prompt Liya to return to China-to discover what she never learned about her mother-and everything she can about the father she never knew.  Three narrators tell this moving story.  The author is Chinese-born and Harvard educated, and shows great promise in this debut novel.

Secret Guests
By Benjamin Black 

This is a novel for Anglophiles and royal lovers.  It is the fictional story of two very special young girls who are secretly sent to the Irish countryside during World War II to keep them safe.  They just happen to be the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, who are sent with a female English secret agent and a male Irish detective.  Are the girls going to stay safe?  Are sparks going to fly?

Trace Elements
By Donna Leon

Guido Brunetti’s newest case comes when a woman on her deathbed sends him on a case that turns out to threaten all of Venice.  This is the 29^th in a series that does for Italy what Louise Penny does for Three Pines.  Great story, as always.

Yellow Bird Sings
By Jennifer Rosner 

Shira and her mother are hiding in a barn in Poland in 1941.  Shira, only five years old, and she is a musical prodigy, but she is not allowed to say or sing anything, so her mother helps her create a fantasy world where a yellow bird sings all the music in Shira’s head.  Eventually, they must leave the shelter and find safety elsewhere.  The author tells the story from the point of view of different characters.  It is a debut novel inspired by true stories of children hidden during World War 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. 

Recommendations by Susan Lipstein

(These books are all available as ebooks)

Dear Edward
By Ann Napolitano

Twelve year old Edward is the only survivor of a plane crash that kills every other person on board the aircraft, including Edward’s family.  He now has to learn how to survive the rest of his life.  This is a coming of age story, dealing with the emotional fall out from a tragedy as Edward struggles to find its purpose – and his own.

Girl
By Edna O’Brien

Maryam is kidnapped by the brutal terrorist group Boko Haram.  How this young woman survives her kidnapping and then fights for herself and her daughter’s acceptance  back into their community makes tough but rewarding reading.

Milk and Honey
By Rupi Kaur

This is a collection of poetry and prose about survival-pretty apropos for our lives today.  It is made up of four chapters- each dealing with a different kind of pain-but all showing how there is sweetness even in the most  bitter moments.

Mirror and the Light
By Hilary Mantel

This is the long awaited third book in the trilogy that covers the life of Thomas Cromwell.  The third book begins with the execution of Anne Boleyn and covers the final years of Cromwell’s career and life.  Cromwell was a blacksmith’s son who rose to power with his wits and cunning to be by the side of Henry the Eighth.  But Henry is loyal to no one but himself, so how long can Cromwell survive?

My Dark Vanessa
By Kate Elizabeth Russell

In 2000, fifteen year old Vanessa has a relationship with her 42 year old English teacher.  She moves on in her life, but was always convinced that he truly loved her.  Years later, when a fellow student calls this same teacher out for sexual abuse, Vanessa’s life is thrown into turmoil as she has to come to terms with what actually happened to her.  She struggles to redefine her image of herself-and her lover without destroying herself. 

Red Lotus
By Chris Bohjalian

The newest from the best selling author.  Alexis and Austin travel to Vietnam where Austin disappears.  Alexis soon discovers that he has left a trail of lies behind him, and determined to find out the truth, she starts to put herself in danger.  A real thriller.

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
By Malcolm Gladwell

How do we use tools and strategies to make sense of people we don’t know?  Gladwell uses actual cases in the news to show ways we often misjudge other people which results in conflict and misunderstanding.  In today’s world, finding out who is speaking the truth has never been more important, and using some of his techniques, he hopes people will learn to mitigate miscommunication.

These Ghosts are Family
By Maisy Card

This is a debut novel.  Abel and Vera Paisley are a married couple living in Jamaica in the 1960’s.    Their lives change instantly when Abel travels to London, and decides that he can make a better life for himself if he fakes his own death and changes his identity.  Of course, this results in major repercussions for the rest of his family, who believe he is dead.  This is a personal drama made more exciting by its historical background.

You Are Not Alone
By Greer Hendricks

Shay, a lonely misfit, is befriended by sisters, and she feels her friendship with them brings with it a promise of a better life for her.  However, the sisters have actually befriended her for their own sinister purposes.  Will keep you on the age of your seat.