MARCH READS
FICTION
You Are Not Alone
by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
(March 3)

Without job or apartment, love life or direction, Shay Miller receives a stark wake-up call after witnessing a tragic and desperate young woman leap to her death before a subway train. She finds herself drawn towards the woman’s friends, sisters Cassandra and Jane Moore. Life begins looking up for Shay, but before long she is asking herself - are her new friends too good to be true? An intense, puzzle of psychological suspense!
Separation Anxiety
by Laura Zigman
(March 3)

Talk about middle-age slump! Judy has seen her career as a children's book author crash-land. Her son Teddy mostly disdains her. Her husband has become a pot-addled “snackologist” who she can’t afford to divorce, and she's stuck in a dead end job writing for a self-help website. To top it off, she’s branded the family dog her comfort animal and carries it around with her everywhere she goes in a baby sling she stumbled across while attempting to organize her basement. Wickedly funny and surprisingly tender, this witty novel offers a candid portrait of middle-age limbo. Fun and full of heart!

Writers & Lovers
by Lily King
(March 3)

Stunned by her mother's sudden death, Casey Peabody is without a life plan. Wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors fill her mailbox. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on a novel she's been writing for over six years. At thirty-one, she’s still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of - the longing for a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world spirals further. The challenge to fulfill her creative ambition and balance her life push her to the brink. This is a candid, funny, moving novel with a bite like JoJo Moyes and a “character feel” similar to Katherine Center’s How to Walk Away.

These Ghosts Are Family
by Maisy Card
(March 3)

Stanford Solomon is not who he says he is. Beginning life as Abel Paisley, he left Jamaica for London in 1970 so that he could earn more money for his family and escape his unhappy marriage. A freak accident in London allowed him to assume his partner's identity and fake his own death. He began a new life in New York, married again, and created a new family. More than three decades later, circumstances compel him to bring his families together and let them in on his secret. His revelation meets with mixed reactions, explained by each participant traveling back in time to tell their own story. Card weaves a multi-generational narrative that tackles racism, colonialism, slavery, immigration, infidelity, and family ties—and just about every other issue of the modern age. A stunning debut!
Deacon King Kong
by James McBride
(March 3)

Handyman and occasional baseball coach Deacon Cuffy Lambkin, known as “Sportcoat” because of his colorful wardrobe or as “Deacon King Kong” on account of his affection for a moonshine by the same name, inexplicably shoots off the ear of his baseball protégé Deems Clemens. This sets in motion a hunt for Sportcoat by Deems’s employers, drawing in Tommy “Elephant” Elefante, a sweetly melancholy Italian mover of “hot goods,” and scrupulous police officer “Potts” Mullen, who is on the brink of retirement. As Deems’s crew ineffectually attempts to murder Sportcoat, Elephant follows clues left by his dead father to find a hidden treasure, and Potts tries to keep the neighborhood safe while falling for the wife of a preacher. With a wealth of quirky characters, sardonic humor and crazy action scenes, McBride creates a lived-in world where everybody knows everybody’s business. This generous, achingly funny novel will delight and move readers. 

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird
by Josie Silver
(March 3)

Lydia Bird's waking life is a nightmare after the love of her life, Freddie, dies in a senseless car crash on her birthday. Her days consist of grief and despair, while at night she is transported by a new kind of sleeping pill into hyper realistic dreams to a world where Freddie is still alive and they are together. She splits her time between her real life, where she takes tentative steps to deal with her grief, and her dream life. But can you ever really heal when you spend half your time in a fantasy? A gently developed love story and a touching meditation on healing after loss with richly drawn characters. Silver’s beautiful writing is full of humor and hope.

The Sea of Lost Girls
by Carol Goodman
(March 3)

Tess, a teacher at Haywood, an elite boarding school in Maine, keeps her harrowing past well hidden. The school has its own troubling past, involving the disappearance of several girls. Tess’s 17-year-old son, the nightmare-prone Rudy, who has always had “a nose for darkness,” seems to have finally come into the light after taking up with fellow student Lila Zeller. However, when Lila is found dead, Tess has every reason to suspect Rudy and goes to extreme lengths to shield him from the police. Her husband, along with the school’s longtime benefactor and a disgraced former faculty member, all become persons of interest. Much social-media witch-hunting ensues, set against a school production of The Crucible, providing clever modern parallels about the damage that can be done by teenagers with big imaginations. Beautifully drawn, especially the visit to the creepy little museum devoted to Haywood’s past.

The Deep
by Alma Katsu
(March 10)

An eerie, well researched supernatural spin on two historical tragedy – the sinking of sister ships Titanic and Britannica. Irish maid Annie Hebbley has the bad luck to be on both ships for their doomed voyages. In 1912, she's a starry-eyed eighteen-year-old who, having fled her family in Ireland, hopes to make a fresh start aboard the Titanic. Tragedy strikes when a young serving boy dies unexpectedly, leaving his mistress, the young, pregnant Maddie Astor, devastated and convinced that there is some sort of supernatural malfeasance afoot. Annie is distracted by her own powerful feelings for Mark Fletcher, a handsome passenger onboard. Four years later, she enlists for a tour of duty as a nurse aboard the hospital ship Britannica during World War I, and is shocked when Mark is brought on board as a patient and her feelings for him reignite. A slow-burning but satisfying, spine-chilling read.

Beheld
by TaraShea Nesbit
(March 17)

Ten years after its discovery, Plymouth is ruled by the rigid Puritans who forbid Anglicans to worship as they wish. Anglican families are on the verge of open rebellion. A stranger arrives and murder follows. The story is revealed through the experiences of two women of different status whose own voices would never have been included in standard histories of the time. Capturing the alternating voices of the haves and the have-nots, lush prose adds texture to stories of the colony’s women and Colonial life. Fans of Miriam Toews’s Women Talking will eagerly devour this gripping historical. A perfect reading choice for Women’s History Month.

Long Range
by C. J. Box
(March 3)

When Joe Pickett joins the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. As one survivor of the grizzly's rampage relays the bizarre story Joe begins to suspect the attack is not what it seems. Further, he is called home by an emergency on his own turf. Someone has targeted a prominent local judge, shooting at him from a seemingly impossible distance. While the judge was not hit, his wife was severely wounded, and it is up to Joe to find answers, the shooter, and how the dots connect. Fast-paced action, full of grit and suspense!

NON-FICTION


The Splendid and the Vile:
A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
by Erik Larson

Meticulously researched nonfiction that reads like the very best fiction.  This is a two-fold story of political risk-taking, and intimate domestic drama. The author provides new insight on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experiences of Churchill and his family.