Don't miss these book happenings - including new materials at our library, featured recommendations, and more! Click on any of these book covers to place your holds.
New Materials
Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce -- Historical Fiction

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist—the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship.
We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper -- True Crime

1969: the height of counterculture, the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious 23-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.

40 years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for 10 years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.
Cobble Hill by Cecily Von Ziegesar -- Relationship Fiction
 
In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst 4 married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her husband Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones—everywhere.

A few blocks away, Roy, a well-known, newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage. Around the corner, Tupper, the nervous, introverted industrial designer with a warehouse full of prosthetic limbs struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife Elizabeth. She remains…elusive. Throw in 2 hormonal teenagers, a 10-year-old pyromaniac, a drug dealer pretending to be a doctor, and a lot of hidden cameras, and you’ve got a combustible mix of egos, desires, and secrets bubbling in brownstone Brooklyn.
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter -- Historical/Literary Fiction

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.
Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?
Featured Recommendations
May We Suggest...
Jan LaRoche, Young Adult Librarian, recommends reading We Speak in Storms by Natalie Lund.

She liked this book because it features a collective first person narrator as all of the teenagers who died when a tornado hit a drive-in movie in small town Illinois. Now, more than 50 years later, another tornado hits the same place on the same day. The lives of three teens are changed forever when this new tornado returns some of the spirits to the earth.
Anita Mehuys, Adult Services Librarian, recommends reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

She liked this book because it is a coming-of-age story about a boy who was raised by a graveyard of ghosts. Although the story sounds grim, it is full of pleasant surprises and a few chuckles.
Deborah Shippy, Cataloging and Acquisitions Coordinator, recommends reading I Heart Soul Food: 100 Southern Comfort Food Favorites by Rosie Mayes.

She liked this cookbook because it was full of really yummy soul food recipes that everyone would want to eat. Be careful, this cookbook will make you hungry!
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