Titles read by our staff and recommended to you. These books can be found in the “Staff Picks” display in Readers' Services and Outreach located on the second floor. New recommendations are added on a continuing basis so come by and see what your library staff likes to read!

Title: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeanette Walls
Suggested by: Jackie Ranaldo, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: Publishers Weekly
Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents-just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book-were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus-they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents-walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star-was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure."

Title: The Swallows of Kabul
Author: Yasmina Khadra
Suggested by: Susan Santa, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: The New York Times
Yasmina Khadra — whose previous books have chronicled Algeria's savage civil war, pitting Islamic fundamentalists against the army-backed government — is intimately familiar with the consequences that war and religious extremism have on people's daily lives, and in this book he gives the reader a tactile sense of what life under the Taliban might have been like.

Title: Black & White
Author: Dani Shapiro
Suggested by: Rosemarie Germaine, Circulation Clerk
* Review: Publishers Weekly
Clara, the protagonist of Shapiro's uneven fifth novel (after Family History), is the youngest daughter and muse of Ruth Dunne, a famous Manhattan photographer who made her name shooting Sally Mann–style (read: nude and provocative) photos of a young Clara. Unable to bear the humiliation of being "the girl in those pictures," Clara runs away from home at 18. Fourteen years later and still estranged from her mother, Clara's living in Maine with her husband and daughter when her older sister calls and tells her Ruth is in failing health. Clara travels back to Manhattan, where she comes to terms with her family and herself. Though Clara's frequent bemoaning of her emotional scars tries the reader's patience, Shapiro's sharp depictions of love and shame go a long way toward putting the self-pity into relief. It's unfortunate that Ruth fails to comes across as anything more than a narcissistic artist, but the novel offers some fine insights into marriage, the making of art and the often difficult mother-daughter dynamic.

Title: The World to Come
Author: Dara Horn
Suggested by: Audrey Honigman, Media Clerk
* Review: The New York Times
… the book succeeds, in part because Horn gracefully plays off certain words and images, using them as touchstones and leitmotifs: the title phrase and the Chagall painting; the recurring references to wombs, caves, bridges and the dents that angels supposedly leave beneath our noses. Little connections leap the narrative gaps and draw story lines together. Throughout this rich, complex and haunting novel, Horn reminds us that our world poses constant threats to the artist and to art, to the individual and the creative spirit. Their very survival is a miracle: in a sense, every one of us is that bearded man flying, unaware, over Vitebsk.

Title: In Legend Born
Author: Laura Resnick
Suggested by: Megan Kass, Page
* Review: Library Journal
Determined to free their country of Sileria from its Valdani conquerors, a freedom fighter, a noblewoman, an exiled warrior, and a vengeful mage put aside their personal vendettas to follow the lead of a young seer whose visions promise an end to slavery. Romance author Resnick makes her fantasy debut with a smoothly narrated, intricate tale of revolution and the human heart. The characters' efforts to overcome the barriers that divide them and discover their common bonds provides a welcome depth to this series opener and sets the stage for future titles.

Title: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Korean Translation)
Author: Jung Chang
Suggested by: Jeannie Wang, Page
Review: Publishers Weekly
Bursting with drama, heartbreak and horror, this extraordinary family portrait mirrors China's century of turbulence. Chang's grandmother, Yu-fang, had her feet bound at age two and in 1924 was sold as a concubine to Beijing's police chief. Yu-fang escaped slavery in a brothel by fleeing her ``husband'' with her infant daughter, Bao Qin, Chang's mother-to-be. Growing up during Japan's brutal occupation, free-spirited Bao Qin chose the man she would marry, a Communist Party official slavishly devoted to the revolution. In 1949, while he drove 1000 miles in a jeep to the southwestern province where they would do Mao's spadework, Bao Qin walked alongside the vehicle, sick and pregnant (she lost the child). Chang, born in 1952, saw her mother put into a detention camp in the Cultural Revolution and later ``rehabilitated.'' Her father was denounced and publicly humiliated; his mind snapped, and he died a broken man in 1975. Working as a ``barefoot doctor'' with no training, Chang saw the oppressive, inhuman side of communism. She left China in 1978 and is now director of Chinese studies at London University. Her meticulous, transparent prose radiates an inner strength.

Title: My French Whore
Author: Gene Wilder
Suggested by: Marie Martin, Circulation Clerk
* Review: Publishers Weekly
A simple, straight-faced love story about a brave coward and a scarlet woman drives actor Wilder's touching debut novel. (His memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger, appeared last year.) It's 1918, and Paul Peachy, an unassuming train conductor and amateur actor in Milwaukee, finds his marriage has run out of steam, and decides to enlist as a doughboy. At nearly 30, Paul has seen little of the world, as his naive and candid dispatches from the French trenches make clear. Paul, who speaks German, is brought in to interrogate notorious German spy Harry Stroller. Soon sent into the front line, Paul deserts and, in an extraordinary sequence, passes himself off as Harry Stroller. Taken to the local schloss and treated like royalty by the German officials, Paul is given a French whore, Annie Breton, for comfort, and he gradually comes to care for her once she reveals herself to him more than physically. Despite some ensuing heroism, the game's soon up for Peachy, and the novel takes the form of the final, eloquent notebook of a man still finding out who he is.

Title: Black Maps
Author: Peter Spiegelman
Suggested by: Ed Goldberg, Teen Librarian
* Review: Publishers Weekly
After a lengthy, but never boring, setup, Spiegelman's first novel pitches from one taut, suspenseful scene to another, with New York PI John March at the center but also including an impressive cast of allies, adversaries and interlopers. The author lays out the collapse of financial giant MWB (Merchant's Worldwide Bank) and the subsequent federal investigations in detail. March's friend, lawyer Michael Metz, hires him to help a client, an officer at a major investment bank. It appears that fallout from MWB's collapse has prompted a blackmailer to use information seemingly derived from MWB documents to threaten Metz's client with exposure that would ruin his career. Real or manufactured, this data would be damaging. March must be careful, of course, not to step on federal toes. From computers to shoe leather, March's dogged search is entertaining, plausible and ultimately dangerous. Nothing about this stylish, literate mystery reads like a debut, as Spiegelman handles the complex plot with verve and artfully sets the stage for a backstory with mere hints about the trauma that drove March from upstate cop to PI. John March is one of the most intriguing new PIs to come along in quite some time, and if this strong first outing is any indication, he should be in for a long and enjoyable run.

Title: The Color of Water
Author: James McBride
Suggested by: Lisa Jones, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: Library Journal
The need to clarify his racial identity prompted the author to penetrate his veiled and troubled family history. Ruth McBride Jordan concealed her former life as Rachel Deborah Shilsky, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, from her children. Her grim upbringing in an abusive environment is left behind when she moves to Harlem, marries a black man, converts to Christianity, and cofounds a Baptist congregation with her husband. The courage and tenacity shown by this twice-widowed mother who manages to raise 12 children, all of whom go on to successful careers, are remarkable.

Title: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Suggested by: Judith Lockman, Library Director
* Review: Publishers Weekly
The marriage of Ted and Elinor Mackey, a yuppie podiatrist-lawyer couple in their early-40s living in Northern California, is pushed to the brink when Elinor learns that Ted is having an affair with his trainer, Gina Ellison. Elinor's reaction-pity-surprises her. Winston (Good Grief) adroitly makes it clear that Ted's affair is a symptom: infertility problems have caused years of emotional turmoil. And Gina's no bimbo: she has a loving but difficult relationship with Ted, complicated further by her young son, Toby, and his immediate attachment to Ted as a stable father figure. When Elinor confronts Ted and Gina, Ted quickly ends the affair; neither is sure if infidelity or infertility should end their marriage. During their separation, Elinor takes a sabbatical from her law firm and casually dates Noah Orch, a hunky but dull arborist. Ted haphazardly resumes his relationship with Gina. As he realizes that his connection to her is more than an escape from a bad marriage, all concerned have decisions to make. Winston has a real feel for the push and pull of a marriage in crisis, and delivers it in a brisk, funny, no-nonsense style that still comes off as respectful of the material.

Title: The House On Beartown Road
Author: Elizabeth Cohen
Suggested by: Christine Kingsley, Reference Librarian
Review:
* The New York Times
Instead of molding all this into 270 pages of scathing retribution or bitter self-pity, Cohen has written a frank, funny and unexploitative memoir. She is not shy about detailing her father's Alzheimer's, but she's equally intent on illuminating his dignity. Indeed, the disease's cruel habit of eating away at memory made her determined to understand better the man who now depends on her for his existence. And though she doesn't glamorize Alzheimer's, she's not blind to its occasional heartbreaking beauty.

Title: Veronica
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Suggested by: Lisa Caputo, Head of Readers’ Services and Outreach
* Review: Publishers Weekly
Gaitskill begins her bittersweet novel of the friendship between fashion model Alison and the older HIV+ Veronica (whose looks and habits are totally alien to Alison's stylish world) years later when Alison is older and feeling her body slowly decay. While the book follows Alison's younger self as she prances about Paris catwalks and New York nightclubs, the knowledge that she ends up lonely and broken-spirited casts a pall over the telling of those glittering earlier days. Mazur plays on this well, giving Alison a weary yet wistful tone that conveys the weight of her self-loathing. For Veronica's lines, she skillfully alters her voice to be the "bitterly inflected instrument" Gaitskill describes: nasal, almost braying, but direct and honest in contrast to the timidity and insincerity of Alison's words. The narration can be disorienting as it slips from grim present to various points in the past, but that works to the story's advantage, making all the perspectives bleed together, infusing the whole with sadness. Bleak but compelling, the book affords listeners a wonderfully nuanced glimpse inside a damaged psyche.

Title: Outlander
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Suggested by: Sonia Grgas, Administration
* Review: Library Journal
After being separated by seven years of World War II, Claire and Frank Randall return to the Scottish Highlands for a second honeymoon. Left to her own devices while her husband immerses himself in historical pursuits, Claire inadvertently enters a circle of standing stones and is plunged back 200 years to a Scotland on the verge of the second Jacobite uprising. Her pluck and skill as a nurse win the Scots' grudging respect, but only marriage to a Scot will save her from the clutches of Frank's vicious forbear, Black Jack Randall. Though first novelist Gabaldon uses time travel primarily to allow a modern heroine, this is basically a richly textured historical novel with an unusual and compelling love story.

Title: What is the What
Author: Dave Eggers
Suggested by: Lisa Jones, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: The New York Times
Reading What Is the What does indeed make it impossible to pretend that Valentino Achak Deng and the other Lost Boys and all the men and women and children who have suffered, and continue to suffer, fates like his do not exist. Dave Eggers has made the outlines of the tragedy in East Africa — so vague to so many Americans — not only sharp and clear but indelible. An eloquent testimony to the power of storytelling, What Is the What is an extraordinary work of witness, and of art.

Title: This Book Will Save your Life
Author: A.M. Homes
Suggested by: Lisa Caputo, Head of Readers’ Services and Outreach
* Review: Library Journal
Richard Novak's day-trading fortune has given him the good life in the hills above 21st-century Los Angeles, but a heart-attack scare exposes his isolation, and a rapidly expanding sinkhole in his front yard forces him to move to a Malibu rental. These crises throw Richard into the paths of such diverse characters as a donut shop owner, a runaway housewife, and a reclusive, iconic author. His eventual return to humanity culminates in a confrontational and emotional visit with teenage son Ben, and a feral chihuahua attack on his ex-wife brings them all to a greater understanding and acceptance of one another. Harrison Ford and ex-president Gerald Ford appear in one of the book's weaker scenes that stops just shy of contrived silliness, but, overall, this is an engaging and timely tale told with a balanced mix of dark humor and sympathy for individuals enduring the foibles of everyday living. Devoted fans of Homes (Music for Torching) might miss her edgier and more provocative works, and new readers may be shaken by the comically apocalyptic ending of Richard's midlife crisis.

Title: Step on a Crack
Author: James Patterson
Suggested by: Rosemary Moran, Circulation
* Review: Publishers Weekly
Pop a bowl of popcorn, settle into a comfy chair and you might finish this combination thriller and tearjerker before the popcorn. Bestseller Patterson (Cross) and Ledwidge (The Narrowback) spin a fantastic tale of an audacious mass kidnapping and the unlikely detective thrust into the primary role of negotiator, sleuth and hero. Michael Bennett, a senior NYPD homicide detective, has a wife dying of cancer and 10 adopted children of various ethnic origins. When St. Patrick's Cathedral, site of the celebrity-packed funeral of a former first lady, is seized by a dozen ruthless men, Bennett ends up as point man for the hastily assembled negotiating team. From then on, the tale requires the reader to go with the flow as Bennett alternates visits to his wife's hospital bedside, brief trips to check on how his kids are managing and tense dealings with the well-prepared kidnappers.

Title: Here on Earth
Author: Alice Hoffman
Suggested by: Jill Jacobson, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: Library Journal
As this novel opens, March Murray Cooper returns to her hometown, ostensibly to bury the woman who raised her but needing to resolve the unfinished business of her youthful love for Hollis, from whom she has been separated for years. Hollis has now grown into a man embittered by loneliness. He has learned neither to forgive nor to forget, and March must discover whether he can ever learn to love. Hoffman (Practical Magic, LJ 12/94) takes great care here to examine the many facets of love and relationships, turning them like a prism to reflect on March and Hollis. Hoffman's evocative language and her lyrical descriptions of place contrast sharply with the emotional scars that her characters must uncover and bear. Her novel is a haunting tale of a woman lost in and to love; it will enthrall the reader from beginning to end.

Title: In His Image
Author: James BeauSeigneur
Suggested by: Ralph Guiteau, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: Booklist
BeauSeigneur's In His Image is the first installment of his Christ Clone trilogy, an End Times series that was all but privately published in the late 1990s but that developed a considerable underground following. This is mostly because BeauSeigneur knows how to write, deploying a tough, driving style in perfect cadence. He generates suspense by withholding details. Like a historian of the future, he goes out of his way to show every viewpoint. And, like Tom Clancy, BeauSeigneur throws in technical details about how systems and organizations operate, and since he was formerly a CIA operative, he's persuasive. In His Image begins as an almost scholarly account of scientific examinations of the shroud of Turin in the 1970s, all to dissuade you of your disbelief for the cloning of Christopher Goodman from the blood of Christ. Christopher is a bright, lonely kid, entirely sympathetic. You will like this Antichrist. The odd events on the international scene have nothing to do with him, and what happens at the United Nations is entirely reasonable given the circumstances. The sequels are Birth of an Age (terrifying plagues, each given detailed, almost dispassionate, scientifically plausible explanations) and Acts of God (the reign of the Antichrist and the Battle of Armageddon).

Title: Plain Jane
Author: Eve Horowitz
Suggested by: Helene Pfeffer, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: Publishers Weekly
Jane Singer, 19, thinks she's plain; she hates her body, and doesn't care much for her face, either. She's wrong about her appearance, but it's undeniable that her plainspoken opinions get her into trouble. Jane is an engaging narrator, treating the reader to a funny, touching coming-of-age story that marks first novelist Horowitz as a remarkably accomplished writer. The middle child in a dysfunctional Cleveland family, Jane has learned to deflect her autocratic father's temper tantrums in order to earn his love; her emotionally distant mother is showing the strain and will soon ask for a divorce. The youngest sibling, 12-year-old Willie, a chronic liar, is away at a school for problem kids. Jane is sure that she caused Willie's problems; she has expressed her guilt only to a psychiatrist, with whom she thinks she is in love, although she becomes engaged to someone else. Her older sister, Caroline, has astonished the nearly assimilated Singer family by marrying an Orthodox Jewish doctor. Refracted through Jane's wickedly observant eye and acerbic wit, the contrasting behavior of Caroline's in-laws and the secularized Singers is an iconoclastic, often hilarious social portrait. Horowitz artfully depicts her characters' foibles and society's shams in a perfectly controlled narrative whose insights are expressed with poignant resonance.

Title: American Islam: the struggle for the soul of a religion
Author: Paul M. Barret
Suggested by: Ralph Guiteau, Readers’ Services Librarian
* Review: The Washington Post
Paul M. Barrett's well wrought and engaging new book, American Islam, seeks to change perceptions by providing an intimate group portrait of Muslim Americans as they struggle to combat the threats, prejudices and stereotypes that have dogged them since 9/11. Barrett, a longtime Wall Street Journal reporter who's now at BusinessWeek, uses his journalistic skills to insinuate himself into the lives of his subjects -- no easy task in a time of heightened suspicions. The book traces the lives of seven American Muslims, from the wily Dearborn, Mich., publisher and political activist Osama Siblani to the energetic journalist and Islamic feminist Asra Nomani, whose crusade to tear down the wall of separation between men and women in her Morgantown, W.Va., mosque made her a media superstar in the United States and, to her surprise, a scourge in her own community.