Fall Reading- Popular Reads for the Season

It's that time of year again, and hopefully it will start to feel like it outside, too. There are many great books being published this fall, and listed below are only a few of the most-talked-about books being published this season. Give them a try and let me know if they deserve all of the attention they are getting. As always, Happy Reading!!!

Omens by Kelley Armstrong

FIC ARMSTRONG

Having wrapped her Women of the Otherworld Series, Armstrong’s latest, Omens, is the first book in the Cainsville series. Olivia Taylor-Jones seems to have the perfect life until it all comes crashing down when she finds out that she was adopted, and that her biological parents are convicted serial killers, Todd and Pamela Larsen. So Olivia heads to Cainsville, Illinois to escape all of the media chaos and find out the truth about her parents and her past, with the help of Gabriel Walsh, her biological mother’s lawyer and “ambulance chaser.”

Longbourn by Jo Baker
FIC BAKER

Pride and Prejudice is a work that has had many sequels, remakes, and modernizations made of it, but Jo Baker takes a different look at the story, from the points of view of the servants of Longbourn. However, it is a more in depth look at early nineteenth century life, even the unromantic parts like chamber pots and lice. You will find the major players from the original story, but you will also see that the servants had their own issues, dreams, romances, and views.

One Summer, America 1927  by Bill Bryson

973.915 BRYSON (audio is coming soon)

The summer of 1927 was a very eventful time in American history. Charles Lindbergh had just made his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean, while Babe Ruth was batting his way to the home run record. A murder case was tearing its way through the tabloids, while the American South was washing away with the flooding of the Mississippi Basin. Al Capone was terrorizing Chicago, while the first “talking picture,” The Jazz Singer (a movie that would completely change the motion picture industry), was being filmed. Bryson documents all of these important events and more…

Year Zero: A History of 1945  by Ian Buruma

940.5314 BURUMA (coming soon)

 

With the ending of World War II, the world was taking on a new shape. The year 1945 marks a huge turning point in the history of the world. Throughout Europe and Asia, buildings and properties lay in ruin, there was an enormous loss of life, and the governments of many of the countries were in disarray. Buruma looks at the year 1945, and using the stories of different individuals dealing with issues that came after the war was over, he helps readers see the effects of the efforts that were made to bring back some measure of “normal” that the war had destroyed.

The Signature of All Thing by Elizabeth Gilbert

FIC GILBERT (also in audio)

Gilbert returns to writing fiction after publishing her memoirs (Eat, Pray, Love and Committed). Spanning almost two hundred years, this novel is about the fortunes and ideologies of the Whittaker family. Henry Whittaker is born poor, but makes a fortune in the South American quinine trade, using his knowledge of botany. Henry’s daughter, Alma, is a botanist, continuing with her father’s fascination with plants, but she also is very curious about the ways of the world and her place in it. Gilbert has done a lot of research into botany and other scientific issues of the time, and she takes us traveling around the world with her characters.

Doctor Sleep  by Stephen King

FIC KING (also in audio)

The sequel to The Shining, published in 1977, Doctor Sleep shows us the scars that his year living in the Overlook Hotel have left on Danny, now Dan, Torrance. Dan has been drifting for years and fighting with alcoholism, but he has finally settled down in a small New Hampshire town, using what is left of his “shining” abilities to help folks in the hospice pass on, earning him the nickname “Doctor Sleep.” Then Dan “meets” Abra Stone, a girl with incredibly strong “shining” abilities that put her in the crosshairs of The True Knot. The True Knot is a group traveling around in their RVs, disguised as the elderly, who suck “steam” (or essence) from children with psychic abilities (in order to gain some immortality) and “steam” is best enjoyed while the child is being tortured to death. Can Dan save Abra from these octogenarian “vampires?”

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

FIC LAHIRI  (coming soon in Large Print and audio)

The story looks at the lives of two brothers, who even though they look very similar, are very different in many ways. In 1960s India, Udayan Mitra is drawn to the Naxalite movement (seeking justice for the poor), and he is willing to die for what he believes in. His brother, Subhash, however, chooses a quiet life, conducting scientific research in America. Whenever tragedy befalls Udayan in the lowland, Subhash comes home to help his family pick up the pieces that his brother had broken.

Dallas 1963  by Bill Minutaglio and Stephen L. Davis

973.9022092 MINUTAGL

This story looks at Dallas and the political and social turmoil that was already brewing before Kennedy was even elected in 1960. The city was full of individuals and groups that thought they had a good reason to dislike (or worse) Kennedy and his ideologies, and this chaotic grumbling led many to warn the president against his November visit.

Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

FIC PYNCHON (coming soon in audio)

 In the year 2001, before the tragedy of 9/11, Maxine Tarnow is the owner of a small fraud investigations business, chasing down small-scale con artists. After losing her license, Maxine has taken the opportunity to look for clues while using her own interesting code of ethics (and her Beretta). Looking into the finances of a computer security firm, Maxine finds that she may have gotten in over her head, into the “deep web” where all of the secrets seem to be hiding. Now she faces drug runners, secret agents, mobsters, bloggers, and hackers, many of whom wind up dead.  

The Bone Season  by Samantha Shannon

SF SHANNON

In the year 2059, many of the world’s major cities are now under the control of the Scion, a security force. In the Scion’s world, being a “voyant” makes you a traitor and earns you a stay in the “voyant” prison in the city of Oxford (called Sheol 1 and long missing from current maps). Paige Mahoney works in the “criminal underworld” of London, using her “dreamwalker” (rare form of clairvoyance) abilities to gather information. After she is arrested, Paige finds that an even worse force than the Scion exists, the Rephaim, and they control the “voyants” that enter their prison, making them into soldiers for their army. Assigned to Warden, the Rephaite in charge of her care and training, Paige must learn something of his mind, if she ever hopes to regain her freedom.