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Jewish Book Month : Teens
In the neighborhood of true
Summary:In the very white, very Christian world of Atlanta society in 1958, New York transplant Ruth decides not to tell her new high school friends and boyfriend that she is Jewish, but when a violent act rocks the city, Ruth must figure out where her loyalties lie.
Recommended for you
Summary:Shoshanna Greenburg loves her job at the bookstore, Once Upon, until Jake Kaplan joins the staff, a handsome non-reader who challenges her for a bonus she needs.
Crying laughing
Summary:Winnie Friedman has been waiting for the world to catch on to what she already knows: she’s hilarious. It might be a long wait, though. After bombing a stand-up set at her own bat mitzvah, Winnie’s been keeping her jokes to herself. Well, herself and her dad, a former comedian and her inspiration. Then, on the second day of tenth grade, the funniest guy in school actually laughs at a comment she makes in the lunch line and asks her to join the improv troupe. Maybe he’s even flirting. Just when Winnie’s ready to say yes to comedy again, her father reveals he’s been diagnosed with ALS. That’s not funny. Her dad’s still making jokes, though, which seems like a good thing. And Winnie’s prepared to be his straight man if that’s what he wants. But is it what he needs? Caught up in a spiral of epically bad dates, bad news, and bad performances, Winnie’s struggling to see the humor in it all. But finding a way to laugh is exactly what will get her through.
It’s a whole spiel : love, latkes, and other Jewish stories
Summary:"From stories of confronting their relationships with Judaism to rom-coms with a side of bagels and lox, It’s a Whole Spiel features one story after another that says yes, we are Jewish, but we are also queer, and disabled, and creative, and political, and adventurous, and anything we want to be"
Summary:"From stories of confronting their relationships with Judaism to rom-coms with a side of bagels and lox, It’s a Whole Spiel features one story after another that says yes, we are Jewish, but we are also queer, and disabled, and creative, and political, and adventurous, and anything we want to be"
Today tonight tomorrow
Summary:"Throughout the years both Rowan and Neil have been at competition with one another on everything from who has the best ideas for school functions to which one will be their graduating class’s valedictorian. However, in the twenty-four hours left they have as high school students, the two learn they share something much deeper than a rivalry"
The Way Back
Summary:A historical fantasy that follows Eastern European teens Yehuda and Bluma on a journey through the Far Country, the Jewish land of the dead.
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Thanksgiving Picture Books
Thanks a million
Summary:What makes you thankful? A book? Weekends? Your family? How do you say thanks? With a flower? With a chocolate bar? With a surprise? In sixteen extraordinary poems that range in form from a haiku to a rebus to a riddle, Nikki Grimes reminds us how wonderful it is to feel thankful, and how powerful a simple "thank you" can be.
Thanksgiving is for giving thanks
Summary:A child lists all the things for which he is thankful, especially at Thanksgiving.
Duck for Turkey Day
Summary:When Tuyet finds out that her Vietnamese family is having duck rather than turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, she is upset until she finds out that other children in her class did not eat turkey either.
We are grateful : otsaliheliga
Summary:The word otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express gratitude. Beginning in the fall with the new year and ending in summer, follow a full Cherokee year of celebrations and experiences. Written by a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, this look at one group of Native Americans is appended with a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah.
Pearl and Squirrel give thanks
Summary:Pearl the dog and her shy friend, Squirrel, find much to be thankful for while roaming their big city on Thanksgiving, but at day’s end, they have a reason for lasting gratitude.
Giving thanks : a Native American good morning message
Summary:"Giving Thanks is a special children’s version of the Thanksgiving Address, a message of gratitude that originated with the Native people of upstate New York and Canada and that is still spoken at ceremonial gatherings held by the Iroquois, or Six Nations."–Amazon.com.
Llama Llama gives thanks : an Anna Dewdney book
Summary:"It’s Thanksgiving time for Llama Llama and his family! That means yummy foods and autumn leaves and being thankful for everything from pumpkin pies to blue skies. Thanksgiving may only come once year, but in Llama’s family, giving thanks is always here!"–Amazon.com.
Thanks for Thanksgiving
Summary:At Thanksgiving time, children express their gratitude for the people and things in their lives.
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Commemorating Veterans Day
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The vanquished : why the First World War failed to end
Summary:Contains primary source material.,"An epic, groundbreaking account of the ethnic and state violence that followed the end of World War I– conflicts that would shape the course of the twentieth century. For the Western allies, November 11, 1918 has always been a solemn date– the end of fighting that had destroyed a generation, but also a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of the principal enemies: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. But for much of the rest of Europe this was a day with no meaning, as a continuing, nightmarish series of conflicts engulfed country after country. In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War."–Provided by publisher.
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The First World War
Summary:The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times–modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society–and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation.
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With our backs to the wall : victory and defeat in 1918
Summary:Most histories of the Great War focus on the avoidability of its beginning. This book brings a laser-like focus to its ominous end–the Allies’ incomplete victory, and the tragic ramifications for world peace just two decades later.
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Hundred days : the campaign that ended World War I
Summary:“In the late summer of 1918, after four long years of senseless, stagnant fighting, the Western Front erupted. The bitter four-month struggle that ensued–known as the Hundred Days Campaign–saw some of the bloodiest and most ferocious combat of the Great War, as the Allies grimly worked to break the stalemate in the west and end the conflict that had decimated Europe. In Hundred Days, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd leads readers into the endgame of World War I, showing how the timely arrival of American men and materiel–as well as the bravery of French, British, and Commonwealth soldiers–helped to turn the tide on the Western Front.”
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The greatest day in history : how, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the First World War finally came to an end
Summary:Unlike 1945, the First World War did not end neatly with the unconditional surrender of the Germans. After a dramatic week of negotiations, military offensives and the beginning of a Communist revolution, the German Imperial regime collapsed. The Allies eventually granted an armistice to a new German government, and at eleventh hour on the 11th of November, the guns officially ceased fire, but only after 11,000 casualties had been sustained—almost as many as on D-Day. Nicholas Best tells the story in sweeping, cinematic style, revealing that events were far from pre-ordained. From the generals’ headquarters to the frontline trenches, from the factories to the farms, he reveals the twists and turns that led to the end of the Great War.
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Sons of freedom : the forgotten American soldiers who defeated Germany in World War I
Summary:“The heroic American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, and yet is largely overlooked by history. In Sons of Freedom, historian Geoffrey Wawro presents the dramatic narrative of the courageous American troops who took up arms in a conflict 4,000 miles across the Atlantic, and in doing so ensured the Allies’ victory. Historians have long dismissed the American war effort as too little too late: a delayed U.S. Army – although rich in manpower and matériel – fought a dismal, halting battle that was certainly not decisive nor even really necessary. Historians generally assign credit for the Allied victory to improved British and French tactics, the British blockade, and German exhaustion. But drawing on extensive research in US, British, French, German, and Austrian archives, Wawro contends that the Allies simply would not have won the war without the help of the Americans.”
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Memoir Writing Month
The dragons, the giant, the women : a memoir
Summary:"When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking and hiding for three weeks until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across the border to Sierra Leone, reuniting the family and setting them off on yet another journey, this time to the United States." –Publisher’s description.
Memorial Drive : a daughter’s memoir
Summary:"At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a "child of miscegenation" in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985."–Amazon.
Unbowed : a memoir
Summary:"Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya. Born in a rural village in 1940, she was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most girls were uneducated. We see her become the first woman both in East and Central Africa to earn a PhD and to head a university department in Kenya. We witness her numerous run-ins with the brutal Moi government; the establishment, in 1977, of the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages; and how her courage and determination helped transform Kenya’s government into the democracy in which she now serves.–From publisher description."
This is what America looks like : my journey from refugee to Congresswoman
Summary:"An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar-the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress. Ilhan Omar was only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia. The youngest of seven children, her mother had died while Ilhan was still a little girl. She was being raised by her father and grandfather when armed gunmen attacked their compound and the family decided to flee Mogadishu. They ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya, where Ilhan says she came to understand the deep meaning of hunger and death. Four years later, after a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia. Aged twelve, penniless, speaking only Somali and having missed out on years of schooling, Ilhan rolled up her sleeves, determined to find her American dream."
Men we reaped : a memoir
Summary:In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life–to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth–and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends.
Hunger : a memoir of (my) body
Summary:"Gay has written … about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as ‘wildly undisciplined,’ Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care."
Once I was you : a memoir of love and hate in a torn America
Summary:"Emmy Award-winning NPR journalist Maria Hinojosa shares her personal story interwoven with American immigration policy’s coming-of-age journey at a time when our country’s branding went from "The Land of the Free" to "the land of invasion.""
The beauty in breaking : a memoir
Summary:"A series of connected personal stories drawn from the author’s life and work as an ER doctor that explores how we are all broken–physically, emotionally, and psychically–and what we can do to heal ourselves as we try to heal others."
More myself : a journey
Summary:"An intimate, revealing look at one artist’s journey from self-censorship to full expression As one of the most celebrated musicians of our time, Alicia Keys has enraptured the nation with her heartfelt lyrics, extraordinary vocal range, and soul-stirring piano compositions. Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with
Polar Bear Week
The three snow bears
Summary:Retells the story of Goldilocks, set in an Inuit village and featuring a family of polar bears.
I love you with all my heart
Summary:Polo the polar bear asks his mother how she loves him, and she explains that she loves him with her eyes, her nose, her paws, and all her heart.
The last polar bear
Summary:Tigluk and his grandmother paddle out into the Arctic Ocean where they find a young polar bear whose mother has died because of the changes brought about by the warming climate, and they bring the cub back to their town so they can teach it how to survive in a changing world.
Polar bear night
Summary:After wandering out at night to watch a magical star shower, a polar bear cub returns home to snuggle with her mother in their warm den.
Sea bear : a journey for survival
Summary:A polar bear waits patiently for spring when the ice breaks up, but after months of hunting, paddling, and resting on ice floes, summer ends and the bear must swim very far to find land. Includes facts about polar bears and the effect of climate change on their environment.
The ice bear
Summary:A bear-child is found by a hunter and his wife who care for him for seven years but, after the child wanders off, the hunter finds the child with his bear mother and the child must decide if he will go with the hunter or stay with his mother.
Nanuk the ice bear
Summary:At the top of the world, a polar bear hunts, swims, courts, raises cubs, and worries as they go off on their own.
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Thrills and Chills for Teens
Scream Site
Summary:Future investigative reporter Sabrina, fourteen, researches a popular website where people post horror videos, hoping to prove they are not as real as they seem until her sister, a big fan of the site, disappears.
This story is a lie
Summary:Seventeen-year-old mathematical genius Peter Blankman battles his lifelong panic attacks as he tries to find his missing twin sister, Bel, and those who nearly assassinated his mother, a famous scientist.
The sacrifice box
Summary:Sep, Arkle, Mack, Lamb and Hadley: five friends thrown together one hot, sultry summer. When they discover an ancient stone box hidden in the forest, they decide to each make a sacrifice: something special to them, committed to the box for ever. And they make a pact: never return to the box at night; never visit it alone; and never take back their offerings. Four years later, the gang have drifted apart. Then a series of strange and terrifying events take place, and Sep and his friends understand that one of them has broken the pact. As their sacrifices haunt them with increased violence and hunger, they realize that they are not the first children to have found the box in their town’s history. And ultimately, the box may want the greatest sacrifice of all: one of them.
Hidden pieces
Summary:After saving a man’s life, Embry Woods, seventeen, is considered a hero but someone begins blackmailing her for causing his near-death, forcing her to make choices that endanger her loved ones.
Girl at the grave
Summary:As a child, Valentine saw her mother murder the wealthiest man in their Connecticut town and then hang at the gallows. Neglected by her father, she’s learned to fend for herself, living in a crumbling estate that feels haunted by the past. Now a top student at Drake Academy, she’s determined to prove herself and overcome her mother’s crime. But like all small towns, Feavers Crossing has a stiflingly long memory, and when a new string of murders occurs, all signs point to the daughter of a killer as the most likely suspect. Outcast and isolated, Valentine finds an unlikely ally in Rowan Blackshaw, the son of the man her mother murdered all those years ago. Vowing to finally clear her family name, Valentine hunts for the real killer. Her search leads her to dangerously powerful families, the graveyard nestled behind her home, and even her own psyche – where must finally face the dark secrets hidden there.
Sadie
Summary:Told from the alternating perspectives of nineteen-year-old Sadie who runs away from her isolated small Colorado town to find her younger sister’s killer, and a true crime podcast exploring Sadie’s disappearance.
Shadow state
Summary:"What Brynn Caldwell can’t remember might get her killed. Brynn is a promising science student recovering from a major setback: Last year, a bad relationship sent her spiraling into depression. But as she puts the pieces of her life back together, a few don’t fit. Soon Brynn starts having flashbacks–hazy memories of being abducted and possibly brainwashed. It’s all connected to a wonder drug to treat PTSD that might actually be the ultimate weapon: a tool to control people’s memories. And Brynn can’t trust the people who know the truth–her best friend turned enemy, her genius scientist mother with a secret, and Brynn herself, whose memories might all be lies. Now, to stop a possible terrorist attack, Brynn has to uncover what she’s been forced to forget–and learn what side she’s really on. Elyse Brayden’s Shadow State is a pulse-pounding thriller that tackles homeland security, government conspiracy, and obsessive love, with a final-page plot twist you’ll never forget"–Jacket flap.
The fourth closet
Summary:"What really happened to Charlie? It’s the question that John can’t seem to shake, along with the nightmares of Charlie’s seeming death and miraculous reappearance. John just wants to forget the whole terrifying saga of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, but the past isn’t so easily buried.Meanwhile, there’s a new animatronic pizzeria opening in Hurricane, along with a new rash of kidnappings that feel all too familiar. Bound together by their childhood loss, John reluctantly teams up with Jessica, Marla, and Carlton to solve the case and find the missing children. Along the way, they’ll unravel the twisted mystery of what really happened to Charlie, and the haunting legacy of her father’s creations."–Page 4 of cover.
Like never and always
Summary:A car accident changes four lives forever. In the hospital, Liv is confused at being called Morgan, but when she looks in the mirror she sees Morgan’s face.
Contagion
Summary:After receiving a distress call from a drill team on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is sent into deep space to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission. When they arrive, they find the planet littered with the remains of the project–including its members’ dead bodies. As they try to piece together what could have possibly decimated an entire project, they discover that some things are best left buried–and some monsters are only too ready to awaken.
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Halloween Picture Books
The Hallo-wiener
Summary:All the other dogs make fun of Oscar the dachshund until one Halloween when, dressed as a hot dog, Oscar bravely rescues the others.
Click, clack, boo! : a tricky treat
Summary:Farmer Brown does not like Halloween, but the animals hold a Halloween party in his barn.
Minerva Louise on Halloween
Summary:On her first Halloween, Minerva Louise the hen puzzles over costumes but enjoys her first taste of candy corn.
Little Blue Truck’s Halloween : a lift-the-flap book
Summary:Little Blue Truck and his friend Toad pick up their animal friends for a Halloween costume party and attempt to guess the identities of the dressed-up passengers, in a story complemented by interactive lift-flaps.
Pick a pumpkin
Summary:"One of the most loved Halloween traditions is visiting a pumpkin patch and picking out the perfect pumpkin! Once you bring your pumpkin home, invite your friends and family to form a carving crew and help you turn that perfect pumpkin into–a grinning, glowing jack-o’-lantern! With vibrant, joyful art and a rhythmic, read-aloud text filled with the spirit of community and the thrills of the season, here is a celebration of every fun-filled step in creating the perfect jack-o’-lantern on Halloween night!"–Book jacket.
It’s raining bats & frogs
Summary:"What’s a witch to do when a rainstorm threatens the Halloween Parade? Make it fun, that’s what!"–Back cover
Five little monkeys trick-or-treat
Summary:When babysitter Lulu takes the five little monkeys trick-or-treating, they decide to change costumes with their friends and try to fool Lulu and their mother.
Los gatos black on Halloween
Summary:Easy to read, rhyming text about Halloween night incorporates Spanish words, from las brujas riding their broomsticks to los monstruos whose monstrous ball is interrupted by a true horror.
Stumpkin
Summary:Stumpkin is the most handsome pumpkin on the block. He’s as orange as a traffic cone! Twice as round as a basketball! He has no bad side! He’s perfect choice for a Halloween jack-o-lantern. There’s just one problem–Stumpkin has a stump, not a stem. And no one seems to want a stemless jack-o-lantern for their window. As Halloween night approaches, more and more of his fellow pumpkins leave, but poor Stumpkin remains. Will anyone give Stumpkin his chance to shine?
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For Fans of The Haunting of Bly Manor
The woman in the mirror
Summary:"For more than two centuries, Winterbourne Hall has stood atop a bluff overseeing the English countryside of Cornwall and the sea beyond. In 1947, Londoner Alice Miller accepts a post as governess at Winterbourne, looking after Captain Jonathan de Grey’s twin children. Falling under the de Greys’ spell, Alice believes the family will heal her own past sorrows. But then the twins’ adoration becomes deceitful and taunting. Their father, ever distant, turns spiteful and cruel. The manor itself seems to lash out. Alice finds her surroundings subtly altered, her air slightly chilled. Something malicious resents her presence, something clouding her senses and threatening her very sanity. In present day New York, art gallery curator Rachel Wright has learned she is a descendant of the de Greys and heir to Winterbourne. Adopted as an infant, she never knew her birth parents or her lineage. At long last, Rachel will find answers to questions about her identity that have haunted her entire life. But what she finds in Cornwall is a devastating tragic legacy that has afflicted generations of de Greys. A legacy borne from greed and deceit, twisted by madness, and suffused with unrequited love and unequivocal rage."
The girl from Rawblood : a novel
Summary:At the turn of England’s century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of Rawblood, young Iris Villarca is the last of her family’s line. They are haunted, through the generations, by "her," a curse passed down through ancient blood that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak. Iris forsakes her promise to her father, to remain alone, safe from the world. She dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began and where it must all end.
The turn of the screw.
Summary:What seems to start out as a Christmas Eve ghost story quickly becomes a tale of psychological horror as a young governess struggles—and ultimately fails—to protect her charges from the “corruption” that only she can conceive of.–
Abigale Hall : a novel
Summary:"Amid the terror of the Second World War, seventeen-year-old Eliza and her troubled little sister Rebecca have had their share of tragedy, having lost their mother to the Blitz and their father to suicide. Forced to leave London to work for the mysterious Mr. Brownwell at Abigale Hall, they soon learn that the worst is yet to come. The vicious housekeeper, Mrs. Pollard, seems hell-bent on keeping the ghostly secrets of the house away from the sisters and forbids them from entering the surrounding town-and from the rumors that circulate about Abigale Hall. When Eliza uncovers some blood-splattered books, ominous photographs, and portraits of a mysterious woman, she begins to unravel the mysteries of the house, but with Rebecca falling under Mrs. Pollard’s spell, she must act quickly to save her sister, and herself, from certain doom. Perfect for readers who hunger for the strange, Abigale Hall is an atmospheric debut novel where the threat of death looms just beyond the edge of every page. Lauren A. Forry has created a historical ghost story where the setting is as alive as the characters who inhabit it and a resonant family drama of trust, loyalty, and salvation"–,"A creepy psychological thriller in a Victorian gothic tradition that recalls Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter."
Starter house
Summary:A pregnant woman who moves into her dream home discovers she must solve the mystery of a decades-old murder to rid herself of a ghostly little boy and save her unborn child.
The widow’s house
Summary:When Jess and Clare Martin move from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to their former college town in the Hudson River valley, they are hoping for rejuvenation — of their marriage, their savings, and Jess’s writing career. They take a caretaker’s job at Riven House, a crumbling estate and the home of their old college writing professor. While Clare once had dreams of being a writer, those plans fell by the wayside when Jess made a big, splashy literary debut in their twenties. It’s been years, now, since his first novel. The advance has long been spent. Clare’s hope is that the pastoral beauty and nostalgia of the Hudson Valley will offer some inspiration. But their new life isn’t all quaint town libraries and fragrant apple orchards. There is a haunting pall that hangs over Riven House like a funeral veil. Something is just not right. Soon, Clare begins to hear babies crying at night, see strange figures in fog at the edge of their property. Diving into the history of the area, she realizes that Riven House has a dark and anguished past. And whatever this thing is — this menacing force that destroys the inhabitants of the estate — it seems to be after Clare next.…
House of echoes : a novel
Summary:"A young New York City couple with a boy and a baby in tow, Ben and Caroline Tierney had it all…until Ben’s second novel missed the mark, Caroline lost her lucrative banking job, and something went wrong with 8-year-old Charlie. When Ben inherits land way upstate from his grandmother, the two of them began to believe in second chances. But upon arriving in Swannhaven, a town that seems to have been forgotten by time, they’re beset by strange sights and disconcerting developments…and they begin to realize they might have made their worst mistake yet. But what dark secret is buried in this odd place? And will Ben and Caroline figure it out soon enough to save their young family?"
The grownup
Summary:A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A
Creepy and Atmospheric Books for Halloween
Melmoth : a novel
Summary:"It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts–or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy. But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. And then Karel disappears…"
In the night wood
Summary:"In this contemporary fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world that consumed his subject"–,American Charles Hayden came to England to forget the past. Failed father, failed husband, and failed scholar, Charles hopes to put his life back together with a biography of Caedmon Hollow, the long-dead author of a legendary Victorian children’s book, In the Night Wood. But soon after settling into Hollow’s remote Yorkshire home, Charles learns that the past isn’t dead. In the neighboring village, Charles meets a woman he might have loved, a child who could have been his own lost daughter, and the ghost of a self he thought he’d put behind him. And in the primeval forest surrounding Caedmon Hollow’s ancestral home, an ancient power is stirring. The horned figure of a long-forgotten king haunts Charles Hayden’s dreams. And every morning the fringe of darkling trees presses closer. Soon enough, Charles will venture into the night wood. Soon enough he’ll learn that the darkness under the trees is but a shadow of the darkness that waits inside us all.
The wild inside : a novel
Summary:"A natural born trapper and hunter raised in the Alaskan wilderness, Tracy Petrikoff spends her days tracking animals and running with her dogs in the remote forests surrounding her family’s home. Though she feels safe in this untamed land, Tracy still follows her late mother’s rules: Never Lose Sight of the House. Never Come Home with Dirty Hands. And, above all else, Never Make a Person Bleed. But these precautions aren’t enough to protect Tracy when a stranger attacks her in the woods and knocks her unconscious. The next day, she glimpses an eerily familiar man emerge from the tree line, gravely injured from a vicious knife wound — a wound from a hunting knife similar to the one she carries in her pocket. Was this the man who attacked her and did she almost kill him? With her memories of the events jumbled, Tracy can’t be sure. Helping her father cope with her mother’s death and prepare for the approaching Iditarod, she doesn’t have time to think about what she may have done. Then a mysterious wanderer appears, looking for a job. Tracy senses that Jesse Goodwin is hiding something, but she can’t warn her father without explaining about the attack or why she’s kept it to herself. It soon becomes clear that something dangerous is going on. the way Jesse has wormed his way into the family. the threatening face of the stranger in a crowd. the boot-prints she finds at the forest’s edge. Her family is in trouble. Will uncovering the truth protect them or is the threat closer than Tracy suspects?"
The visitors
Summary:"With the smart suspense of Emma Donoghue’s Room and the atmospheric claustrophobia of Grey Gardens, Catherine Burns’s debut novel The Visitors explores the complex truths we are able to keep hidden from ourselves and the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces. "Once you start Catherine Burns’s dark, disturbing, and enthralling debut novel, it’s hard to stop. The Visitors is bizarrely unsettling, yet compulsively readable." –Iain Reid, internationally bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door . . . and turning a blind eye to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind — until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret. Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side…"
The turn of the key
Summary:"When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss–a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten–by the luxurious "smart" home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare–one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder."
The devil’s wedding ring
Summary:"On Midsummer Eve in 1985, a young folklore researcher disappears from the village of Eidsborg in the Telemark region of Norway. Exactly thirty years later, the student Cecilie Wiborg goes missing. She too had been researching the old, pagan rituals associated with the 13th-century Eidsborg stave church. And then Knut Abrahamsen, a former police officer from the area, is found
Native American Heritage Month
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Spirit run : a 6,000-mile marathon through North America’s stolen land
Summary:Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who “slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives.” A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At nineteen, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group of Dené, Secwépemc, Gitxsan, Dakelh, Apache, Tohono O’odham, Seri, Purépecha, and Maya runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories alongside his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala that pushed him to his limits.
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Winter counts : a novel
Summary:“An addictive and groundbreaking debut thriller set on a Native American reservation.”
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The only good Indians : a novel
Summary:“Four American Indian men from the Blackfeet Nation, who were childhood friends, find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives, against an entity that wants to exact revenge upon them for what they did during an elk hunt ten years earlier by killing them, their families, and friends.”
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The Round House
Summary:“One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe’s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.” — Page 4 of cover.
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Where the dead sit talking
Summary:“A spare, lyrical Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface–that is, until he meets the seventeen-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American backgrounds and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah’s feelings toward Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both.”
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Book of the little axe
Summary:“In 1796 Trinidad, young Rosa Rendón quietly but purposefully rebels against the life others expect her to lead. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house, for it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she, alone, views as her birthright. But when her homeland changes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners-Rosa’s family among them-will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom. By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Montana, with her children and her husband, Edward Rose, a Crow chief. Her son Victor is of the age where he must seek his vision and become a man. But his path forward is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept from him. So Rosa must take him to where his story began and, in turn, retrace her own roots, acknowledging along the way the painful events that forced her from the middle of an ocean to the rugged terrain of a far-away land.”
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Trail of lightning
Summary:While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinaetah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters. Maggie Hoskie is a Dinaetah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine. Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology. As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive. Welcome to the Sixth World.
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There there
Summary:“We all came to the powwow for different reasons. The messy, dangling threads of our lives got pulled into a braid–tied to the back of everything we’d been doing all along to get us here. There will be death and playing dead, there will be screams and unbearable silences, forever-silences, and a kind of time-travel, at the moment the gunshots start, when we look around and see ourselves as we are, in our regalia, and something in our blood will recoil then boil hot enough to burn through time and place and memory. We’ll go back to where we came from, when we were people running from bullets at the end of that old world. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, that we’ve been fighting for decades