With thousands of books at their fingertips and easy access to an overwhelming number of book reviews of new and forthcoming titles, it is always interesting to discover what librarians have on their "must read" or "must listen to" lists.
Here is a sampling of titles, both fiction and nonfiction, that some of your friendly Glenview librarians are reading and listening to this summer. All descriptions are from WorldCat.
Reading:
Fiction
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (2013)
Working as a private investigator after losing his leg in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike takes the case of a legendary supermodel's suspicious suicide and finds himself in a world of multi-millionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, desperate designers and hedonist pursuits.
Readers are quickly following up this first title in Galbraith's Cormoran Strike novels with the second book in the series.
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (2014)
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days--as he has done before--and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes.
Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, famous for her Harry Potter series.
The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald (2010)
In the mid-twentieth century in a home economics program at a prominent university, real babies are being used to teach mothering skills to young women. For a young man raised in these unlikely circumstances, finding real love and learning to trust will prove to be the work of a lifetime.
Natchez Burning by Greg Iles (2014)
Penn Cage must investigate when his father, a beloved family doctor and pillar of the community, is accused of murdering Violet Davis, the beautiful nurse with whom he worked in the dark days of the early 1960s.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (2013)
In a rural village in December 2004 Chechnya, a failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized 8-year-old daughter of a father abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded rebels and refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child.
The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin (2014)
"In 1872 the American merchant vessel Mary Celeste was discovered adrift off the coast of Spain. Her cargo was intact and there was no sign of struggle, but the crew was gone. They were never found. This maritime mystery lies at the center of an intricate narrative branching through the highest levels of late-nineteenth-century literary society."
Nonfiction
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (2012)
This work of narrative nonfiction tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In it, based on three years of reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. The events recounted are real, as are the names.
The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan (2014)
"An affecting and hope-filled posthumous collection of essays and stories from the talented young Yale graduate whose title essay captured the world's attention in 2012 and turned her into an icon for her generation."
Little Ship of Fools: 16 Rowers, 1 Improbable Boat, 7 Tumultuous Weeks on the Atlantic by Charles Wilkins (2013)
The dramatic and hilarious story of sores and survival on a human-powered journey across the ocean. It was to be an expedition like no other-a run across the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados aboard an experimental rowboat. There would be no support vessel, no stored water, no sails, no motor. The boat's crew of sixteen included several veterans of U.S. college rowing, a number of triathletes, a woman who had rowed both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and a scrawny, bespectacled sexagenarian -- our chronicler, Charles Wilkins.
Listening:
The Circle by Dave Eggers (2013)
"When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle...links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency...What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy and the limits of human knowledge."
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (2014)
The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next 35 years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer (2014)
"Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, Emmett, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, his is shot in the head and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls, but his heart skips a beat when this time he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated."
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