New Books 10/1/18

We are drawn to books for a variety of individual reasons, but certain key elements might be the fast-paced action in a plot driven thriller or the beauty of language in a literary work.  Well-developed characters are often a key element. Some of the characters in these new books are dealing with the past by either trying in vain to recreate it or by running from the haunting memories.  Others are dealing with extreme poverty or devastating grief, and we know through research that in reading such books we are further developing empathy and compassion for others and learning how to deal with our own life traumas.

Aware by Daniel Siegel
The New York Times best-selling author of Brainstorm and Mindsight introduces readers to his science-based Wheel of Awareness meditation discipline, demonstrating how a practice of focused attention and kindness can promote brain health and psychological wellness.

Borrowing of Bones by Paula Munier
A retired MP and her bomb-sniffing dog become embroiled in an investigation involving an abandoned baby, a missing mother and a cold-case murder.

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Becoming the guardian of her late best friend’s enormous Great Dane, a grieving woman is evicted from her no-pets apartment and forges a deep bond with the equally distraught animal in ways that initially disturb her friends.

Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
A 1980s Chicago art gallery director loses his loved ones to the AIDS epidemic until his only companion is his daughter, who, decades later, grapples with the disease’s wrenching impact on their family.

Guinness World Records 2019
The world’s most popular record book is back with thousands of new categories and newly broken records, covering everything from outer space to sports, and presenting an amazing range of human achievements.

Gun Love by Jennifer Clement
Growing up in the front seat of the car she shares with her mother in a lot beside a trailer park, Pearl suffers a terrible tragedy stemming from her mother’s gun-toting boyfriend and is forced to survive on her own as she comes of age.

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
by Sarah Smarsh
A journalist born into a Kansas farming family reveals her firsthand experiences with cyclical poverty and the corrosive impact of intergenerational poverty on individuals, families and communities.

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart
A self-made Wall Street millionaire, baffled by the implosion of his seemingly perfect life, takes a cross-country bus trip in search of his college sweetheart and the ideals of his youth.

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time draws on five decades of scholarship to offer an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth and exercise of leadership as demonstrated by Presidents Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Johnson.

Ohio by Stephen Markley
Four former classmates converge on their recession- and opioid-ravaged hometown on a fateful summer night that finds them pursuing respective goals based on haunting memories from their shared past.

Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind by Reed Farrel Coleman
Returning after a stint in rehab, Jesse Stone finds himself investigating a series of racially motivated crimes at the same time he takes a mysterious young man named Cole Slayton as his protégé.

Sunrise Highway by Peter Blauner
A young Latina detective in the NYPD tracks a serial killer who has been operating for 40 years and who may have been enabled by the chief of police himself.

The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen
Quammen offers a guide to the evolving current understanding of evolution and human nature that explores the role played by horizontal gene transfer, or the movement of genes across species lines.

Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness
A Revolutionary War-era doctor seizes a chance to become a vampire, only to find the ancient traditions governing his new life clashing with the deeply held beliefs of his former one.

When the Lights Go Out by Mary Kubica
Forced to start over upon her mother’s death, a college student with debilitating insomnia begins to succumb to her grief before a stranger’s desperation to have a child changes both of their lives.