New Recreational Reading
- August 27, 2012
Here are the latest books added to the Library's Recreational Reading Collection:
In the shadow of the banyan / Vaddey Ratner.
Summary: Told from the tender perspective of a young girl who comes of age amid the Cambodian killing fields, this novel is based on the author's personal story. For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood, the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival.
The dog stars / Peter Heller.
Summary: Surviving a pandemic disease that has killed everyone he knows, a pilot establishes a shelter in an abandoned airport hangar before hearing a random radio transmission that compels him to risk his life to seek out other survivors.
What the nanny saw / Fiona Neill.
Summary: When her privileged employers become the focus of a financial scandal at the height of the economic crash, a trusted nanny finds her loyalties tested by a reporter who taps her as an insider with unique perspectives into what various family members have hidden from each other.
The playdate : a novel / Louise Millar.
Summary: Single mother Callie returns to work, asking her friend and neighbor to take care of her frail daughter Rae, which sets in motion a chain of events that reveals the isolation, turmoil, and dark secrets behind the doors of a seemingly peaceful neighborhood.
Where we belong : a novel / Emily Giffin.
Summary: Her carefully constructed life thrown into turmoil by the appearance of an eighteen-year-old girl with ties to her past, New York television producer Marian Caldwell is swept up in a maelstrom of personal discovery that changes both of their perceptions about family.
City of women / David R. Gillham.
Summary: Hiding her clandestine activities behind the persona of a model Nazi soldier's wife at the height of World War II, Sigrid Schroeder dreams of her former Jewish lover and risks everything to hide a mother and two young children who she believes might be her lover's family.
Eat & run : my unlikely journey to ultramarathon greatness / Scott Jurek, with Steve Friedman.
Summary: In Eat and Run, ultrarunner Scott Jurek opens up about his life and career as an elite athlete, and about the vegan diet that is key to his success.
The kingmaker's daughter / Philippa Gregory.
Summary: "Kingmaker" Richard, Earl of Warwick, uses his daughters as political pawns before their strategic marriages place them on opposing sides in a royal war that will cost them everyone they love.
The prophet / Michael Koryta.
Summary: Two brothers in a small Midwestern town: one the high school's beloved football coach on the verge of a state championship, one scraping by as a bail bondsman. Their sister was abducted and murdered when they were teenagers, and they've been divided since that day. Now a new killing with ties to each of them has forced a painful and adversarial reunion.
Where'd you go, Bernadette : a novel / Maria Semple.
Summary: When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled, and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her.