Monthly Archives: July 2018

From the Corner of the Oval – Beck Dorey-Stein

July 31, 2018
Society
“[This] breezy page turner is essentially Bridget Jones goes to the White House.”—The New York Times “Obama administration memoirs are rolling in, but in a refreshing twist From the Corner of the Oval swaps policy for good old-fashioned workplace drama.”—Entertainment Weekly Recommended for summer reading by theSkimm • Jane Green on NBC’s Today show • Entertainment Weekly • Refinery29 • Bustle • PopSugar In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein is working five part-time jobs and just scraping by when a posting on Craigslist lands her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate D.C. outsider, she joins the elite ...

Defective – Susan Sofayov

July 31, 2018
Drama
University of Pittsburgh law student, Maggie Hovis, battles an enemy she cannot escape—her own brain. Her family calls her a drama queen. Her fiancé, Sam, moves out after she throws a shoe at his head. Maggie knows there is only one way to get him back—control her moods. So she takes the step most of her family is against: therapy. After a diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder, Maggie begins to investigate her family tree—which is plagued by mental illness and hidden relatives—and develops empathy for ...

My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

July 30, 2018
Comedy
From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman’s efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of ...

In Praise of Wasting Time – Alan Lightman

July 29, 2018
Inspiration
In this timely and essential book that offers a fresh take on the qualms of modern day life, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks. We are all worried about wasting time. Especially in the West, we have created a frenzied lifestyle in which the twenty-­four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to ten minute units of efficiency. We take our iPhones and ...

Beyond: A Short Story Collection – Alanah Andrews

July 29, 2018
Short Stories
The future, ghosts, surprising twists, murder, love and beyond… A nightly visitor isn’t all that she seems. A woman’s life draws strange parallels with a space probe. A man wakes up in a black void, with no recollection of how he got there. These are just a few of the thirty short stories in Beyond. Some explore life beyond death. Others were inspired by questions of existence beyond earth. Some just centre on human emotions and experiences which are beyond normal. “This is a little ...

The Circadian Code – Satchin Panda

July 28, 2018
Non-Fiction
When we eat may be as important as what we eat. Like most people, you probably wake up, get hungry for meals and doze off in bed around the same time every day. If you’ve ever experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter, you know that this schedule can easily be thrown off kilter. But for some people, that imbalance—difficulty sleeping at night, hunger at odd times, or sudden fatigue at noon—is a constant. If you’re one of those people, Dr. Satchin Panda, one of ...

The Fall of Diablo – Liza Kline

July 28, 2018
Romance
Autumn Simon just lost the promotion she’s spent the last two years preparing for and is mad enough to spit nails. Instead, she makes plans with her childhood friend, turned weekly hookup, to help her forget about the day from hell. Tall, dark and dangerous Rusty (Diablo to the rest of the world) could make you forget your own name when he turns those soulful brown eyes on you. But things continue to go downhill for Autumn when she, along with Rusty and her ex, ...

Entangled Earth – David Lea

July 28, 2018
Science Fiction
Physics isn’t easy. Rule number one should always be ‘Don’t Destroy The World’. Sometimes science doesn’t follow the rules. An experiment gone wrong means the Earth only has days left before it is torn apart by an invisible parallel world and Mia Green finds herself stuck in Paris, in the middle of the unnatural disaster. With calamity only ever a step away, she has to get home to England to find her family and stop the experiment that’s ending the world, but that’s easier said ...

Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik

July 27, 2018
Young Adult
A fresh and imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale from the bestselling author of Uprooted, which was hailed as “a very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic” by The New York Times Book Review. With the Nebula Award–winning Uprooted, Naomi Novik opened a brilliant new chapter in an already acclaimed career, delving into the magic of fairy tales to craft a love story that was both timeless and utterly of the now. Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into this glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder ...

Keep Me Close – Cynthia P. O’Neill

July 27, 2018
Romance
I’ve always been driven to succeed at everything I’ve tried. I graduated secondary school at age thirteen, earned a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at sixteen, and finished my medical residency at twenty-two. My focus as Dr. Galen Hunter Christensen has been traveling the world to give medical care to people in remote villages…until now. Sierra Jade Evans has pulled me into her orbit. This last year I’ve been preoccupied with finding ways to talk with her, wanting to know everything about her. Our likes and ...

The Summer Wives – Beatriz Williams

July 26, 2018
Historical
“The Summer Wives is an exquisitely rendered novel that tackles two of my favorite topics: love and money. The glorious setting and drama are enriched by Williams’s signature vintage touch. It’s at the top of my picks for the beach this summer.” —Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams brings us the blockbuster novel of the season—an electrifying postwar fable of love, class, power, and redemption set among the inhabitants of an island off the New England coast . . . In ...

End of the Lane – Sonia Parin

July 26, 2018
Mystery
Abby Maguire’s luck is about to change. She’s starting a new job in a new town. With any luck, she should be able to put her past behind her in no time. Her first assignment working for the Eden Rise Gazette will be to cover the weekend’s bake sale. Within a short time of arriving in town, there is a slight change of plans and Abby finds herself giving a statement to the police. Now her new job and her new life hang in the ...

Clock Dance – Anne Tyler

July 25, 2018
Drama
A charming new novel of self-discovery and second chances from the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread. Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother’s sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother but isn’t sure she ever will ...