film adaptations

The next Genre Reading Group meeting will be Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 6:30pm, most likely via Zoom again.  

The topic will be space, as in outerspace, and I’ve compiled a list of digital resources on the Library’s blog at https://eolib.blogspot.com/2020/04/space-final-frontier.html. A link to the blog always lives on the Library’s homepage at www.eolib.org as well.

This week, we talked about books and short stories adapted to stage, tv, and film.

Plum Pudding Murder by Joanne Fluke (Hallmark series Murder, She Baked https://www.hallmarkmoviesandmysteries.com/murder-she-baked-movies)

The Cookie Jar's busiest time of the year also happens to be the most wonderful time … for Christmas cookies, Hannah's own special plum pudding—and romance! She also gets a kick out of “Lunatic Larry Jaeger’s Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot,” a kitschy carnival taking place smack-dab in the middle of the village green. But then Hannah discovers the man himself dead as a doornail in his own office …Now, with so many suspects to investigate and the twelve days of Christmas ticking away, Hannah's running out of time to nab a murderous Scrooge who doesn't want her to see the New Year.

Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson (aired frequently on The Wonderful World of Disney so check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

The famous true story of a devoted dog. Although first published in 1912, Greyfriars Bobby is still in print and widely read all over the world. The story is about the little Skye terrier, who kept vigil over his master's grave from 1858 to 1872 in Greyfriars kirkyard in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. Greyfriars Bobby was made into a Disney film of the same name in 1960. Bobby, a sparky silver haired Skye terrier, adopts Auld Jock, a worn-out simple shepherd, as his master. Jock is 'let go' by the farmer and dies in poverty having suffered one winter too many. The farmer tries to reclaim Bobby as a pet for his daughter but the dog owes allegiance only to Auld Jock, guarding his grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard. His devotion changes the lives of those around him and ultimately the conditions of the poor in Edinburgh. Bobby's loyalty is eventually rewarded and he becomes a famous dog indeed! This story will capture and uplift every heart.

Emma by Jane Austen (2020 film release, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Jane Austen's beloved comedy about finding your equal and earning your happy ending is reimagined in this delicious new film adaptation of Emma. Handsome, clever and rich, Emma Woodhouse (Thoroughbreds' Anya Taylor-Joy) is a restless "queen bee" without rivals in her sleepy little English town. In this glittering satire of social class, Emma must navigate her way through the challenges of growing up, misguided matches and romantic missteps to realize the love that has been there all along.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (2019 film release, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) has crafted a Little Women that draws on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott, and unfolds as the author’s alter ego, Jo March, reflects back and forth on her fictional life. In Gerwig’s take, the beloved story of the March sisters – four young women each determined to live life on their own terms – is both timeless and timely. Portraying Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth March, the film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, with Timothée Chalamet as their neighbor Laurie, Laura Dern as Marmee, and Meryl Streep as Aunt March.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Hulu)

Starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, Little Fires Everywhere follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. Based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller, the story explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (Hulu)

Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley star in this series about three mothers whose lives unravel to the point of murder.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Hulu)

A woman forced into sexual servitude struggles to survive in a terrifying, totalitarian society.

The Loudest Voice in the Room: How Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Fox News insiders past and present, Sherman documents Ailes’s tactical acuity as he battled the press, business rivals, and countless real and perceived enemies inside and outside Fox. Sherman takes us inside the morning meetings in which Ailes and other high-level executives strategized Fox’s presentation of the news to advance Ailes’s political agenda; provides behind-the-scenes details of Ailes’s crucial role as finder and shaper of talent, including his sometimes rocky relationships with Fox News stars such as O’Reilly, Hannity, and Carlson; and probes Ailes’s fraught partnership with his equally brash and mercurial boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Now a Netflix original series! Named a "modern masterpiece" by The A.V. Club, Locke & Key tells a sprawling tale of magic and family, legacy and grief, good and evil. Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box) has created a gripping story of dark fantasy and wonder—with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez—that, like the doors of Keyhouse, will transform all who open it. The epic begins here: Welcome to Lovecraft. Following their father's gruesome murder in a violent home invasion, the Locke children return to his childhood home of Keyhouse in secluded Lovecraft, Massachusetts. Their mother, Nina, is too trapped in her grief—and a wine bottle—to notice that all in Keyhouse is not what it seems: too many locked doors, too many unanswered questions. Older kids Tyler and Kinsey aren't much better. But not youngest son Bode, who quickly finds a new friend living in an empty well and a new toy, a key, that offers hours of spirited entertainment. But again, all at Keyhouse is not what it seems, and not all doors are meant to be opened. Soon, horrors old and new, real and imagined, will come ravening after the Lockes and the secrets their family holds.

The Perfect Horse: The Daring US Mission to Rescue Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis by Elizabeth Letts

(From Holley: I sort of cheated on this one because, of course, Disney’s Miracle of the White Stallions wasn’t based on this book, but this book will give you all the behind the scenes details and stories that Disney couldn’t/wouldn’t share. Check your video streaming subscriptions for availability.)

WINNER OF THE PEN AWARD FOR RESEARCH NONFICTION

In the chaotic last days of the war, a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find—his briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the world’s finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machine—an equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food.

A Discovery of Witches: All Souls trilogy Book 1 by Deborah Harkness (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Now “[a] hot show that’s like Twilight meets Outlander” (Thrillist) airing Sundays on AMC and BBC America, as well as streaming on Sundance Now and Shudder.

Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

First published in 1812, Johann David Wyss’s “The Swiss Family Robinson” is a classic story of survival on a deserted tropical island. While en route to Australia, the titular Swiss Family Robinson finds themselves in great peril when their vessel is caught in a violent storm. As the ship breaks apart when it is battered against a reef, the family is abandoned by their crew, who escape without them in the lifeboats. The family, which consists of a mother, father, and their four sons, are left to fend for themselves. Luckily as the storm subsides they see an island in the distance. After salvaging a plethora of food, livestock, and other supplies they fashion a crude raft from the wreckage and make their way for the island. Every day on the island brings a new adventure and a new obstacle to overcome, as the family struggles to survive in a foreign land isolated from society. Johann David Wyss, a Swiss pastor, wrote this tale of adventure not only to entertain but to instruct, specifically his four sons, in the ways of good family values and the virtue of self-reliance. This exciting adventure has been loved for generations by readers both young and old. 

Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

This classic memoir of the First World War is now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington. Includes an afterword by Kate Mosse OBE. In 1914 Vera Brittain was 20, and as war was declared she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life - and the life of her whole generation - had changed in a way that would have been unimaginable in the tranquil pre-war era. TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, one of the most famous autobiographies of the First World War, is Brittain's account of how she survived those agonising years; how she lost the man she loved; how she nursed the wounded and how she emerged into an altered world. A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Vera Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time, and has lost none of its power to shock, move and enthral readers since its first publication in 1933.

Alice (2009 tv show, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Writer-director Nick Willing, who turned The Wizard of Oz on its ear with 2007's Tin Man, takes a similar approach to another childhood classic with Alice, one of the more visually striking and offbeat live-action adaptations of Lewis Carroll's fantasy stories. Willing's Alice (Caterina Scorsone) is a grown woman--and a karate instructor to boot--whose lack of luck in love seems to have finally taken a turn toward the positive with Jack (Philip Winchester). Their idyll is shattered when Jack is abducted, and Alice's search for him leads her to Wonderland--the one visited by Carroll's Alice a century ago, but now overrun by gloom and vice and anachronistic machinery, and lorded over by a Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates) who kidnaps people from the "real" world to harvest their emotions. Willing's Alice looks impressive, with its richly saturated colors and CGI environment that suggests a world with one foot in Carroll's absurd realm and the other in a futuristic dystopia, and he's abetted by a terrific supporting cast, including Matt Frewer (as the White Knight), Harry Dean Stanton (Caterpillar), Tim Curry (Dodo), and Primeval's Andrew Lee Potts as a sort of glam-rock Mad Hatter. 

GENERAL DISCUSSION: Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir, illustrated by Sarah Andersen

In a one-of-a-kind graphic novel collaboration between the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian and the beloved illustrator behind Sarah’s Scribbles, Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy team up to save the multiverse, from Wonderland to Neverland and Oz. Originating as fan fiction from the brilliant imagination of Andy Weir, now brought to vivid life by Sarah Andersen, Cheshire Crossing is a funny, breakneck, boundlessly inventive journey through classic worlds as you’ve never seen them before. Years after their respective returns from Wonderland, Neverland, and Oz, the trio meet here, at Cheshire Crossing—a boarding school for girls.

The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski (Netflix)

For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf. Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil. As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all -- and the Witcher never accepts defeat.

The Lord of the Rings (books and movies, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

Return of the King

The Hobbit (prequel)

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. And now Lennox is on the lam and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe.

The Russia House by John le Carre (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

"Glasnost" is on everyone's lips, but the rules of the game haven’t changed for either side. When a beautiful Russian woman foists off a manuscript on an unwitting bystander at the Moscow Book Fair, it's a miracle that she flies under the Soviets' radar. Or does she? The woman's source (codename: Bluebird) will trust only Barley Blair, a whiskey-soaked gentleman publisher with a poet's heart. Coerced by British and American Intelligence, Blair journeys to Moscow to determine whether Bluebird's manuscript contains the truth - or the darkest of fictions. At once poignant and suspenseful, John le Carré's The Russia House is a captivating saga of lives caught in the crosshairs of history.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability

The inspiration for the major motion picture Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. The first novel in John le Carré's celebrated Karla trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a heart-stopping tale of international intrigue. The man he knew as "Control" is dead, and the young Turks who forced him out now run the Circus. But George Smiley isn't quite ready for retirement - especially when a pretty, would-be defector surfaces with a shocking accusation: a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest level of British Intelligence. Relying only on his wits and a small, loyal cadre, Smiley recognizes the hand of Karla - his Moscow Centre nemesis - and sets a trap to catch the traitor.

Different Seasons by Stephen King (short stories that spawned films Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Four gripping novellas tied together by the changing of seasons.

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

The atomic submarine Dolphin has impossible orders: to sail beneath the ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean to locate and rescue the men of weather-station Zebra, gutted by fire and drifting with the ice-pack somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. But the orders do not say what the Dolphin will find if she succeeds – that the fire at Ice Station Zebra was sabotage, and that one of the survivors is a killer…

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi by Neil Bascomb (This story, though not this particular book, inspired the film Operation Finale, starring Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, and Melanie Laurent, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

When the Allies stormed Berlin in the last days of the Third Reich, Adolf Eichmann shed his SS uniform and vanished. Following his escape from two American POW camps, his retreat into the mountains and out of Europe, and his path to an anonymous life in Buenos Aires, his pursuers are a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle (and whose rare surveillance photographs are published here for the first time). The capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina to stand trial is the stunning conclusion to this thrilling historical account, told with the kind of pulse-pounding detail that rivals anything you'd find in great spy fiction. 

Neal Bascomb wrote another book on this topic, The Nazi Hunters:How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes: overnight millionaire Charles Howard, mysterious mustang breaker Tom Smith, and Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon. 

Space, the final frontier

The Genre Reading Group meets on Tuesday, May 26^th at 6:30pm (on Zoom unless otherwise noted) to discuss that final frontier, space!  Here are some ebooks, digital audiobooks, streaming videos, and websites you may enjoy.

NONFICTION, A BRIEF SELECTION

NASA has an ebook collection: https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/index.html

Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions,and Gravity-Breaking Adventures by Karen Bush Gibson

Women in Space profiles 23 pioneers, including Eileen Collins, the first woman to command the space shuttle; Peggy Whitson, who logged more than a year in orbit aboard the International Space Station; and Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space; as well as astronauts from Japan, Canada, Italy, South Korea, France, and more. Their story, and the stories of the pilots, physicists, and doctors who followed them, demonstrate the vital role women have played in the quest for scientific understanding.

Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age by Matthew Brzezinski

This is the pulse-racing story of a time when two nations and ideologies were pitted against each other in a quest that laid the foundations of the modern technological world.

Death by Black Hole: and Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil deGrasse Tyson

This collection of his essays from Natural History magazine explores a myriad of cosmic topics, from astral life at the frontiers of astrobiology to the movie industry's feeble efforts to get its images of night skies right. Renowned for his ability to blend content, accessibility, and humor, Tyson is a natural teacher who simplifies some of the most complex concepts in astrophysics while sharing his infectious excitement for our universe.

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.

The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, From Stardust to Living Planet by Robert M. Hazen

Hailed by The New York Times for writing “with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along,” nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planet’s living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earth’s many iterations in vivid detail.

Exoplanets: Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets,and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System by Michael Summers and James Trefil

The past few years have seen an incredible explosion in our knowledge of the universe. Since its 2009 launch, the Kepler satellite has discovered more than two thousand exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. More exoplanets are being discovered all the time, and even more remarkable than the sheer number of exoplanets is their variety. In Exoplanets, astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore these remarkable recent discoveries, revealing the latest discoveries and the incredible richness and complexity we are finding. In short, we have to change how we think about the universe and our place in it, because it is stranger and more interesting than we could have imagined.

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel

In the mid-19th century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

Failure is not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America’s manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA’s Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director’s role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy’s commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger

The full story of Apollo 8 has never been told, and only Jeffrey Kluger—Jim Lovell’s co-author on their bestselling book about Apollo 13—can do it justice. Here is the tale of a mission that was both a calculated risk and a wild crapshoot, a stirring account of how three American heroes forever changed our view of the home planet.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. From the Space Shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule, Mary Roach takes us on the surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.

Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly

A stunning, personal memoir from the astronaut and modern-day hero who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station—a message of hope for the future that will inspire for generations to come.

FICTION, A BRIEF SELECTION

Light from Other Stars by Erika Swyler

Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach--if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

A brilliantly inventive novel about three astronauts training for the first-ever mission to Mars, an experience that will push the boundary between real and unreal, test their relationships, and leave each of them—and their families—changed forever.

The Martian by Andy Weir

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. There is a sequel, Children of God. Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Children of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell’s special literary magic.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Chambers (Book 1 of the Wayfarers series)

Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space—and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe—in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star. Perfect for fans of Firefly!

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Book 1 of the Imperial Radch series)

Ancillary Justice is Ann Leckie's stunning debut -- the only novel to ever win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards -- about a ship's AI who becomes trapped in a human body and her quest for revenge. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey. "There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are few who ever could." -- John Scalzi

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Despite two films made with panache, Solaris remains a book constantly rediscovered by new generations of readers. The moving story of contact with alien intelligence serves as a canvas for discussion of our mind’s limitations and the nature of human cognition. A love story for some readers, a philosophical treatise for others; Lem’s inspiring masterpiece defies unambiguous interpretations.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

Browse more here

FILMS, A BRIEF SELECTION

(Nova) Earth from Space

(pbs.org) "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth. Viewers witness how dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon; how a vast submarine "waterfall" off Antarctica helps drive ocean currents around the world; and how the Sun's heating up of the southern Atlantic gives birth to a colossally powerful hurricane. From the microscopic world of water molecules vaporizing over the ocean to the magnetic field that is bigger than Earth itself, the show reveals the astonishing beauty and complexity of our dynamic planet.

(Nova) Telescope: Hunting the Edge of Space

Three centuries of engineering have produced telescopes far beyond Galileo's simple spyglass. Perched on mountaintops, orbiting the Earth, and even circling other planets, these telescopes are revealing the solar system in detail Galileo could only dream of. Get up close with today's most powerful telescopes and embark on a stunning journey to the planets and moons now being imaged as never before.

(Great Courses) Experiencing Hubble: Understanding the Greatest Images of the Universe

For more than 20 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been amassing discoveries that rival those of history's greatest scientists and explorers, making it the most important scientific instrument ever built. This program is a visual feast of images taken by Hubble. Go on a dazzling voyage of discovery that will delight your eyes, feed your imagination, and unlock new secrets of the cosmos.

(Great Courses) Dark Matter and Dark Energy

What happens when the accepted picture of reality is dramatically overthrown? Watch this happen in the late 20th century, when scientists suddenly discovered two completely unexpected phenomena: dark matter and dark energy, which together dwarf the contribution of ordinary matter to the cosmos.

The Farthest: Voyager in Space

Launched in 1997, NASA's epic Voyager missions revolutionized our understanding of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and their spectacular moons and rings. In 2012, Voyager 1 left our solar system and ushered humanity into the interstellar age. 

Project Gemini: Bridge to the Moon

All of the necessary technologies required to reach the Moon were first tested during Project Gemini, which comprised ten missions in the mid-1960's.

Moon (streaming free on Crackle with account and check your streaming service subscriptions)

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the completion of his 3-year-long contract with Lunar Industries, mining Earth's primary source of energy on the dark side of the moon. Alone with only the base's vigilant computer Gerty (voiced by Oscar-Winner Kevin Spacey, 1999 Best Actor, American Beauty) as his sole companion, Bell's extended isolation has taken its toll. His only link to the outside world comes from satellite messages from his wife and young daughter. He longs to return home, but a terrible accident on the lunar surface leads to a disturbing discovery that contributes to his growing sense of paranoia and dislocation so many miles away from home. Moon is an engrossing, intelligent sci-fi thriller that ranks with genre classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Interstellar (check your streaming service subscriptions)

From Director Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight trilogy) comes the story of a team of pioneers undertaking the most important mission in human history. Acadamy Award winner Matthew McConaughey stars as ex-pilot-turned-farmer Cooper, who must leave his family and a foundering Earth behind to lead an expedition traveling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.

Contact (check your streaming service subscriptions)

Two-time Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey shine in this spellbinding drama of a dedicated astronomer's quest to make first Contact. From Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Sagan's best-seller comes the story of a visionary scientist's unshakable conviction that somewhere in this boundless universe an intelligence yearns for Contact.

Solaris (check your streaming service subscriptions)

Ground control has been receiving strange transmissions from the remaining residents of the Solaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to investigate, he experiences the strange phenomena that afflict the Solaris crew, sending him on a voyage into the darkest recesses of his own consciousness. In Solaris, the legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev) gives us a brilliantly original science-fiction epic that challenges our conceptions about love, truth, and humanity itself.

Spaceballs (check your streaming service subscriptions)

Lampooning everything from Star Wars to Star Trek, this outrageous send-up of epic sci-fi movies is full of cosmic crazies who score "eight trillion on the laugh-meter" (Gene Shalit, NBC-TV). Fearless--and clueless--space heroes Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his half man/half dog sidekick Barf (John Candy) wage interstellar warfare to free Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) from the evil clutches of Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis). On the way to the rescue--in their Winnebago--they confront the huge, gooey Pizza the Hutt (voice of Dom DeLuise), sassy robot Dot Matrix (voice of Joan Rivers) and a wise little creature named Yogurt (Mel Brooks), who teaches them the mystical power of "The Schwartz" in order to bring peace--and merchandising rights--to the entire galaxy.

Gravity (check your streaming service subscriptions)

Seasoned astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) is on his final mission in space, while medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is making her first outing on the NASA Space Shuttle Explorer. While they are engaged in extra-vehicular activity, debris collides into the shuttle, damaging it irreparably. Kowalsky and Stone now find themselves drifting in space with low oxygen supplies and cut off from all communication on Earth. They work together in their attempt to survive but will they make it back to solid ground? The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven including Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki), Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón) and Best Original Score (Steven Price), and also picked up the Golden Globe for Best Director and BAFTAs for Best Director and Outstanding British Film.

Event Horizon (check your streaming service subscriptions)

Its name: EVENT HORIZON. The high-tech, pioneering research spacecraft mysteriously vanished, without a trace, on its maiden voyage seven years earlier. But a weak, persistent signal form the long-missing craft prompts a rescue team, headed by the intrepid Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne, THE MATRIX and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III), to wing its way through the galaxy on a bold rescue mission. Accompanying Miller is his elite crew and the lost ship’s designer (Sam Neill, JURASSIC PARK); their mission is to find and salvage the state-of-the-art interstellar horror.

2001: A Space Odyssey (check your streaming service subscriptions)

A four-million-year-old black monolith is discovered on the moon, and the government sends a team of scientists on a fact-finding mission while hiding the truth from the public. Later, another team is sent to Jupiter in a ship controlled by the perfect HAL 9000 computer to further investigate the giant object--but something goes terribly wrong.

Serenity (check your streaming service subscriptions)

A passenger with a deadly secret. Six rebels on the run. An assassin in pursuit. When the renegade crew of Serenity agrees to hide a fugitive on their ship, they find themselves in an action-packed battle between the relentless military might of a totalitarian regime that will destroy anything — or anyone — to get the girl back and the bloodthirsty creatures who roam the uncharted areas of space. But, the greatest danger of all may be on their ship. From the mind of Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Firefly) comes an edge-of-your-seat adventure loaded with explosive battles, gripping special effects and fantastic new worlds!

BROAD TOPICS

Click on an author/subject to search JCLC’s digital holdings.

Stephen Hawking
Carl Sagan
Brian Greene
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle Challenger
Apollo missions

Mars exploration
The planets
Hubble Space Telescope

Spacecraft

Astronomy

Explore TED Talks on space https://www.ted.com/talks?sort=relevance&q=space

Why wait?

Long lines, whether in stores or waiting for the hottest books and audiobooks, are tough but the Library can help!

Holley compiled a list of readalikes for the top 5 largest waitlists for ebooks and audiobooks in Libby. 

These recommendations should little to no wait and might even be available today, so check them out while you wait!

If you live in a city where the library subscribes to Hoopla, check out the recommendations there since those titles are always available.

Ebooks

1) The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

The Line That Held Us by David Joy

From critically acclaimed author David Joy comes a remarkable novel about the cover-up of an accidental death, and the dark consequences that reverberate through the lives of four people who will never be the same again.

This Rock by Robert Morgan

From the author of Gap Creek-an international best-seller and winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award-comes the gripping story of two brothers struggling against each other and the confines of their mountain world in 1920s Appalachia.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

Millions of readers around the world have fallen in love with the small town of Big Stone Gap, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and the story of its self-proclaimed spinster, Ave Maria Mulligan. In the series’ enchanting debut, Ave Maria reaches her thirty-fifth year and resigns herself to the single life, filling her days with hard work, fun friends, and good books. Then, one fateful day, Ave Maria’s past opens wide with the revelation of a long-buried secret that will alter the course of her life.

Serena by Ron Rash

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire, vowing to let no one stand in their way, especially those newly rallying around Teddy Roosevelt's nascent environmental movement.

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler. 

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished America in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.

Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash

In this poetic and haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia, New York Times best-selling author Ron Rash illuminates lives shaped by violence and a powerful connection to the land.

2) Maybe you should talk to someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS EBOOKS AND AUDIOBOOKS FROM THESE AUTHORS:

Kelly Corrigan

Brene Brown

Jenny Lawson

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Elizabeth Wurtzel writes with her finger on the faint pulse of an over-diagnosed generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. Her famous memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation is a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era for readers of Girl, Interrupted and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Would I Lie to You?: The Amazing Power of Being Honest in a World That Lies by Judi Ketteler

Inspired by her popular New York Times article, "How Honesty Could Make You Happier", award-winning journalist Judi Ketteler takes a deep dive into the hard truths about honesty, from her own personal story to the exploding field of research on the subject, at a time when the world seems full of dishonesty - from elected officials, to corporate leaders, to tabloid-like fakery that gets passed off as news....

3) American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS THIS AUTHOR:

Luis Alberto Urrea

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora

Javier Zamora was nine years old when he traveled unaccompanied 4,000 miles, across multiple borders, from El Salvador to the United States to be reunited with his parents. This dramatic and hope-filled poetry debut humanizes the highly charged and polarizing rhetoric of border-crossing; assesses borderland politics, race, and immigration on a profoundly personal level; and simultaneously remembers and imagines a birth country that's been left behind.

The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen

The award-winning debut novel by young Mexican author Aura Xilonen, The Gringo Champion is a thrillingly inventive story about crossing borders that the Los Angeles Review of Books called "one of the must-read books of 2017."

Bang by Daniel Peña

Uli’s first flight, a late-night joy ride with his brother, changes their lives forever when the engine stops and the boys crash land, with “Texas to the right and Mexico to the left.” In Mexico, each is forced to navigate the complexities of their past and an unknown world of deprivation and violence.

All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the US Borderlands by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

After a decade of chasing stories around the globe, intrepid travel writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest followed the magnetic pull home - only to discover that her native South Texas had been radically transformed in her absence. Ravaged by drug wars and barricaded by an 18-foot steel wall, her ancestral land had become the nation's foremost crossing ground for undocumented workers, many of whom perished along the way.

4) The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

From Jennifer Weiner comes a smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places - and be true to themselves - in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history - and herstory - as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

All children mythologize their birth... So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's beloved collection of stories, long famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale. The enigmatic Winter has always kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she summons a biographer to tell the truth about her extraordinary life.

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

The stunning debut novel from best-selling author Bill Clegg is a magnificently powerful story about a circle of people who find solace in the least likely of places as they cope with a horrific tragedy.

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.

The Sisters of Glass Ferry by Kim Michele Richardson

Spanning several decades and written in an authentic voice both lyrical and wise, The Sisters of Glass Ferry is a haunting novel about small-town Southern secrets, loss and atonement, and the unbreakable bond between siblings.

5) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

On a more humorous note of families gone wrong:

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this "whip-smart and divinely funny" novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times).

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Tangerine by Christine Mangan

“A juicy melodrama cast against the sultry, stylish imagery of North Africa in the fifties.” —The New Yorker
Tangerine is a sharp dagger of a book—a debut so tightly wound, so replete with exotic imagery and charm, so full of precise details and extraordinary craftsmanship, it will leave you absolutely breathless.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how a chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.

Audiobooks

1) The Guardians by John Grisham

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

 NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred is one of the best-loved stories of all time.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. 

2) American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

A mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both.

It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo (also available in Hoopla)

Told with gripping intensity, It Would be Night in Caracas chronicles one woman’s desperate battle to survive amid the dangerous, sometimes deadly, turbulence of modern Venezuela and the lengths she must go to secure her future.

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it comes after years of yearning to leave Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised. More than anything, Patsy wishes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, whose letters arrive from New York steeped in the promise of a happier life and the possible rekindling of their young love. But Patsy's plans don't include her overzealous, evangelical mother - or even her five-year-old daughter, Tru. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to choose herself first - not to give a better life to her family back home.

Border Son by Samuel Parker

It's been years since Edward Kazmierski has seen his wayward son. In fact, it's been years since he has allowed thoughts of Tyler to even enter his mind. The last place he knew Tyler to be was in an El Paso jail six years ago. Then, in one day, he receives a cryptic phone call telling him that his son needs him in Mexico, another from a federal agent searching for Tyler, and a visit from two men he hopes to never meet again.  

Separated at the Border: A Birth Mother, a Foster Mother,and a Migrant Child’s 3000 Mile Journey by Gena Thomas

Weaving together the stories of birth mother and foster mother, this book shows the human face of the immigrant and refugee, the challenges of the immigration and foster care systems, and the tenacious power of motherly love.

3) Open Book: A Memoir by Jessica Simpson

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit. Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. "But it isn't all sweetness and light sabers."

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish

From stand-up comedian and actress Tiffany Haddish comes a hilarious, edgy, and heart-wrenching collection of autobiographical essays that will leave you laughing through tears. 

We’re Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny,Complicated, and True by Gabrielle Union

In the spirit of Amy Poehler's Yes Please, Lena Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl, and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman.

Inside Out: A Memoir by Demi Moore

In this deeply candid and reflective memoir, Demi pulls back the curtain and opens up about her career and personal life - laying bare her tumultuous relationship with her mother, her marriages, her struggles balancing stardom with raising a family, and her journey toward openheartedness. Inside Out is a story of survival, success, and surrender - a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s at once ordinary and iconic life.

There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me by Brooke Shields

Only Brooke knows the truth of the remarkable, difficult, complicated woman who was her mother. And now, in an honest, open memoir about her life growing up, Brooke will reveal stories and feelings that are relatable to anyone who has been a mother or daughter. 

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher and We’re Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union are also available on Hoopla (see links above to check for availability)

The Girl on the Balcony: Olivia Hussey Finds Life After Romeo & Juliet by Olivia Hussey

In 1968, Olivia Hussey became one of the most famous faces in the world, immortalized as the definitive Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet. Now the iconic girl on the balcony shares the ups and downs of her truly remarkable life and career....

Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography by Rob Lowe

Never mean-spirited or salacious, Lowe delivers unexpected glimpses into his successes, disappointments, relationships, and one-of-a-kind encounters with people who shaped our world over the last 25 years. These stories are as entertaining as they are unforgettable.

4) Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam

Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season."

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories by Kathleen Collins

Now available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker - a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley - whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim. Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins' stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues - race, gender, family, and sexuality - that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

Like Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood - the promise and peril of growing up - and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

5) This spot was a tie between Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (see the suggestions from the ebook list above) and The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.  The suggestions below are for The Silent Patient.

FROM LIBBY, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

Any of the psychological thrillers written by Fiona Barton

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas". As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived, and famously testified that her 15-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who've long forgotten her. The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details, proof they hope may free Ben, Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history.

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life--solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

(only available in ebook) In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien

Pursued by rumors of the atrocities he committed in Vietnam, a politician and his wife seek refuge in a cabin in Minnesota, where a mystery unfolds.

FROM HOOPLA, HOLLEY SUGGESTS:

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

For listeners of Gillian Flynn and Tana French comes one of the decade's most anticipated debuts, to be published in 36 languages around the world and already in development as a major film from Fox. A twisty, powerful Hitchcockian thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she witnessed a crime in a neighboring house. 

The Dinner by Herman Koch

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.