books and beyond

 

The next Books & Beyond (BAB) meeting will be on Tuesday, July 21^st at 6:30pm.  For the duration of the library’s renovation, BAB will meet at the Levite Jewish Community Center (3960 Montclair Road 35213) in their Berkowitz Boardroom.

BAB participants are required to sign in at the front desk with a valid photo ID. If you happen to be a member of the LJCC, simply scan in as usual for this establishment. LJCC membership is NOT required to attend Books & Beyond. The boardroom is across the hall from the indoor walking track. 

New members are always welcome!  In July, we’ll be chatting about solar energy, the sun, and the solar system.  If you’re looking for reading/watching/listening inspiration, check out the Books & Beyond row on the Shelf Care page of our website: https://oneallibrary.org/adults---reading-recommendations

Last night, BAB met for one of our biannual Salon Discussions, where there is no assigned topic and participants can share anything they’ve listened to, read, and watched.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

Tautly wound and expertly crafted, Two Nights in Lisbon is a riveting thriller about a woman under pressure, and how far she will go when everything is on the line.

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen

Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up alongside her family's farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (NPR, TIME, USA Today, The Economist,Scientific American, Good Housekeeping, Reader's Digest,BuzzFeed, BookRiot, HuffPost, Jezebel, The Globe and Mail, Kirkus, and more!)

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.

Sierra Simone’s New Camelot series:
American Queen
American Prince
American King
The Moon
American Squire

A president. A vice president. And the woman they're forbidden to love. New Camelot is a contemporary reimagining of the legend of King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot—elegant, carnal, and unforgettable.

Jay Bell’s Something Like series (not available in the JCLC, request from Interlibrary Loan)
Something Like Summer
Something Like Winter
Something Like Autumn
Something Like Spring
Something Like Lightning
Something Like Thunder
Something Like Hail
Something Like Rain
Something Like Forever

Central to the plot is the troubled relationship between Ben and Tim, former high school sweethearts who continue to meet over the years, their chemistry changing with each encounter. While the series doesn’t shy away from intimate details, it also focuses deeply on emotion, resulting in a combination that will make your heart flutter.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace.

Our Game by John le Carre

With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress, Emma. But when both Emma and Cranmer’s star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, disappear, Cranmer is suddenly on the run, searching for his brilliant protégé, desperately eluding his former colleagues, in a frantic journey across Europe and into the lawless, battered landscapes of Moscow and southern Russia, to save whatever of his life he has left. 

Spy Game (2001, 2h 7m, Rated R)

Redford stars as CIA operative Nathan Muir, who is on the brink of retirement from the field, when he learns his protégé Tom Bishop has been arrested in China on a charge of espionage. No stranger to the machinations of the CIA's top echelon, Muir hones all his skills and irreverent manner in order to find a way to free Bishop.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre

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.

Winds of Change podcast 

Spies. Secrets. Soviets. And tight leather pants. It’s 1990. The Berlin Wall has just come down. The Soviet Union is on the verge of collapse. A heavy metal band from West Germany, the Scorpions, releases a power ballad, “Wind of Change.” The song becomes the soundtrack to the peaceful revolution sweeping Europe — and one of the biggest rock singles ever. According to some fans, it’s the song that ended the Cold War. Decades later, New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe hears a rumor from a source: the Scorpions didn’t actually write “Wind of Change.” The CIA did.

Winds of Change song

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna―a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker’s ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop in Edinburgh and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—where she has been locked away for more than sixty-one years. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?

What Maisie Knew by Henry James

Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her selfish mother and her selfish father. Through her experiences, Maisie learns to navigate her complicated situation with insight and resilience. This timeless novel explores the themes of love, loyalty, and the power of family.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge is a vivid portrait of London's descent into anarchy, where 'King Mob' rules the streets, and innocent lives are swept up in the chaos. Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution.

Tell Others: Storytelling for a World in Turmoil by Kim Echlin (not in the JCLC, request from Interlibrary Loan)

Looking to her favourite writers—Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Ma Jian, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Haruki Murakami, to name a few—Echlin grapples in fresh ways with tyranny, war, sexual violence, and censorship to bear witness to the past and look to the future. Written in characteristically unsparing and evocative prose, Tell Others is an invitation to all readers to acknowledge histories that are difficult to see and to make meaning from the stories that buried bones tell. The author has one novel, about the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, titled The Disappeared.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke   

A traditional American woman, a “tradwife” influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something
far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.

Item descriptions pulled from Amazon, Fantastic Fiction, Rotten Tomatoes, Crooked Podcasts, and Youtube.