readers choice

July’s GRG topic is magazines and registration is available here: http://www.eolib.org/event/3501675.  

Mountain Brook residents have access to the Flipster digital newsstand (avail for Apple and Android) with a valid library card, but we also make magazines available for curbside pickup!  Call the Adult Svcs desk at 205.445.1121 to check availability of your favorites. 

More information about magazines if available on the Library’s blog: https://eolib.blogspot.com/2020/06/magazines.html

This week, the Genre Reading Group met for one our biannual Salon Discussions.  Each year, GRG selects ten topics to explore, leaving two months free for open discussion of pretty much anything.  We had a fabulous chat!

Annotations pulled from Amazon and and Rotten Tomatoes, unless otherwise noted.

A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

How do you start over after the end of the world?  Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the planet’s population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs. In postapocalyptic San Francisco, former pop star Moira has created a new identity to finally escape her past―until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world on behalf of those too traumatized to go outside, determined to help everyone move on―even if they don’t want to.

Rob survived the catastrophe with his daughter, Sunny, but lost his wife. When strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again. Krista, Moira, Rob and Sunny are brought together by circumstance, and their lives begin to twine together. But when reports of another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced to finally face everything that came before―and everything they still stand to lose. Because sometimes having one person is enough to keep the world going.

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley (not available within the JCLC system, but you may request it from Interlibrary Loan)

The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby's son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place. Juliette, convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree.

Starve Acre is a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.

Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale

The uproarious, bestselling true story of the world's most sought-after con man, immortalized by Leonardo DiCaprio in DreamWorks' feature film of the same name, from the author of Scam Me If You Can.

Frank W. Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters, and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious criminal career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks, all before he was twenty-one.

Known by the police of twenty-six foreign countries and all fifty states as "The Skywayman," Abagnale lived a sumptuous life on the lam—until the law caught up with him. Now recognized as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play, Abagnale is a charming rogue whose hilarious, stranger-than-fiction international escapades, and ingenious escapes-including one from an airplane-make Catch Me If You Can an irresistible tale of deceit.

Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabar & Anna Waterhouse

Fresh out of Cambridge University, the young Mycroft Holmes is already making a name for himself in government, working for the Secretary of State for War. Yet this most British of civil servants has strong ties to the faraway island of Trinidad, the birthplace of his best friend, Cyrus Douglas, a man of African descent, and where his fiancée Georgiana Sutton was raised.

Mycroft’s comfortable existence is overturned when Douglas receives troubling reports from home. There are rumors of mysterious disappearances, strange footprints in the sand, and spirits enticing children to their deaths, their bodies found drained of blood. Upon hearing the news, Georgiana abruptly departs for Trinidad. Near panic, Mycroft convinces Douglas that they should follow her, drawing the two men into a web of dark secrets that grows more treacherous with each step they take...

Written by NBA superstar Kareem Abdul- Jabbar and screenwriter Anna Waterhouse, Mycroft Holmes reveals the untold story of Sherlock’s older brother. This harrowing adventure changed his life and set the stage for the man Mycroft would become: founder of the famous Diogenes Club and the hidden power behind the British government.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:

"I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people' also might never understand. And that's what Furiously Happy is all about."

Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny's core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family―and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy―and who doesn't want a bit more of that?

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Albert Camus' The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world, with millions of copies sold. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived, and is certainly one of the most important and influential books ever produced. Now, for the first time, this revered masterpiece is available as an unabridged audio production.

When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. The apparently amoral Meursault, who puts little stock in ideas like love and God, seems to be on trial less for his murderous actions, and more for what the authorities believe is his deficient character.

This remarkable translation by Matthew Ward has been considered the definitive English version since its original publication. It unlocks the prose as no other English version has, allowing the listener to soak up the richness of Camus' ideas.

Transit (also available on Kanopy)

As fascism spreads, German refugee Georg (Franz Rogowski) flees to Marseille and assumes the identity of the dead writer whose transit papers he is carrying. Living among refugees from around the world, Georg falls for Marie (Paula Beer), a mysterious woman searching for her husband--the man whose identity he has stolen. Adapted from Anna Segher's 1942 novel, TRANSIT transposes the original story to the present, blurring periods to create a timeless exploration of the plight of displaced people.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

The Bloodletter’s Daughter by Linda Lafferty (not available within the JCLC system, but you may request it from Interlibrary Loan)

Within the glittering Hapsburg court in Prague lurks a darkness of which no one dares speak…

In 1606, the city of Prague shines as a golden mecca of art and culture carefully cultivated by Emperor Rudolf II. But the emperor hides an ugly secret: His bastard son, Don Julius, is afflicted with a madness that pushes the young prince to unspeakable depravity. Desperate to stem his son’s growing number of scandals, the emperor exiles Don Julius to a remote corner of Bohemia where the young man is placed in the care of a bloodletter named Pichler. The bloodletter’s task: cure Don Julius of his madness by purging the vicious humors coursing through his veins.

When Pichler brings his daughter Marketa to assist him, she becomes the object of Don Julius’s frenzied—and dangerous—obsession. To him, she is the embodiment of the women pictured in the Coded Book of Wonder, a priceless manuscript from the imperial library that was the mad prince’s only link to sanity. As the prince descends further into the darkness of his mind, his acts become ever more desperate, as Marketa, both frightened and fascinated, can’t stay away.

Inspired by a real-life murder that threatened to topple the powerful Hapsburg dynasty, The Bloodletter’s Daughter is a dark and richly detailed saga of passion and revenge.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

From Publishers Weekly
If you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoë, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

Evicted meets Nickel and Dimed in Stephanie Land's memoir about working as a maid, a beautiful and gritty exploration of poverty in America. Includes a foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich.

At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly.

A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva

Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to discover the truth behind a bombing that killed an old friend, but while there he encounters something that turns his world upside down. It is a face—a face that feels hauntingly familiar, a face that chills him to the bone.

While desperately searching for answers, Allon will uncover a portrait of evil stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives—and into his own personal nightmares…

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

The Best of Scanfest: An Authentic Treasury of Scandinavian Recipes and Proverbs by Cheryl Long

Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin’s legions of devoted readers cherish his timeless novels and short stories, which are uplifting in their conviction of the goodness and resilience of the human spirit. Freddy and Fredericka—a brilliantly refashioned fairy tale and a magnificently funny farce—only seems like a radical departure of form, for behind the laughter, Helprin speaks of leaps of faith and second chances, courage and the primacy of love. Helprin’s latest work, an extraordinarily funny allegory about a most peculiar British royal family, is immensely mocking of contemporary monarchy and yet deeply sympathetic to the individuals caught in its lonely absurdities.

Water Music by T.Corahgessan Boyle (not available within the JCLC system, but you may request it from Interlibrary Loan)

The novel follows the parallel adventures and intertwining fates of its protagonists Ned Rise, a luckless petty criminal, and the famous explorer Mungo Park - the first a purely fictional character, the latter based on a historical person. The book takes place in various locales in Scotland, England and Western Africa. 

It revolves around two Imperial British expeditions into the interior of Western Africa in an effort to find and explore the Niger River. The novel is loosely based on historical sources, including Mungo Park's 1799 book, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa. However, as Boyle admits in his foreword to Water Music, he does not claim historical accuracy or even faithfulness to the contemporary accounts, whose reliability is doubtful anyway.

Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition.

From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age. 

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

The Plague by Albert Camus

A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror.

An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.

Wolf Hall

Tony Award-winning actor Mark Rylance and Emmy Award-winning Damian Lewis star as Thomas Cromwell and King Henry VIII in this adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels. A historical drama for a modern audience, Wolf Hall charts Cromwell’s meteoric rise in the Tudor court – from blacksmith’s son to Henry VIII’s closest advisor, trapped between his desire to do what is right and his instinct to survive.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered.

Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track—until the recession hits and she is downsized, furloughed, and escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, all for a slim chance of getting rehired.

In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Samantha’s new job takes her into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack. But some of the locals aren’t so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town, and within weeks Samantha is engulfed in litigation that turns deadly. Because like most small towns, Brady harbors big secrets that some will kill to conceal.

Wallander series

Wallander is a British television series adapted from the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous police inspector. It was the first time the Wallander novels have been adapted into an English-language production.

   1. Faceless Killers 
   2. The Dogs of Riga 
   3. The White Lioness 
   4. The Man Who Smiled 
   5. Sidetracked
   6. The Fifth Woman 
   7. One Step Behind 
   8. Firewall
   9. The Pyramid 
   10. The Troubled Man 
   11. An Event in Autumn 

Millennium series

THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING SENSATION. In these page-turning thrillers, a crusading journalist and a cyberpunk hacker team up to drag Sweden’s darkest secrets into the light: family scandals, political corruption, sex crimes, and murder. Experience Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series, which introduced the world to one of the most original, unforgettable characters in crime fiction: Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo and a quest for revenge.

   1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 
   2. The Girl Who Played with Fire 
   3. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest 
continued in the series by David Lagercrantz
   4. The Girl in the Spider's Web 
   5. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye 
   6. The Girl Who Lived Twice 

Genetic Detective tv series

ABC News' all-new series, "The Genetic Detective," follows investigative genetic genealogist CeCe Moore as she uses her unique research skills to transform the face of crime solving. By working with police departments and crime scene DNA, Moore is able to trace the path of a violent criminal's family tree to reveal their identity and help bring them to justice.  Airs Tuesday nights at 9pm.

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society by Lisa Wingate and Judy Christie

The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal—some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

THE BASIS FOR THE MAJOR 6-PART HBO® DOCUMENTARY SERIES

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR:

Washington Post | Maureen Corrigan, NPR | Paste | Seattle Times | Entertainment Weekly | Esquire | Slate | Buzzfeed | Jezebel | Philadelphia Inquirer | Publishers Weekly | Kirkus Reviews | Library Journal | Bustle 

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards for Nonfiction | Anthony Award Winner | SCIBA Book Award Winner | Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime | Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence

The haunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California during the 70s and 80s, and of the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case—which was solved in April 2018. Introduction by Gillian Flynn • Afterword by Patton Oswalt

Mother's Day

While festivals honoring mothers and mother goddesses date to ancient times, a version of an official Mother’s Day has been around since the Middle Ages. It was customary to allow those who had moved away to visit their mothers in their home parishes on Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of lent, which became Mothering Sunday in Britain. The modern day form of the holiday originated here in the U.S. and has been adopted widely around the world.

The first Mother’s Day was held on May 12, 1907 in Grafton, West Virginia. It quickly became a success, celebrated in nearly every state within five years, and was made a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mothers-Day)

In honor of Mother’s Day, coming up next weekend on Sunday, May 10th, here are some of the most entertaining mothers in print.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

“You-will-never-touch-our-children-again!” A doting and devoted mother, Molly Weasley is the center around which the Weasley universe revolves. A generous soul, she takes on Harry Potter as if he were her own. Their means may be limited, but the children never go without food in their bellies, a warm hug, and a gift now and then. But that’s not all. She is a powerful witch who can take on formidable opponents, especially if her kids are threatened. Now that’s a supermom!

Motherest by Kristen Iskandrian

ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

(amazon) Marrying the sharp insights of Jenny Offill with the dark humor of Maria Semple, Motherest is an inventive and moving coming-of-age novel that captures the pain of fractured family life, the heat of new love, and the particular magic of the female friendship--all through the lens of a fraying daughter-mother bond.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

The Carters are a modern fictional family, and Lisa is the glue that holds them together. Lisa got pregnant as a teenager and dealt with her mother’s rejection. A nurse, she raised her children, Starr and Sekani, to be strong and well-aware of the racial injustice of their neighborhood and the world they live in. She’s forged a strong marriage despite her husband’s incarceration and affair, and she treats Seven, the product of that affair, with love. The Hate U Give is a story of strength in the face of adversity, and Lisa is one of the strongest characters in Garden Heights.

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

If your mom loves to lose herself in big, epic novels along the lines of The Queen of the Night or Pachinko that she can lose herself in, she'll love See's latest, The Island of Sea Women, about two friends working in their Korean village's all-female diving collective. Their bond is tested as they come of age against a backdrop of war, social change, and technological advancements. What's even cooler: See based her novel on a real place, Jeju, where men take care of children while women work as divers. This is a novel about women who are strong as your own mom.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook/eaudio on your Hoopla app
ebook in the National Emergency Library

“Watch and pray dear, and never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault” Let’s start with the gold standard of literary motherhood – Margaret March, affectionately called Marmee by her daughters. She is the ideal mother – kind, endearing, compassionate and everything nice. A highly principled and charitable woman, she is never too busy to gently guide her daughters. She provides them the emotional strength they need to endure the pains of growing up. She is poor; she is hard working, yet she never encourages her daughters to marry for money. All in all, she is everything a mother is expected to be.

The Color of Water by James McBride
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook in the National Emergency Library

When James McBride started writing his memoir, I don’t think he knew the way the world would fall in love with his mother. The book is told in two narratives: McBride tells his story about the struggles he faced growing up black with a white mom, and Ruth tells her story growing up Jewish in the South. I’m breaking the mold here and choosing a non-fictional mom, but if you’ve read this book you know just how touching Ruth is. She raised twelve children, mostly by herself. She had no family to rely on other than her husband’s and their children. If ever there was a super-mom, she was Ruth McBride.

Room by Emma Donoghue
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook/eaudio on your Hoopla app
streaming movie on your Kanopy app

Ma  and 5 year old Jack live in an 11 foot by 11 foot room.  Ma sacrifices everything for her son so they can escape from “room” and have a chance at a normal life. Despite her abduction and abuse, Ma is able to create a world for her son and does everything in her power to make that world a better place.  

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook/eaudio on your Hoopla app
ebook in the National Emergency Library

“You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.” This constantly irritated, perpetually annoyed mother of five daughters would feature on any list on the subject of memorable mothers. She might be an utter embarrassment to her family with her frivolous nature and alarmingly loud voice, but she is certainly not forgettable to the reader. Mrs. Bennett embodies a style of motherhood diametrically opposite to that of Marmee March. She is a social climber and would rather have her daughters marry a rich man than be happy with someone who understands them. I suppose she loves her daughters in her own way, but trying to push them into inconvenient marriages is an odd way of showing it, don’t you think?

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook in the National Emergency Library

Everyone needs a mom that will keep them over-caffeinated and bear with them through the early years of playing an instrument. Gayle Forman writes Kat as an awesome rocker mom to a cello-playing teenager. Their personalities couldn’t be more opposite, but they couldn’t have a closer relationship. It’s so clear in every page that Kat supports any and every decision Mia makes. Go to Juliard or stay in Portland with your boyfriend? Most moms would say “you’re going to college” but not Kat. Not many moms would slap noise cancelling headphones onto their baby and bring them into a rock concert, but it is this that makes Kat so special. Her unconditional love for her children mixed with her desire to treat them like small adults qualifies her for fictional mom of the year.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook in the National Emergency Library

Coralie Sardie is raised by a terrible father and trained from a young age to work as a mermaid in his coney island “museum”.  Coralie is all but ignored by her father and is raised by the family maid, Maureen.  Once again, this mother figure provides Coralie with the strength to pursue her own dreams and live her life in her own extraordinary way.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app
ebook/eaudio on your Hoopla app
ebook in the National Emergency Library

“Truly I am the worst mother of all time! How can you forgive me, child? Yet we cannot see each other again!” With the haughty and distant personality she presents to the world and an explosive secret to hide, Lady Honoria Dedlock is an emotionally divided woman. But the reader soon realizes she is far from being a snob. Three things define her – a great passion, a broken heart and an illegitimate child she loves deeply and will die to protect from the judgment of society. When Esther falls ill, Lady Dedlock is clearly distraught. She disguises herself and goes around trying to get information about her daughter. She could have been a good mother, but her circumstances are unfortunate. However, she is one character that doesn’t easily fade from memory.

The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty by Susan Page
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

Susan Page, the award-winning Washington bureau chief for USA Today, details the unbelievable life of the former First Lady, and what it was like to be wife to one president and mother to another.  

Becoming by Michelle Obama

ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

The former First Lady tells her life story, from her growing up on Chicago's South Side to her journey to the White House. If your mom is so inclined, you can opt for the audiobook and let your mom listen to Obama read it in her own voice.

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan

ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

Are there certain words and phrases that create strong relationships? In this collection of essays from Kelly Corrigan, she reflects on 12 phrases that connect us as humans—from “Tell Me More,” to “I Was Wrong.” Your mom will love Corrigan’s musings on marriage and motherhood, and she will find the essay is poignant, funny, and filled with warmth.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

Bernadette is an unlikely mother to make the list.  She leaves her daughter and husband temporarily and goes on a hunt to find where her mother has gone.  This is a book about mother-daughter relationships. Forcing her daughter to become a little more independent and simultaneously doing something for her self, this is an oddly touching tale.

Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips
ebook/eaudio on your Libby app

(amazon) The zoo is nearly empty as Joan and her four-year-old son soak up the last few moments of playtime. They are happy, and the day has been close to perfect. But what Joan sees as she hustles her son toward the exit gate minutes before closing time sends her sprinting back into the zoo, her child in her arms. And for the next three hours—the entire scope of the novel—she keeps on running.

Using your Kanopy app, watch the 2-part series "Moms" from filmmakers Louis Alvarez & Andrew Kolker, a series from The Center for New American Media presenting mothers from all walks of life speaking amusingly and movingly, without sentimentality, about what it's like to have kids. 

Hoopla also has movies about moms and families of all kinds.

SOURCES

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/holidays/mothers-day/g23793799/books-for-moms/
https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/literary-mum-unforgettable-mothers-from-the-world-of-fiction/1575503/
https://bookstr.com/article/five-times-we-found-the-best-moms-in-books/
https://www.beyondthebookends.com/2017/05/12/14-best-literary-moms/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/the-10-best-moms-in-fiction/
https://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/holidays/mothers-day/books-for-mom?slide=6953d0ff-c7ef-4119-82a1-ed10e6d67b14#6953d0ff-c7ef-4119-82a1-ed10e6d67b14

matters of the heart

Did you know that your library card gives you access to the complete New York Times online?  Find more information on how to access it by clicking here.

50 States of Love presented by The New York Times

From sea to shining sea, here’s a tour of unforgettable fiction that explores matters of the heart.

By Tina Jordan and Elisabeth Egan

Illustrations by Ross MacDonald

Published Feb. 10, 2020 Updated Feb. 14, 2020, 9:49 a.m. ET

Plunk yourself in an armchair and lose yourself in a tale of love, whether it’s a family saga, “12-hanky weeper" or timeworn classic.

Alabama

Winston Groom, “Forrest Gump”

Forrest Gump and Jenny Curran meet in their first-grade class in Greenbow, Ala. They walk home from school together and quickly become the best of friends — but Forrest (later to be played by Tom Hanks in the movie) will carry a torch for Jenny (Robin Wright) for the rest of his life. As he puts it, “I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is.” And that’s smart enough for us.

Alaska

Eowyn Ivey, “The Snow Child”

“A childless couple struggling to adapt to the harsh Alaskan wilderness in the 1920s are heartened by the arrival of a young girl who hovers between reality and fantasy,” the Times review said of Ivey’s “evocative retelling of a Russian fairy tale.”

Arizona

Barbara Kingsolver, “The Bean Trees”

Barbara Kingsolver’s debut novel stars Taylor Greer, who wants to escape rural Kentucky and avoid getting pregnant. How hard can it be? Along the way she inherits a 3-year-old Native American girl named Turtle, and the two of them make their way to Tucson. As Kingsolver writes, “In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.”

Arkansas

Bette Greene, “Summer of My German Soldier”

“This is an exceptionally fine novel about a young girl whose mediocre parents don’t like her, precisely because she is an inconveniently exceptional human being,” The Times said in its 1973 review. “Twelve-year‐old Patty Bergen begins to learn to her genuine surprise that she is a lovable person, ‘a person of value,’ from a German P.O.W. escapee in Arkansas during World War II.”

California

Isabel Allende, “Daughter of Fortune”

Our critic described “Daughter of Fortune” as “one of those event-crammed sagas featuring a beautiful, plucky heroine, a mysterious, elusive lover and a cardboard supporting cast of thousands. The resulting book reads like a bodice-ripper romance crossed with Judith Krantz, with plenty of feminist and multicultural seasoning thrown in to update the mix.”

Colorado

Kent Haruf, “Our Souls at Night”

Kent Haruf’s final novel opens with an evening visit between neighbors in their 70s. Our reviewer wrote: “Both are widowed — Addie is 70, Louis about the same — and Addie makes the surprising proposal that they begin sleeping together, without sex, just to talk in the dark and provide the sleep-easing comfort of physical company. … We get to watch these two, night by night, pass through phases of awkwardness, intimacy and alliance.”

Connecticut

Bill Clegg, “Did You Ever Have a Family”

Welcome to the unimaginable heartbreak of June Reid, whose home is destroyed in a fire on the eve of her daughter’s wedding. “Tragedies tunnel through life, and the suspense comes from seeing how these spaces will be filled,” our reviewer wrote. “This is what excites us about books that begin with a sorrowful bang. Grief is sad — we know that — but what now? How will these particular characters respond? What else do you have to give us?”

Delaware

Cristina Henríquez, “The Book of Unknown Americans”

“The question of how communities of immigrants form is prominent in this tale centered on a young and (what feels early on to be) fatal love,” our reviewer wrote. “‘The Book of Unknown Americans’ is less about the actual trek of its characters than about how they settle in, make do and figure things out. … Despite the travails that any of us have in these unsure times when traveling or relocating — who among us wouldn’t want to be able to say we are home at last?”

Florida

Karen Russell, “Swamplandia!”

Our reviewer described “Swamplandia!” as a wild ride, “vividly worded, exuberant in characterization.” The action centers on a family-owned gator-wrestling theme park in the Everglades, where love blooms in many forms — some deeply rooted, others mystical and fantastical. You read it in our pages first: “Russell has style in spades.”

Georgia

Tayari Jones, “An American Marriage”

“‘An American Marriage’ tells us a story we think we know,” Stephanie Watts wrote in her Times review. “Roy, a young black man, is tried and wrongly convicted of rape while his wife, Celestial, waits for his return. But Jones’s story isn’t the one we are expecting, a courtroom drama or an examination of the prison-industrial complex; instead, it is a clear vision of the quiet devastation of a family” and the intimate story of one couple’s relationship.

Hawaii

Kaui Hart Hemmings, “The Descendants”

Matt King, a wealthy Honolulu attorney, has had the worst kind of shock: His wife, Joanie, has been injured in a boat-racing accident and now lies in the hospital in a vegetative state. In the painful depths of this crisis, King tries to repair his relationship with his two daughters, then struggles with the revelation that before her accident his wife had been in love with another man.

Idaho

Wallace Stegner, “Angle of Repose”

In 1971, our reviewer wrote: “Reading this new novel by Wallace Stegner is like watching the swallows return to Capistrano. Summer warmth and pleasant holidays lie ahead.” We challenge you not to underline passages and dog-ear pages as you read this iconic story of the American West. Here’s Stegner’s take on one of our favorite senses: “Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed, and betray others.”

Illinois

Sandra Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street”

Cisneros’s classic coming-of-age story is a pillar of middle school curriculums — and deservedly so. But adults will also enjoy these poignant vignettes about Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old girl growing up in Chicago, and they’ll be reminded of the ways in which loyalty to family can add up to its own kind of romance.

Indiana

John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars”

Warning: This novel about teenagers who fall in love at a cancer support group is not for the faint of heart. Hazel has thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs; Augustus is a former basketball player who has lost a leg to osteosarcoma. Our reviewer wrote, “Green’s characters may be improbably witty, but even under the direst circumstances they are the kind of people you wish you knew.” Their slow-burn romance is one for the ages.

Iowa

Robert James Waller, “The Bridges of Madison County”

The Times wasn’t a big fan of “The Bridges of Madison County,” calling it “a bodice-heaving, swept-away-by-love romance, a soft-focus fantasy.” But plenty of people loved Waller’s novel — so many, in fact, that this novel about an affair between an Iowa farmer’s wife and a National Geographic photographer planted itself on the best-seller list and remained there for three years.

Kansas

Langston Hughes, “Not Without Laughter”

This is the story of an African-American boy growing up in the early part of the 20th century in mostly white Stanton, Kan. (which was based on Hughes’s actual hometown of Lawrence). In a 2018 essay, Angela Flournoy wrote that “‘Not Without Laughter’ crystallizes some of the themes introduced in Hughes’s first two poetry collections and examines in detail subjects he would return to throughout his decades-long career, among them the experiences of working-class and poor blacks, the importance of black music to black life, the beauty of black language and the trap of respectability.”

Kentucky

Ann Patchett, “The Patron Saint of Liars”

“Ann Patchett has written such a good first novel that among the many pleasures it offers is the anticipation of how wonderful her second, third and fourth will surely be,” Alice McDermott wrote in her review. On its surface, “The Patron Saint of Liars” may not appear to be a traditional love story — after all, it takes place at a home for pregnant teenagers — but you won’t have to look very hard to see the beating heart behind this story of friendship and healing.

Louisiana

Anne Rice, “The Witching Hour”

Welcome to the first in Anne Rice’s beloved Mayfair Witches series, where readers get acquainted with generations of New Orleans witches. “We watch and we are always here” is the motto of the Talamasca, the group that chronicles the lives of this dynasty. This saga is equal parts sexy, scary and seductive, and it always goes for the jugular.

Maine

Anne Rivers Siddons, “Colony”

“We are hooked from the moment we meet Maude Gascoigne as a 17-year-old tomboy,” The Times said in 1992 of this bittersweet family saga. “Her life changes forever when Peter Chambliss, her brother’s Princeton classmate and a New Englander, accompanies her to Charleston’s Saint Cecilia Ball. Maude is a match for anything that’s thrown her way — and plenty is,” especially at the Chambliss family’s summer compound in Maine, where most of the novel takes place.

Maryland

Anne Tyler, “A Spool of Blue Thread”

Of this story of a refreshingly abnormal family, our reviewer wrote: “For Tyler, the quality of mercy is anything but strained. By her own admission, she’s a chronicler of sad failures and unhappy marriages.” And yet, “A Spool of Blue Thread” provides an unexpected sense of uplift. You read it and realize your family’s not so bad — and those ties that bind can also lift you up when you least expect it.

Massachusetts

Erich Segal, “Love Story”

“You can resist the charm and bounciness of ‘Love Story’ on the ground that it should have stayed in Ladies’ Home Journal, where portions of it first appeared; on the ground that it isn’t even semi‐serious literature,” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in his review of the “12-hanky” weeper about a pair of star-crossed lovers who meet at college and marry over his family’s objections. “Nevertheless, about two-thirds of the way through, a lump forms in the throat and starts growing until it feels like a football coming up sideways. You either fight it or let it out.”

Michigan

Jeffrey Eugenides, “The Virgin Suicides”

Set in Grosse Point in the 1970s, Eugenides’s debut explores the deaths of the five Lisbon sisters from the perspective of an anonymous group of teenage boys who struggle to make sense of what happened. In her review, Suzanne Berne wrote, “Mr. Eugenides is blessed with the storyteller’s most magical gift, the ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary.” One could say the same of true love.

Minnesota

J. Ryan Stradal, “The Lager Queen of Minnesota”

Stradal’s sophomore novel is a love letter to beer. It begins in 1959, when 15-year-old Helen Calder takes her first sip. She becomes obsessed, both with drinking beer and brewing beer, until eventually she bets the family farm on beer. What unfolds from there is a sprawling tale of loyalty and sisterhood, with a good cold one easily supplanting bubbly as the beverage of romance.

Mississippi

Bret Lott, “Jewel”

This novel might be our favorite about the love of a mother for her child. Under the headline “Blessed Are the Ordinary,” our reviewer described it like this: “In this sweeping and beautifully written book, Mr. Lott has given us something unusual — an unsentimental account of the life of a woman from rural Mississippi who transcends poverty and ignorance to become part of a pioneering movement in the treatment of children with Down syndrome.” The woman is Jewel; her daughter is Brenda Kay. You won’t forget them.

Missouri

Gillian Flynn, “Gone Girl”

File this one under “love story gone wrong.” Our critic wrote: “Gillian Flynn’s ice-pick-sharp ‘Gone Girl’ begins far too innocently by explaining how Nick and Amy Dunne celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. Amy got up and started making crepes. Nick came into the kitchen, appreciating his wife’s effort but wondering why Amy was humming the theme song from ‘M*A*S*H.’ You know, that ‘suicide is painless’ thing. ‘Well, hello, handsome,’ Amy says to her husband.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Montana

Rick Bass, “Where the Sea Used to Be”

Our reviewer had mixed feelings about Rick Bass’s story of a geologist sent to find oil in northern Montana: “‘Where the Sea Used to Be’ is encased in an aesthetic of such contrived, overelaborated meaningfulness that the effect is stock melodrama rather than genuine human struggle.” But who can resist a yarn that knits up a love triangle smack dab in the snowy wilderness? (For example: “He could feel the pleasure coming straight through her — could feel it like heat conducted, as if it were his.”)

Nebraska

Rainbow Rowell, “Eleanor & Park”

“I have never seen anything quite like ‘Eleanor & Park,’” John Green wrote of this unlikely love story, which became an instant classic. “Rainbow Rowell’s first novel for young adults is a beautiful, haunting love story — but I have seen those. It’s set in 1986, and God knows I’ve seen that. There’s bullying, sibling rivalry, salvation through music and comics, a monstrous stepparent — and I know, we’ve seen all this stuff. But you’ve never seen ‘Eleanor & Park.’ Its observational precision and richness make for very special reading.”

Nevada

Tupelo Hassman, “Girlchild”

“Three generations of Hendrix women are all, for a time, residents of the Calle de las Flores, a dust-choked Reno trailer park where violence and sexual abuse abound, and an unlocked door is an invitation of the worst kind,” our reviewer wrote. “Though Rory seems heir to all the disadvantages in the world, her grandmother Shirley Rose makes her expectations clear: ‘Someone’s got to make it and it has to be you.’” Will she? Won’t she? The heart of this story is in the details — the diary entries, social workers’ reports and arrest records that show the trajectory of a girl who wants — and deserves — better.

New Hampshire

John Irving, “A Prayer for Owen Meany”

Our reviewer wasn’t sold on “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” She wrote: “‘A Prayer for Owen Meany,’ which asks to be judged on old-fashioned terms, has high-minded hopes and some vitality. It just doesn’t give you the shivers.” (Shivers are a recurring theme throughout the novel.) We would argue that this sprawling tale of two boys from Gravesend is one of the more moving portraits of friendship we’ve ever read — and one of the few novels with a main character whose voice you can hear so clearly, it’s as if he’s sitting right next to you.

New Jersey

Philip Roth, “Goodbye,Columbus”

In 1959, our reviewer described Roth’s novella as a “somewhat incongruous mingling of conventional boy-meets-girl material and a portrait-of-the-intellectual-as-a-young-man.” He said, “There is blood here and vigor, love and hate, irony and compassion.” What better ingredients for a story about summer love?

New Mexico

Leslie Marmon Silko, “Almanac of the Dead”

“The plot follows a far-flung conspiracy of displaced tribal people to retake North America toward the millennium’s end,” our reviewer said, adding: “There is genius in the sheer, tireless variousness of the novel’s interconnecting tales. … ‘Almanac of the Dead’ burns at an apocalyptic pitch — passionate indictment, defiant augury, bravura storytelling.”

New York

Truman Capote, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

Before Audrey Hepburn shimmied into that iconic black dress and dangled her cigarette holder between two fingers, the story of Holly Golightly existed only between the covers of Truman Capote’s beloved novella. Way back in 1958, our reviewer summed it up in words that hold true to this day: “‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a valentine of love, fashioned by way of reminiscence, to one Holly Golightly … a wild thing searching for something to belong to.”

North Carolina

Charles Frazier, “Cold Mountain”

Inman is a wounded Confederate soldier who “had seen so much death it had come to seem a random thing entirely,” so he “resolves to reclaim himself and his humanity by fleeing the hospital where he is recovering, returning to his home and to Ada … whom he intends to make his wife.”

North Dakota

Louise Erdrich, “Love Medicine”

“The story opens in 1981 when June Kashpaw, an attractive, leggy Chippewa prostitute who has idled away her days on the main streets of oil boomtowns in North Dakota, decides to return to the reservation on which she was raised,” our reviewer wrote in 1984. He went on to say that the novel is about the “enduring verities of loving and surviving, and these truths are revealed in a narrative that is an invigorating mixture of the comic and the tragic.”

Ohio

Toni Morrison, “Beloved”

Margaret Atwood put it best: “‘Beloved’ is Toni Morrison’s fifth novel, and another triumph. … There are many stories and voices in this novel, but the central one belongs to Sethe, a woman in her mid-30s, who is living in an Ohio farmhouse with her daughter, Denver, and her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs. … The farmhouse is also home to a sad, malicious and angry ghost, the spirit of Sethe’s baby daughter, who had her throat cut under appalling circumstances 18 years before, when she was 2. We never know this child’s full name but we — and Sethe — think of her as Beloved, because that is what is on her tombstone.”

Oklahoma

Wilson Rawls, “Where the Red Fern Grows”

“To the conventional scene of a boy and his dogs, Mr. Rawls has brought a fresh eye, a quick phrase and a close, specialized knowledge of the ways in which hounds hunt coons and coons deceive hounds,” our reviewer wrote in 1961. “If you care for the sort of writing too often dismissed as ‘folksy’ and soft, then you will find this a rewarding book.”

Oregon

Gayle Forman, “If I Stay”

One February morning, a family goes for a drive and everything changes in an instant. There’s a car accident and the sole survivor is 17-year-old Mia, who must decide (from her hospital bed, through a pea soup fog of grief) whether she can carry on without her family. This is a love story about friends and community — and music.

Pennsylvania

Nick Hornby, “Juliet, Naked”

“Hornby seems, as ever, fascinated by the power of music to guide the heart, and in this very funny, very charming novel, he makes you see why it matters,” our reviewer wrote. The music at the center of the story is from a 20-year-old album called “Juliet,” known to be one of the greatest “breakup albums” of its time. How do these songs still influence and move Hornby’s characters? Read the book to find out.

Rhode Island

Beatriz Williams, “A Hundred Summers”

Lily Dane, nursing heartbreak, is summering at her family’s house in a moneyed Rhode Island enclave when her former fiancé and former best friend unexpectedly show up — as husband and wife. Complicating the high-society tale of love, loss, gossip and duplicity is the great New England hurricane of 1938, which is barreling up the Atlantic coast straight toward them all.

South Carolina

Pat Conroy, “The Prince of Tides”

Tom Wingo is a middle-aged former high school teacher who can no longer outrun the demons of the “grotesque family melodrama” of his childhood. Encouraged by his sister’s psychiatrist (described as “one of those go-to-hell New York women with the incorruptible carriage of lionesses”), he agrees to talk about his childhood. What he reveals and whom he falls for are classic Conroy — improbable, yet … who can resist?

South Dakota

Nora Roberts, “Black Hills”

Childhood friends-turned-sweethearts Coop and Lil first meet as grade-schoolers when he’s dispatched to spend summers on his grandparents’ ranch. Though their relationship ends in heartbreak, they meet again years later when Coop — now a retired New York City police detective — returns to South Dakota and finds that Lil, a wildlife biologist, is being stalked, possibly by a serial killer. There’s a reason people call Roberts “the queen of romantic suspense.”

Tennessee

James Agee, “A Death in the Family”

Agee’s posthumously published novel, which won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize, is a study in grief and love. After a young husband is killed in a terrible car accident on a sticky summer night in 1915, the family struggles to come to terms with his loss. “Agee’s book cannot be judged as another novel of the week,” Alfred Kazin wrote in his review of the book for The Times. “It is an utterly individual and original book, and it is the work of a writer whose power with English words can make you gasp.”

Texas

Edna Ferber, “Giant”

This racy, larger-than-life love story of a bookish Virginia socialite and a Texas rancher — famously made into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean — was the “it book” of 1952. “‘Giant’ makes marvelous reading,” The Times wrote. “Wealth piled on wealth, wonder on wonder in a stunning, splendiferous pyramid of ostentation.”

Utah

David Ebershoff, “The 19th Wife”

This novel is about two wives in polygamous marriages: the real historical figure Ann Eliza Young, who was much younger than her husband, Brigham, the founder of Salt Lake City; and BeckyLyn, a fictional contemporary woman accused of shooting her husband dead. Ebershoff’s book sets out to give a history and critique of polygamy, shedding light on the dynamics it creates and how the practice has evolved.

Vermont

Donna Tartt, “The Secret History”

In Tartt’s gripping debut, a handful of students at Hampden — an idyllic but isolated liberal arts college in Vermont — form intense bonds with one another and with their classics professor, “who nurtures both their sense of moral elevation and an insularity from conventional college life that ultimately proves fatal,” our reviewer said. “The writing throughout ‘The Secret History’ is at once lush and precise, and it keeps the more preposterous aspects of the plot in check. Ms. Tartt is especially adept at showing how Hampden’s ‘hermetic, overheated atmosphere’ leads to a melodramatic inflation of emotions that in turn results in acts of violence.”

Virginia

Katherine Paterson, “Bridge to Terabithia”

You might have read this one in fifth grade, but this Newbery Medal winner is always worth a revisit (and no, we’re not talking about the movie). Two friends conjure an enchanted land in the woods behind their houses. It’s a place to escape the real world — until the day one of them doesn’t come home. Paterson writes: “She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there — like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

Washington

David Guterson, “Snow Falling on Cedars”

On an island in Puget Sound in 1954, the body of a fisherman is pulled out of the sea, trapped in his own net. ​A Japanese-American man is charged with his murder, and the ensuing trial leads the town’s newspaper editor to reflect on his long repressed love for the accused man’s wife. The novel, which became a best seller and was adapted into a 1999 feature film, explores the sometimes porous line between unrequited love and resentment, and how deep-seated animosity and fear can erode a community.

West Virginia

Jayne Anne Phillips, “Lark and Termite”

Phillips’s fourth book unfolds in the 1950s in Korea and West Virginia, where a teenage girl named Lark cares for her half brother, Termite, who can’t walk or speak, after their mother abandons them and their father dies while serving in Korea. Told in alternating points of view, the novel explores the ferociously protective love that can grow between siblings, as Lark worries that Social Services might take her brother away.

“Repeated images and leitmotifs link these people’s stories together, lending the novel a haunting musical quality, even as they suggest the unconscious, almost magical bonds shared by people who are connected by blood or love or memory,” Michiko Kakutani wrote in a review for The Times.

Wisconsin

Chad Harbach, “The Art of Fielding”

“If it seems a stretch for a baseball novel to hold truth and beauty and the entire human condition in its mitt, well, ‘The Art of Fielding’ isn’t really a baseball novel at all, or not only,” Gregory Cowles wrote in these pages in 2011. “It’s also a campus novel and a bromance (and for that matter a full-fledged gay romance), a comedy of manners and a tragicomedy of errors — the baseball kind as well as the other kind.”

Wyoming

Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain”

“Brokeback Mountain,” the standout story in Proulx’s “gritty, gleamy” collection “Close Range,” is about the “sudden flare-up of sexual passion between two ranch hands herding 1,000 sheep in summer upland pasture,” Richard Eder wrote in his review. “The passion continues painfully — long separations and rare but explosive consummations — after they marry and for the rest of their lives. It is a story told with equanimity: the sheepherding, the mountains, the strained marriages, the divergent itineraries are not a backdrop but as real as the affair itself.”