Staff Picks

If you love a good ghost story, you’ll really enjoy Jennifer McMahon’s latest novel, The Winter People! The author puts a unique spin on the age old question: "If you could, would you want someone you loved to return from the dead, even if only for a short time?"

The year is 1908 and Sara Harrison Shea lives in West Hall, Vermont. Her daughter, 8-year-old Gertie, has been found at the bottom of a deep and abandoned well on their farm property. Sara's gut-wrenching grief is all consuming. In the present day, Fawn and Ruthie live with their mother, Alice, in the same farmhouse where Sara grieved so long ago. One day, Alice goes missing, and as the girls search for clues, they stumble upon an old diary hidden in the floorboards, along with a strange cache of other mysterious items.  Will these items help them find Alice, or perhaps even shed some light on the past? This creepy and suspenseful page-turner will keep you up reading late into the night, but only if you keep the lights on!

Beth Moore
Information Specialist

Staff Picks

As a best-selling novelist submits her latest manuscript -- and causes controversy by revising the endings of her earlier works- her estranged rock-star son is arrested for murder.  These surviving members of a once happy family of four open up all their old wounds in their search for answers to an ever-deepening mystery.

With a fascinating look at celebrity culture and insights into the literary life, The Nobodies Album is a mystery full of family drama.

Alicia Cavitt

Information Specialist

Staff Picks

How you view Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother really depends on your own parenting style.  This engaging memoir highlights the differences in Chinese and American parenting styles.  (I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed growing up in Amy Chua’s home but I did enjoy reading about her struggles.)

Like many mothers Amy seems at odds with herself as she defends and doubts her daily choices, most of them regarding pushing her daughters in their artistic pursuits.  Filled with memorable anecdotes, Battle Hymn illustrates the difficulty in striking a balance between parental expectations and modern realities.

Here are a few of my favorite passages from the book.

It’s not easy to make your kids work when they don’t want to, to put in grueling hours when your own youth is slipping away, to convince your kids they can do something when they (and maybe even you) are fearful that they can’t.  “Do you know how many years you’ve taken off my life?” I’m constantly asking my girls.  “You’re both lucky that I have enormous longevity as indicated by my thick good-luck earlobes.”

Unlike my Western friends, I can never say, “As much it kills me, I just have to let my kids make their choices and follow their hearts.  It’s the hardest thing in the world, but I’m doing my best to hold back.”  Then they get to have a glass of wine and go to a yoga class whereas I have to stay home and scream and have my kids hate me.

…Chinese parenting is incredibly lonely—at least if you’re trying to do it in the West, where you’re on your own.  You have to go up against an entire value system --- rooted in the Enlightenment, individual autonomy, child development theory, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--- and there’s no one you can talk to honestly, not even people you like and deeply respect”

Whether the Chua children are the beneficiaries of Chinese parenting or its victims is one question readers will have to decide for themselves though it wouldn’t surprise me if either of the high-achieving youngsters grew up to pen their own memoir one day.

Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist