Staff Picks: September

Carolyn’s Pick

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn

is dead, decapitated in the space

of a heartbeat by a hired French

executioner.  As her remains are

bundled into oblivion, Thomas

Cromwell breakfasts with the victors.

Sharon’s Pick

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired

librarian in Florida, is shelving books

one morning when her eyes lock on a

photograph in a magazine lying open

nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a

book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—

The Book of Lost Names.

Martha’s Pick

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-

year-old in 1943–aware of the war but

distanced from its reach. Then her

father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two

decades, is suddenly arrested on

suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer.

Jess’s Pick

Halfway through a midsummer afternoon

performance, Ringling Brothers Barnum

and Bailey Circus’s big top caught fire.

The tent had been waterproofed with a

mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in

seconds it was burning out of control, and

more than 8,000 people were trapped inside.

Eric’s Pick

Boots Elsworth was a famous treasure

hunter in another life, but now she’s

washed up. She makes her living faking

salvage legends and selling them to the

highest bidder, but this time she might

have stumbled on something real–a famous

warship, capable of untold destruction.

Sonya’s Pick

Julie is missing, and the missing

don’t often return. But Elise knows

Julie better than anyone, and she

feels in her bones that her best

friend is out there, and that one

day she’ll come back.

Laura’s Pick

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves

between two worlds: the poor neighborhood

where she lives and the fancy prep school

she attends. The balance between these

worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses

the shooting of her childhood best friend

Khalil at the hands of a police officer.