More new adult fiction

Last week I introduced readers to new fiction that has recently arrived on the Peter White Public Library shelves.  There are many more books, and here is another week of new fiction.

Dean Bakopoulos grew up in Michigan and won a Michigan Notable Book designation for his first novel Please Don’t Come Back From the Moon.  He is now writer-in-residence at Iowa’s Grinnell College.  Grinnell is the scene of his latest book Summerlong.  This story demonstrates just what happens when life goes awry.    Full of mirth, melancholy and redemption, this novel traces the wild and reckless behavior of the town’s adults during a crazy and sweltering summer.

Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller with aimless teenage video gamer Zack Lightman as the star.  One night, he sees a flying saucer, the same saucer he sees in his favorite videogame every night.  Suddenly Zach and millions of other gamers across the world must save Earth.  Ernest Cline infuses each page of this novel with the same pop-culture savvy that made his first novel Ready Player One a phenomenon. 

 Mazie Phillips is bighearted and bawdy.  She is the proprietress of the New York City movie theater  Venice.  As the Great Depression hits home, Maizie opens the theater to the homeless residents of the Lower East Side.  She defines one neighborhood and helps to define the city.  Her dearest secrets are kept in her diary and after 90 years, her diary is found.  Jami Attenberg uses the diary and the memories of Maizie’s contemporaries to tell the story of Saint Mazie and the story of a unique period in history.

Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont is a dazzling first novel that documents the story of an American family on the cusp of irrevocable change.  Jack Shanley is a well-known New York artist who is living a double life.  His wife Deb is a retired dancer happily raising two children that she adores.  She realizes Jack has weaknesses, but does not confront them until a package of emails chronicling his secrets are mailed.  Deb doesn’t open the package, but her children do, and the family is forced to make changes that will define them in the future.

Chief of Police Kate Burkholder finds herself confronted with a thirty-year-old murder case that plunges her into the heart of the Amish community to which she once belonged.  When a tornado travels through town, human bones are unearthed, and Kate finds out that this death was no accident.  In After the Storm by Linda Castillo, Kate discovers the lengths to which people will go to protect their own.

To some Juliet Townsend is a loser.  She lost every high school track meet to her best friend Madeleine Bell.  Ten years later she is running the Mid-Night Inn, a loser hotel that attracts the cheap or the desperate.  One night, Madeleine and her family walk in, but Maddie never walks out, and Juliet is considered the number one suspect in her murder.  Lori Rader-Day follows up her first mystery novel The Black Hour with Little Pretty Things. 

Nuala O’Connor has written a work of biographical fiction that explores the life of American poet Emily Dickinson and the family’s spunky Irish maid Ada Concannon.  Ada accepts the eccentric Dickinson family of Amherst, Massachusetts and develops a deep friendship with the gifted middle daughter Emily.  As Emily sinks deeper into a fear of the world outside of the family compound, Ada’s safety and reputation are threatened.  Emily must face down her own demons to save her friend in Miss Emily.

Set in England in 1255, The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader tells the story of 17 year-old Sarah who chooses to become an anchoress.  As a holy woman shut way in a cell only seven by nine paces, Sarah thinks she is safe from dangerous outside influences.  It soon becomes clear that the thick walls and isolation do not offer all of the protection Sarah expected.  She begins to hear the voice of the previous anchoress, and she finds herself questioning what she thought she knew about the anchorhold and the village itself.

Constant Fear by Daniel Palmer is a brilliantly plotted thriller set on a private school campus.  Custodian Jake Dent fell from glory as a talented baseball player as the result of an auto accident.  His life fell apart and all he has left is his son Andy.  Obsessed with preparing for doomsday, prepper Jake may have to use all of his skills to save his son and other students from a vicious drug cartel bent on destroying the school in retaliation for a computer hacking implemented by a small group of students.

Nick and Maya Wakefield’s marriage is in the dumps.  Nick is a workaholic and flirt who sees life as greener on the other side.  In order to posture himself as a perfect husband and father, in order to improve his status in case of divorce, he hatches a plan with his friend and divorce attorney to be the perfect husband.  All goes well, until his wife realizes what is happening.  Author Leah McLaren spins a compelling novel in A Better Man.

There are many new books on the library shelves for your reading enjoyment.

By Pam Christensen

Library Director