The October LibraryReads List!

Wait...what is LibraryReads? A list of new or soon-to-be published titles selected and recommended by librarians and library staff from across the country. We've included descriptions* below and you can head to the LibraryReads website to see brief reviews submitted by librarians. We'd love to hear what you think about the titles, so if you love it or hate it be sure to let us know!

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Published: October 1, 2013

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a "wonderful" husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner.

Longbourn by Jo Baker
Published: October 8, 2013

In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Published: September 24, 2013

Growing up in Calcutta, born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead of them. It is the 1960s, and Udayan-charismatic and impulsive-finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty: he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother's political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America. But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family's home, he comes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind-including those seared in the heart of his brother's wife.

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois
Published: September 24, 2013

When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters: the colorful buildings, the street food, the handsome, elusive man next door. Her studious roommate Katy is a bit of a bore, but Lily didn’t come to Argentina to hang out with other Americans. Five weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home, and Lily is the prime suspect. But who is Lily Hayes? It depends on who’s asking. As the case takes shape—revealing deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA—Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through the eyes of those around her: the media, her family, the man who loves her and the man who seeks her conviction.

Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway
Published: September 23, 2013

Hawthorn and Child are mid-ranking London detectives tasked with finding significance in scattered facts. They are comic ghosts - one white and gay, one black and straight - turning up repeatedly and ineffectively to haunt the scene of some catastrophe or another, appearing and disappearing along with a ghost car, a crime boss, a pickpocket, a dead race-car driver, and a pack of wolves. Mysteries are everywhere, but the biggest of all is our mysterious - and hopeless - compulsion to solve them.

The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement by Nick Saul & Andrea Curtis
Published: September 24, 2013

In 1998, when Nick Saul became executive director of The Stop, the little urban food bank was like thousands of other cramped, dreary, makeshift spaces, a last-hope refuge where desperate people could stave off hunger for one more day with a hamper full of canned salt, sugar and fat. The produce was wilted and the packaged foods were food-industry castoffs—mislabeled products and misguided experiments that no one wanted to buy. For users of the food bank, knowing that this was their best bet for a meal was a humiliating experience. Since that time, The Stop has undergone a radical reinvention. Participation has overcome embarrassment, and the isolation of poverty has been replaced with a vibrant community that uses food to build hope and skills, and to reach out to those who need a meal, a hand and a voice.

We Are Water by Wally Lamb
Published: October 22, 2013

After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh--wife, mother, outsider artist--has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family's hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora's Box of toxic secrets--dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Published: October 22, 2013

A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friends family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld.

The Tilted World by Tom Franklin & Beth Ann Fennelly
Published: October 1, 2013

The year is 1927. As rains swell the Mississippi, the mighty river threatens to burst its banks and engulf all in its path, including federal revenue agent Ted Ingersoll and his partner, Ham Johnson. Arriving in the tiny hamlet of Hobnob, Mississippi, to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents on the trail of a local bootlegger, they unexpectedly find an abandoned baby boy at a crime scene.

Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town by Mirta Ojito
Published: October 15, 2013

In November of 2008, Marcelo Lucero, a thirty-seven-year-old undocumented Ecuadorean immigrant, was brutally attacked and murdered by a group of teenagers as he walked the streets of Patchogue, a quiet Long Island town. The teenaged attackers were out "hunting for beaners," their slur for Latinos, and Lucero was to become another victim of the anti-immigration fever spreading in the United States. But in death, Lucero's name became a symbol of everything that was wrong with our broken immigration system: porous borders, lax law enforcement, and the rise of bigotry. With a strong commitment to telling all sides of the story, journalist Mirta Ojito unravels the engrossing narrative with objectivity and insight, providing an invaluable peephole into one of American's most pressing issues.

So...which one will you read first? If you need help placing a hold with your Chandler Public Library card, give us a call at 480-782-2800.

If you'd like more book recommendations, stay tuned to our Facebook page for our next "Book Recs" session, browse our Book Lists page, and check out the September LibraryReads list. 

*Book descriptions from the publisher.