Spotlight Books for Winter
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
Fiction
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same. 
Fiction
Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. 
Nonfiction
Arty Parties: An Entertainment Cookbook by Julia Sherman Artists throw superior parties, and we can learn from their willingness to draw outside the lines, choose character over perfection, and find boundless joy in feeding family and friends. Cook, live, and host like an artist with inspired, easy recipes and playful hands-on experiments in the kitchen. 
Nonfiction
Ghosting: A Widow’s Voyage Out by Barbara Ascher Married at a young age to an older man , neither he nor she doubted that he would predecease her; but she discovers that there is no preparing for the loss a beloved. Their marriage was a passionate 35 year love affair, as if the odds against its longevity engendered a rare intensity. She discovers that love has no boundaries, grief is not eternal and her husband’s motto “Life is a love story” is so very true. |
Fiction
The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths Newly minted PI Emma Holmes and her partner Sam Collins are just settling into their business when they’re chosen for a high-profile case: retired music-hall star Verity Malone hires them to find out who poisoned her husband, a theater impresario. Verity herself has been accused of the crime. The only hitch—the Brighton police are already on the case, putting Emma in direct competition with her husband, police superintendent Edgar Stephens. 
Fiction
A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Travelling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the survivor's guilt he has carried for decades and his feelings for Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant with his child), Jaryk must decide how to honor both the past and the present, and how to accept a happiness he is not sure he deserves. 
Nonfiction
Our Oldest Companions: A Story of the First Dogs by Pat Shipman Dogs and humans have been inseparable for more than 40,000 years. The relationship has proved to be a pivotal development in our evolutionary history. The same is also true for our canine friends; our connection with them has had much to do with their essential nature and survival. How and why did humans and dogs find their futures together, and how have these close companions (literally) shaped each other? Award-winning anthropologist Pat Shipman finds answers in prehistory and the present day. |