New Books: Tuesday, 7/21

Here are a few more of the new books that have arrived at the library since we closed due to the pandemic. You can request them using our online form and then just swing by the library, where we’ll have them all checked out and ready for your curbside delivery.

Image of item

Love

Two old friends reconnect in Dublin for a dramatic evening of drinking and storytelling in this new novel from the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Davy and Joe were drinking pals back in their Dublin youth. Davy rarely sees Joe for a pint anymore—maybe one or two times when Davy comes over from England to check on his elderly father. But tonight Davy’s father is dying in the hospice, and Joe has a secret that will lead the two on a bender back to the haunts of their youth. Joe had left his wife and family a year earlier for another woman, Jessica. Davy knows her too—she was the girl of their dreams four decades earlier. As Joe’s story unfolds across Dublin, so too do the memories of what eventually drove Davy from Ireland: the upheaval that Faye, his feisty, profane wife, would bring into his life; his father’s somber disapproval; the pained spaces left behind when a parent dies. As much a hymn to the Dublin of old as a delightfully comic yet moving portrait of what it means to try to put into words the many forms that love can take.

Image of item

The Love Story of Missy Carmichael

The world has changed around seventy-nine-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, aka Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as a housewife and mother less than satisfying, Missy once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a classics degree from Cambridge. Now her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife’s native Australia, taking Missy’s beloved only grandchild half-a-world away. She spends her days sipping sherry, avoiding people, and rattling around in her oversized, under-decorated house waiting for…what exactly? The last thing Missy expects is for two perfect strangers and one spirited dog named Bob to break through her prickly exterior and show her just how much love she still has to give. In short order, Missy finds herself in the jarring embrace of an eclectic community that simply won’t take no for an answer—including a rambunctious mutt-on-loan whose unconditional love gives Missy a reason to re-enter the world one muddy paw print at a time.

Image of item

Master Class

From the critically acclaimed author of Vox comes a suspenseful new novel that explores a disturbing alternate reality where the government has legalized eugenics. Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state’s new elite schools, where children undergo routine tests for their quotient. Those who don’t measure up are placed in the state boarding schools that have cropped up under a new government mandate—Elena’s daughter, Freddie, is one of them. To her horror, she learns that the children are receiving the bare minimum of instruction. Instead, they spend their days making handcrafted goods—valuable commodities in the age of machine-made products. What began as a shock quickly becomes a nightmare as Elena discovers the terrifying atrocities inflicted upon the students. Not only have their test scores been tampered with, but they’re unwitting subjects of experiments, one of which tests a new method of chemical sterilization. The plan? To render all adolescents with undesirable quotients infertile…and Freddie may be next in line.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s