Season's Readings 2020: Home

In a near-future world where many of the species of mammals and birds are disappearing, protagonist Franny Stone goes on a journey following the last of the Arctic terns on their migration from the Arctic to Antarctica. Poetic, this a page turner in the best sense of the word.

Fans of Baby Teeth and The Girl on the Train will be set on edge by this psychological thriller about two sisters living in the aftermath of a family tragedy.

Newly retired English professor, Antonia, is also recently widowed. Her instinct is to become reclusive, yet around her people require support: the immigrant farm worker next door, and her three sisters with their complex relationships. Her husband was the outgoing one who would quote his mother to her, saying, "when in doubt, try love." She isn't sure she can.

A finance journalist arrives at her Manhattan office on a foggy morning soaked to the bone. One problem - she hasn't worked there in 5 years and has no memory of the last few days. The diagnosis? Dissociative state. Is this the result of some kind of trauma? Is Ally's life in danger or did she do something she will spend a lifetime regretting?

It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages and chaos reigns in England. Three characters find their lives intertwined in an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate.

A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, the premise is that somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life.

Elana Ferrante never disappoints, this time with a stand-alone book introducing the complicated adolescent world of Giovanna, who struggles with her family’s secrets and how to approach the world of adults. Fans of Ferrante’s Neapolitan series of novels will recognize the coming-of-age angst and focus on class disparities.

When retired cop Cal Hooper moves to an idyllic Irish village, he thinks he’s finally escaped from a nasty divorce and the crime of Chicago. But when he reluctantly agrees to help a child find a missing older brother, Cal is drawn into a world that is just as disturbing as the one he left behind.

What if you were trapped in an enchanted house that was cursed with death and decay? Moreno-Garcia's portrayal of a 1950's Gothic heroine, Noemi is as unforgettable as is the setting. The cast of odd and frightening characters spin the evolving story set in a forgotten isolated Mexican countryside manor. Hang on for the wild ride and don't let go!

This sequel started off slow, but stick with it for an intricate puzzle and adventure through eighties pop culture nostalgia. We could all use a little fun to end 2020.

By alternating the points of view of complex female characters, Odessa, Texas is brought to life during the cusp of an oil boom in the mid 1970s. This is a story of class, race, regional culture, fear and hope.

Weaves the stories of an urban socialite who has big plans to save the wilderness and a small-town heartthrob who sets out to catch the eye of his dream girl. Fans of Virgin River by Robyn Carr will enjoy this fun, romantic Alaskan escape.

A headstrong lawyer moves to L.A. to be a partner in her own lawfirm and accidentally ends up dating a US Senator. No big deal keeping their fling hush-hush at first, but when they realize their relationship may be more serious, can they weather the media scrutiny after going public?

Enchantments and those that can break them exist in the Victorian world. Elsie has the power to break spells, yet little does she know the mystery and deceit she has become entangled in.

Four Native American men bonded by an ominous event in their youth find themselves the target of an entity born of the culture they’ve left behind, seeking it’s violent revenge.

Now all grown up, the child survivors of a doomsday cult reunite at the funeral of one of their own, and begin discussing what really happened “that night” up on Red Peak.

A group of sassy Southern ladies looking for a break in their early 1990’s suburban monotony end up in the middle of a mystery when a peculiar man moves into their neighborhood, accompanied by a string of bizarre occurrences.

Written pre-COVID, Survivor Song is the story of Dr. Ramola Sherman’s road trip through hell, in an attempt to save her pregnant friend Natalie, who has contracted a rabies-like infection. The novel brilliantly juxtaposes hope, love, and friendship with violence, panic, and fear.

Horror master King uses the weird and uncanny to riff on mortality, the price of creativity, and the unpredictable consequences of material attachments. This extraordinary collection of four new and compelling novellas pulls you into intriguing and frightening places

The high-school population of an economically depressed fictional small-town becomes the target of a masked killer, but strangely, neither the townsfolk nor law enforcement seems to be terribly concerned. Coulrophobics beware!

In an original spin on biotech gone wrong, The Loop blends horror, conspiracies, and science run amok in a novel of teens trying to survive a world gone berserk. Sure to appeal to fans of David Cronenberg, Welcome to Night Vale, and Stranger Things.

Biography of Civil Rights icon, John Lewis. A New York Times best seller from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America.

Long admired cartoonist for The New Yorker, chronologs the body of his career from commercial artist to David Letterman co-author to National Lampoon and SNL writer. He tells the story of his journey from Ontario to the here and now of New York City.

In his own words, "I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year." Fans inviting him to their homes nightly by watching Jeopardy have really been cheering him on for decades!

A definitive, exhaustively-researched biography of one of the most well-regarded popular musical artists of our time, “Weird” Al Yankovic. Al is a genre-defying master of parody, and all-around pretty swell guy, with a compelling & inspiring life story.

If you are looking for the definitive traditional biography of George Washington, read Ron Chernow's 904-page Pulitzer Prize-winning biography instead. On the other hand, if you are looking for an amusing inside look that gets behind some of the myths advanced by other biographers to find a fascinating fresh take of the real George Washington, this unconventional biography is well worth your time.

Collecting material from half a century in comedy, a chronologically arranged selection of favorite bits by the iconic funnyman. The first book in twenty-five years from Jerry Seinfeld features his classic best work that evokes laughing out loud.

Drawing on the Academy Award-winning actor's journals and diaries from the last 40 years, this unflinchingly honest book presents a unique approach to achieving success and satisfaction. An unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

A fascinating deep dive into Curchill, his family, his life style, and his unwavering, persuasive ability to keep the British people believing that the Natzis could be defeated. All the while knowing that their success was dependent on engaging a reluctant United States.

The world's leading expert on habit formation shows how you can have a happier, healthier life: by starting small. B.J. Fogg brings his experience coaching more than 40,000 people to help you lose weight, de-stress, sleep better, or achieve any goal of your choice. You just need Fogg's behavior formula: make it easy, make it fit your life, and make it rewarding.

Meant for every manager who wants to understand and move past their own preconceived ideas, this book explains that bias is the result of mental shortcuts and our likes and dislikes, and is a natural part of the human condition. Teaching you how to overcome unconscious bias, this book provides more than thirty unique tools.

Keep nature in balance and give pollinators a fighting chance because the time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, and corporate landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline.

Pie Academy website founder brings you the best recipes for scratch pie crusts and hundreds of mouth-watering fillings. Got milk? Make a pie!

In vibrant detail and drawing on a rich array of illustrations, Boddy considers how the sunflower, poppy, rose, lily--and many others--have given rise to meaning, value, and inspiration throughout history, and why they are integral to so many different cultures.

To compile this fresh and exhaustive anthology of black poetry ranging from hip-hop to sonnets, Kevin Young went beyond culling from the canon of African American poetry to pouring over untold volumes of forgotten and previously unconsidered verse. Young’s book manages to place Phillis Wheatley’s poems in context, place Lucille Clifton upon her rightful throne, showcase a new generation of black writers – and more.

In this poetic rendering of the life a former slave and the first African American published poet, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers fleshes out the arc of Phillis Wheatley’s life. In tracing one remarkable trajectory, she also brings the reader into an age of the transatlantic slave trade, and the ways in which Wheatley’s experience was not unique.

As expansive as her 1970’s account of atrocities in El Salvador – What You Have Heard is True – is specific, Forche’s first volume of her own poems in 17 years introduces new generations to her work, while satisfying fans of earlier volumes. The publication is timely in that the poet who was once denounced by peers for ‘being political’ joins a new wave of poets willing to take a stand.

Winner of the 2020 National Book Award 2020, Choi’s compilation of poetry transforms reportage and experience; from the verbatim testimony of those orphaned by the Korean War, to her account of her photojournalist father’s chronicling social unrest. Childhood photographs, POV, and her translator’s professional ethic inform this verse.

In this collection of honest probings of inner and outer nature, the personal becomes the universal. In a poem that asks us to ‘go easy’, Klink inquires what a panhandler might do “…If he were given a boat, a breeze…if he thought life would help him.”

Diaz’ second stunning collection of poems, according to Graywolf Press, is an anthem of desire against erasure. The Mohave poet pushes beyond Audre Lorde’s model of ‘writing the body’ to make being in and of the body a thing of urgency. “I am begging: let me be lonely but not invisible” the poet writes. Shortlisted for the National Book Award 2020.

Did you know that knew that Steve Bannon wrote a screenplay for Titus Andronicus? Or how the NYC Public Theater pushed boundaries by starring a Donald Trump look-alike as Julius Caesar? Shapiro’s book runs the gamut as to how America has – for better or worse – embraced the British bard. Among NYT’s 10 Best Books.

In his final, acclaimed volume of poems, Carson – the Irish scholar, translator and educator – does not shy away from the subject of his own death. This native Irish speaker brings painterly attention to the ordinariness of the chemo ward, and bequeaths us his humanity and humor.

This collection of nature essays by the poet distinguishes itself by finding wonderment in the quirks of nature, and by infusing the personal. Each of the 28 essays in Nezhukumathil’s zeroes in on a species or animal: the narwhal’s mode of echolocation, for example, or a memory of the teacher who found her Indian-immigrant child’s drawing of a peacock not American.

Overachiever Pepper's family owns a massively popular fast food chain and pressures her to help out by posting to the company social media channels. When a viral Twitter war erupts between her family's business and the deli owned by her classmate Jack, and accusations of recipe theft and hurt feelings enter the mix, Pepper and Jack's lives are upended, when all they really want to do is figure out where they fit in the world.

This genre-bending book is about seemingly random and sometimes insignificant people and how they are all connected by one great prophecy. When the story begins, a poor family in an alternate 1950’s Washington has just hired a dragon to work their farm; at the same time a teen assassin from a religious cult begins a long-planned mission of destruction.

For fans of the Hunger Games trilogy, author Suzanne Collins has penned a prequel, set at a time when the Hunger Games were still new. Eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow, the future president of Panem that you loved to hate in the original trilogy, is the mentor of a singer-songwriter named Lucy Gray from District 12. Coriolanus badly needs to shine to save his future after his family has fallen on hard times.

The men in the Torres sister's lives don’t measure up: a father who is consumed by his grief, a boyfriend who is never satisfied and the neighborhood boys who are always watching. Beautiful Ana was the one everyone loved and who everyone wanted to be, and when she died, they were all left adrift... But what if she’s come back?

Piano prodigy Nannerl Mozart yearns so deeply to be remembered, though her younger brother Wolfgang soon outshines her on stage and in her father’s eyes. When an otherworldly boy finds her in her dreams and promises her the world, she leaps at the chance to change her fate, but in the Kingdom of Back a sacrifice must be given to fulfill your heart’s wish.

Ripley finds a treasure map! But as with everything else the Roanoke scouts encounter, they're going to get more than they bargained for. Delightful whether you've read the previous volumes or not.

When Pippa gets a mysterious basketball scholarship to an expensive private school, she decides to reinvent herself as a popular girl to impress her crush. Unfortunately, this doesn't go as planned and her lies begin to catch up with her.

Told in alternating chapters, Jeanne and her mother moved to San Francisco for work but now find themselves homeless and living out of their orange van. Cal lives cross the street in a beautiful home with views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Cal tries to save Jeanna, but she doesn't need rescuing.

When a 150 year-old pine was hit by lightning, the Churchmans, aided by their local community, used its wood to build a winter barn to shelter their animals from the snowy Vermont weather on Moonrise Farm. The animals moved in on Christmas Eve where an alpaca named Joy gave birth to a baby named Hope. Go to www.themoonrisefarm.com to visit the animals.

As a Chinese immigrant to California in the 1930's, Ming wants nothing more than to feel she belongs in her new world and to have a family Christmas tree. Inspired by a true story

In this companion to the award-winning New Kid, eight-grader Drew Ellis, one of the few black students in an elite school, straddles the line between his scholarship school and his old neighborhood friends. But his white friends are struggling just as much to be welcoming. A view of two sides of the same problem

Kirby Finn, a modern day Peter Pan, forms the Resistance, a group of school kids who band together to help other kids and foil bullies. The real mystery, though, is who exactly is Kirby Finn.

A poignant story showcasing a budding friendship between 2 boys on a train ride and the injustice of racism in the segregated South

An inspirational book told in rhyme about believing in yourself and following your dreams

Hannah and her father move to a railroad town in the Dakota Territories in the 1850's to open a tailor shop. Life will not be easy for Hannah because her mother was Chinese and her father is white and this was against the law. An insightful book about racial tensions during the Westward Expansion.

Mia's family relocates to Vermont to be closer to her grandmother. While it's hard at first, Mia begins to love her new life and her new friends, even helping her grandmother with her cricket farm. But packed at the bottom of Mia's belongings is a secret that she desperately does not want to face.

Lucely Luna can see ghosts. The spirits of her relatives inhabit her house and often appear as fireflies. When the spirit of her grandmother mysteriously disappears, Lucely and her best friend cast a spell to bring her back. But the spell accidentally awakens evil spirits and now the entire town is in jeopardy.

Relax, embrace an imperfect parenting style that works for you, and enjoy your kids!