New Halloween Reads!

With Halloween falling on a Tuesday this year, this weekend is sure to be filled with pre-Halloween fun. Whether you are heading out to a fall-fest, getting ready for the trick-or-treaters, or just planning on staying at home with the porch lights out, here are some new Halloween books:

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty:  Author and mortician Caitlin Doughty travels around the world to research different culture's death customs. For the reader wondering what happens after death, here on Earth.

All I Want for Halloween by Marie Hart: Here's a romance novel about a spin the bottle game at a masquerade ball, and the hunt for the man she kissed. For the reader who likes holiday driven romance.

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King: In a world where women are encased as they sleep, and become violent if the casing is disturbed, one woman is immune to this. Fans of Stephen King, and horror area probably already of the wait list, so why not join them!

The Apparitionists by Peter Manseau: I think the sub-title tells you what you need to know about this book, "a tale of phantoms, fraud, photography, and the man who captured Lincoln's ghost". For the historian or paranormal fan.

Basic Witches by Jaya Saxena: Looking for a self-empowering read, that might make mention of magic and spells? More of a self help book than actual witchcraft, this is for the reader looking to be a better more confident person.

If there isn't something on this list for you, check out this list of New Creepy Books for Halloween from the Book Bub blog!

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Chris Harte has known Emily Gold since the day she was born, and from that time on, they were inseparable, forever linking the Harte and the Gold families as more than just neighbors. Sharing dinners, family parties, and holidays together the Hartes and Golds were a significant portion of one another's lives. When Chris and Emily began to date, it had always been assumed that they were meant to wind up together as soulmates. Aside from having a love like no other, Emily and Chris had everything going for them. Chris was an excellent student and Emily a gifted painter, both applying for colleges.

So imagine the surprise of the Harte and Gold families when they receive late-night calls from the hospital stating that Emily is dead at age 17 from a single gunshot wound to the head, most likely coming from a gun Chris took from his father's gun safe. When there's still another bullet in the chamber of the gun and Chris tells police that it was intended for a suicide pact, Chris Harte suddenly becomes the primary suspect.

Jodi Picoult's The Pact is full of intrigue, suspense, and legal drama that will keep you turning the page.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste NG

Leo Tolstoy wrote that, “…each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Lee family, living in a small town in Ohio during the 1970s, is a good example of this. Their unhappiness, which had driven middle child Lydia to disappear on a summer night, involved none of the usual components of the dysfunctional family. There was no alcoholism, drug abuse, physical violence, mental illness, poverty or infidelity. There was simply a lack of communication.

The parents, James and Marilyn, were disappointed with their lives. Marilyn had planned to defy her mother’s expectations for her, perfect wife and homemaker, by becoming one of the few women of the 1950’s to qualify for medical school. James, the son of Chinese immigrants, striving to be accepted as a true American, became a professor who taught a class focusing on the American cowboy. Unfortunately, Marilyn’s plans for medical school were disrupted by an unexpected pregnancy. And the academic community put little value on James’ area of expertise. He was viewed as odd and was offered only one teaching position.

So they transferred their ambitions to their children, particularly Lydia. Marilyn, making the same mistake her own mother had made, assumed that Lydia wanted what she had wanted, medical school. And James pushed her into a tortured social life which had her lurking at the edges of the gym at school dances and pretending to talk to friends on the telephone. Meanwhile they ignored their other two children, Nath and Hannah, whose real interests and abilities seemed insignificant in comparison to those imagined for Lydia.

The family imploded after Lydia’s disappearance, shortly after her sixteenth birthday. Rage and recrimination from past slights and injuries came to the surface and drove the family members apart. It seemed a point of no return had been reached. Only quiet and observant Hannah, who knew some of Lydia’s secrets, could help the others come to terms with what had happened.

Check out a copy of Everything I Never Told You @ the library!

The End of Days by Jennie Erpenbeck

Sometimes a life may be extended by a stroke of good luck or ended by a slight misstep. Did the car run through the intersection or stop just in time? Did a stranger at the restaurant know the Heimlich maneuver or not? Did a slip on the ice result in a broken wrist or a broken neck? What does fate have in store for us?

In The End of Days, Jennie Erpenbeck considers the many ways a life may end or continue for another year or more. Her heroine, unnamed until the last chapter, was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. She dies five times in this compact novel.  After each death, the author considers small changes that could have allowed the infant, girl and woman to survive. Then, in the next chapter, her life goes on. In this way, the history of an ordinary life in turbulent 20^th century Europe is depicted with many possibilities. And so, the surviving infant lives to become a teenage girl who suffers the deprivations brought on by World War I. The girl becomes a woman who dies in a Russian prison camp during World War II. The woman who survives dies in an accident in East Berlin, leaving behind a teenage son.  And then, ninety year old Frau Hoffmann, confined to a wheelchair and suffering from dementia, dies her final death, a death caused by old age. From death there ultimately is no escape. 

Check out The End of Days @ the library!

Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

In a series of letters to Richard Gere, Bartholomew Neil tells us his story of what happened after the death of his mother. He was her primary caretaker during her life, and now his life feels a bit empty. He has few friends, most prominently Father McNamee the local priest. With his therapist he has made a few goals including having a beer with a friend at a bar, and more privately talking to the Girlbrarian who he watches work at the library.

While working towards his own new normal, things quickly spiral out of control when Father McNamee renounces his priesthood and moves in with Bartholomew. As his mother told him, one persons bad luck is another person's good luck, and he sees no reason not to let Father McNamee move in. In another therapy session Bartholomew meets Max, and Max just might be the key to Bartholomew meeting some of his goals.

Matthew Quick is a master of quirky characters dealing with dark issues. Bartholomew is an insightful, unintentionally hysterical and slightly unreliable narrator who looks at the world a bit differently than expected. Like his other adult novel, Silver Linings Playbook, The Good Luck of Right Now is going to be made into a movie, so pick up the book before it hits the big screen!

Check out The Good Luck of Right Now @ the library

The First Phone Call from Heaven by Mitch Albom

How would you like to receive a phone call from one of your loved ones who passed away?  Well the townspeople of Coldwater are able to do just that.  Many of the members of this small town are getting frequent calls from their loved ones that have passed away.  This event leaks to the media and everyone wants to head to Coldwater to learn more about this miraculous happening.  One member of the town, Sully Harding becomes suspicious of these phone calls and decides to investigate what is happening.  Are these phone calls a hoax or are the townspeople really getting phone calls from their loved ones? Find out for yourself in this novel written by the author who also wrote, The Five People you Meet in Heaven.  This novel will leave you at the edge of your seat wanting to learn the truth.  As a reader you become attached to the characters while they are all trying to make sense of this phenomenon.

 

The audiobook version of this novel is read by Mitch Albom and who better to read the story than the author himself.  This moving story comes to life as the author takes you through this emotional story. With a surprise ending, this is a must read for anyone who believes in the afterlife or is curious about how the world could react if their loved ones are calling from the dead. 

Check out the The First Phone Call from Heaven @ the library! 

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Spoiler alert…In this book Skippy dies on page 5. Skippy dies while engaged in a doughnut eating contest with his friend Ruprecht. The rest of this funny book is devoted to informing the reader how he came to this end.

Skippy is a fourteen year old student at a boys’ boarding school in Ireland.  He is surrounded by boys his own age, adolescents with the usual adolescent problems and personalities. They inflict one another with cruel nicknames. (Skippy, whose given name is Daniel, is so called because of his resemblance to a kangaroo on a television show.) They play cruel pranks and threaten each other with violence. They regale each other with lies, stories laced with sexual bravado and brave defiance of authority. There are also, of course, teachers. Many are graduates of this same school. They inflict one another with cruel nicknames, such as Howard the Coward. They play cruel pranks and threaten each other with violence. They regale each other with lies, stories laced with sexual bravado and brave defiance of authority. Some are well-meaning but incompetent. Some are consumed with ambition and incompetent. Parents are self-absorbed and indifferent except when their child’s success might reflect back on them. Adolescent girls have their own school and their own forms of cruelty which they inflict on boys, parents and teachers. Drugs are rampant on both campuses.

Skippy falls in love with a beautiful girl from the nearby all-girls’ school.  At first he can only worship her from afar as he watches her play Frisbee. He finally meets her and learns her name (Lori) at the ill-fated Halloween Hop mixer held at his school. The beautiful Lori allows him to think she is his girlfriend, but she is mercurial and manipulative and unworthy of the sweet-natured Skippy. Meanwhile history teacher, Howard Fallon, is just as infatuated with Miss McIntyre, the new substitute teacher, as Skippy is with Lori, and his actions are just as immature as Skippy’s (or more so.)

After Skippy becomes infatuated with Lori, his behavior changes. He becomes forgetful.  He daydreams in class and outside of class. He gets physically ill. He, against his father’s and coach’s wishes, quits the swim team. The teachers notice his uncharacteristic behavior but none step up to properly investigate his problem. Skippy asks to come home for a visit but his father refuses. In the end, the indifference of the adults charged with protecting Skippy is far crueler than any nickname or violence or broken heart a fellow teen could inflict on him.

Skippy Dies is a bittersweet book, a dark comedy with, despite its title and theme, a hopeful end. 

Check out Skippy Dies @ the library!

Ten Poems to Say Goodbye by Roger Housden

Ten Poems To Say Goodbye is a collection of poems carefully chosen by Roger Housden to help us confront and understand death. This book consists of works by ten different poets, each addressing different aspects of death and grief.  The author accompanies each selection with a personal essay that may help the reader appreciate the poem, but the poems themselves are the heart of this book. The author writes that with most poetry collections he finds “no more than a couple of poems that strike me to the core.” In this collection, he has assembled some of these, each poem a gem that expresses grief, comfort, regret, relief and other emotions associated with life and death.  

Check out Ten Poems to Say Goodbye @ the library!