Clean Realistic Romance

Try these books if you're looking for:

• realistic romance
• clean reads
• good characterization
• moving plot lines

Longbourn 
Jo Baker
F BAKER
In this irresistibly imagined below stairs 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. Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen's classic-- and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.

The Shoemaker's Wife 
Adriana Trigiani
F TRIGIANI
Two star-crossed lovers--Enza and Ciro--meet and separate, until, finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever. Set during the years preceding and during World War I.

The Whistling Season 
Ivan Doig
F DOIG
Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent Rose and her brother, Morris, endeavor to educate the widower's sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project.

All the Light We Cannot See 
Anthony Doerr
F DOERR
A blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Romance that Sweeps You Into the Past

Try these books if you're looking for:

• romance
• historical fiction
• clean read
• engaging plot

Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind 
Heidi Ashworth
ROMANCE ASHWORTH
When the dowager duchess of Marcross insists he accompany her niece, Ginny, into the country for the day to execute a special task, Sir Anthony is appalled, to say the least. Ginny, who thinks little of the fashionable Sir Anthony, is as eager to be done with the chore as he, but before they arrive at their destination they are stranded by a highwaymen and launched into an adventure marked by a battle of words, wills, and wit.

Miss Grimsley's Oxford Career 
Carla Kelly
ROMANCE KELLY
Beautiful and brilliant, Miss Ellen Grimsley considers it a scandal that she cannot attend Oxford simply because she's female, while a dashing dunderhead like her older brother, Gordon, is perfectly free to pursue the education of her dreams. That's why Miss Grimsley sees nothing wrong with donning her brother's robes to do his work for him--even though she knows society would reel in shock at the merest hint of such a notion. But an even greater scandal looms for this unconventional heroine when a charming Shakespearean scholar learns her secret. Now she's in for some lessons in an entirely different subject--love.

The Heiress of Winterwood 
Sarah Ladd
ROMANCE LADD
Darbury, England, 1814. Amelia Barrett, heiress to an estate nestled in the English moors, defies family expectations and promises to raise her dying friend's baby. She'll risk everything to keep her word -- even to the point of proposing to Graham, the child's father -- a sea captain she's never met.

Full Steam Ahead 
Karen Witemeyer
ROMANCE WITEMEYER
In this 1850s romance set in Galveston, Texas, Nicole Renard, daughter of the owner of Renard Shipping, returns home to find her father deathly ill. Vowing to find a suitable husband to give her father the heir he desires before it's too late, she offers a dowry -- the Lafitte Dagger -- to attract a mate never dreaming that scientist Darius Thornton could be the sort of man she would consider ever marrying. And when her father's rivals discover the dagger's hiding place, will she have to choose between her love and her family's legacy?

Mr. Knightley’s Diary 
Amanda Grange
F GRANGE
Amanda Grange serves Austen and Austen fans nicely with her take on Emma. She writes a diary of Mr. Knightley’s viewpoint of the matchmaking, mischievous young lady. Covered are the debacles Emma creates with Harriet Smith, Mr. Elton and Frank Churchill. Of course, the details aren’t shared in the same way because Mr. Knightley is not aware of Emma’s thinking until much later. The Diary is entertaining, a pleasant, light afternoon read. It mostly works as a diary but sometimes seems to fall short a bit. It is obviously best suited to readers who know Emma well. It’s a bit hard to say whether Mr. Knightley’s Diary is too close to its “mother book” or a little too distant; it can sometimes be a little slow going and almost “reserved,” much like Knightley’s character seems. But Austen fans who are always eager for new material will most likely be satisfied.

Mystery and Storytelling in One Package

Try these books if you're looking for:

• mystery, suspense, action
• good storytelling
• well-written stories

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents 
Terry Pratchett
YA F Pratchet
A talking cat, intelligent rats, and a strange boy cooperate in a Pied Piper scam until they try to con the wrong town and are confronted by a deadly evil rat king.

The Kraken Project 
Douglas Preston
F Preston
When a NASA accident kills seven scientists and enables a self-modifying artificial intelligence to escape into the Internet, Wyman Ford and the AI's creator, Melissa Shepherd, struggle to keep the evolving program out of the hands of scheming Wall Street traders.

Historical Fiction

Try these books if you're looking for:

• historical fiction, covering any topic or era

It Happened at the Fair 
Deeanne Gist
F GIST
A transporting historical novel about a promising young inventor, his struggle with loss, and the attractive teacher who changes his life, all set against the razzle-dazzle of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

Cinnamon and Gunpowder 
Eli Brown
F BROWN
In 1819, kidnapped chef Owen Wedgwood transforms meager shipboard supplies into sumptuous meals at the behest of his kidnapper, pirate queen Mad Hannah Mabbot, while she pushes her exhausted crew to track down a deadly privateer.

The Calligrapher's Daughter 
Eugenia Kim
F KIM
In early twentieth-century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. Smart and headstrong, she is encouraged by her mother, but her stern father is determined to maintain tradition, especially as the Japanese steadily gain control of his beloved country. ** The library has this as a book club set as well**

Thought-Provoking Fiction

Try these books if you're looking for:

• thought-provoking fiction
• clean reads
• focus on characters and relationships
• strong characterization

The Awakening of Miss Prim 
Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera
F SANMARTI FENOLLER
"Prudencia Prim is a young woman of intelligence and achievement, with a deep knowledge of literature and several letters after her name. But when she accepts the post of private librarian in the village of San Ireneo de Arnois, she is unprepared for what she encounters there. Her employer, a book-loving intellectual, is dashing yet contrarian, always ready with a critique of her cherished Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott. The neighbors, too, are capable of charm and eccentricity in equal measure, determined as they are to preserve their singular little community from the modern world outside."-- Provided by publisher. This book has a feel of British authors from the 1930s that I've really enjoyed.

While Beauty Slept 
Elizabeth Canning Blackwell
F BLACKWELL
A Gothic retelling of the real story behind the legend of Sleeping Beauty. The writing is very lush and it provides an interesting behind-the-scenes look at Sleeping Beauty.

La's Orchestra Saves the World 
Alexander McCall Smith
F MCCALL SMITH
It is 1939. Lavender--La to her friends--decides to flee London, not only to avoid German bombs but also to escape the memories of her shattered marriage. Settling in a small town, she boosts morale by organizing an amateur orchestra from the village and the local RAF base--and falls in love with one of her prized recruits. McCall Smith creates amazing characters. His books are very soothing reads and have a lot more depth than you would expect.

The Buddha in the Attic 
Julie Otsuka
F OTSUKA
The story of a group of women brought from Japan to San Francisco in the 1900s as mail-order brides. I just read this one recently and was captivated. The way she wrote the book is very uniquely beautiful and manages to tell hundreds of stories in a few carefully-placed words.

Cold Comfort Farm 
Stella Gibbons
F GIBBONS
Flora Poste, upon finding herself orphaned, decides to go live with her great aunt Ada Doom on Cold Comfort Farm, where she can exert her exceptional skills to tidy up everyone's lives. This was written as a satire (mocking bucolic literature), so don't take it too seriously. But the writing is phenomenal and the points she's able to make through the satire will get you thinking about what we convey through literature.

Historical Mysteries, with an Emphasis on Science and Medicine

Try these books if you're looking for:

• historical mystery
• lesser-known figures in history
• history of science and medicine
• problem solving
• adventure fiction and non-fiction
• realistic plots
• strong characterization

Mistress of the Art of Death 
Ariana Franklin
MYSTERY Franklin Mistress #1
In medieval Cambridge, a young Italian doctor named Adelia is called on to investigate the murders of four children and finds herself caught in a web of anti-Semitism and hatred that threatens her own life.

The Anatomy of Deception 
Lawrence Goldstone
MYSTERY Goldston
Nineteenth-century Philadelphia physician Ephraim Carroll draws on the new techniques of forensic medicine to investigate the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman and the horror that led to her death.

Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle 
Thea Cooper
612.34 COO 2010
Written with authentic detail and suspense, and featuring walk-ons by William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Eli Lilly himself, among many others, "Breakthrough" relives the heartwarming true story of the discovery of insulin.

The Plague Tales 
Ann Benson
F Benson
Two parallel stories, one set in the fourteenth century, the other in the twenty-first century, feature two unwitting heroes who confront the release of the bubonic plague on an unsuspecting world.

Teen Audiobooks

Try these books if you're looking for:

• teen reads
• audiobooks
• romance
• various societies

Cinder 
Marissa Meyer
YA F MEYER Lunar #1
As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.

Anna and the French Kiss 
Stephanie Perkins
YA F PERKINS
When Anna's romance-novelist father sends her to an elite American boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school, she reluctantly goes, and meets an amazing boy who becomes her best friend, in spite of the fact that they both want something more.

Wicked Lovely 
Melissa Marr
YA F MARR Wicked L #1
Seventeen-year-old Aislinn, who has the rare ability to see faeries, is drawn against her will into a centuries-old battle between the Summer King and Winter Queen, and the survival of her life, her love, and summer all hang in the balance.

Keturah and Lord Death 
Martine Leavitt
YA F LEAVITT
When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old Keturah while she is lost in the King's Forest, she charms him with her story and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love.

Along for the Ride 
Sarah Dessen
YA F DESSEN
When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating.

YA Fantasy with a Side of Romance and Adventure

Try these books if you're looking for:

• teen reads
• fantasy
• romance
• adventure

The Kiss of Deception 
Mary Pearson
YA F PEARSON
Princess Lia flees an unwanted marriage and expectations about her supernatural legacy only to be pursued by her jilted fiance and a ruthless assassin.

Winterspell 
Claire Legrand
YA F LEGRAND
To find her abducted father and keep her sister safe from the lecherous politicians of 1899 New York City, seventeen-year-old Clara must journey to the wintry kingdom of Cane, where Anise, queen of the faeries, has ousted the royal family in favor of her own totalitarian, anti-human regime.

Ironskin 
Tina Connolly
SCI-FI CONNOLLY Ironskin #1
Jane Eliot, a woman forced to wear an iron mask to suppress a scarring fey curse, takes a job as governess to a fey-stricken child and falls in love with her employer, an enigmatic artist who transforms unattractive women into beautiful fey.

Contemporary Thrillers

Try these books if you're looking for:

• contemporary books
• thrillers/legal thrillers/adventure books
• a focus on characters and relationships
• a focus on story and action
• read like Ann Cleeves and Gillian Flynn

In the Woods 
Tana French
MYSTERY FRENCH Dublin M #1
French writes with a similar tone to Gillian Flynn. In the Woods is the first in a moody, police psychological series where things do not always end up as one would expect. Detective Rob Ryan must investigate a chilling murder which brings back 20 year old memories of the violent murder of 2 companions.

A Share In Death 
Deborah Crombie
MYSTERY CROMBIE Duncan #1
Both Cleeves and Crombie write suspenseful, intricately plotted police novels. A Share in Death is the first in a series. Inspector Kincaid is vacationing incognito until a new acquaintance is found murdered in the hotel. This requires him to resume his true identity.

Still Life 
Louise Penny
MYSTERY PENNY Three #1
Penny like Cleeves writes intricately plotted police procedural novels. In the novel, Still Life (first in a series), a much loved member of a community is found murdered in the woods. Will Inspector Gamache be able to find enough small clues to locate the murderer?

Dark Tide 
Elizabeth Haynes
MYSTERY HAYNES
Haynes writes thrillers with suspenseful plots that are similar to the writing style of Flynn. Genevieve is starting a new life living on a houseboat far away from her secret past. She is horrified when a body washes up by the boat and she recognizes it as someone linked to her life she left behind.

Books That Tell it Like it Is

Try these books if you're looking for:

• contemporary fiction
• authentic books
• honest books - tell the story like it is, without shying away from anything
• focus on characters and relationships

The Road 
By Cormac McCarthy
F MCCARTHY
A man and his son walk alone towards the coast, and this is the moving story of their journey. The Road is an unflinching exploration of human behavior-from ultimate destructiveness to extreme tenderness. The dialog is terse and terribly authentic. Although this novel is set in a post-apocalyptic America; the nature of the story, the relationship between father and son, and the powerful dialog all lead me to recommend this as “realistic fiction.”

Going Bovine 
By Libba Bray
YA F BRAY
Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

Say What You Will 
By Cammie McGovern
YA F MCGOVERN
A girl confined to a wheelchair by cerebral palsy and a boy stymied by an obsessive-compulsive disorder are assigned to spend time together in what becomes a blossoming friendship that neither expected.

Fast-paced Compelling Apocalyptic Bio-Thrillers

Try these books if you're looking for:

• fast-pace
• thrillers
• apocalyptic stories
• strong plot
• adventure

Blindness 
Jose Saramago
F SARAMAGO
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" whose victims are confined to a vacant mental hospital, while a single eyewitness to the nightmare guides seven oddly assorted strangers through the barren urban landscape. Blindness is an eerie, elegantly written dystopian novel about a society stricken with a sudden, debilitating epidemic. It emphasizes intimate psychological detail and incisive social commentary over action.

Lock In 
John Scalzi
F SCALZI
When a new virus sweeps the globe a discovery is made -- that a few rare individuals have brains that are receptive to being controlled by others, meaning that from time to time, those who are "locked in" or fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus, can "ride" these people and use their bodies as if they were their own. This skill is quickly regulated, licensed, bonded, and controlled. Nothing can go wrong. Or can it?

The Age of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker
F WALKER
Imagines the coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life. This haunting dystopian novel is driven primarily by nuanced characterization, thought-provoking social commentary, and realistic, sensitively drawn human drama.

The Children of Men 
P.D. James
MYSTERY JAMES
The year is 2012. The country is under the absolute rule of the Warden. Then by chance, Theo Faron meets a young woman who seeks to challenge the power of the Warden's regime. A compelling, bleakly atmospheric dystopian novel about near-future industrial society plagued by mysterious and devastating medical phenomena. The suspenseful plot serves as an avenue for intimate character drama, thought-provoking social commentary, and haunting meditations on human behavior in extreme conditions.

Clean Reads that Have It All

Try these books if you're looking for:

• clean reads
• good story/plot
• strong female characters
• some action
• some romance

The Woman in White 
Wilkie Collins
MYSTERY COLLINS
One of the greatest mystery thrillers ever written, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White was a phenomenal bestseller in the 1860s, achieving even greater success than works by Dickens, Collins's friend and mentor. Full of surprise, intrigue, and suspense, this vastly entertaining novel continues to enthrall readers today. The story begins with an eerie midnight encounter between artist Walter Hartright and a ghostly woman dressed all in white who seems desperate to share a dark secret. The next day Hartright, engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie and her half sister, tells his pupils about the strange events of the previous evening. Determined to learn all they can about the mysterious woman in white, the three soon find themselves drawn into a chilling vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue. Masterfully constructed, The Woman in White is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian fiction: Marion Halcombe, dark, mannish, yet irresistibly fascinating, and Count Fosco, the sinister and flamboyant Napoleon of Crime. This is one of my all-time favorite classic books.

A Duty to the Dead 
Charles Todd
MYSTERY TODD Bess Cr #1
Bess Crawford, a nurse in World War I, promises Lieutenant Arthur Graham that she will carry his request to his dying brother, a request that is treated with skepticism, leading Bess to carry it out herself, putting her own life at risk for Arthur’s sake and thrusting her into a maelstrom of intrigue and murder. I also really loved his The Walnut Tree, which is not a mystery but is set in the same period and has some really great characters.
 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society 
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
F SHAFFER
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey-a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island. Another book with great characters and a new look at World War II.

The Forgotten Garden 
Kate Morton
F MORTON
“Nell,” abandoned as a child, leaves her adoptive parents in Australia and travels to England to trace her story, to find her real identity – a quest that ultimately leads her to Blackhurst manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Montrachet family. Kate Morton writes beautifully and her plots are so complex - without taking anything away from her compelling characters - that you have to read to the last page to really solve the mystery.

Some Serious YA Mystery and Adventure

Try these books if you're looking for:

• teen reads
• serious/dramatic books
• male characters
• reads like: The Black Reckoning (Books of Beginning); Nathan Fox's Dangerous Times; Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children; Hollow City; Confessions: The Private School Murders; Confessions of a Murder Suspect.

The Replacement 
By Brenda Yovanoff
YA F Yovanoff
Mackie Doyle is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years before, and when creatures under the hill decide that they want him back, he must decide where he really belongs and what he really wants.

In the Shadow of the Blackbirds 
By Cat Winters
YA F WINTERS
In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners flock to seances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first love, killed in battle, returns.

Anna Dressed in Blood 
By Kendare Blake
YA F BLAKE
For three years, seventeen-year-old Cas Lowood has carried on his father's work of dispatching the murderous dead, traveling with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat, but everything changes when he meets Anna, a girl unlike any ghost he has faced before.

The Girl is Murder 
By Kathryn Miller Haines
YA F HAINES Iris And #1
In 1942 New York City, fifteen-year-old Iris grieves for her mother who committed suicide and for the loss of her life of privilege, and secretly helps her father with his detective business since he, having lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, struggles to make ends meet.