Life's a Beach!

If you love to laugh about everyday things, pick up Calypso by David Sedaris. As he comes to terms with middle age, David has an even sharper tongue about what bothers him and everything else. He has purchased a beach home in North Carolina and invites his extended family down for vacations and holidays. He then proceeds to endure, enjoy and exasperate them by being himself. Sedaris is edgy and very funny. Enjoy!

A library is a small town.

Back when Andrew Carnegie was building public libraries in every city across America, the town of Riverton, NH, had its own mogul, whose name was Robers, which morphed into "Robbers" through probably equal parts humor and resentment. In Sue Halpern's latest, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, the town barely hangs on, but the library is now its best-maintained building. Halpern brings together three oddball characters in this setting and follows them through their encounters with multiple points of view. There is librarian Kit, fresh from therapy following marriage to a controlling monster, Solstice (Sunny), a teenager whose parents live off the grid and hide a secret past, and Rusty, a fugitive from Wall Street. When Sunny is assigned community service at the library after being arrested for shoplifting, she soon connects with Kit and Rusty. Readers will be taken with this beautifully written novel with appealing characters
.Halpern subtly tests our assumptions about self, love, marriage, family, vocation, and ethics, both personal and communal. Along the way, she offers a realistic view of the struggles and triumphs of a small public library, while framing it as a safe place in which to search for answers and solace. 

Witness to Murder

What would you do if you saw a murder through your window and were unable to leave your house to get help? This is exactly what happens to Anna Fox. She’s a child psychologist suffering from agoraphobia. A new family has moved in across the park from her New York home and when she is caught looking at them through her window the woman and her son come over to visit. When Anna looks over another time she sees a stabbing. She alerts authorities but the family claims innocence and make her look like mental case.The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn is a thrilling, informative book about the strangers next door. DB