A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

In this bestselling and delightfully quirky debut novel from Sweden, a grumpy yet lovable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.

A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Fredrik Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful and charming exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others.

337 pages (July 2014)

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Title Read-alikes: Elling by Ingvar Ambjørnsen; Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam; The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune; The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 ¼ Years Old by Hendrik Groen; The Big Finish by Brooke Fossey; The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg; There Must Be Some Mistake by Frederick Barthelme; The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons; Elevation by Stephen King; Ellie and the Harpmaker by Hazel Prior; Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson; Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman; and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.

Love Water Memory by Jennie Shortridge

Inspired by a true story, this bittersweet novel about a woman with a rare form of amnesia explores the raw, tender complexities of relationships and personal identity. Library Journal calls it “an emotional heart-tugger that doesn’t go where readers might expect; a fascinating turnabout...” 

 

If you could do it all over again, would you still choose him?

 

At age thirty-nine, Lucie Walker has no choice but to start her life over when she comes to, up to her knees in the chilly San Francisco Bay, with no idea how she got there or who she is. Her memory loss is caused by an emotional trauma she knows nothing about, and only when handsome, quiet Grady Goodall arrives at the hospital does she learn she has a home, a career, and a wedding just two months away.

What went wrong?

Grady seems to care for her, but Lucie is no more sure of him than she is of anything. As she collects the clues of her past self, she unlocks the mystery of what happened to her. The painful secrets she uncovers could hold the key to her future—if she trusts her heart enough to guide her

328 pages (April 2013)

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Title Read-alikes: You Were There Too by Colleen Oakley; Family Tree by Susan Wiggs; The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood; The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman; Lost and Found by Danielle Steel; Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister; Now That You Mention It by Kristan Higgins; What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty; I Almost Forgot About You by Terry Mcmillan; Heart Like Mine by Amy Hatvany; Where You Can Find Me by Sheri Joseph; The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski; and The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. by Nichole Bernier.

Dream with Little Angels by Michael Hiebert

Michael Hiebert's remarkable debut novel tells the riveting story of a small southern town haunted by tragedy, one brave woman's struggle to put a troubling mystery to rest--and its impact on the sensitive boy who comes of age in the midst of it all. . .

Abe Teal wasn't even born when Ruby Mae Vickers went missing twelve years ago. Few people in Alvin, Alabama, talk about the months spent looking for her, or about how Ruby Mae's lifeless body was finally found beneath a willow tree. Even Abe's mom, Leah, Alvin's only detective, has avoided the subject. But now, another girl is missing.

Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Dailey took the bus home from school as usual, then simply vanished. Townsfolk comb the dense forests and swampy creeks to no avail. Days later, Tiffany Michelle Yates disappears. Abe saw her only hours before, holding an ice cream cone and wearing a pink dress.

Observant and smart, Abe watches his mother battle small-town bureaucracy and old resentments, desperate to find both girls and quietly frantic for her own children's safety. As the search takes on a terrifying urgency, Abe traverses the shifting ground between innocence and hard-won understanding, eager to know and yet fearing what will be revealed.

Dream with Little Angels is by turns lyrical, heartbreaking, and shocking--a brilliantly plotted novel of literary suspense and of the dark shadows, painful secrets, and uncompromising courage in one small town.

298 pages (June 2013)

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Title Read-alikes: Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub; The Searcher by Tana French; The Round House by Louise Erdrich; Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger; The Distant Dead by Heather Young; Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; The Survivors by Jane Harper; The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter; The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens; The Bones of You by Debbie Howells; The Never List by Koethi Zan; The Longings of Wayward Girls by Karen Brown; and The Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash.

Dollbaby by Laura McNeal

1964, her mother unceremoniously deposits Ibby with her eccentric grandmother Fannie and throws in her father’s urn for good measure.

Fannie’s New Orleans house is like no place Ibby has ever been—and Fannie, who has a tendency to end up in the local asylum—is like no one she has ever met. Fortunately, Fannie’s black cook, Queenie, and her smart-mouthed daughter, Dollbaby, take it upon themselves to initiate Ibby into the ways of the South, both its grand traditions and its darkest secrets.

For Fannie’s own family history is fraught with tragedy, hidden behind the closed rooms in her ornate Uptown mansion. It will take Ibby’s arrival to begin to unlock the mysteries there. And it will take Queenie and Dollbaby’s hard-won wisdom to show Ibby that family can sometimes be found in the least expected places.

For fans of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and The Help, Dollbaby brings to life the charm and unrest of 1960s New Orleans through the eyes of a young girl learning to understand race for the first time.

337 pages (July 2014)

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Title Read-alikes: Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall; Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward; The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls; Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson; The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson; The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis; The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton; Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler; At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen; The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew; Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams; The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman; and Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom.

Until I Say Good-bye: my year of living with joy by Susan Spencer-Wendel

In June 2011, Susan Spencer-Wendel learned she had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)—Lou Gehrig's disease—an irreversible condition that systematically destroys the nerves that power the muscles. She was forty-four years old, with a devoted husband and three young children, and she had only one year of health remaining.

 Susan decided to live that year with joy.

She quit her job as a journalist and spent time with her family. She built an outdoor meeting space for friends in her backyard. And she took seven trips with the seven most important people in her life. As her health declined, Susan journeyed to the Yukon, Hungary, the Bahamas, and Cyprus. She took her sons to swim with dolphins, and her teenage daughter, Marina, to Kleinfeld's bridal shop in New York City to see her for the first and last time in a wedding dress.

 She also wrote this book. No longer able to walk or even to lift her arms, she tapped it out letter by letter on her iPhone using only her right thumb, the last finger still working.

 However, Until I Say Good-Bye is not angry or bitter. It is sad in parts—how could it not be?—but it is filled with Susan's optimism, joie de vivre, and sense of humor. It is a book about life, not death. One that, like Susan, will make everyone smile.

From the Burger King parking lot where she cried after her diagnosis to a snowy hot spring near the Arctic Circle, from a hilarious family Christmas disaster to the decrepit monastery in eastern Cyprus where she rediscovered her heritage, Until I Say Good-Bye is not only Susan Spencer-Wendel's unforgettable gift to her loved ones—a heartfelt record of their final experiences together—but an offering to all of us: a reminder that "every day is better when it is lived with joy."

376 pages (March 2013)

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Title Read-alikes: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom; Every Day I Fight by Stuart Scott; Now I See You by Nicole C. Kear; Before I Die by Candy Chang; My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason Rosenthal; The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs; How to Be Loved by Eva Hagberg; Jan's Story by Barry Petersen; Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler; I Forgot to Remember by Su Meck; The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe; The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne; and Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala.

Under Magnolia: a southern memoir by Frances Mayes

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life.

The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the idea of home, and the lasting force of a chaotic and loving family.

From her years as a spirited, secretive child, through her university studies—a period of exquisite freedom that imbued her with a profound appreciation of friendship and a love of travel—to her escape to a new life in California, Mayes exuberantly recreates the intense relationships of her past, recounting the bitter and sweet stories of her complicated family: her beautiful yet fragile mother, Frankye; her unpredictable father, Garbert; Daddy Jack, whose life Garbert saved; grandmother Mother Mayes; and the family maid, Frances’s confidant Willie Bell.

Under Magnolia is a searingly honest, humorous, and moving ode to family and place, and a thoughtful meditation on the ways they define us, or cause us to define ourselves. With acute sensory language, Mayes relishes the sweetness of the South, the smells and tastes at her family table, the fragrance of her hometown trees, and writes an unforgettable story of a girl whose perspicacity and dawning self-knowledge lead her out of the South and into the rest of the world, and then to a profound return home.

293 pages (April 2014)

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Title Read-alikes: My Mother's Witness by Carolyn Haines; All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg; This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear; Between Them by Richard Ford; Elsewhere by Richard Russo; The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande; Not for Nothing by Kathy Curto; Kitchen Yarns by Ann Hood; The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates; Bettyville by George Hodgman; Delancey by Molly Wizenberg; The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills; and The Writing Life by Ellen Gilchrist.

Your Face in Mine by Jess Row

One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn't recognize calls out to him. To Kelly’s shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly’s closest friends in high school—and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, skinny, white, and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: After years of immersing himself in black culture, he’s had a plastic surgeon perform “racial reassignment surgery”—altering his hair, skin, and physiognomy to allow him to pass as African American. Unknown to his family or childhood friends, Martin has been living a new life ever since.

Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his new identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Kelly, still recovering from the death of his wife and child and looking for a way to begin anew, agrees, and things quickly begin to spiral out of control.

Inventive and thought-provoking, Your Face in Mine is a brilliant novel about cultural and racial alienation and the nature of belonging in a world where identity can be a stigma or a lucrative brand.

372 pages (August 2014)

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Title Read-alikes: Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett; I Am Radar by Reif Larsen; In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende; Open City by Teju Cole; A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara; We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin; Home by Toni Morrison; The Mothers by Brit Bennett; The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow;  A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley; The Black Witch by Laurie Forest; And Again by Jessica Chiarella; and An Untamed State by Roxane Gay.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt.

But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office–leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.

Nella's life changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist–an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways...

Johannes's gift helps Nella pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand–and fear–the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation...or the architect of their destruction?

400 pages (August 2014)

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Cabinet houses at the Rijksmuseum, including a painting of the one by the real Petronella Oortman.

 

"Hidden women of history: Petronella Oortman and her giant dolls’ house" from The Conversation

 

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Title Read-alikes: Pew by Catherine Lacey; The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar; The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell; The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal; The Anatomy Lesson by Nina Siegal; Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks; Gulliver's Wife by Lauren Chater; Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier; The Girl Before by J. P. Delaney; Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie; Dark Aemilia by Sally O'Reilly; Life After Life by Kate Atkinson; and Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adoles-cence of hard labor and servitude?

As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.

Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.

Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship

278 pages (April 2013)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: Home for Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibler; Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate; The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trenow; So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore; Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald; The Lightkeeper's Daughters by Jean Pendziwol; The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman; Father's Day by Simon Van Booy; Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams; The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay; The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman; and The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.