We Are All Made of Stars by Rowan Coleman

A dedicated nurse, Stella finds comfort at the hospice where she works the late shift, especially since her husband returned from Afghanistan—cold, distant, and shattered by painful memories he refuses to share. The hospice at night is another world, where the dying receive closure by creating the letters that Stella helps them write. The pages are filled with love and humor, sometimes regret, and, occasionally, even instructions for a perplexed husband on how to run appliances. There’s one rule: The letters are mailed only after the patient has passed.

Suddenly Stella is faced with a dilemma: A woman under her care, Grace, has written a confession to the son she abandoned many years before. The letter clearly needs to be read before Grace dies. But if Stella mails it now, she breaks the rule—and risks tampering not only with Grace’s wishes but also with fate.

Navigating passion and grief, loyalty and loss, and a marriage threatened by silence and secrets, Stella discovers that letters hold a special power: granting solace, saving memories, nurturing relationships. As the words endure, love redeems.

342 pages. (July 2016)

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Title Read-alikes: And Again by Jessica Chiarella; Me Before You by Jojo Moyes; The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey; Bearing the Body by Ehud Havazelet; The Mother's Promise by Sally Hepworth; Nora Webster by Colm Toibin; Tempting Fate by Jane Green; On Second Thought by Kristan Higgins; A Walk Along the Beach by Debbie Macomber; Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt; and Ned's Circus of Marvels by Justin Fisher.

To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

An atmospheric, transporting tale of adventure, love, and survival from the bestselling author of The Snow Child, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

In the winter of 1885, decorated war hero Colonel Allen Forrester leads a small band of men on an expedition that has been deemed impossible: to venture up the Wolverine River and pierce the vast, untamed Alaska Territory. Leaving behind Sophie, his newly pregnant wife, Colonel Forrester records his extraordinary experiences in hopes that his journal will reach her if he doesn’t return–once he passes beyond the edge of the known world, there’s no telling what awaits him.

The Wolverine River Valley is not only breathtaking and forbidding but also terrifying in ways that the colonel and his men never could have imagined. As they map the territory and gather information on the native tribes, whose understanding of the natural world is unlike anything they have ever encountered, Forrester and his men discover the blurred lines between human and wild animal, the living and the dead. And while the men knew they would face starvation and danger, they cannot escape the sense that some greater, mysterious force threatens their lives.

Meanwhile, on her own at Vancouver Barracks, Sophie chafes under the social restrictions and yearns to travel alongside her husband. She does not know that the winter will require as much of her as it does her husband, that both her courage and faith will be tested to the breaking point. Can her exploration of nature through the new art of photography help her to rediscover her sense of beauty and wonder?

The truths that Allen and Sophie discover over the course of that fateful year change both of their lives–and the lives of those who hear their stories long after they’re gone–forever.

417 pages (August 2016)

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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: Green Alaska by Nancy Lord; Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney; The Expeditions by Karl Iagnemma; Letters from Yellowstone by Diane Smith; The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister; True Sisters by Sandra Dallas; The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier; Caroline by Sarah Elizabeth Miller; The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett; The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth Church; In the Kingdom of Ice by Hapmton Sides; This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger; and News of the World by Paulette Jiles.

Mercies in Disguise : a story of hope, a family's genetic destiny, and the science that rescued them by Gina Bari Kolata

The phone rings. The doctor from California is on the line. "Are you ready Amanda?" The two people Amanda Baxley loves the most had begged her not to be tested--at least, not now. But she had to find out.

If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold a brutal illness and you were offered the chance to find out if you'd inherited it, would you do it? Would you walk toward the problem, bravely accepting whatever answer came your way? Or would you avoid the potential bad news as long as possible?

In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times science reporter and bestselling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events that many saw as providential. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution--not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma--fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process.

A work of narrative nonfiction in the tradition of the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Mercies in Disguise is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It's a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman--Amanda Baxley--who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family's destiny.

262 pages (March 2017)

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Title Read-alikes: The Family Gene by Joselin Linder; Against Medical Advice by James Patterson; Patient H.M. by Luke Dittrich; The Angel and the Assassin by Donna Jackson Nakazawa; The Breakthrough by Charles Graeber; Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius; The Philadelphia Chromosome by Jessica Wapner; The Lost Family by Libby Copeland; Happiness by Heather Harpham; Chasing My Cure by David Fajgenbaum; My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason B. Rosenthal; A Mind Unraveled by Kurt Eichenwald; and Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh.

Leave Me by Gayle Forman

An irresistible novel that confronts the ambivalence of modern motherhood head on and asks, what happens when a grown woman runs away from home?

Every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, and every woman who has ever dreamed of boarding a train to a place where no one needs constant attention - meet Maribeth Klein. A harried working mother who's so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn't even realize she's had a heart attack.

Surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: she packs a bag and leaves. But, as is often the case, once we get where we're going we see our lives from a different perspective. Far from the demands of family and career and with the help of liberating new friendships, Maribeth is able to own up to secrets she has been keeping from herself and those she loves.

With bighearted characters - husbands, wives, friends, and lovers - who stumble and trip, grow and forgive, Leave Me is about facing the fears we're all running from.

343 pages (September 2016)

 

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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: Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler; Marriage Vacation by Pauline Brooks; Lulu Anew by Etienne Davodeau; The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms; The Misfortune of Marion Palm by Emily Culliton; Grown-up Pose by Sonya Lalli; Escape by Barbara Delinsky; First Comes Love by Emily Giffin; and Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center.