The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber

The Velveteen Daughter reveals for the first time the true story of two remarkable women: Margery Williams Bianco, the author of one of the most beloved children's books of all time - The Velveteen Rabbit - and her daughter Pamela, a world-renowned child prodigy artist whose fame at one time greatly eclipses her mother's.

But celebrity at such an early age exacts a great toll. Pamela's dreams elude her as she struggles with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair, and a spectacularly misguided marriage. Throughout, her life raft is her mother.

The glamorous art world of Europe and New York in the early 20th century and a supporting cast of luminaries - Eugene O'Neill and his wife Agnes (Margery's niece), Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Richard Hughes, author of A High Wind in Jamaica - provide a vivid backdrop to the Biancos' story. From the opening pages, the novel will captivate readers with its multifaceted and illuminating observations on art, family, and the consequences of genius touched by madness.

416 pages (July 2017)

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Title Read-alikes: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline; All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews; Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich; We Are Water by Wally Lamb; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara; The History of Love by Nicole Krauss; Motherland by Maria Hummel; A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass; The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli; Salt Houses by Hala Alyan; Miss Jane by Brad Watson; and The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

A stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

531 pages (May 2014)

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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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Anthony Doer discusses All the Light We Cannot See (Simon & Schuster Books):

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Title Read-alikes: Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans; The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder; Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles; The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje; In the Wolf's Mouth by Adam Foulds; Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan; The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson; Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi; Jacob's Oath by Martin Fletcher; The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel; The Paris Hours by Alex George; The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.

Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.

Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?

303 pages (October 2014)

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Lit Guide from LitLovers.

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40 Great Book Club Discussion Questions for Any Book from Book Riot

 

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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Allen Eskens talks about his writing (KSMQ Public Television):

This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller; No Book But the World by Leah Hager Cohen; Safe Keeping by Barbara Taylor Sissel; A Dance of Ghosts by Kevin Brooks; Night Passage by Robert B. Parker; The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block; Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman; Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle; Me Before You by Jojo Moyes; Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger; Before the Fall by Noah Hawley; and Finding Laura Buggs by Stanley Gordon.