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)

Check availability

 

Lit Guide from LitLovers.

Reading Guide from BookMovement.

 

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.)

 

Life We Bury at goodreads

 

Review at Arlene's Book Club

Review from BookPage

Review at Booking Mama

Review from Kirkus Reviews

Review from Publishers Weekly

 

Author Website

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.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

 Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.

307 pages (March 2013)

Check availability

 

Book Page at BookBrowse.

Lit Guide from LitLovers. 

Reading Guide from BookMovement.

Reading Guide from ReadingGroupChoices.

Reading Guide from Reading Group Guides. 

 

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.)

 

Ordinary Grace at goodreads

 

Review at book reporter

Review at Huffpost

Review from Kirkus Reviews

Review from Minneapolis Star Tribune

Review from Publishers Weekly

 

Author Website

Ordinary Grace was our "One County, One Book Choice" for 2014 (thecountylibrary):

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

Title Read-alikes: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson; Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens; A Painted House by John Grisham; Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey; Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield; Setting Free the Kites by Alex George; The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt; The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall; and The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley; News of the World by Paulette Jiles; and The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout.

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)

Check availability

 

Book Page at BookBrowse.

Reading Guide from BookMovement.

Reading Guide from ReadingGroupChoices.

 

The Best Book Club Questions to Spark Discussion from The Oprah Magazine

 

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.)

 

Dream with Little Angels at goodreads

 

Review from Publishers Weekly

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

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.

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)

Check availability

 

Book Page at BookBrowse.

Reading Guide from BookMovement.

 

13 Book Club Questions to Energize Any Meetup from Bustle

The Best Book Club Questions to Spark Discussion from The Oprah Magazine

 

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.)

 

Your Face in Mine at goodreads

 

Review from Book Forum

Review at book reporter

Review from Kirkus Reviews

Review from Minneapolis Star Tribune

Review from The New York Times

Review from Slate

 

Author Website

Story Hour in the Library featuring Jess Row (UC Berkeley Events):

 

Jess Row reads from Your Face in Mine (West Hartford Public Library):

Author Interview at npr:

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

 

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.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

From concert violinist Gerald Elias (who has played with the Utah Symphony) comes this debut set in the classical music world about the theft of a priceless violin.

Daniel Jacobus is a blind, reclusive, crotchety violin teacher living in self-imposed exile in rural New England. He spends his time chain-smoking, listening to old LPs, and occasionally taking on new students, whom he berates in the hope that they will flee.

Jacobus is drawn back into the world he left behind when he decides to attend The Grimsley Competition at Carnegie Hall. The young winner of this competition is granted the honor of playing the Piccolino Stradivarius, a uniquely dazzling three-quarter-size violin that has brought misfortune to all who possessed it over the centuries. But the violin is stolen before the winner of the competition has a chance to play it, and Jacobus is the primary suspect.

With the help of his friend and former musical partner, Nathaniel Williams, his new student,Yumi Shinagawa, and several quirky sidekicks, Jacobus sets out to prove his innocence and find the stolen Piccolino Strad. Will he be successful? The quest takes him through the halls of wealth and culture, across continents to Japan, and leads him to a…murder.

306 pages. (August 2009)

Check availability

Book Page at BookBrowse.

Reading Guide from BookMovement.

 

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.)

 

Devil's Trill at goodreads

 

Review from Kirkus Reviews

Review at Mysterious Reviewsb

Review at Simply Music

Interview with Gerald Elias at The Dark Phantom Review

"Devil's Trill Sonata" (Part 1); Tartini, Gerald Elias:

 

"Devil's Trill" Sonata (Part 2); Tartini, Gerald Elias:

 

Title Read-alikes: The Devil of Echo Lake by Douglas Wynne; The Lost Concerto by Helaine Mario; Farewell Performance by Tessa Barclay; The Rainaldi Quartet by Paul Adam; The Long Way Home by Louise Penny; The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow; Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey; Rock & Roll Never Forgets by Deborah Grabien; Vengeance by Stuart Kaminsky; The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John; and A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

A stunning first novel, both literary and thriller, about a retired orthopedic surgeon with dementia, Turn of Mind has already received worldwide attention. With unmatched patience and a pulsating intensity, Alice LaPlante brings us deep into a brilliant woman's deteriorating mind, where the impossibility of recognizing reality can be both a blessing and a curse.

As the book opens, Dr. Jennifer White's best friend, Amanda, who lived down the block, has been killed, and four fingers surgically removed from her hand. Dr. White is the prime suspect and she herself doesn't know whether she did it. Told in White's own voice, fractured and eloquent, a picture emerges of the surprisingly intimate, complex alliance between these life-long friends—two proud, forceful women who were at times each other's most formidable adversaries. As the investigation into the murder deepens and White's relationships with her live-in caretaker and two grown children intensify, a chilling question lingers: is White's shattered memory preventing her from revealing the truth or helping her to hide it?

A startling portrait of a disintegrating mind clinging to bits of reality through anger, frustration, shame, and unspeakable loss, Turn of Mind is a remarkable debut that examines the deception and frailty of memory and how it defines our very existence.

307 pages. (July 2011)

Check availability

Reading Guide from BookBrowse.

Lit Guide from LitLovers.

Reading Guide from BookMovement.

Reading Guide from ReadingGroupChoices.

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.)

 

Turn of Mind at goodreads

 

Review from AARP Magazine

Review from The Guardian

Review from Kirkus Reviews

Review from The New York Times

Review from NPR

Review from SFGate

 

Author Webpage

Author Interview on NPR's Fresh Air

Alice LaPlante interview with Author Magazine:

Title Read-alikes: The Breakdown by B. A. Paris; Someone Really Not Her Mother by Harriet Scott Chessman; Still Alice by Lisa Genova; The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford; The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey; The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok; Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey; Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson; and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.