10 Books We’re Looking Forward to in March

Every month, librarians from around the country pick the top ten new books they’d most like to share with readers. The results are published on LibraryReads.org. One of the goals of LibraryReads is to highlight the important role public libraries play in building buzz for new books and new authors. Click through to read more about what new and upcoming books librarians consider buzzworthy this month. The top ten titles for March are:

  1. The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh
  2. The Accident by Chris Pavone
  3. The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger
  4. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths
  5. Panic by Lauren Oliver
  6. A Circle of Wives by Alice LaPlante
  7. Gemini by Carol Cassella
  8. Precious Thing by Colette McBeth
  9. Kill Fee: A Stevens and Windermere Novel by Owen Laukkanen
  10. Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered by Austin Kleon

Shades of Love: An Assortment of Love Stories

loveThe love stories in these books run the gamut from sweet to sinister and everything in between!

Unlikely Love Stories:

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

The Beginner’s Goodbye by Anne Tyler

The Devil In Winter by Lisa Kleypas

The Madness of Lord Ian by Jennifer Ashley

First Love:

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

First Love by James Patterson

Dangerous Love

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

Love Overseas

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan Philipp Sendker

That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay

I Always Loved You by Robin Oliveira

Star Crossed Love

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Dark Witch by Nora Roberts

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

True Love

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Love & War: Twenty Years, three presidents, two daughters & one Louisiana home by James Carville

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the marriage of the centuryby Sam Kashner

Source: Amazon

On Our Shelves: New Cozy Mysteries

Winter’s the perfect  time to curl up with a cozy mystery. Here are some of the newest additions to our collection:

Books, Cooks, and Crooks (A Novel Idea Mystery) by Lucy Arlington

A Fatal Slip (A Sweet Nothings Lingerie Mystery) by Meg London

Throw In The Trowel (A Flower Shop Mystery) by Kate Collins

Town In A Strawberry Swirl (A Candy Holliday Murder Mystery) by B.B. Haywood

Days of Wine and Roquefort (A Cheese Shop Mystery) by Avery Aames

Scandal In Skibbereen (A County Cork Mystery) by Sheila Connolly

Murder With Ganache (A Key West Food Critic Mystery) by Lucy Burdette

A Tale of Two Biddies (A League of Literary Ladies Mystery) by Kylie Logan

Beewitched (A Queen Bee Mystery) by Hannah Reed

A Tough Nut to Kill (A Nut House Mystery) by Elizabeth Lee

Poison at the PTA by Laura Alden

Book Club Picks – Humor

smileIs your book club looking for some titles to cheer them up during the dreary winter season?  Here are a few titles they might enjoy reading.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion – Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.

Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple – Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Little Bitty Lies by Mary Kay Andrews –  A tantalizing tale about an abandoned Atlanta housewife and mother who tells one tiny white lie that sets her world spiraling outrageously out of control.

Very Valentineby Adriana Trigiani – The adventures of an extraordinary and unforgettable woman as she attempts to rescue her family’s struggling shoe business and find love at the same time.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boyby Helen Fielding –  Bridget Jones stumbles through the challenges of loss, single motherhood, tweeting, texting, technology, and rediscovering her sexuality in—Warning! Bad, outdated phrase approaching!—middle age.

The Good House by Ann Leary – Hildy Good is a lifelong resident of a small community on the rocky coast of Boston’s North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone.  A successful real-estate broker, mother, and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, sent her off to rehab.  Now she’s in recovery—more or less.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen – A tale at once fiercely pointed and wickedly funny in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.

Truth In Advertising by John Kennedy – Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He’s recently called off his wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Superbowl commercial for his diaper account in record time.

Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew – A funny and poignant novel that explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far—and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.

This Is When I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper – A riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind-whether we like it or not.

Louise Reads: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Don Tillman, 39 and a professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. His lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not “wired” for romance. Logically, though, he concedes to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner through an exhaustive 16-page survey he has designed to scientifically eliminate all incompatible candidates.

Rosie Jarman would never make it past page one of Don’s survey. A smoking, drinking, disorganized vegetarian, she is completely unsuitable. Yet Don feels somehow compelled to use his expertise in DNA analysis to assist her with a project of her own – identifying her biological father. An unlikely friendship develops between them as they work together on The Father Project.

In The Rosie Project, Don is our narrator, and seeing the story from his point of view is part of the charm of this book. Similar to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -Time and Silver Linings Playbook, the narrator of this story is wired differently than most people.  To say Don has social difficulties is an understatement.  In an early scene, Don is discussing a lecture he’d recently given at the university:

“Claudia asked whether I’d enjoyed the Asperger’s lecture… [I] told her I had found the subject fascinating. “Did the symptoms remind you of anyone?” she asked.  They certainly did. They were an almost perfect description of Lazlo Hevesi in the Physics department.”
 

Fans of the television series “The Big Bang Theory” may notice some similarities to the character Sheldon Cooper from that show.  For example, in a scene where Don is explaining his scheduled meal system to Rosie after a meeting at a restaurant goes comically awry:

“So you cook this same meal every Tuesday, right?”
“Correct.” I listed the eight major advantages of the Standardized Meal System:
  1. No need to accumulate recipe books.
  2. Standardized shopping list – hence very efficient shopping.
  3. Almost zero waste – nothing in the refrigerator or pantry unless required for one of the recipes.
  4. Diet planned and nutritionally balanced in advance.
  5. No time wasted wondering what to cook.
  6. No mistakes, no unpleasant surprises.
  7. Excellent food, superior to most restaurants at a much lower price (see point 3).
  8. Minimum cognitive load required.

Debut novelist Graeme Simsion has written a warm-hearted, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly poignant story. No huge surprises, The Rosie Project follows many of the tropes that are the stock-in-trade of romantic comedies,  but I was still caught up in the story from the first words and it never lagged or disappointed. A feel-good book that delivered!  Audiobook listeners will enjoy first-time narrator Dan O’Grady’s performance, his Australian accent (the story is set in Melbourne) added an authentic touch.

If you like The Rosie Project, you may also enjoy:

The Big Bang Theory starring Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon