Shelf Life Blog
Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker jumped off the train in Manifest, Kansas, well before it officially stopped—and for good reason. Abeline was in a bit of a mood. She, who was used to criss-crossing the whole nation alongside of her beloved drifter dad Gideon, was being parked for an entire summer at the dustiest, driest town imaginable while he goes to work a railroad job in another state. In Moon Over Manifest, by Clare Vanderpoole, the year is 1938—about 20 summers since her Dad was here as a boy. The whole town, not just the lawns and the gardens, seems like it’s about to blow away in the June wind. What Abilene doesn’t realize is that this seemingly dead place is full of secrets and regrets just waiting to bubble to the surface.
Jessie Knadler, transplanted from Montana, is living a less than satisfying life in the Big Apple. She’s just been laid off from her position as a magazine editor; she recently learned that her lover has a proclivity for (really) young girls; and she’s certain that her late nights spent drinking into the wee hours will not prolong her life. When she’s offered a freelance opportunity to return to Montana to write a story on a popular rodeo event, Jessie figures she’s got nothing better to do…plus there’s always the nagging fact of needing cash. In Rurally Screwed: My Life Off the Grid with the Cowboy I Love, Jessie’s trip back West will dramatically change her life.
“My name is Blaise Fortune, and I am a citizen of the French Republic. It’s the pure and simple truth.”
Koumail knows this phrase in French very well. It is vitally important that he remember it for he and Gloria, the woman who has looked after him since he was a baby, are refugees, and someday this phrase and an old passport may be his ticket to a better life away from war, starvation and danger. A Time of Miracles, by Anne-Laure Bondoux, is set in the 1990s, as war rages in the Caucasus region, and the Soviet Union has collapsed, leaving masses of people without shelter or food.
Storms batter the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Always have. Always will. Ships break up in those dangerous seas. Sometimes there are survivors but oftentimes not. It’s 1898, and waiting and watching are the surfmen—the rescuers of the Lifesaving Service—who take out boats in horrible weather and try to save whom they can. In Teetoncey, by Theodore Taylor, twelve-year-old Ben O’Neal is determined to become a surfman, leaving his mother’s storm-swaying house on a terrible night to go help at the Rescue Station. He’s seen the flare, and he knows—there’s a ship in trouble.
Promising young archaeologist Verity Grey ventured to the wilds of Scotland for a job interview little knowing that she was leaving behind her secure London flat for encounters with ghostly visions and the threat of madness in Susanna Kearsley’s Shadowy Horses.
Author Gideon Defoe has established a successful micro-franchise with his comedic novels about the misadventures of the dim-witted yet lovable Pirate Captain, beginning with The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists and continuing throughout the 2000s and 2010s to the latest installment, The Pirates! In an Adventure with the Romantics. Defoe’s ridiculous tales are dominated by the presence of the Pirate Captain, a man who never found a boast too ridiculous to make, a ham too large to eat, or an amount of money too large to spend. It is this last attribute that forces him and his bizarre crew into their latest adventure. Deeply in debt, they decide to take some wealthy intellectuals on an “authentic” pirate adventure in hopes of making some quick money. Unfortunately for them, those intellectuals turn out to be Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin, and a variety of bizarre, hilarious events ensue.
"The game's afoot!"
Eleven of the Great Detective's finest cases are brought together in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. From his Baker Street digs, a bored Sherlock sorts through newspapers, puffs on his pipe, and makes tea with his less-than-scrubbed chemistry set until the next puzzle presents itself. His chronicler Watson passes on the questionable tea but is only too happy to take a little time away from his doctor's practice to assist his old friend on adventure after adventure.
In Beastly, by Alexandra Flinn, Kyle Kingsbury is the kind of guy who has it all--looks, money, and charm. At his exclusive NYC prep school, of course he's going to be voted homecoming prince. It's a joke that anybody else even has his name on the ballot. Speaking of jokes, there's some new, chubby girl dressed in Goth black who's spent a lot of the morning glaring at him. She even called him beastly. How dare she?
Dreamer, Inspired by a True Story, is one of those uplifting horse films that is good for the whole family. It features a stellar cast. Ben Crane (Kurt Russell) is the dad who barely makes a living training other people’s--rich people’s--horses. Kris Kristofferson plays his father, a gruff man who lost almost all the family’s land along with their money and their stock during his hard times as a racehorse owner. Father and son are shy with each other, bitter, and stubborn. The lightness comes from young Cale Crane (Dakota Fanning) who, without being cloyingly sweet, wants to follow in her family’s footsteps, much against her father’s wishes.
This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse the book matches here.
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
By Blood by Ellen UllmanPages
