All The Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doer
Af/Doerr
2015 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their
Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. But when
the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret. Werner is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father's life, until he discovers a
knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on
suffering. At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara
Af/Yanagihara
BookPage Best of 2015
Winner 2015 Kirkus Prize
Finalist-2015 National Book Award
Honor List-Man Booker Prize
Booklist-Editors Choice Adult Books 2015
Moving to New York to pursue creative ambitions, four former classmates share decades marked
by love, loss, addiction, and haunting elements from a brutal childhood.
The Girl On The Train
Paula Hawkins
Mf/Hawkins
LibraryReads top ten of 2015
Goodreads-Best Mystery/Thriller 2015
Bookpage-Readers Choice Best Books 2015
Rachel is a washed-up thirty-something who creates a fantasy about the seemingly perfect couple
she sees during her daily train ride into London. When the woman goes missing, Rachel manages to
insert herself into the investigation of the woman’s disappearance. In the vein of Gone Girl, this
dark psychological thriller is fast-paced and features some very unreliable narrators.
Did You Ever Have a Family
Bill Clegg
Af/Clegg
Library Journal –Top Ten Best Books 2015
Finalist-2015 National Book Award
Booklist Editors Choice Adult Books 2015
Clegg's devastatingly beautiful fiction debut is the portrait of a community in the aftermath of a tragedy. June Reid, the broken woman at the epicenter of the novel, is struggling with a loss so profound that she is unable to see beyond her grief, unaware that it has touched many people. Clegg tells their stories with heartbreaking sensitivity and insight.
Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff
Af/Groff
Library Journal-Top Ten Best books of 2015
2015 Finalist for Kirkus Prize
Finalist 2015 National Book Award
Booklist-Editors Choice Adult Books 2015
Fates and Furies is a modern portrait of marriage. Lotto Satterwhite is the center, the hub around which all the characters revolve
in the first half of the book. In the second half of the book, the lens turns to Lotto’s wife Mathilde, and her side of the lopsided
partnership gives us a totally different view. Groff is a master of language. It’s not a gentle read. But it’s magnificent.
Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee
Af/Lee
Finalist Goodreads Choice Award 2015
Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch -- "Scout"--Returns home from New York
City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political
turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she
learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories
from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters
from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past -- a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience.
Best Boy
Eli Gottlieb
Af/Gottlieb
LibraryReads Favorites: 2015
BookPage Best Books of 2015
Library Journal Best Books of 2015
Booklist-Editors Choice Adult Books 2015
What happens when someone on the autism spectrum grows up, and they aren't a cute little
boy anymore? Gottlieb's novel follows the story of Todd Aaron, a man in his fifties who has
spent most of his life a resident of the Payton Living Center. Todd begins to wonder what lies beyond the gates of his institution. A funny and deeply affecting work.
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
305.896073/Coa
Winner-2015 National Book Award
Library Journal-Top Ten Best 2015
New York Times-100 Notable Books of 2015
Between the World and Me is written as a letter to the author's teenaged son about the feelings,
symbolism, and realities associated with being black in the United States. Coates recapitulates the
American history of violence against black people and the incommensurate policing of black youth.
A common theme is his fear of bodily harm. Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore
Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Erik Larson
940.4514/Lar
LibraryReads Favorites of 2015
Library Journal-Top Ten Best of 2015
Bookpage-Readers Choice Best Books 2015
On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an
English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months,
German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic
“Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the
gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
Lucia Berlin
Af/Berlin
Kirkus Reviews-2015 Finalists for Fiction
New York Times-Best Fiction & Poetry 2015
A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia
Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy
all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class,
among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.
The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah
Af/Hannah
Amazon.com Top 100
Library Journal Best Books 2015 Historical Fiction
Bookpage-Readers Choice Best Books 2015
An epic love story and family drama set at the dawn of World War II. A profound
and compelling portrait of two ordinary French women living in a city under siege
and in a country at war, where surviving sometimes means doing the unthinkable.
A Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler
Af/Tyler
BookPage-Best of 2015
Amazon-Top 100
LibraryReads-Top Ten of 2015
Honor List-Man Booker Prize
Booklist-Editors Choice Adult Books 2015
In this book, we come to know three generations of Whitshanks--a family with secrets and memories that are sometimes
different than what others observe. The book’s timeline moves back and forth with overlapping stories, just like thread on a
spool. Most readers will find themselves in the story.
H is for Hawk
Helen Macdonald
636.6869/Mac
New York Times-100 Notable Books of 2015
Amazon.com-Top 100
H is for Hawk tells Macdonald's story of the year she spent training a goshawk in the wake
of her father's death. Her father, Alisdair Macdonald, was a respected photojournalist who
died suddenly of a heart attack in 2007. Having been a falconer for many years, she purchased a young goshawk to help her through the grieving process.
The Nature of the of the Beast
Louise Penny
Mf/Penny
Libraryreads Favorites– 2015
NoveList-Best Mysteries 2015
All our old friends are back in Three Pines where a young boy with a compulsion to tell tall tales
tells one true story with disastrous results. But which story is the truth and why is it so threaten-
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
J. Ryan Stradal
Af/Stradal
BookPage-Best Books of 2015
LibraryReads-Top Ten of 2015
Goodreads-Best Fiction 2015
This novel is quirky and colorful. The story revolves around chef Eva Thorvald and the people
who influence her life and her cooking. With well-drawn characters and mouthwatering descriptions of meals, Kitchens of the Great Midwest will appeal to readers who like vivid storytelling.
Pretty Girls
Karin Slaughter
Mf/Slaughter
Amazon.com Top 100 books
NoveList-Best Thrillers 2015
In her second standalone novel, bestselling author Karin Slaughter tells the story of estranged
sisters -- Claire and Lydia -- reunited by the murder of Claire's husband, whom Lydia had accused
of harassment years ago. Hidden computer files pique Claire's interest and provoke suspicion
that he may have known something about the disappearance of their oldest sister, Julia, decades
previously. Realistic characters, unexpected humor, poignant chapters from their father's perspective, ample suspense, and the slow healing of damaged relationships make for a tense, unsettling, and utterly compelling
Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: stories
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Af/Campbell
Booklist-Editors Choice Adult Books 2015
NoveList-Best Short Stories 2015
National Book Award-Finalist
In this third short story collection from author Bonnie Jo Campbell, mothers and daughters feature heavily, weighing the consequences of bad choices, facing difficult situations in the present,
and worrying about their futures. Marginalized women -- poor, alone, abused -- ruminate on
their lives; some stories ultimately offer hope while others do not, a hallmark of Campbell's
work. As with her other collections, the 16 works presented here are commanding.
Poplar Creek Public Library
1405 S. Park Avenue
www.poplarcreeklibrary.org
Fiction Desk:
630-483-4925
(all book excerpts are taken from goodreads.com, NoveList, or amazon.com)
Lmd 12/15