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Adult Books You Want to Read
Who says you have to read YA just because you’re a teen?
Books owned by Cohasset are marked with an asterisk (*) and the call number is
listed. Other books can be requested and sent here for you to pick up!

*The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (FIC WALKER)
Julia and her family awake to discover that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow.
The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, and the environment is thrown
into disarray. Yet, as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping
with the normal disasters of everyday life.

Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin
Judy Lohden is your above-average sixteen-year-old --- sarcastic and vulnerable, talented and
uncertain, full of big dreams for a big future. With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium,
she should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl
this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town?

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson
When Darren Bennett meets Eric Lederer, there's an instant connection. They share a love of
drawing, the bottom rung on the cruel high school social ladder and a pathological fear of girls.
Then Eric reveals a secret: He doesn’t sleep. Ever. When word leaks out about Eric's condition,
he and Darren find themselves on the run. Is it the government trying to tap into Eric’s mind, or
something far darker? It could be that not sleeping is only part of what Eric's capable of, and the
truth is both better and worse than they could ever imagine.

*The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by
William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer (968.97 KAM)
William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was
mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger, and a place where hope and
opportunity were hard to find. But William had read about windmills in a book called USING
ENERGY, and he dreamed of building one that would bring electricity and water to his village
and change his life and the lives of those around him.

*Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to
Harvard by Liz Murray (B MURRAY, L)
Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted
for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put
into a girls’ home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled.
She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to
sleep. When Liz’s mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations
where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York
Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League.

The Bride’s Farewell by Meg Rosoff
A young woman in 1850s rural England runs away from home on horseback the day she’s to
marry her childhood sweetheart. Pell is from a poor preacher’s family and she’s watched her
mother suffer for years under the burden of caring for an ever-increasing number of children. Pell
yearns to escape the inevitable repetition of such a life. But as she rides farther away from home,
Pell’s feelings for her parents, her siblings and her fiancé surprise her with their strength and
alter the course of her travels. And her journey leads her to find love where she least expects it.

*Calico Joe by John Grisham (FIC GRISHAM)
In the summer of 1973, Joe Castle quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America,
including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the
day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but
also for his dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever.

Caring is Creepy by David Zimmerman
While trying to survive a long boring summer in rural Georgia, Lynn befriends a lonely soldier
online. When they meet face to face, tables are turned as Lynn tries to exert power in her out-ofcontrol life. Dangerous, amusing, role-bending, and definitely creepy!

Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson
In a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order
and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy with lost
cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on
every aspect of daily life.

*Dare Me by Megan Abbott (FIC ABBOTT)
Addy Hanlon and Beth Cassidy are the cheerleaders all the other girls fear and admire, but
everything changes when the new coach arrives. Coach Colette French instantly overturns the
girls’ pecking order and gains their fierce alliance --- until a shocking event shakes their fragile
peace.

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
Lizzie and her best friend, Evie, are 13 years old and inseparable --- until the day Evie disappears.
Lizzie is frantic to puzzle out the mystery behind the disappearance and to bring Evie home. Her
desperate quest is entwined with her own coming-of-age story, in an intense and gripping tale of
obsession, friendship and family.
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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
*Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr. (FIC CURRIE)
In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: a comet will obliterate life on Earth in
36 years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age grappling with the question: Does anything I
do matter? While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices,
Junior’s loved ones emerge with parallel stories. Our recognizable world is transformed into a
bizarre nation at endgame, where government agents conspire in subterranean bunkers,
preparing citizens for emigration from a doomed planet.

*The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey (FIC LIVESEY)
The resonant story of a young woman’s struggle to take charge of her own future, The Flight of
Gemma Hardy is a modern take on Charlotte Brontë’s classic, Jane Eyre.

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok (FIC KWOK)
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she
quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop
worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life , Kimberly learns to
constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she
straddles.

*Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman (FIC HASSMAN)
With only a worn copy of the Girl Scout Handbook for reference, resourceful and tenacious Rory
Hendrix must navigate the depressing landscape of a 1970s trailer park where she suffers abuse
at the hands of a neighbor and neglect from her mother.

*The Good Soldiers by David Finkel (956.7044 FIN)
It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced
a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. Among those listening were the young, optimistic
army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a
vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them. Fifteen months later, the
soldiers returned home forever changed. What was the true story of the surge? And was it really
a success? Those are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines.

The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Sebastian Prendergast lives in a geodesic dome with his eccentric grandmother, who
homeschooled him in the teachings of futurist philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller. But when his
grandmother has a stroke, Sebastian is forced to leave the dome and make his own way in town.
Jared Whitcomb is a chain-smoking 16-year-old heart-transplant recipient who befriends
Sebastian, and begins to teach him about all the things he has been missing, including grape soda,
girls and Sid Vicious. They form a punk band called The Rash, and it’s clear that the upcoming
Methodist Church talent show has never seen the likes of them.
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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
*In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard (FIC BEARD)
The beguiling fourteen-year-old narrator of In Zanesville is a late bloomer. Luckily, she has a best
friend, a similarly undiscovered girl with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s
American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed, and character is forged.

Little Girl Gone by Drusilla Campbell
Madora was 17 and headed for trouble when Willis rescued her. She ran away with him, and for
five years they have lived alone, in near isolation. But after Willis kidnaps a pregnant teenager
and imprisons her in a trailer behind the house, Madora is torn between love and her sense of
right and wrong.

The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton
Marked by tragedy, traumatized at the age of eight, Michael, now 18, is no ordinary young man.
Besides not uttering a single word in 10 years, he discovers the one thing he can somehow do
better than anyone else. Whether it’s a locked door without a key, a padlock with no
combination, or even an 800 pound safe...he can open them all. It’s an unforgivable talent. A
talent that will make young Michael a hot commodity with the wrong people and, whether he
likes it or not, push him ever close to a life of crime. Until he finally sees his chance to escape and,
with one desperate gamble, risks everything to come back home to the only person he ever loved
and to unlock the secret that has kept him silent for so long.

The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
How does one talk about love? Taking a unique approach to this problem, the nameless narrator
of David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary has constructed the story of his relationship as a
dictionary.

*The Magicians by Lev Grossman (FIC GROSSMAN)
In The Magicians, a cadre of young wizards --- and the fantasy genre itself --- learn to live in the
real world. This fabulously rendered novel manages to completely ensnare readers by their
escapist tendencies, and then show how our dreams of happiness and magic never quite live up
to the real thing.

*Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks (FIC DICKS)
Budo is the imaginary friend of eight-year-old Max Delaney. He loves Max and is charged with
protecting him from the class bully, from awkward situations in the cafeteria, and even in the
bathroom stalls. But he can’t protect Max from Mrs. Patterson, who kidnaps him. It is up to Budo
and a team of imaginary friends to save him --- and Budo must ultimately decide which is more
important: Max’s happiness or Budo's very existence.

Monster: A Novel of Frankenstein by Dave Zeltserman
In 19th-century Germany, one young man counts down the days until he can marry his
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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beloved...until she is found brutally murdered, and the young man is accused of the crime.
Broken on the wheel and left for dead, he awakens on a lab table, transformed into an
abomination. Friedrich must go far to take his revenge --- only to find his tormentor, Victor
Frankenstein, in league with the Marquis de Sade, creating something much more sinister deep in
the mountains.

*Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (FIC SLOAN)
Clay Johnson loses his web-designer job and begins working the night shift in a bookstore with
only a few customers. This marvelous mashup blends mystery, adventure, and romance into a
literary and technological tale.

My Abandonment by Peter Rock
A 13-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland,
Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, bathe in a nearby creek, store perishables at
the water’s edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once
a week, they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But
one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire
existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight.

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
Written by a former classmate of Jeffery Dahmer, this graphic novel illustrates the teenage years
of a future serial killer.

The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant
Teens by Brooke Hauser
Some walked across deserts and mountains to get here. Others flew in on planes. One arrived
after escaping in a suitcase. And some won’t say how they got here. These are “the new kids”:
new to America and all the routines and rituals of an American high school, from lonely first
days to prom.

*The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner (FIC WEINER)
Ruth Saunders headed west with her 70-year-old grandma in tow, hoping to be hired as a
television writer. Four years later, she finally hits the jackpot when the sitcom she wrote, “The
Next Best Thing,” gets the green light. But her dreams are threatened by demanding actors,
number-crunching executives, a crush on her boss, and her grandmother’s impending nuptials.

*The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (FIC MORGENSTERN)
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on
lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The circus enchants all
who enter --- but hidden behind the scenes is a fierce competition between two young magicians.
In the midst of this dark rivalry that only one of them can survive, the two fall headfirst in love.
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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
*Night Road by Kristin Hannah (FIC HANNAH)
When Lexi Baill, a former foster child with a dark past, moves to the Farradays’ small town, she
becomes inseparably close with their family. But one bad decision on a summer night during
their senior year of high school will change everything

One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard
This remarkable story follows the Macon Ironmen, a team of misfits with a hippie coach, through
a record setting baseball season.

*The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender (FIC BENDER)
On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother’s homemade lemonchocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the
cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother tastes of despair and desperation.
Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose. Yet as Rose grows
up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds
cannot discern.

*Pure by Juliana Baggott (FIC BAGGOTT)
There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the
Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most
influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. When a slipped phrase suggests his
mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

*The Radleys by Matt Haig (FIC HAIG)
The Radleys are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid
and quiet suburban English town. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception:
Peter and Helen are vampires and have --- for 17 years --- been abstaining by choice from a life of
chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives. One night, Clara finds
herself driven to commit a shocking --- and disturbingly satisfying --- act of violence, and her
parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies.

*Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline (FIC CLINE)
At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a genre-busting
debut --- part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where
spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and
flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

*The Reapers Are the Angels: A Novel by Alden Bell (FIC BELL)
For 25 years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead.
Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her
heart. She can’t remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her on a personal
journey toward redemption.

*Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel Wilson (FIC WILSON)
Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial
intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of
machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication.

*Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue (FIC DONOGHUE, PBK DONOGHUE)
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where
he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts
him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home
to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through
determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows
it’s not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her
young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for
the plan to actually work.

*The Round House by Louise Erdrich (FIC ERDRICH)
An attack on 13-year-old Joe's mother near their North Dakota Ojibwe reservation home leads
him and his friends on a quest to solve the crime. This coming-of-age story highlights friendship,
family, tradition, and the uneasy relationship between the tribal and white communities.

*Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (FIC WARD)
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage,
Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't
show concern for much else. But Esch has her own problems.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston
For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father’s
old Corona typewriter. Despite Frankie’s dreams of becoming a writer, she must forgo a college
scholarship to help her widowed mother. But when a mysterious Captain James sweeps her off
her feet, her mother finds a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of her
unsuitable beau.

*Stitches: A Memoir by David Small (B SMALL, D)
One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been
transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together
like a bloody boot, the 14-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to
die. In Stitches, Small re-creates this terrifying event. As the images painfully tumble out, we gain
a ringside seat at a gothic family drama where David , a highly anxious yet supremely talented
child, all too often became the unwitting object of his parents’ buried frustration and rage.
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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
*The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon (FIC SIMON)
It is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African
American deaf man, are locked away in the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have
been left to languish, forgotten. Deeply in love, they escape, and find refuge in the farmhouse of
Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow. But the couple is not alone-Lynnie has just given
birth to a baby girl. When the authorities catch up to them that same night, Homan escapes into
the darkness, and Lynnie is caught. But before she is forced back into the institution, she
whispers two words to Martha: "Hide her." And so begins the 40-year epic journey of Lynnie,
Homan, Martha, and baby Julia-lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn
together by a secret pact and extraordinary love.

*The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (MYS BRADLEY)
In an early 1950s English village, 11-year-old Flavia is preoccupied with retaliating against her
lofty older sisters when a rude, redheaded stranger arrives to confront her eccentric father, a
philatelic devotee. Equally adept at quoting 18th-century works, listening at keyholes and
picking locks, Flavia learns that her father, Colonel de Luce, may be involved in the suicide of his
long-ago schoolmaster and the theft of a priceless stamp. The sudden expiration of the stranger in
a cucumber bed, wacky village characters with ties to the schoolmaster, and a sharp inspector
with doubts about the colonel and his enterprising young detective daughter mean complications
for Flavia. Tantalizing hints about a gardener with a shady past and the mysterious death of
Flavia's adventurous mother promise further intrigues ahead.
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*The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo (FIC MERULLO)
In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing,
snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again. For seventeen-year-old Marjorie
Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with her own
home, every day.
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*Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt (FIC BRUNT)
June thought she knew everything about her beloved uncle, Finn. After his death from a
mysterious new illness called AIDS, his grieving boyfriend delivers Finn's favorite teapot to
June's door, and she realizes nothing is what she thought it was: not her family, not her uncle, not
even herself.

*The Vanishing of Katharina Linden: A Novel by Helen Grant (FIC GRANT)
It isn’t 10-year-old Pia’s fault that her grandmother dies in a freak accident. But tell that to the
citizens of Pia’s little German hometown, or to the classmates who shun her. The only one who
still wants to be her friend is StinkStefan, the most unpopular child in school. But then something
else captures the community’s attention: the vanishing of Katharina Linden. Katharina was last
seen on a float in a parade, dressed as Snow White. Pia and Stefan suspect that Katharina has
been spirited away by the supernatural. Their investigation is inspired by the local legends told
to them by their elderly friend Herr Schiller. Then another girl disappears, and Pia is plunged
into a new and unnerving place, far away from fairy tales --- and perilously close to adulthood.
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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
*Where We Belong by Emily Giffin (FIC GIFFIN)
Marian Caldwell, a 36-year-old television producer, is living her dream in New York City. With a
fulfilling career and a satisfying relationship, Marian has everyone convinced that her life is
going just the way she wants it to be. But when Kirby Rose, an 18-year-old with a key to Marian’s
past, shows up on her doorstep, everything Marian has worked so hard to keep secret pours out.

*Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple (FIC 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. Then
Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised
reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle --- and people
in general --- has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most
basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles
email messages, official documents, secret correspondence --- creating a compulsively readable
and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd
world.
Summaries adapted from teenreads.com
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