Reader’s Advisory Recommendations:
Posted February 20, 2025 by Isabella Rodrigues
Hello, all! I hope everyone has gotten into a good groove for the semester. I am starting to realize I have way more homework than I thought I did and a bit of panic set in, but then I started planning and I got back on track again. Winter makes everyone and everything a little clogged. So in an effort to knock off those winter blues I have made a list of recommended books for both patrons and librarians! Put these titles on hold now!
- Hungerstone By Kat Dunn
This gothic horror novel is a reworking of Carmilla and Dracula centering around a woman named Lenore stuck in a loveless marriage with her husband. One day she finds a strange woman who appears very ill during the day and yet completely alive at night. All the while the local village girls keep disappearing…
- The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
If you’re like me, you were obsessed with Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle series as a teen. This is the author’s first plunge into adult literature and I couldn’t be more excited. The year is 1942 in West Virginia and the luxury hotel June Porter Hudson managed has just offered to house capture Axis diplomats while the FBI interrogates them. June quickly realizes how the war has come to the homefront.
- Sourdough by Robin Sloan
Lois is a very exhausted software engineer in the Bay Area whose only joy in life is her neighborhood hole-in-the-wall restaurant owned by two brothers. When one day the brothers have to close up shop and move, they give Lois very clear instructions to take care of their secret sourdough starter recipe. Lois, by caring for the sourdough, not only dazzles all with her homemade bread soon starts to realize just how odd the foodies in the Bay Area actually are. Whimsical, magical, and completely strange, this book is a rare find.
- Fragile Animals by Genevive Jagger
Struggling through her religious trauma, hotel cleaner, Noelle, travels to the Isle of Bute where she meets a man who claims to be not human. Whether or not he actually is, is irrelevant for Noelle goes on a journey of guilt, horror, and self-actualization.
- James by Percival Everett
From the author of Erasure (which was adapted into the film, American Fiction), comes a reworking of Huckleberry Finn, specifically from the perspective of the character, Jim. Overhearing that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans and become separated from his family, Jim joins Huck on a runaway adventure down the Mississippi River.
- The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
Set in Victorian times, newly-wed Elsie has just become a widow weeks after her marriage. Now she is marooned at her late husband’s country estate where her only companion besides a hateful staff and an awkward relation, is a small doll she finds amongst her husband’s things. A doll that looks a little bit like her…
- The Tainted Cup by Robert Bennett Jackson
A mystery story for the ages if I’ve ever read one. In another world, there is a very eccentric detective who solves crimes while being completely sequestered in her house, wearing a blindfold.
- Swing Time by Zadie Smith
From literary powerhouse, Zadie Smith, comes a story about two brown girls who wish to be dancers. It details their differences in ambition, talent, dreams, and their complications with the world and each other.