Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt

Growing up in the 1950s, Lewis Lark hasn’t had the easiest life. His mother, Ava, raises him by herself after his father abandons them.  Many people in the neighborhood shun Lewis and Ava, because Ava is a single mother, and they believe that Ava has too many boyfriends. The only two people that pay any attention to them are Rose and Jimmy Rearson. Rose and Jimmy are Lewis’s best friends, and they both idolize Ava.

Suddenly, Jimmy goes missing, and Ava is the last one to see him. Rose and Lewis do everything they can think of to find him. Rose moves away, and Lewis and Ava become estranged as the years go by. Rose dwells on Jimmy’s disappearance, and can’t move on. Just as suddenly, what happened to Jimmy is revealed. After the discovery, the three that remain try to get back what was lost.

I really enjoyed this book. The feelings that came across inIs This Tomorrow are believable and heartbreaking.  Leavitt does an excellent job of drawing the reader in. I didn’t want to put the book down.

If you liked this book, you might also like Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan.

Carrie

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is the type of essayist that you either hate or love, are offended by or understand, and either make you gasp or squeal in delight. Well, I am the latter. His latest, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, was exactly what I hoped for and expected. Once again, he writes about his everyday life with his partner Hugh, his family, and his travels. And it's the travelling part that is the best! He talks about mundane conversations he overhears, his shopping excursions, and his dining experiences. And I never stopped laughing!

As in his earlier works, his essays are short but pack a punch. They range from something as simple as standing in line at an airport and what he observes all the way too finding a stuffed owl for his partner at a taxidermy shop. The laughs keep coming.

If at all possible, go for the audiobook. Somehow listening to him speak just makes it all the more hysterical!

Karen

Read alike: There is no one quite like David Sedaris, but if you have never read or listened to him before, I suggest you start with Holidays on Ice. I feel that is his best work.

The Victory Season by Robert Weintraub

Baseball columnist Weintraub is the author of The House That Ruth Built.  His latest offering, The Victory Season, is a dual history of the war service of professional baseball players and the 1946 season.  Weintraub reminds the reader that 1946 was a turbulent transitional year marked by housing and food shortages and labor uprisings.  Baseball also saw turbulence with the rise of the Mexican league, the glut of players returning from service, and the failed efforts to organize them.  Weintraub details the war service of numerous players, including DiMaggio, Williams, Musial and Feller.  Some remained stateside and some saw combat, but most were able to play baseball with their units.  He also pays homage to the players who didn't return.  The bulk of the book is devoted to the drama of the season, alternately describing the Boston Red Sox quest for their first World Series title since 1918, and the pennant race between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals.  The narrative concludes with the thrilling World Series, although baseball fans will already know how it ends.  If the book has one flaw, it is that it includes too much detail and useless trivia.  Weintraub tends to overwhelm the reader by gunning them with unrelated facts and hitting the ball all over the field.  But for World War II historians and baseball fans, it's a home run.

Dawn

If you enjoy this book, you will also enjoy "When Chicago Ruled Baseball" by Bernard Weisberger

Little Green by Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins, an African-American private detective, awakens from a partial coma at the beginning of Walter Mosley’s Little Green. He somehow survived his car going off a cliff. While most anyone else would take time to get his strength back, Easy believes if he doesn’t get back to work he’ll end up as good as or literally dead. He quickly gets a case from his sketchy friend Mouse who wants Easy to find a young man named Evander who disappeared on the Sunset Strip after taking some acid. Yes, Little Green is set in late sixties L.A. amid all its hippy glory.

Not surprisingly, Easy comes back from near death to find himself in the middle of a case far more complicated than a simple missing person. He runs across various members of the counterculture and a wide array of thugs both of the hippy and non-hippy variety. Once he’s found, Evander’s drug-induced state makes it difficult for him to clearly know what did or did not happen while he was missing. The case in Little Green has plenty of twists and turns, but it’s really the voice Mosley gives to Easy, the added element of him trying to stay alive in a city none too welcoming of an African-American detective, and the mix of the summer of love with a hard boiled crime novel that make this a winner.

John

While we were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax

Let's just start off by saying that if you have never watched an episode of this unbelievably popular PBS show, then parts of this novel may confuse you a bit.

However, if you are a fan, then you are in for a real treat.

While we were Watching Downton Abbey is really a story about friendship set in an exclusive high rise in downtown Atlanta. There is Samantha, married 25 years to a the perfect husband and who grew up in the perfect household and now lives in the perfect penthouse. How perfect is that? Well, as it turns out, not perfect at all. Then there's Claire, a single mother who, after years of struggling, has finally saved enough money to be able to take off a year and write. Again, perfect surroundings, but can she do it? Finally, there is Brooke, a young mother whose husband has left her for another woman. Certainly nothing about that is perfect. How can she make it on her own?

Three different women with very different lives are pulled together after the concierge of their building, the very proper and very British Edward Parker, decides to run episodes of Downton Abbey in the building's club room on Sunday evenings. At first, the three are undecided for a variety of reasons, but eventually decide to give it a try. That's when things get interesting!

This is very much a novel of women becoming empowered through friendship and by taking some risks. A very enjoyable read.

Karen

Read-alike author: Haywood Smith

Being Esther: A Novel by Miriam Karmel

What can you say about a novel about an eighty-five-year-old Jewish woman living in Chicago? Well, quite a bit actually. Being Esther reads almost like a memoir, and is, in one word, delightful! In this compact story, Esther recounts her life with her husband, their friends, her children, her parents, and anything else you can think of. There are quite a few references to the Chicago area, and Jewish traditions as well.

As she nears the end of her life, Esther has a few challenges. Her daughter would really like her to move into an assisted-living facility, which of course she refuses. Her daughter also thinks she should stop driving, but of course she continues. She wants Lucky Charms for breakfast, her daughter buys her bran flakes. And so and so on...

Luckily she has one friend in the same situation, and they speak on the phone every day to make sure the other has survived the previous evening (love it!) and go out to lunch weekly to commiserate (hysterical!).

Try this if you are in the mood for something different. It certainly is that.

Karen

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

 I was looking for something different to follow some fairly dark, intense books when I came across Jones’ The Uninvited Guests. I got different alright! Expecting an Edwardian comedy/drama, I felt I was reading an episode from Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.

Emerald Torrington is turning 20 and there is to be a birthday party for her. She is typical of her class and upbringing (think of Downton’s Lady Mary) as is her older brother, Clovis. Their fairly selfish and maternally casual mother, Charlotte, has remarried after their father’s death to a man they feel is beneath them. The youngest member of the family is Imogen, aka Smudge, a child basically raising herself with intermittent notice and kindnesses by family and staff.

Edward, Charlotte’s husband, has gone to try to save Sterne, their home, from being sold and is out of the picture. When Clovis and a groom drive to the station to pick up the party guests, they return with news of a train wreck nearby and that survivors will have to be housed at Sterne.

As the dazed, dirty crowd appears at their doors, none of the family or invited guests seems able to grasp what is needed beyond corralling them in a room and hoping someone will come to take them away soon. Then appears Charles Traversham-Beechers, another survivor, who is unwilling to stay with the others and insinuates himself into the birthday celebrations. Definitely not a gentleman, he manages to mesmerize them all (except Smudge!) into accepting his presence and following his lead in a bizarre, cruel game.

To say more would tip into spoiler territory, but rest assured this 24 hour long tale has wonderfully quirky characters and a truly satisfying conclusion.

CAS

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

Long secluded in an island monastery in remote, northern Quebec, a Gilbertine order of monks has produced a recording of Gregorian chants. Having taken a vow of silence, their music is their only vocal outlet and their means of worship. When the recording explodes on the world music stage, all is irreparably changed.

The choirmaster is found dead and the murderer must be one of the members. Chief Inspector Gamache and his partner, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir must solve the murder without their usual support staff and with few modern comforts. As each works to unravel the clues and conflicting statements, the lives of the monks continue in their ancient patterns. The music is both sublime and terrible – it is the heart of the order and may now lead to its demise. The Beautiful Mystery is Louise Perry’s 8^th Inspector Armand Gamache novel and she has taken me to another new place of thought and emotion.

CAS

Listen In

Summer reading starts today! This year’s theme is Have Book, Will Travel. Audiobooks are perfect for travel. I’m a big fan of audiobooks, and I have a few favorite narrators. If you’re looking for great voices, look no further than this list!


Here are a few selections from narrator Scott Brick. 

Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon

Superstar detective Dave Gurney's renewed efforts to retire are halted by the brutal murder of a young bride at her wedding reception, a crime subsequently linked to a brilliant criminal who targets Gurney's family to further his agendas.

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

Irrepressible individualist and iconoclast Pat Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract in May 2002 to enlist in the United States Army. Deeply troubled by 9/11, he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in Afghanistan. Though obvious to most on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman's family and the American public for five weeks following his death, while President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman's name to promote his administration's foreign policy. Biographer Krakauer draws on his journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research in Afghanistan to render this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death.

The Woods by Harlan Coben

Twenty years ago, four teenagers at summer camp walked into the woods at night. Two were found murdered, and the others were never seen again. Four families had their lives changed forever. Now, two decades later, they are about to change again.For Paul Copeland, the county prosecutor of Essex, New Jersey, mourning the loss of his sister has only recently begun to subside. Cope, as he is known, is now dealing with raising his six- year-old daughter as a single father after his wife has died of cancer. Balancing family life and a rapidly ascending career as a prosecutor distracts him from his past traumas, but only for so long. When a homicide victim is found with evidence linking him to Cope, the well-buried secrets of the prosecutor’s family are threatened.Is this homicide victim one of the campers who disappeared with his sister? Could his sister be alive? Cope has to confront so much he left behind that summer twenty years ago: his first love, Lucy; his mother, who abandoned the family; and the secrets that his Russian parents might have been hiding even from their own children. Cope must decide what is better left hidden in the dark and what truths can be brought to the light.


Here are some selections from narrator Susan Ericksen.

 Indulgence in Death by J.D. Robb
Random hits, thrill kills, and murderers with a taste for the finer things in life are making NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas angry. And an angry Eve can be just as efficient and dangerous a predator as the killer. As time runs out on another innocent victim's life, Eve's investigation will take her into the rarified circle that her husband, Roarke, travels into the perverted heart of madness.  

Missing in Death by J.D. Robb

Investigating a woman's disappearance on a New York City ferry, Detective Eve Dallas wonders: if she didn't jump, and she's not on board, then where in the world is she?

Treachery in Death by J.D. Robb

Peabody, Eve, and her husband Roarke are trying to get the hard evidence they need to bring two dirty cops down -- knowing all the while that the two are willing to kill to keep their secret.







Here are some selections from narrator Cassandra Campbell

The History of Us by Leah Stewart
Three grown siblings return to their childhood home and face a family secret that forces them to reexamine their relationships to each other--and to the aunt who took them in as children.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke College, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The First World War is spreading across Europe, and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There, Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo to join the British Army in Egypt, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost.Flash forward to the present, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents' ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed the "Ottoman Annex," Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura's grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family's history that reveals love, loss--and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Here are selections from narrator Jenna Lamia.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

For years, 12-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt from Savannah, Tootie Caldwell, who whirls CeeCee into her world of female friendship, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.

Here is a selection from Lorna Raver.

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

Jess Hall, growing up deep in the heart of an unassuming mountain town that believes in protecting its own, is plunged into an adulthood for which he is not prepared when his autistic older brother, Stump, sneaks a look at something he isn't supposed to, which has catastrophic repercussions.





Here are selections from narrator Mark Bramhall.

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts. The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure. Unlike the Miracle on the Hudson, however, most of the passengers aboard Flight 1611 die on impact or drown. The body count? Thirty-nine - a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door. Meanwhile, Emily finds herself wondering about the women in this sparsely populated White Mountain village - self-proclaimed herbalists - and their interest in her fifth-grade daughters. Are the women mad? Or is it her husband, in the wake of the tragedy, whose grip on sanity has become desperately tenuous?

Mark Bramhall is also one of the narrators for A Land More Kind Than Home. The description is above.


Who are your favorite audiobook narrators?

Carrie