October 2024
The Read More! Reading Challenge suggestions for the month of October are to read A Book Set in New York or to read A Book Written By a Local Author!
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Winter in New York by Josie Silver
Romance (A Book Set in New York)
Moving to New York, young chef Iris offers her services to save a struggling gelato shop in Little Italy where she finds herself falling for the owner’s nephew Gio and his family until all the secrets she’s been keeping threaten to ruin the new life — and new love — she’s been building
The Connellys of County Down by Tracey Lange
Fiction (A Book Set in New York)
After serving 18 months on a drug charge, 30-year-old Tara Connelly returns home to live with her siblings, and as she works to build a new career and hold her family together, especially when secrets threaten to tear them apart forever, she finds love in a most unlikely place.
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Fiction/Historical (A Book Set in New York)
A furniture store owner and ex-grifter leaves the straight and narrow path when he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter in 1971 Manhattan in the new novel by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys.
The Auburn Conference by Tom Piazza
Fiction/Historical (A Book Set in New York)
It is 1883, and America is at a crossroads. At a tiny college in Upstate New York, an idealistic young professor has managed to convince Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other luminaries to participate in the first (and last) Auburn Writers’ Conference for a public discussion about the future of the nation. By turns brilliantly comic and startlingly prescient, The Auburn Conference vibrates with questions as alive and urgent today as they were in 1883—the chronic American conundrums of race, class, and gender, and the fate of the democratic ideal.
The Truth of Who You Are by Shelia Myers
Fiction/Historical (A Book Written By a Local Author)
When his family is plunged into poverty during the Great Depression, Ben Taylor takes a job with the US Civilian Conservation Corps developing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A tragic accident puts him in a dilemma: does he let someone else take the fall for what he did so he can keep his position? The repercussions of his decision plague him all the way to the Battle of the Bulge in World War II where Ben is reunited with an old friend from his time with the Corps. Inspired by actual events and the people who once lived in the Smoky Mountains before it became a National Park, this saga explores how people use stories to hide uncomfortable truths and the lengths they’ll go to protect their home and family.
Don’t Curse the Rain by David Homick
Thriller (A Book Written By a Local Author)
Separating truth from lies can be a messy–and dangerous–business. Two tours in Afghanistan couldn’t help Dillon Bishop put his past behind him. When his father’s death calls him back to his hometown after ten years, he returns to discover that his father may have been murdered. But truth is in short supply in this little Texas town. The return of his estranged mother after going AWOL for sixteen years throws gasoline on the fire when she seeks his forgiveness even as she becomes a prime suspect. His questions uncover the trail of another mystery–the disappearance of his younger brother ten years earlier–and the motives and actions of those he thought he could trust are thrown into doubt. While Dillon dreams of a fresh start and a new life in Colorado with his girlfriend Jenny Lee, he struggles with moving on before settling old scores. As painful memories resurface and the lines between seeking the truth and exacting revenge are blurred, Dillon finds himself drawn into a conspiracy that could cost him everything.
Rook by Stephen G. Eoannou
Thriller (A Book Written By a Local Author)
Rook is based on the true story of Al Nussbaum. To his unsuspecting wife, Lolly, Al is a loving, chess-playing, family man. To J. Edgar Hoover, he is the most cunning fugitive alive. Al is the mastermind behind a string of East Coast robberies that has stumped law enforcement. After his partner, one-eyed Bobby Wilcoxson, kills a bank guard and wounds a New York City patrolman, Al is identified as one of the robbers and lands on top of the FBI’s most wanted list. He is forced to flee his hometown of Buffalo, New York as the FBI closes in and Lolly learns of her husband’s secret life. While Al assumes another identity and attempts to elude the police, Lolly is left alone to care for their infant daughter and adjust to her new life as ‘The Bank Robber’s Wife’. Friends, family, and federal agents all pressure Lolly to betray Al. While Lolly struggles at home financially, with unrelenting FBI agents, and her conscious, Al and Bobby continue to rob banks, even as Bobby grows more mentally unstable and dangerous. Al has only two goals: avoid capture and steal enough money to start a new life with his family. Returning to gather his wife and baby is suicidal, but as Al said, he’d only stick his neck in the Buffalo noose for Lolly.
Tillable Soil by Heidi Nightengale
Poetry (A Book Written By a Local Author)
In this chapbook, Nightengale has collected works which move the reader through a series of poems which lead us to sink our teeth into the connections between the universal world and the internal world of common human experiences. Her voice is melodic as she shows us how the natural world reflects the daily wonders of human emotions and memory.