Book Fair 2020: Faculty + Staff Favorites 2019-2020

Dr. Elizabeth Davis. In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.

Ms. O'Doherty. Rill Foss, just twelve years old, must protect her four younger siblings as they are wrenched from their home on the Mississippi and thrown into the care of the infamous Georgia Tann, director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. In S. Carolina Avery Stafford has lived a charmed life. Loving daughter to her father, a U.S. Senator, she has a promising career as an assistant D.A. in Baltimore and is engaged to her best friend. But a chance encounter with a stranger leaves her deeply shaken. Avery's decision to learn more about the woman's life will take her on a journey through her family's long-hidden history.

Mr. Eric Walters. The fourth book in the series, this bitter-sweet story of self-discovery, family, and identity is told in My Life With Lukas (On Topanga Boulevard): Tailspin. The story is one that provides moments of reflection, laughter, and joy, but also tells of an enduring hope that is always present when two kindred souls collide, searching for meaning in their lives as well as a new definition of family.

Mme Andre. Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person that understood her, June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom she forges a poignant relationship.

Mr. Avery. Following the death of her son, Mieko Toganō takes an increasing interest in the personal affairs of her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko. Devastated by her loss, she skillfully manipulates the relationships between Yasuko and the two men who are in love with her, encouraging a dalliance that will have terrible consequences.

Mrs. McGoldrick. In the Philadelphia suburbs, a mother's disappearance cements an unbreakable connection between a pair of siblings.

Sr. Clevie Youngblood. For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.

Ms. Wendy Cortes. Follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Mme Tesson. This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.

Dr. Sarah Cunningham. A young man, Ben, meets a young woman, Kate--and they begin to fall in love. From their first meeting, Ben knows Kate is unworldly and fanciful, so at first he isn't that concerned when she tells him about the recurring dream she's had since childhood. In the dream, she's transported to the past, where she lives a second life as Emilia, the mistress of a nobleman in Elizabethan England. But for Kate, the dream becomes increasingly real and compelling until it threatens to overwhelm her life.

Ms. Gildea. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him.

Ms. Balthazar. Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

Dr. Collins. A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected.

Ms. Jacqueline Richard. Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip of danger and hope.

Ms. Jenn Cyranski. Follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune.

Ms. Betsy Hulton. A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.

Ms. Bode. Sequel to Olive Kitteridge, a retired teacher, begins navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, in her life.

Ms. Grogan. Witty, urbane, and frequently affecting, Nine Stories sits alongside Salinger's very best work.

Mr. Dano Madden. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious race.

Ms. Martha Erskine. Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments. Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.

Dr. Nisinson. An odd couple patrols a county full of mythological beasts and ornery locals. A familiar youngster from the world of The Last Unicorn is gifted in magic but terrible at spell-casting. A seemingly incorruptible judge meets his match in a mysterious thief who steals his heart.

Ms. Brittany Fitzgerald. Two estranged sisters, raised in Brooklyn and each burdened with her own shocking secret, are reunited at the Springfield Armory in the early days of WWII.

Ms. Root. Late in the 18th century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home.

Mrs. Riva Rosen. Middle-aged sisters Meredith and Nina, having been estranged from one another and their parents by the actions of their disapproving mother, reunite after their father falls ill, and, by carrying out their dad's dying wish of hearing the true story of their mother's life in war-torn Leningrad, the women find their relationships mending and begin to have a deeper understanding and respect for their mom.

Dr. Speiser. In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

Ms. Laws. In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation.

Ms. Megan Schilling. Two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.

Ms. Kara Kutner. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand.

Ms. Carcaterra. Vianne and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. Younger, bolder sister Isabelle lives in Paris while Vianne lives a quiet and content life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. When World War II strikes and Antoine is sent off to fight, Vianne and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope.

Ms. Genter. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men.

Mr. Herrada. The story of three sisters growing up in the countryside near Athens before the Second World War. Over three summers, the girls share and keep secrets, fall in and out of love, try to figure out their parents and other members of the tribe of adults, take note of the weird ways of friends and neighbors, worry about and wonder who they are.

Ms. Pat Bauer. The epic story of the intervening half century, during which an exhilarating quest to unravel the secrets of the material world revealed how to destroy it, and an open, international, scientific adventure transmuted overnight into a wartime sprint for the bomb.

Dr. Simon Dyton. Positing that civilization is at the dawn of a new era, he offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the 21st century.

Ms. Vanderberg. Offers an incisive commentary on America's relationship with food, and the history of grocerty stores, from its evolution from the earliest trading posts to retail chains and superstores.

Ms. Gunther. The author's spiritual message is a path to happiness lies in awareness found by leaving behind the fast pace of the world and becoming truly alive to the needs and potentials of others.

Ms. Dorothy Chan. Design thinking tools and ideas for using todays resources to transform current jobs into their best versions while establishing positive mindsets to facilitate new opportunities.

Ms. Melissa Lijo. An inspiring, insightful, and honest guide to discovering the true self, committing to life, and pushing beyond limits.

Mr. Don Buckley. Discusses the evolution of the nervous system and the mind, focusing on octopuses, sea life, and human life.

Ms. Krueger. The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.

Ms. Croson. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.

Dr. Marie O'Brien. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. Veltri, Ms. Ramsawak. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life.

Mr. Moore. The second volume of Moby's extraordinary life story is a journey into the dark heart of fame and the demons that lurk just beneath the bling and bluster of the celebrity lifestyle.

Ms. Liljegren, Ms. Pagliocca. An autobiography of lawyer and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Mr. Anthony Wartel. The epic story also told in the film FORD V. FERRARI:tells the remarkable story of how Henry Ford II, with the help of a young visionary named Lee Iacocca and a former racing champion turned engineer, Carroll Shelby, concocted a scheme to reinvent the Ford company.