Top 5 Books You Do Not Want to Miss at the Library This Week

Senior reference librarian, Rosemary Jerome, chooses five of her favorite fiction books that are on the shelves at  right now.

Cecelia Ahern, The Book of Tomorrow   (2011)

A tale of magic and suspense from Irish author Ahern who wrote P.S. I Love You. Sixteen-year-old Tamara Goodwin’s wealthy father commits suicide after he realizes he cannot pay his debts. Tamara and her mother are forced to move from their Dublin suburb to the countryside to live with her aunt and uncle. Tamara begins exploring the ruins of a castle where family secrets are hidden. In a library bookmobile, she finds a locked diary that contains future entries written in her handwriting.  She can foresee the future, can it help her solve the mystery?

Frank Delaney, Matchmaker of Kenmore: A Novel of Ireland  (2011)

In this sequel to Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show, Charles Miller, an American intelligence officer, sends Kate Begley and Ben McCarthy on a secret assignment to France. When they return Kate marries Charles. After D-day Charles disappears while on a mission and the military authorities tell her that he has been killed.  She asks Ben to help her search for him through war-torn Europe.

Patricia Falvey, Linen Queen (2011)

Author of The Yellow House. Eighteen-year-old Sheila McGee wants to escape from her small Irish village and life as a mill girl. She plans to enter the annual Linen Queen pageant and use her winnings to leave. The outbreak of WWII complicates her plans, as does the two men in her life. She is torn between Joel Soloman, a Jewish-American army officer and her possessive best friend Gavin O’Rourke.  She is forced to re-examine her goals when American troops set up base in her home town and she joins the Civil Defense.


Maura Rooney Hitzenbuhler, The Lane:  A Young Woman’s Tale in the Heart of Dublin  (2011)

In the 1950s, life for an unwed mother in Dublin was grim. Kate manages to avoid scandal and support herself and her child by pretending to have an absentee husband and relying on her nurse’s training. She becomes part of the close-knit community of Bath Avenue.

Joseph O’Connor, Ghost Light  (2011)

Bestselling Irish author O’Connor (Redemption Falls) divides his narrative between Dublin in 1908 and London in 1952. Molly Allgood, whose stage name was Maire O’Neill, is 65 years old, an alcoholic, selling her meager possessions on the streets of London to survive. She tells the story about her life and secret engagement to playwright J.M. Synge when she was 18. It was an unsuitable match between a beautiful, less educated Molly and the older, ailing Synge who died at 37 of Hodgkin’s disease. During the course of their relationship they struggled with the differences in their age, class, religion, their temperaments and expectations.