Looking for a good novel to take along on your vacation—or read in your backyard? The Summer edition of Staff Favorites for Adults is hot off the press and available at your branch. The bright green booklet highlights 27 books, fiction and nonfiction, recommended by Library staff. The three novels suggested here are also available on audio, making them good companions for road trips, too.
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan
It’s Manny DeLeon’s last night managing a Red Lobster restaurant on a snowy stretch of Connecticut highway. The staff knows the restaurant is closing, yet they seat, serve, feed and clean up after customers with infinite consistency, despite the uncertainty of their own futures. Soft-hearted, conscientious Manny leads readers through twelve ordinary hours and lets us into lives at the Lobster. Tender, funny and concise, this novel is pure perfection for anyone who’s worked at a restaurant (ever change the oil in a Frialator?) as well as for fans of Richard Russo. A favorite in the Fiction Department! ~ Linda J.
The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper
Joe Goffman returns to Bush Falls, Connecticut, when his father is hospitalized by a stroke. But Joe hasn’t been back to Bush Falls for 17 years. He had a miserable time growing up there, and Joe chronicled his rage against his town’s small-minded ways in his debut novel and is now universally hated for it. Needless to say, this complicates Joe’s visit. Add to that an old high school flame that he has never gotten over, a friend dying of AIDS, a vindictive bully, countless ’80s and Bruce Springsteen references, and you’ve got the general idea. This is a witty, compulsive read. ~ Misha S.
Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh
The day Rose Novak found her husband face down, dead on the basement floor, signaled big changes for the only Italian wife on Polish Hill in Bakerton, Pennsylvania. Coal mining built the town and the uneasy community of “Slavish” and Italians with its company store, brutal working conditions and endless poverty. But the five Novak children growing up mid-20th century try—in battle, alone in a big city or in furtive illicit relationships—to escape the mold created by their widowed mother and nosy neighbors. The Novaks, like all of us, learn that we can’t escape our roots. ~ Jen B.
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