Índex per November 2022 a Booklist Reader

Just the thought of a grand old hotel evokes a longing for luxury and escape. But while opulence plays a role in Paulina Bren’s The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free, she focuses most on how this legendary New York hotel stands as a microcosm for social and cultural change. The nonfiction books below offer similar perspectives, while the novels imagine hotels during tumultuous times. Nonfiction The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont. By Shawn Levy. 2019. Doubleday. Levy sorts fact from myth and brings hidden stories to light in his history of Los Angeles’ legendary Chateau Marmont, a magnet for celebrities for nearly a century. Dateline—Liberated Paris: The Hotel Scribe and the Invasion of the Press. By Ronald Weber. 2019. Rowman…

Fiction Anon Pls. By DeuxMoi. Morrow. They say write what you know, and anonymous celebrity gossip Instagrammer @DeuxMoi’s debut novel is about an anonymous celebrity gossip Instagrammer! Desert Star. By Michael Connelly. Little, Brown. Renée Ballard is back with the LAPD, and she has a deal for Harry Bosch: work with her new Open-Unsolved Unit, and she’ll help him catch the killer who haunts him, a madman who murdered an entire family. Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering. By Margaret Atwood and others. Harper. Loads of big name authors—Atwood! Ng! Erdrich! Gaiman!—collaborated secretly on this novel that finds Manhattan neighbors gathering on their building’s rooftop to tell stories during the pandemic lockdown. The Prisoner. By B. A. Paris. St. Martin’s. A woman’s perfect, shimmering life—in glamorous London, married to a billionaire—is…

Real World Audio Adventures The Boys in the Back Row. By Mike Jung. Read by Keong Sim. 2020. 5.5hr. Dreamscape. Gr. 4–7. Band geeks and comic fans Matt and Eric are about to have one last adventure before Eric moves. Sim brings effervescent energy to this rollicking, heartwarming, MG buddy epic. Lions & Liars. By Kate Beasley. Read by Robbie Daymond. 2018. 6hr. Listening Library. Gr. 4–7. This romping audio presentation about the cringe-inducing camp misadventures of meek Frederick soars, thanks to Daymond’s energetic and effortlessly funny narration. Paradise on Fire. By Jewell Parker Rhodes. Read by Tyla Collier. 2021. 4hr. Hachette. Gr. 5–8. When a camping trip goes up in flames, Addy must face her demons to save her friends. Collier’s narration distinguishes characters from diverse backgrounds, adding emotion…

There’s nothing like reading for pleasure to ease the stress of daily life and world concerns, and talking about fun books makes for a festive bookgroup gathering. Each of these titles offers both diversion and light, whether it’s an entrancing, hilarious, or satirical novel or a transporting or amusing work of narrative nonfiction. We hope that reading these titles together offers cheering and affirmative experiences. Fiction Black Buck. By Mateo Askaripour. 2021. Mariner. Askaripour’s biting, witty satire portrays the only Black employee at a cult-like start-up, illuminating the absurdity of many complex social ills. The Fortnight in September. By R. C. Sherriff. 2021. Scribner. Originally written in 1931, this story of a family on holiday demands to be savored. Not a lot happens, but the minutiae are beguiling. Gold Diggers.…

Booth: This is the first year that the Odyssey offered both a children’s and young adults’ category and your books won in both of them! How do you see producing for children as different from producing for young adults? Beynon: While the process for each book is unique, casting children’s and YA is about the narrator energy and how it serves the story. For children’s, a lot of people assume that there should be boisterous characterizations and exaggerated dialogue. While this is certainly the case for specific types of children’s books, the majority of them require a more authentic narration style. It is less about the ability to do “character voices” and more about the ability to tap into an energy and performance that is accessible to listeners around that…

Though young adult nonfiction often gets a bad rap for being “less dense” or “less academic” than adult nonfiction, those very criticisms make it the ideal entry into a moment of history for a wide range of readers. Adults who lived the moment, teens just learning about an event, and the average reader in between will find that the care that authors of teen nonfiction take with their subject and their audience is perfectly suited to making history something that feels narratively tangible and interesting rather than boring, stodgy, or something more likely to be found in a history book collecting dust. In my work as a youth services librarian who also coordinates book clubs for social organizations, I have had amazing success using teen nonfiction titles like Black Birds…

Most people working in libraries and bookstores love matching readers with books they might enjoy. But what if these bibliocentric settings offered the opportunity to forge a different kind of connection? Say, one of a more romantic nature? That is the premise of the following romantic novels, each of which feature bookstore and library staff discovering that happily-ever-after endings are also possible outside the pages of a good book. Along a Storied Trail. By Ann H. Gabhart. 2021. Revell. Kentucky packhorse librarian Tansy Calhoun loves her job, but will the appearance of new writer Damien Fielding and old friend Caleb Barton send Tansy down a different path in life? American Dreamer. By Adriana Herrera. 2021. Carina. After just one visit to Ithaca’s hot new lunch spot, librarian Jude Fuller finds…

Artemis Fowl, the first book in Eoin Colfer’s eightbook series, is more than 20 years old. In many ways, the things that made it such a skip-the-field-trip hit for me at 12 are the things that are keeping it on shelves today: a too-smart-for-anyone’s-good Irish kid bosses around a bunch of adults, powers up some fancy gadgets, and faces off against an ancient fairy police force solely for personal gain. There are wacky high jinks, shifting alliances, a paranoid but tech-savvy centaur, and a kleptomaniac dwarf who expels his dirt (exactly how you might think) just as fast as he can chew it up. It’s a near-perfect blend of sharp, smart, and hilarious, and despite mixing themes of old magic and new customs, it manages to not feel dated in…

Older Bloodmarked. By Tracy Deonn. Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry. Gr. 9–12. Bree is still learning to control her powers in this sequel to Deonn’s best-selling Legendborn. Will she master them in time to defend her people against a dangerous force? Cursed. By Marissa Meyer. Feiwel and Friends. Gr. 9–12. Best-selling Meyer follows up Gilded, a Rumpelstiltskin-inspired fantasy, with this duology-closing volume, which finds Serilda in a dangerous battle of wits with the Erlking. Gleanings. By Neal Shusterman. Simon & Schuster. Gr. 7–10. Shusterman, with the help of some all-star collaborators, expands the universe of his Scythe series with this collection of stories set in the same world. The Luminaries. By Susan Dennard. Tor Teen. Gr. 9–12. In an eerie fantasy world, a powerful order protects sleepers from nightmares. My…