Jennifer’s Bookshelf
What’s new on our shelves? Find out from long-time library patron Jennifer Gerholdt! Each month, Jennifer will highlight several of her favorite books that have been recently added to our collection.
Meet Jennifer: Jennifer works remotely for Native, a Burlington, VT based carbon projects developer and offsets provider, helping companies find their best course of climate actions. She has a master’s degree in environmental sciences and policy from The Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from New Mexico State University. Jennifer lives here in Shepherdstown with her husband Rhys. In her free time Jennifer enjoys hiking, kayaking, biking, traveling, and, of course, reading.
New Arrivals:
Spare by Prince Harry
Making waves on both sides of the Atlantic, Prince Harry, through ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer, offers a detailed and unflinching account of his life story. Prince Harry provides a window into his childhood, the profound grief over losing his mother, Princess Diana, at a young age, his subsequent troubled teenage years, and his experiences in the British Army. He also talks about his relationships with his brother Prince William, his father King Charles III, and his relationship and marriage to Meghan Markle. The book has received praise for its openness and criticism for the inclusion of too many personal details. A book that will guarantee energetic discussions!
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
Award winning novelist and screenwriter Grady Hendrix delivers a “wildly entertaining” and “ingenious” new novel that explores childhood and family trauma, sibling rivalry, and how your past and your family can haunt you like nothing else. It’s a novel ultimately about people: how we grapple with death, how we deal with grief and all that it entails, and what we do with new revelations we learn about the past, and family. A novel that focuses on character development, with a spatter of spooky sprinkled throughout.
The Porcelain Moon by Janie Chang
In the Porcelain Moon, Janie Chang brings to life the little-known history of 140,000 Chinese workers who were brought to Europe during WWI as non-combat workers to aid in the war effort. The novel centers around two young women – one Chinese, one French – who become friends and the terrible decision they are forced to make that will have devastating consequences for the rest of their lives. The Porcelain Moon is a novel about identity, belonging, forbidden love, and the risks we are willing to take for freedom.
What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall
When they were 11 years old, best friends Naomi, Cassidy and Olivia spent the summer roaming the woods and using their imaginations to find magic and wonder at every turn. Their fun comes to a horrific end when Naomi is stabbed 17 times, and miraculously lives to identify her killer. They were hailed as heroes … and liars. For over 20 years, the friends have guarded a secret worth killing for, and one of them wants to talk. Naomi sets out to understand what really happened in the woods that summer, no matter the cost.
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Pulitzer Prize winning author Paul Harding reimagines the true story of Malaga, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that was once home to a mixed-race fishing community — and one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast — until the state evicted them in 1912. On Harding’s fictional Apple Island, we meet a vibrant cast of characters that gives color to the contours of life on this island for more than one hundred years until the eve of the community’s eviction. This is a story about the struggle to maintain human dignity in the face of prejudice and intolerance.