In the video below, the author talks to the execustive producer of the FX show about the character and the 272 pages Leonard devoted to him.

Publisher’s Summary:
“With more than forty novels to his credit and still going strong, the legendary Elmore Leonard has well earned the title, “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek). And U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Pronto, Riding the Rap, Fire in the Hole) is one of Leonard’s most popular creations, thanks in part to the phenomenal success of the hit TV series “Justified.” Leonard’s Raylan shines a spotlight once again on the dedicated, if somewhat trigger-happy lawman, this time in his familiar but not particularly cozy milieu of Harlan County, Kentucky, where the drug dealing Crowe brothers are branching out into the human body parts business. Suspenseful, darkly wry and riveting, and crackling with Leonard’s trademark electric dialogue, Raylan is prime Grand Master Leonard as you have always loved him and always will.”

Links lead to the NOBLE catalog.

John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby. Names that shall ever live in our collective memories, even for those of us who weren’t born yet. Have you ever wondered about the many what ifs regarding that infamous day? Well, Stephen King takes us back via time travel to discover just that, and to ponder the eternal question: if you could change history, should you? Jake Epping is a 35 year old High School English teacher living in Lisbon Falls, Maine who also does double duty helping adults attain their GEDs. An essay passed in by one of his adult students detailing the night his family was massacred by his father has a profound effect on Jake. Soon after, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a long kept secret. The storeroom in the diner is actually a time portal to 1958 and Al has been using it to attempt to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Now however, Al is dying and he wants Jake to take up the cause. Although hesitant at first, Jake becomes caught up in the mission and soon finds himself much more personally involved with the times and people of the era then he ever could have possibly imagined. I have been a Stephen King fan since I first read “Carrie” when I was 14 years old. Through the years, one thing has become apparent regarding his novels. They are at their best when they are character driven because there aren’t many writers besides King who can delve so deeply into the human psyche and make his “Dear Readers” care and identify so much with his characters. For long time fans of his, “11/22/63″ is one of his best works. In my humble opinion it actually is his best. There is really no horror in this book, and even the time travel aspect isn’t really enough to plant it firmly in the Science Fiction genre. I guess if I were going to label it, I’d say it was Historical Fiction, and Suspense. I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, but readers can expect characters from his older books to make appearances as well as some familiar places. Jake and the new characters that King introduces us to feel like old friends as well, and that is one of the many reasons why this prolific author has such a fan base. Even at over 800 pages long the plot moves along briskly, and towards the end I found myself trying to hold back because I didn’t want the story to end. I find it amazing that 37 years after his first novel, Stephen King still manages to amaze with his incredible imagination. As one of his many fans, I consider myself privileged to have traveled back in time in his latest masterpiece. Thank you dear friend.

Kim is the Assistant Head of Children’s Services Read her full Read This profile: kimb8

Check the catalog for 11/22/63

For more – juvenile and young adult titles, specifically – click here.

Shelley and her mom have been menaced long enough. Excused from high school where a trio of bullies nearly killed her, and still reeling from her parents’ humiliating divorce, Shelley has retreated with her mother to the quiet of Honeysuckle Cottage in the countryside. Thinking their troubles are over, they revel in their cozy, secure life of gardening and books, hot chocolate and Brahms by the fire. But on the eve of Shelley’s sixteenth birthday, an unwelcome guest disturbs their peace and something inside Shelley snaps. What happens next will shatter all their certainties-about their safety, their moral convictions, the limits of what they are willing to accept, and what they’re capable of.”

Staff comment: “It’s like oh, my god!”

Check the catalog to see if Mice is available for checkout

If you’ve read Mice by Gordon Reece, you may want to try:

• Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan
  “Every day, Mathilde takes the Metro to her job at a large multinational, where she has felt miserable and isolated ever since getting on the wrong side of her bullying boss. Every day, Thibault, a paramedic, drives where his dispatcher directs him, fighting traffic to attend to disasters. For many of the people he rushes to treat, he represents the only human connection in their day. Mathilde and Thibault are just two figures being pushed and shoved in a lonesome, crowded city. But what might happen if these two souls, traveling their separate paths, could meet? ” [Check the catalog for availability]

• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
  “In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling’s residents. Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded – must decide whether or not to step down. She’s torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile, claims she can’t remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter’s rampage. Or can she? And Peter’s parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes. Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really know someone?” [Check the catalog for availability]

• Save Me by Lisa Scottoline
  “Rose McKenna volunteers as a lunch mom in her daughter Melly’s school in order to keep an eye on Amanda, a mean girl who’s been bullying her daughter. Her fears come true when the bullying begins, sending Melly to the bathroom in tears. Just as Rose is about to follow after her daughter, a massive explosion goes off in the kitchen, sending the room into chaos. Rose finds herself faced with the horrifying decision of whether or not to run to the bathroom to rescue her daughter or usher Amanda to safety. She believes she has accomplished both, only to discover that Amanda, for an unknown reason, ran back into the school once out of Rose’s sight. In an instance, Rose goes from hero to villain as the small community blames Amanda’s injuries on her. In the days that follow, Rose’s life starts to fall to pieces, Amanda’s mother decides to sue, her marriage is put to the test, and worse, when her daughter returns to school, the bullying only intensifies. Rose must take matters into her own hands and get down to the truth of what really happened that fateful day in order to save herself, her marriage and her family.” [Check the catalog for availability]

If you’re looking for something to get you in the spirit of the holidays, try one of the books on our New Holiday Fiction Booklist.

If you’re looking for a good book your favorite booklover, we have some suggestions for you. Books to Give the Reader in Your Life This Holiday Season is a compilation of book suggestions hand-picked by the staff here at the Peabody Institute Library.

We hope you find something on these lists to make your season bright!

From The Guardian:
“McCaffrey, who went on to publish almost 100 books, began her career in 1967 with Restoree, which she described as a “jab” at the way women were portrayed in science fiction. Later that year, she had the idea for the Dragonriders of Pern series, in which dragons and humans join forces to defend their planet from the deadly “thread” which falls from space and which, from 1967′s Weyr Search to the most recent Dragon’s Time, published this summer, became a smash hit.”

FICTION

WINNER: Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
(Bloomsbury USA)

FINALISTS:
Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn
(Bellevue Literary Press) – Interview

Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
(Random House)

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House) – Interview

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
(Lookout Books, an imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington) – Interview

Fiction Judges: Deirdre McNamer (Panel Chair), Jerome Charyn,
John Crowley, Victor LaValle, Yiyun Li

NONFICTION

WINNER: Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
(W. W. Norton & Company) – Interview

FINALISTS:
Deborah Baker, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism
(Graywolf Press) – Interview

Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution
(Little, Brown and Company) – Interview

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
(Viking Press, an imprint of Penguin Group USA) – Interview

Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout
(It Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers) – Interview

Nonfiction Judges: Alice Kaplan (Panel Chair), Yunte Huang,
Jill Lepore, Barbara Savage

POETRY

WINNER: Nikky Finney, Head Off & Split
(TriQuarterly, an imprint of Northwestern University Press) – Interview

FINALISTS:

Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Carl Phillips, Double Shadow
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Interview

Adrienne Rich, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010
(W.W. Norton & Company) – Interview

Bruce Smith, Devotions
(University of Chicago Press) – Interview

Poetry Judges: Elizabeth Alexander (Panel Chair), Thomas Sayers Ellis,
Amy Gerstler, Kathleen Graber, Roberto Tejada

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

WINNER: Thanhha Lai, Inside Out & Back Again
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers) – Interview

FINALISTS:
Franny Billingsley, Chime
(Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, Inc. )

Debby Dahl Edwardson, My Name Is Not Easy
(Marshall Cavendish)

Albert Marrin, Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books) – Interview

Gary D. Schmidt, Okay for Now
(Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) – Interview

Young People’s Literature Judges: Marc Aronson (Panel Chair),
Ann Brashares, Matt de la Peña, Nikki Grimes, Will Weaver

Publisher’s Summary:
“Inspired by one of the world’s greatest novels, Ohio artist Matt Kish set out on an epic voyage of his own one day in August 2009. More than one hundred and fifty years following the original publication of Moby-Dick, Kish began illustrating Herman Melville’s classic, creating an image a day over the next eighteen months based on text selected from every page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition. Completely self-taught, Kish refused to set any boundaries for the artwork and employed a deliberately low-tech approach in response to the increasing popularity of born-digital art and literature. He used found pages torn from old, discarded books, as well as a variety of mediums, including ballpoint pen, marker, paint, crayon, ink, and watercolor. By layering images on top of existing words and images, Kish has crafted a visual masterpiece that echoes the layers of meaning in Melville’s narrative.”

Check the catalog for availability.

Patron comment: This is a great book if you like stories about horses and families. It’s a great book even if you aren’t into horses.”

Check the catalog to see if The Eighty-Dollar Champion is available for checkout

If you’ve read The Eighty Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts, you may want to try:

• Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
  “Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail.” [Check the catalog for availability]

• The Horse That God Built: The Untold Story of Secretariat by Lawrence Scanlan
  “The story of Secretariat, the legendary Triple Crown winner whose record-breaking accomplishments in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes have never been equaled, is seen through the perspective of the bond between the horse and his African-American groom, Eddie Sweat.” [Check the catalog for availability]

• Following Atticus by Tom Ryan
  “Middle-aged, overweight, and acrophobic newspaperman Tom Ryan and miniature schnauzer Atticus M. Finch are an unlikely pair of mountaineers, but after a close friend dies of cancer, the two pay tribute to her by attempting to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four-thousand-foot peaks twice in one winter while raising money for charity. In a rare test of endurance, Tom and Atticus set out on an adventure of a lifetime that takes them across hundreds of miles and deep into an enchanting but dangerous winter wonderland. ” [Check the catalog for availability]

1. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
“On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared–Lt. Louis Zamperini. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.”

2. Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
“Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper’s yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful–and attempts a nail-biting escape.”

3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
“Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping.”

4. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel by Jamie Ford
“Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.”

5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
“In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.”

6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
“Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, they are bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine. Marion flees his homeland fresh out of medical school when he and his brother fall in love with the same woman. He goes to work in an underfunded New York hospital until his past catches up with him, nearly destroying him, and he must trust his life to his father and brother.”

7. The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain
“Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash “beautiful boy” Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband’s career.”

8. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
“In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women–black and white, mothers and daughters–view one another.”

9. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
“As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey–a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.”

10. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
“On the anniversary of the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris, Julia is asked to write an article on this dark episode and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah.”

Up and Coming:

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The library offers book club kits for several of the titles above. For more information about these kits, please visit the circulation desk or call to inquire: 978-774-0554.