On the Nightstand

Sea Glass, by Anita Shreve. This vividly told novel follows the lives of a group of people in a small town on the New Hampshire coast during a winter at the beginning of the Drepression. A group of mill workers laboring under deplorable conditions decide to try to form a union, and in the process their lives become intertwined in unexpected ways. Judy Mazurkiewicz.

Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. Following two highly regarded novels, this is Lahiri’s first collection of short stories. Like the novels they are stories of immigrants, their relationships with their parents, their ties to the India of their birth, their struggles to reconcile their two countries, and how all of that impacts their handling of life’s tragedies common to us all. Sabra Sanwal. “They are as elegant and melancholy as Interpreter of Maladies.” Kathleen McNamara.

A Patchwork Planet, by Anne Tyler. Barnaby Gaitlin is an employee of Baltimore’s Rent-A-Back agency, employed to help the less able with any chore they need to have done. Anybody who enjoyed Tyler’s An Accidental Tourist is bound to enjoy this book.  The well-drawn characters are both quirky and believable and the writing is so good that it never draws attention to itself. Barry Leibson

The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women and African Americans in the Civil War’s Defining Battle, by Margaret S. Creighton. The title pretty much says it all – Creighton flushes out the white men’s military story of the Battle of Gettysburg to give a much fuller picture of that epic struggle. This is Bob Naeher’s newest favorite book.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Colbert. Written in a calm, reasoned voice, Colbert lets the facts of climate change speak for themselves as she describes what is happening to our Earth as a result of warming temperatures. Rob Buckley

Death By Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down and Poisoning of America, by Nancy Deville. This book serves as an exposé of the food and drug industry and how American supermarket food (DeVille calls it “factory food”) is often nutritionally dead, or worse, harmful. She makes clear the linkage between misleading advertising and nutritional labeling and our common misconceptions of the healthfulness of what we eat, as well as the unhealthy relationship that has grown up between the Food and Drug Administration, certain national health associations and the industries that they are supposed to regulate or watch over. She has done her research thoroughly, and provides plenty of “food for thought” to those of us who really wish to eat food that is in fact good for us. You will clear your cupboards and refrigerators, shop differently, and make more informed choices when it comes to health care. Bruce Rowe.

Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee. In this novel of South Africa a disgraced professor who has been involved with one of his students, visits his daughter on her farm in the bush. There he learns from her how to survive as a minority in a hostile community. Linda Maier and Barb Wiley

John Knox, by Rosalind K. Marshall. The biography of one of the central figures in the Reformation. Marshall puts his life in the context of 16th century Scotland and the winds of change that were sweeping Europe at that time. Bob Naeher