Having trouble finding a book for this category? Here are some of our recommendations.
11/22/63 : a novel
Stephen King
2011
ISBN: 9781451627282
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? The author's new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. In this novel that is a tribute to a simpler era, he sweeps readers back in time to another moment, a real life moment, when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history. Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
The 1619 Project : a new origin story
edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
2021
ISBN: 9780593230572
"The animating idea of The 1619 Project is that our national narrative is more accurately told if we begin not on July 4, 1776, but in late August of 1619, when a ship arrived in Jamestown bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric and unprecedented system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's very origin. The 1619 Project tells this new origin story, placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country. Orchestrated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by MacArthur 'genius' and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this collection of essays and historical vignettes includes some of the most outstanding journalists, thinkers, and scholars of American history and culture--including Linda Villarosa, Jamelle Bouie, Jeneen Interlandi, Matthew Desmond, Wesley Morris, and Bryan Stevenson. Together, their work shows how the tendrils of 1619--of slavery and resistance to slavery--reach into every part of our contemporary culture, from voting, housing and health care, to the way we sing and dance, the way we tell stories, and the way we worship. Interstitial works of flash fiction and poetry bring the history to life through the imaginative interpretations of some of our greatest writers. The 1619 Project ultimately sends a very strong message: We must have a clear vision of this history if we are to understand our present dilemmas. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and trying as hard as we can to understand its powerful influence on our present, can we prepare ourselves for a more just future."-- Provided by the publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Nineteen eighty-four : a novel
by George Orwell ; with a foreword by Thomas Pynchon ; with an afterword by Erich Fromm
2003
ISBN: 9780451524935
Portrays a terrifying vision of life in the future when a totalitarian government, considered a "Negative Utopia, " watches over all citizens and directs all activities, becoming more powerful as time goes by.
Audiobook always available on hoopla.
The Ides of April
Lindsey Davis
2013
ISBN: 9781250023698
Working as a private informer in Rome during the reign of Domitian, Flavia Albia is hired to investigate a fatal accident, an investigation that turns sinister when her client dies under suspicious circumstances that place Flavia's reputation at stake.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library and audiobook always available on hoopla.
Tuesday Mooney talks to ghosts : an adventure
Kate Racculia
2019
ISBN: 9780358023937
"From the award-winning author of Bellweather Rhapsody, a delightfully clever novel following one woman and a supporting cast of misfits, dreamers and foes as they race to win a treasure hunt inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, left behind by a dying billionaire" -- Provided by publisher.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library and audiobook always available on hoopla.
The madness of July
James Naughtie
2014
ISBN: 9781468309614
"Will Flemyng was trained as a spy for a life behind enemy lines, but now he is in politics--and rising to the top. But when a bizarre death starts to unravel some of the most sensitive secrets of his government, Will is drawn back into the shadows of the Cold War and begins to dance with danger once more"--Amazon.com.
Ebook always available on hoopla.
Sunday silence
Nicci French
2018
ISBN: 9780062819840
Declared a person of interest when a body is discovered under the floor of her home, London psychologist Frieda Klein realizes that a copycat killer is responsible before she finds herself caught between two obsessive murderers.
Audiobook always available on hoopla.