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Staff Recommendations > Jeff

1 2 >>>     sort list by title | publication date The End of Everything A Novel Megan Abbott This little book packs a wallop. In prose as relentless as it is compelling, Abbott rips the shiny veneer from an idyllic suburban childhood, uncovering the uncomfortable truths festering therein. —Recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books The Woman in the Dunes Kobo Abe If you've seen the 1964 Teshigahara film you've already experienced Abe's brilliance (he wrote the screenplay as well). If you haven't, read this first. The haunting story of a vacationing entomologist trapped in a sand-pit with an enigmatic woman... My Name Is Mina David Almond The prequel to the author's award-winning Skellig, which I haven't read and which one doesn't need to read to appreciate this little masterpiece. Almond basically takes us into the mind of a special child, an innocent, not yet corrupted by society's... Wintergirls Laurie Halse Anderson This is the single most powerful Young Adult novel I have ever read. It is searing, devastating, tragic. It is about bulimia, the death of a friend, and regret. It is also ingeniously conceived and beautifully written, transcending the difficult subject.. The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard J. G. Ballard First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily... The Poisoner's Handbook Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York Deborah Blum Fascinating and entertaining, tinged with both humor and horror, this account of the early years of forensic medicine in New York City is near unputdownable. We follow the city's Medical Examiner and head toxicologist as they develop the techniques for... The Terrible Thing that Happened to Barnaby Brocket John Boyne Barnaby Brocket is an ordinary 8-year-old boy in most ways, but he was born different in one important way: he floats. Unlike everyone else, Barnaby does not obey the law of gravity. His parents, who have a horror of being noticed, want desperately... School of Fear Gitty Daneshvari Madeleine, Theo, Lulu and Garrison—each frightfully afraid of something (ghosts, moths, etc.)—are sent to the even more frightening School of Fear, where they will have to learn to cope with their phobias... or else! (For ages 8-12) —Recommended by Jeff The Maze Runner James Dashner Thomas wakes up, with no memory, surrounded by other boys his age, in a place they call the Glade. All they know is that the stone door set in the insurmountable stone wall opens every morning and closes every evening. Outside lies a maze against which... Arming Mother Nature The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism Jacob Darwin Hamblin As a Cold War aggressor, the United States, along with its allies, needed to maintain parity, or better yet attain superiority, in ecological warfare. This fascinating book explores how this perceived "unconventional warfare gap" was one of the main... The Continental Op Stories Dashiell Hammett Short, thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to pain, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op was the prototype for generations of tough-guy detectives. In these stories the Op unravels a murder with too many clues, looks for a girl with eyes the... The Infinite Tides Christian Kiefer An impressive debut novel from NorCal poet, songwriter and recording artist Kiefer, full of achingly beautiful passages on loss and regret, yet leavened with self-aware humor and with wonderment at the banality of contemporary suburbia. Satantango A Novel László Krasznahorkai Much like the seven-and-a-half-hour Béla Tarr film it spawned, Satantango requires patience. Underlying this morass of atrophying humanity is a structure of subtle movements, the structure of the tango, a structure only apparent at a far remove... Every You, Every Me David Levithan A powerful exploration of those intense relationships we form in high school, relationships we assume (no, not assume, know) will define our lives. And those assumptions are always wrong. This realization tears apart a group of friends as they try to... 1 2 >>>