Between the Covers

Between the Covers is a selection of new books coming to Rocky River Public Library this Summer!

MAY

Dykette

Jenny Fran Davis

Partners Sasha and Jesse are thrilled to escape Brooklyn for the holidays, invited to the country home of two older, distinguished lesbians. They’re joined by Jesse’s best friend, Lou, and Lou’s latest lover, Darcy, whose queer confidence

Sasha envies.

The Half Moon

Mary Beth Keane

Longtime bartender Malcolm Gephardt buys the Half Moon bar when his boss retires, but soon realizes that long-time customers do not welcome change. Meanwhile, his marriage gets shaky as his lawyer wife, Jess, realizes that she may not be able to have a child. Events converge as a blizzard hits, a bar patron vanishes, and Malcolm learns something shocking about Jess.

The Covenant of Water

Abraham Verghese

Set within the Christian community of Kerala on southern India’s Malabar Coast, this novel follows a family that suffers successive tragedies, with at least one person in each generation drowning to death. Despite its venerable traditions, family matriarch Big Ammachi knows change is coming.

The Three of Us

Ore Agbaje-Williams

Temi, her best friend, and her best friend’s husband co-exist in a very tenuous, resentful triangle. When they have too much to drink over the course of an afternoon, we hear each character’s perspective as secrets get spilled, truths get told, and relationships are questioned.

The Ferryman

Justin Cronin

On the island paradise of Prospera, residents live contentedly until they’re warned by a monitor embedded in their forearms that it’s time for their scheduled renewal. After boarding the ferry to the Nursery, The Ferryman (and some island resisters) begin to suspect that all is not as benevolent as it seems.

The Disenchantment

Celia Bell

Unhappily married Baroness Marie Catherine and self-confident Mademoiselle de Conti become lovers in 17th century Paris. When a shocking and unexpected murder occurs, Marie Catherine must escape, disappearing in the dark underbelly of a city full of people who have secrets they would kill to keep.

June

Dead Man’s Wake

Paul Doiron

Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch witnesses a hit-and-flee speedboat plowing into two swimmers and suspects murder when he learns that the victims were a badly slashed up man and his married lover.

Watch Us Dance

Leila Slimani

In late 1960s Morocco, biracial siblings Aicha and Selim deal differently with the era’s uncertainties. Tough-minded Aicha wants to study medicine in France, while her rebellious younger brother Selim would rather hang out with the hippies converging on his country.

Girlfriend on Mars

Deborah Willis

Amber Kivinen is competing on a reality TV show with a difference: she wants to win one of two seats on the first human mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task. That means leaving behind Adam, her puzzled boyfriend of 14 years.

What the Neighbors Saw

Melissa Adelman

Pregnant Alexis and her husband Sam are thrilled with the Cape Cod fixer-upper they’ve just bought in a fancy Washington, DC, suburb. Their joy is short-lived, however, as neighbor Teddy is found murdered on the banks of the Potomac and secrets start crawling up through the cracks of a nowdivided neighborhood.

The Brightest Star

Gail Tsukiyama

Based on the life of Anna May Wong, the only Asian American woman to achieve fame in Hollywood’s early days, this novel outlines her rise to stardom and the challenges she faced, both professionally and personally, fighting to win lead roles, accepting risqué parts to financially support her family, and keeping her illicit love affairs hidden.

The Puzzle Master

Danielle Trussoni

Reality and the supernatural collide when an expert puzzle-maker is thrust into an ancient mystery— one with explosive consequences for the fate of humanity.

The Housekeepers

Alex Hay

Housekeeper at one of the grandest houses in Edwardian Mayfair, Mrs. King is shocked when she is dismissed from her position. Quickly rallying, she calls on the smarts she acquired growing up among con artists and thieves and puts together a plan for revenge that will take place on the night of the house’s eagerly anticipated costume ball.

Sunshine Nails

Mai Nguyen

When the Toronto-based family nail salon of Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran is threatened by the chain salon opening across the street, their children Jessica and Dustin and cousin, Thuy, find a way to undermine the competition. But Debbie and Phil begin to wonder if it’s worth undermining the family to save the salon.

The Librarianist

Patrick deWitt

Bob Comet, a retired Librarian who has always lived through and for books, begins to open up after he starts volunteering at the local senior center and is reminded of a painful incident from his complicated and turbulent past.

Crook Manifesto

Colson Whitehead

Furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney returns after the sensational Harlem Shuffle, trying to stay on the straight and narrow and not quite succeeding. The second of the Harlem Trilogy, Whitehead again delivers a portrait of a struggling community in 1970s New York.

How Can I Help You

Laura Sims

Margo works inconspicuously at a small-town public library, hiding her past as a nurse whose patients sometimes met suspicious deaths. But newbie staffer Patricia thinks there’s something off about Margo and becomes especially alert when a patron dies at the library.

Small Worlds

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Stephen, a first-generation Londoner, is the son of Ghanian immigrants. His life is supposed to follow a specific track, to university and then onto a prominent career, but he veers off course when he chooses to pursue music instead.

August

The Apology

Jimin Han

In South Korea, a 105-year-old woman receives a letter. Ten days later, she has been thrust into the afterlife, fighting to head off a curse that will otherwise devastate generations to come.

Time’s Mouth

Edan Lepucki

In 1950’s California, Ursa, possessing the gift of memory, flees her hometown, forming a cultlike community of sisterhood. Soon the community takes an ominous turn, forcing Ursa’s son and his pregnant wife to seek refuge and abandon their daughter Opal. Now a teenager, Opal must journey into her own past to reveal the secrets that gave rise to the source of her family’s painful legacy.

Family Lore

Elizabeth Acevedo

This is the story of a Dominican-American family, centered on four sisters, one of whom has an uncanny ability to predict when people will die. When she asks to bring the family together for a living wake, everyone shows up, bringing all their secrets and troubles with them.

Bridge

Lauren Beukes

Bridget Kittinger is paralyzed by choices. When she finds an object that she thought was imaginary in her dead mother’s freezer, something her mother called the “dreamworm,” it opens a path to all other realities—and a million and one dangers.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

James McBride

When a skeleton is found at the bottom of well in 1972, African American and Jewish residents of Chicken Hill, a small run-down neighborhood in Pennsylvania, struggle with the discovery and find that even in dark times, it is love and community that sustain us.

Tom Lake

Anne Patchett

Gathering with her family at their Michigan orchard in spring 2020, Lara is pestered by her daughters to tell them about her long-ago romance with renowned actor Peter Duke, with whom she acted in a theater company called Tom Lake. The story leads the young women to reconsider their own lives and how they think about their mother.

If you’d like to put any of these titles on hold, contact the library at 440-333-7610, or go to rrpl.org to place an online hold.