F-V Adult Patron Picks 2022

This list is compiled from patron recommendations at our monthly Suggestions on the Spot meeting.

Showing 1 - 20 of 22  There are a total of 99 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The Alice Network"
Star rating for The Alice Network
Author:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Two women--a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947--are brought together in a ... story of courage and redemption"--Amazon.com.
Book cover for "Billy Boyle"
Star rating for Billy Boyle
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Whats a twenty-two-year-old Irish American cop whos never been out of Massachusetts before doing at Beardsley Hall, an English country house, having lunch with King Haakon of Norway? Billy Boyle himself wonders. Back home in Southie, hed barely made detective when war was declared. Unwilling to fight - and perhaps die - for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her...
Book cover for "The book of lost names"
Star rating for The book of lost names
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.
Book cover for "The boys in the boat"
Star rating for The boys in the boat
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Traces the story of an American rowing team from the University of Washington that defeated elite rivals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, sharing the experiences of their enigmatic coach, a visionary boat builder, and a homeless teen rower.
Book cover for "The British are coming"
Star rating for The British are coming
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Rick Atkinson ... has long been admired for his unparalleled ability to write deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative history. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he tells the story of the first twenty months of the bloody struggle to shake free of King George's shackles. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, the ragtag...
Book cover for "Cilka's journey"
Star rating for Cilka's journey
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1942, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival. When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka: she is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a Siberian...
Book cover for "Code girls"
Star rating for Code girls
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the American women who secretly served as codebreakers during World War II—a "prodigiously researched and engrossing" (New York Times) book that "shines a light on a hidden chapter of American history" (Denver Post).
Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While...
Book cover for "Death cloud"
Star rating for Death cloud
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously "unwell," fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain.
Book cover for "The five"
Star rating for The five
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and of the Goodreads Choice Award for History & Biography
The award-winning, best-selling book that changes the narrative of the "Ripper" murders forever

Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from some of London's wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods, from the factory towns of middle England,...
Book cover for "Fly girls"
Star rating for Fly girls
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"High adventure and high ideals merge when a corps of intrepid female aviators battle to take part in the hugely popular air shows of the 1920s and 1930s. Ultimately, one of our heroines would win a race that earned her the right to be called America's best pilot"--
Book cover for "Hero of two worlds"
Star rating for Hero of two worlds
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Few in history can match the breadth and depth of the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought as one with righteous revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic. As an idealistic and courageous teenager serving in the American Revolution, he used his considerable wealth and savvy to help the Americans defeat the British. Then he returned home, and was a principal...
Book cover for "King's mountain"
Star rating for King's mountain
Series:
Ballad novels volume 10.
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"John Sevier had not taken much interest in the American Revolution, he was too busy fighting Indians in the Carolinas and taming the wilderness. But when an arrogant British officer threatened his settlement--promising to burn the farms and kill families--the war became personal. That arrogant officer is Patrick Ferguson of the British Army--who is both charmingly antagonistic and surprisingly endearing. Inventor of the Ferguson rifle, and the devoted...
Book cover for "The kitchen front"
Star rating for The kitchen front
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses; the Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is putting on a cooking contest--and the grand prize is a job as the program's first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the contest presents a crucial chance to change...
Book cover for "The last bookshop in London"
Star rating for The last bookshop in London
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler's forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and drawn curtains that she finds on her arrival are not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she'd wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling...
Book cover for "Magic lessons"
Star rating for Magic lessons
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"In [a] ... novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, ... author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic"--
Book cover for "Soulless"
Star rating for Soulless
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Buffy meets Jane Austen in the first book of this wickedly funny NYT bestselling series about a young woman whose brush with the supernatural leads to a deadly investigation of London's high society.
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social...
Book cover for "Stay where you are & then leave"
Star rating for Stay where you are & then leave
Description:
Four years after Alfie Summerfield's father left London to become a soldier in World War I he has not returned but Alfie, now nine, is shining shoes at King's Cross Station when he happens to learn that his father is at a nearby hospital being treated forshell shock.
Book cover for "The taking of Jemima Boone"
Star rating for The taking of Jemima Boone
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Explores the little-known true story of the kidnapping of legendary pioneer Daniel Boone's daughter and the dramatic aftermath that rippled across the nation"--
Book cover for "Underland"
Star rating for Underland
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:

National Bestseller • New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year" • NPR "Favorite Books of 2019" • Guardian "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" • Kirkus Reviews "Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far)" • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award

"Mesmerizing...Underland is a portal of light in dark times." —Terry Tempest Williams, New York Times Book Review

In Underland,

...
Book cover for "Varina"
Star rating for Varina
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"Her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects the secure life of a Mississippi landowner. Davis instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history"--