BOOKSHELF
September Books
FICTION
The Last Assignment, by Erika Robuck
It’s the fall of 1956 and award-winning but often-maligned combat photojournalist Georgette “Dickey” Chapelle works for the International Rescue Committee — started by Albert Einstein during the Second World War — to bring the plight of the world’s war refugees to the attention of the American people. Still grieving the death of her mother, just two years after the death of her father, and in the midst of a prolonged and painful separation from her philandering husband, Dickey identifies deeply with displaced people — particularly women, children and orphans. After a refugee rescue goes wrong, Dickey finds herself imprisoned in a Soviet camp, and it’s there that a flame is lit deep inside her to show the world what war really means. Her journey places Dickey in the most perilous of dangers where she realizes that, in trying to galvanize support to save oppressed peoples, she is saving herself.
Saltcrop, by Yume Kitasei
In Earth’s not too distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother. But then her eldest sister, Nora, who left home a decade ago in pursuit of a cure for the world’s failing crops, goes missing. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find, and save, Nora. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister’s work and the corporations that want what she has discovered. The farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister — or each other?
NONFICTION
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys, by Mariana Enriquez
Fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager, Enriquez visits them frequently on her travels around the world. When the body of a friend’s mother who was “disappeared” during Argentina’s military dictatorship is found in a common grave, Enriquez begins to examine the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest. She journeys across North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting Paris’ catacombs, Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery, New Orleans’ above-ground mausoleums and the opulent Recoleta in her hometown of Buenos Aires. Enriquez investigates each cemetery’s history and architecture, its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors, and, of course, its dead. Fascinating and spooky, weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, myths, hauntology, personal photographs, and more, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave reveals as much about Enriquez’s own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards she tours.
The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed and Happiness, by Morgan Housel
Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Investing, personal finance and business decisions are typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Fox and the Mystery Letter, by Alex G. Griffiths
Fox has a mystery to solve — and a friendship to fix! In the dense forest, in a lonely cottage, there lives Fox. Fox is perfectly happy all by himself until one day, a letter arrives: “Dear Fox: I know how much you enjoy puzzles. I bet you can’t resist this one . . . Head to the forest path to begin your journey. From an old friend.” Fox doesn’t need any mysterious puzzles or adventures . . . still, it can’t hurt to look at the first clue. Of course, one clue leads to the next. Fox follows arrows in the mud; notes taped to trees; swirling smoke signals; a map from a bottle; and gifts from fellow animals — on the trail of a friendship that once was. (Ages 3-5.)
A Spoonful of the Sea, by Hyewon Yum
On her birthday, a girl is presented with a bowl of miyeokguk — seaweed soup — instead of the cake she wants. As she stirs her soup, her mother tells her how mothers eat it after giving birth and how it is served on birthdays to honor them; about haenyeo — women who dive into the ocean’s depths to harvest shellfish and seaweed; and how, many mothers ago, a pregnant haenyeo saw a whale eating seaweed after giving birth and tried it after having her own baby — creating a tradition that would continue for generations of daughters to come. In her picture book Yum has crafted a luminous and heartfelt celebration of motherhood, heritage, and the deep-rooted connection between women and nature. (Ages 4-8.)
Henry Is an Artist, by Justin Worsley
Henry is a dedicated artist, a master sculptor, and . . . a dog. Each day on his walks to the park, he leaves his new “art” for people to admire. But his sculptures keep getting tossed in the garbage without even being noticed! That is until, one day, when someone quite unexpectedly falls in love with his work and, at last, Henry has his moment to shine. This truly unique picture book about creativity, perseverance, and, well, poop, is a hilarious ode to undiscovered artists everywhere. (Ages 4-8.)