Staff Recommendations

STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS
Gina's Gems	Mom & Dad Picks - Even Mom and Dad need a good book from time to time. . .ACP offers a nice selection of regular fiction and non-fiction for “grown ups.”

The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
	Attention Historical Fiction Fans - Rejoice! The ever magnificent Geraldine Brooks has created yet another mesmerizing tale to savor -- inspired in part upon the actual Sarajevo Haggadah. *The People of the Book* opens with Hannah Heath, our heroine manuscript conservator. In her efforts to discover the history of the mysterious five-hundred year old tome, we follow along and are swept into its imagined travels as the book is passed from one caretaker to another. Sea salt, a butterfly's wing, Persian cats, and rare gemstones each in turn provide clues as to how this illuminated book has survived. A delightful mystery wrapped in historical lore!
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
	Do you enjoy stories of intrigue? Then please, by all means, give *The Reluctant Fundamentalist* a spin! This slim volume describes a brief exchange between our protagonist, Changez and an identified American "tourist." As our narrator shares the events leading up to this encounter, the reader beguns to wonder: What is real? Are people what they seem? Prior to September 11, Changez appears to be living the immigrant's dream of America in NYC. But soon after, this young Pakistani scholar finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, which unearths allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love. The story is electric and riveting!
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
	*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao* is like no book I have ever read: part history of the Domincan Republic, part recognition of the inner misfit we each harbor, part homage to the author's own sci-fi geekdome, ALL amazingly innovative, raw, hilarious, and wonderfully weird. This book will appeal to the reader who enjoys the bizarre. I loved it!
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
	Move over McCarthy, Atwood, and Huxley...here comes Winterson with the dystopian novel to knock everyone's socks off! Mankind has rendered its planet unlivable and is beginning to colonize a new Blue Planet. Our heroine Billie Crusoe's flight to the future is also a return to the distant past - "Everything is imprinted forever with what once was." What begins as a witty, satirical futurist adventure deepens into a dazzling exploration of our own relationsihp to environment, to power, technology, and to what defines us as humans.
The Sharper your knife, the less you cry by Kathleen Flinn
	I'm a Foodie, you're a Foodie! We're all Foodies! But unlike author Flinn, most of us will not have the opportunity to wake up at age 36, be downsized from our jobs, take our life savings, move to France and enroll in the famous Cordon Bleu Culinary School to train as a chef! *The Sharper your Knife...* is such a vicariously thrilling tale of one person's dream come true. I enjoyed every morsel!
Previous