#RAMonday: Read-Alike Monday- Why Not Me?

Every Monday we will pick a popular book to highlight and make a list of books that are similar for you to enjoy. Click on the book's title to be linked to the catalog where you can see if the book is available or place a hold for it. This week's book is Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling.

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling.
In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

READ-ALIKES:

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true.

Like Why Not Me, Bossypants is a hilarious account of a strong woman making her way in the world of comedy.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor.

Similar to Mindy Kaling, Jenny Lawson shows us the funny and sometimes painfully awkward side of life in her work.

Self Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation by Aisha Tyler

Aisha Tyler serves up a spectacular collection of her own self-inflicted wounds. From almost setting herself on fire to going into crushing debt to pay for college and then throwing away her degree to become a comedian, Aisha's life has been a series of spectacularly epic fails. And she's got the scars to prove it. Literally.

Aisha's laugh out loud memoir shows us how you have to fail sometimes in order to succeed. 

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that "every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section". 

This book differs from Why Not Me in that it is not so much about making your way in Hollywood as it is a book about growing up and making your way in the world. However, the humor and tone of the stories will remind you of Kaling's memoir.

Yes Please by Amy Poehler
In Amy Poehler’s highly anticipated first book, Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious. Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.

Like Kaling, Poheler is another powerful and awesome woman in comedy. Her memoir describes how she got into comedy and how she's succeeded in it.

JUNIOR DETECTIVES, TAKE NOTE

Mystery lovers start early.  Beginning with Nate the Great, Cam Jansen & Encyclopedia Brown through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, young readers  sleuth along with their favorite detectives or solve the case in stand-alone stories.  Both the Mystery Writers Association and Malice Domestic recognize that juvenile mysteries represent a valid category and award prizes in Children’s and Young Adult every year.  This year’s nominees for books published in 2015 offer cozy and gritty, sleuths from today and yesteryear (even one dog) and puzzles most ingenious. 

Edgar Award nominees – sponsored by the Mystery Writers’ Association

Best Juvenile

 Catch You Later,Traitor by Avi

Well-known children’s author Avi, who is known for his award-winning historical fiction and animal adventures, also writes mysteries.  This time it's 1951, and twelve-year-old Pete Collison is a regular kid in Brooklyn, New York, who loves Sam Spade detective books and radio crime dramas. But when an FBI agent shows up at Pete's doorstep, accusing Pete's father of being a Communist, Pete is caught in a real-life mystery. Could there really be Commies in Pete's family?

If You Find This by Matthew Baker

When the grandfather he never knew is released from prison suffering from dementia, eleven-year-old Nicholas, a mathematical and musical genius, tries to save the family's home by helping search for heirlooms Grandpa claims to have buried.

The Shrunken Head by Lauren Oliver

The author of popular paranormal suspense for teens and adults throws in a mystery in her new series The Curiosity House. Orphans Philippa, Sam, Thomas, and Max  must find out who stole a valuable artifact in order to save to save their home, Dumfrey's Dime Museum of Freaks, Oddities, and Wonders.

The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands

In 1665 London, fourteen-year-old Christopher Rowe, apprentice to an apothecary, and his best friend, Tom, try to uncover the truth behind a mysterious cult, following a trail of puzzles, codes, pranks, and danger toward an unearthly secret with the power to tear the world apart.

Footer Davis Probably is Crazy by Susan Vaught

Eleven-year-old Footer and her friends investigate when a nearby farm is burned, the farmer murdered, and his children disappear, but as they follow the clues, Footer starts having flashbacks and wonders if she is going crazy like her mother, who is back in a mental institution near their Mississippi home.

Best Young Adult

  

Endangered by L.R. Giles

When Lauren (Panda), a teen photoblogger, gets involved in a deadly game, she has to protect the classmates she despises.

A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

Near the turn of the nineteenth century, Dr. Thornhollow helps teenaged Grace Mae escape from the Boston asylum where she was sent after becoming pregnant by rape, and takes her to Ohio, where they put her intelligence and remarkable memory to use in trying to catch murderers.

The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury

For four years sixteen-year-old Twylla has lived in the castle of Lormere, as the Goddess embodied, whose touch can poison and kill, and hence the Queen's executioner--but when Prince Merek, her betrothed, who is immune to her touch returns to the kingdom she finds herself caught up in palace intrigues, unsure if she can trust him or the bodyguard who claims to love her.

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

Orianna and Violet are ballet dancers and best friends, but when the ballerinas who have been harassing Violet are murdered, Orianna is accused of the crime and sent to a juvenile detention center where she meets Amber and they experience supernatural events linking the girls together.

Ask the Dark by Henry Turner

To keep his family in their home, fourteen-year-old juvenile delinquent Billy Zeets does odd jobs to raise money, but when he tries to locate a missing schoolmate for the reward, Billy inadvertently makes himself the target of a serial killer.

Agatha Award Nominees – sponsored by Malice Domestic

Best Children’s /Young Adult

  

Pieces and Players by Blue Balliett

This series of  Chicago based, art themed mysteries continues when thirteen high-value pieces of art are stolen from a secret museum, Calder, Petra, and Tommy are grouped with two new companions to solve puzzles that are complicated by the clever Mrs. Sharpe.

Need by Joelle Charbonneau

In this exploration of the dark side of social media, and government control and manipulation, the teenagers in a small town are drawn deeper and deeper into a social networking site that promises to grant their every need--regardless of the consequences.  Be careful what you wish for – you might just get it.

Andi Unstoppable by Amanda Flower

Andi Boggs and her best friend Colin Carter return to solve another mystery in her adopted small town home.   School has begun for the two Killdeer middle-schoolers, and their science teacher has a great idea. He is a birder and wants his class to share in the fun. In a birding group with Colin and her biggest school rival, Ava, Andi sets out to be the first student in class to spot the elusive Kirtland's Wrabler...but end up spotting the town's resident ghost instead! Good clean fun harking back to Nancy Drew type mysteries.

Woof: a Bowser and Birdie Novel by Spencer Quinn

Bowser is a mutt, just adopted by eleven-year-old Birdie Gaux and her grandmother, but when they all get home to Grammy's bait and tackle shop in the bayou they discover that their prize stuffed marlin has been stolen--so Bowser decides to investigate, and things quickly become complicated and dangerous. Spencer Quinn has also written the bestselling Chet and Bernie  mysteries for adult dog lovers and, as PeterAbrahams, the award-winning Echo Falls mysteries

Fighting Chance by B.K. Stevens

When his coach and mentor is killed at a tae kwon do tournament, seventeen-year-old Matt Foley suspects that it was not a tragic accident, but deliberate murder, and investigates himself. 

#RAMonday: Read-Alike Monday- The Girl on the Train

Every Monday we will pick a popular book to highlight and make a list of books that are similar for you to enjoy. Click on the book's title to be linked to the catalog where you can see if the book is available or place a hold for it. This week's book is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

READ-ALIKES:

Losing You by Nicci French

Nina Landry is supposed to be taking her two children on a Christmas holiday today. But the road away from Sandling Island seems littered with obstacles. Most pressing of all, her 15-year-old daughter, Charlie, has yet to return from a night out ...Minute by minute, Nina's unease builds to worry and then panic. Has Charlie run away? Or has something more sinister happened to her? And why will nobody take her disappearance seriously? As a series of half-buried secrets lead Nina from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas - and more whether they'll ever leave it again.

In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien

This riveting novel of love and mystery examines the lasting impact of the twentieth century’s legacy of violence and warfare, both at home and abroad. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival, his wife mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love--all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. 

Welcome to Christine's life.

Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm

On the grubby outskirts of Paris, Grace restores bric-a-brac, mends teapots, re-sets gems. She calls herself Julie, says she’s from California, and slips back to a rented room at night. Regularly, furtively, she checks the hometown paper on the Internet. Home is Garland, Tennessee, and there, two young men have just been paroled. One, she married; the other, she’s in love with. Both were jailed for a crime that Grace herself planned in exacting detail. The heist went bad—but not before she was on a plane to Prague with a stolen canvas rolled in her bag. And so, in Paris, begins a cat-and-mouse waiting game as Grace’s web of deception and lies unravels—and she becomes another young woman entirely.

One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis

An apparently happy marriage. A beautiful son. A lovely home. So what makes Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life to start all over again? Has she had a breakdown? Was it to escape her dysfunctional family - especially her flawed twin sister Caroline who always seemed to hate her? And what is the date that looms, threatening to force her to confront her past? No one has ever guessed her secret. Will you?

#RAMonday: Read-Alike Monday- The Nightingale

Every Monday we will pick a popular book to highlight and make a list of books that are similar for you to enjoy. Click on the book's title to be linked to the catalog where you can see if the book is available or place a hold for it. This week's chosen book is The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The Nightingale came out in February of 2015 and we have not been able to keep it on the shelves since then! This book has remained popular with a wide audience because of it's great story and well developed characters. 

This book is about two sisters struggling to survive during World War II in France. One sister is rebellious and intent on fighting for France. The other simply wants to survive the war with her family intact. Both sisters learn who they are and what they are capable of as the war wages on.

READ-ALIKES:

 Motherland by Maria Hummel This page-turning novel focuses on the Kappus family: Frank is a reconstructive surgeon who lost his beloved wife in childbirth and two months later married a young woman who must look after the baby and his two grieving sons when he is drafted into medical military service. When one child begins to mentally unravel, Liesl must discover the source of the boy’s infirmity or lose him forever to Hadamar, the infamous hospital for “unfit” children. 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr This winner of the Pulitzer Prize is about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

The Undertaking by Audrey Magee In a desperate bid to escape the trenches of the Eastern front, Peter, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina, a woman he has never met. With ten days’ leave secured, Peter visits his new wife in Berlin and both are surprised by the passion that develops between them. As Peter heads to war, Katharina ruthlessly works her way into Nazi high society, wedding herself, her young husband, and her unborn child to the regime. But when the tide of war turns and Berlin falls, Peter and Katharina find their simple dream of family cast in tragic light.

The Wind is Not a River by Brian Payton The Wind Is Not a River is Brian Payton's gripping tale of survival and an epic love story in which a husband and wife—separated by the only battle of World War II to take place on American soil—fight to reunite in Alaska's starkly beautiful Aleutian Islands.

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally In 1915, Naomi and Sally Durance, two spirited Australian sisters, join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father’s farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Amid the carnage, the sisters’ tenuous bond strengthens as they bravely face extreme danger and hostility—sometimes from their own side. There is great humor and compassion, too, and the inspiring example of the incredible women they serve alongside. In France, each meets an exceptional man, the kind for whom she might relinquish her newfound independence— if only they all survive.

The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian Hoping to safeguard themselves from the ravages of World War II within the walls of their ancient villa in Florence, the noble Rosatis family become prisoners in their home when eighteen-year-old Cristina's courtship by a German lieutenant prompts the Nazis to take over the estate, a situation that leads to a serial murder investigation years later.