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I read 93 books in 2024! Here are my top five…

 

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the

summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last

seen by her brother Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain

distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come. In Maine, a young girl named Norma

grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams

and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly

comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her.

 

Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in

the middle of the night. She hears a noise—it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow,

coming up the stairs. She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the

shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the

house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for

them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.

 

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely.

Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn

how and when they are going to die.

 

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her

Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world

where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again,

her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym. In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

 

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single

mother, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for

survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

 

Jen Pace Dickenson is the Youth Services Librarian for Polk County Public Libraries. For

information about the library’s resources, programs, and other services, visit polklibrary.org or

call (828) 894-8721.