Meet Our Mystery Dates! The Complete Book List

Thank you to everyone who enjoyed going out on a Mystery Date With a Book this month! If you didn’t get a chance to check out our display, or if you’re just curious to know what books we selected, here’s a complete list of our mystery picks, along with the library staff member who recommended them. Add them to your Goodreads list. Happy reading!

Selected by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Head, Humanities Section and Librarian for Literature and Theater Studies:

Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness: “What does an octopus think about?”

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto: “What connects an opera singer, a group of terrorists, a businessman, and a translator?”

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things: “Seven year old twins are forever changed by one day in 1969.”

Linda Medley, Castle Waiting: “Fairy tale characters, a castle, and intriguing back stories, all told in graphic form.”

Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice, “A warship’s AI becomes trapped in a human body, her goals reduced to one: revenge.”

Selected by Sara Seten Berghausen, Associate Curator of Collections, Rubenstein Library

Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise: “Love and loss in Nazi-occupied France.”

David Sedaris, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: “Dark and wickedly funny animal love stories.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me: “A father’s heartfelt letter to his 16-year-old in an existentially unfair world.”

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones: “A teenage girl and her brothers strive to protect and love one another as Hurricane Katrina looms.”

Selected by Ciara Healy, Librarian for Psychology & Neuroscience, Mathematics, and Physics

Nick Harkaway, Gone Away World: “Two words: Ninjas. Mimes.”

Mable Maney, Nancy Clue and the Hardly Boys in a ghost in the closet: “A retelling of the classic Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. Revisit your favorites!”

Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race: “Insightful writer and thinker on race in America, similar to Roxanne Gay.”

Jasmine Guillory, The Wedding Date: “A woman who goes to a wedding with a man she meets in an elevator.”

Sujata Massey, The Widows of Malabar Hill: “Widows plunges readers into everyday life and frustrations facing women in 1920s India.”

Kim Fu, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore: “Five girls at camp who take a kayaking trip and end up stranded, unchaperoned, on an island.”

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend: “A woman loses her mentor and best friend, and takes on caring for his Great Dane.”

Aminatta Forna, Happiness: “Two strangers in London search for a missing boy.”

Selected by Kelli Stephenson, Coordinator, Access and Library Services

Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand: “A quintessential local and a perpetual foreigner find common ground in a small English village.”

Omar El Akkad, American War: “A second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle.”

John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: “A veteran cold war spy undertakes one last assignment.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet: Read the comics for the most successful superhero movie of all time.

Anderson Cooper, Dispatches from the edge: a memoir of war, disasters and survival: “The story of an extraordinary year (2006) in a reporter’s life.”

John Krakauer, Into Thin Air: a personal account of the Mount Everest disaster: “The definitive account of the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster.”

Selected by Aaron Welborn, Director of Communications

Gabriel Garcia Maquez, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: “What it’s like to be lost at sea, fending off sharks, thirst, and insanity.”

Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road: “Heart-warming long-distance friendship develops over books and the lost art of letter-writing.”

J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country: “A gem of a book: a quaint English village, a WWI vet, and a shimmering summer of youth.”

Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence: “History, travel, and the pleasures of the quiet life. Best savored slowly and antisocially.”

Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever: Stories: “Beautifully written stories about the love of science, and the science of love, set in the 19th century.”

Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: “The strangest museum you’ve never heard of is a real place, and you’re going to be obsessed with it.”

Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia: “Despite what you read in the news, Russia is actually a pretty funny place.”

Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation: “Hilarious, irreverent road trip that brings American history to life (and death).”

Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere: “A love letter to a city 4,000 years old.”

Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World: “A deep dive into deep time offers a glimpse of our possible future.”

Selected by Brittany Wofford, Coordinator for The Edge and Librarian for the Nicholas School of the Environment

Michelle McNamara, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: “A sleep-with-the-lights-on kind of book.”

Naomi Alderman, The Power: “An electrifying read about gender and power.”

Selected by Andrea Loigman, Head, Access and Delivery Services

Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time: “What does a hospitalized detective do to amuse himself in the 1950s England?”

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: “Two cousins’ adventures during the golden age of comic books.”

Selected by Holly Ackerman, Head, International & Area Studies Dept. and Librarian for Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a Studies

Leonardo Padura, Havana Red: “The first of a 5-part detective series set in Cuba.”

Selected by Katie Henningsen, Head of Research Services, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows: “Ocean’s Eleven meets Game of Thrones.”

Selected by Kristina Troost, Librarian for Japanese Studies

Lynne Kutsukake, The Translation of Love: a novel: “A portrait of post-war Japan, where a newly repatriated Japanese Canadian girl must help a classmate find her missing sister.”

Ann Waswo, Damaged Goods: A higher education mystery: “An art fraud investigator based in Tokyo, responds to a request from an old friend and soon arrives at Thaddeus Hall, England.”

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko: “Follows one Korean family through the generations.”

Selected by Megan Crain, Annual Giving Coordinator

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: “A must read for fans of science fiction and Harrison Ford.”

Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: “We all know what it means to survive. But do we know what it means to live in the 21st century?”

Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: “The queen of mystery will keep you guessing until the very end.”

Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: “A childhood classic about family, bravery, and finding light through the darkness.”

Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies: “The true story of three brave sisters who revolt against their nation’s dictator.

Selected by Sarah Park, Librarian for Engineering and Computer Science

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis: “Where are you going?”

Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek: “A recipe for happiness: ‘a glass of wine, a roast chesnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.'”

Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise: “For a phenomenal woman.”

Selected by Lee Sorensen, Librarian for Visual Studies and Dance, Lilly Library

Collin Thurbron, Night of Fire: a novel: “John Banfield and I think this is the best book we’ve read in years. Zen meets Spoon River Anthology.”

Selected by Laura Williams, Head, Music Library

Tom Brothers, Help! : the Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the magic of collaboration: “About the collaborative relationships among the members of each of these famous music groups and identifies collaboration as key to creating the distinctive sound and lasting legacy of each.”

Selected by Keegan Trofatter, Communications & Development Student Assistant

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend, “Being a smart (like really smart) girl in a rough Italian neighborhood is easier with a friend by your side—or is it?”

Neil Gaiman, American Gods, “My favorite part of a cross country road-trip? A bunch of gods fighting one another.