What Not To Skip For Adult Summer Reading

What Not to Skip...Science Fiction

Science Fiction or "Sci Fi" stories are about or based upon real or imagined scientific theories or technology (Gale CENGAGE Learning). Settings can include the future, outer space with alien creatures, time travel, or alternative realities and parallel dimensions.

Science Fiction differs from fantasy in that fantasy is rooted in mythology, folklore, or the supernatural. However, many stories incorporate both fantasy and sci-fi.

Space travel, computers, telecommunications, surveillance, robots, cloning...interestingly, what was once science fiction is now reality.

Dare to indulge yourself in the possibilities of the future by reading one of the sci-fi books listed below:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author ofThe Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers ofOryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again. The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief. With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.



Gravity by Tess Gerritsen
An organism harmless on earth where it is subject to gravity terrorizes a research station in space. Scientists die violently and from their insides spill creatures that are part human, part frog and part mouse. A medical thriller by the author of Bloodstream.




True Believer by Nicholas Sparks
As a science journalist with a regular column in Scientific American, Jeremy Marsh specializes in debunking the supernatural and has a real nose for the strange and unusual. A born skeptic, he travels to the small town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, determined to find the real cause behind the ghostly apparitions that appear in the town cemetery. What he doesn't plan on, however, is meeting and falling hopelessly in love with Lexie Darnell, granddaughter of the town psychic. Now, if the young lovers are to have any kind of future at all, Jeremy must make a difficult choice: return to the life he knows, or do something he could never do before-take a giant leap of faith.




Ilium by Dan Simmons
From the Hugo Award-winning author of the Hyperion Cantos comes the first book of a breathtaking new saga based on the themes of Homer's "The Iliad" and Shakespeare's "The Tempest"--a groundbreaking work from a "magnificently original" ("Denver Post") writer.

Pit Stop Books for the Adult Summer Reading Club

How to find Pit Stop books for the Adult Summer Reading Club

Two Pit Stop categories for the Race Into Reading Adult Summer Reading Club race track are Short Stories and Plays. We've made it easy to find a wide variety of titles for both categories in our PAC (online Public Access Catalog). Just follow these simple instructions...

1. Click on the arrow on the "Limit By" field and scroll down until you see Plays or Short Stories (the category headings are in alphabetical order). Click on either.


2. After you click on Plays or Short Stories, an asterisk will appear in the "Keyword search for" field. Click on Go!

You can choose from 291 items in the Plays category and 597 items in the Short Stories category

What Not To Skip For Adult Summer Reading

What not to skip...Sustainable Living

In 2007, CDPL *added over 300 books featuring ideas, issues, and instructions on how to live an environmentally responsible life as an individual and as a society. We call this our "Sustainable Living" collection.

Reading just one book from this collection could result in several personal choices that will benefit the world in which your family lives for many, many years.

The top fifteen most circulated books from our Sustainable Living Collection are:

1. Energy Efficient Houses - 696 Ene

2. The Backyard Berry Book: a Hands-on Guide to Growing Berries, Brambles, and Vine Fruit in the Home Garden by Stella Otto - 634.7 Ott

3. Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin - 636.213 Sal

4. Naturally Clean: the Seventh Generation Guide to Safe & Healthy, Non-toxic Cleaning by Jeffrey Hollender - 648.5 Hol

5. Wild Fermentation: the Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz - 641.7 Kat

6. The New Organic Grower: a Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener by Eliot Coleman - 635.0484 Col

7. Build Your Own Earth Oven: a Low-cost, wood-fired Mud Oven, Simple Sourdough Bread, Perfect Loaves for Bakers & Beginners Both by Kiko Denzer - 641.578 Den

8. Little House on a Small Planet: Simple Homes, Cozy Retreats, and Energy Efficient Possibilities by Shay Salomon - 728.37 Sal

9. You Can Farm: the Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farm Enterprise by Joel Salatin - 630.68 Sal

10. Pastured Poultry Profits by Joel Salatin - 636.513 Sal

11. This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader by Joan Dye Gussow - 635.0484 Gus

12. Serve God, Save the Planet: a Christian Call to Action by J. Matthew Sleeth - 261.88 Sle

13. Cottage Economy...by William Cobbett - 630 Cob

14. The $50 and Up Underground House Book by Mike Oehler

15. Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community by H.C. Flores - 631.58 Flo

* Books donated by Chelsea Green Publishers, Envirowatts, Tipmont REMC, and New Society Publishers

What Not To Skip For Adult Summer Reading

What Not To Skip...Westerns

If you are thinking about skipping the Westerns section on the "Race Into Reading" race track... please think again.Consider the "McKettrick Men"series by Linda Lael Miller














Miller's trilogy features the present day descendants of the heroes from her earlier McKettrick novels. Fortunately the new generation fills in admirably. The veteran romance author doesn't disappoint in her sizzling love scenes and fine sense of place. (Publisher's Weekly Review)

Click here to find these books in our catalog

What Not To Skip For Adult Summer Reading

What Not to Skip...Westerns

If you are thinking about skipping the Westerns section on the "Race Into Reading" race track...please think again.

Consider the "Freedom's Path" series by Judith Miller

This series is "A saga of two families that portrays the harsh circumstances and intense courage displayed by African-American sharecroppers and Caucasian men as they formed the towns of Nicodemus and Hill City in the western Kansas prairie during the late nineteenth century"
--Provided by publisher.

Click here to find these books in our catalog

What Not To Skip For Adult Summer Reading

What Not To Skip...Westerns

If you are thinking about skipping the Westerns section on the "Race Into Reading" race track... please think again.

Listed below are some Western stories that explore the human drama and personal discoveries as vast and unpredictable as the western frontier in which they unfold.

A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher
A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration,A Sudden Countryfollows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption. James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson’s Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family. Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family’s safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become. Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans,A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.
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A Gentle Giving by Dorothy Garlock
A New York Times extended list bestselling author, Dorothy Garlock has won acclaim and awards for her unique ability to convey both the romance and reality of frontier America. Here she presents one of her most beloved stories, a tale of two outcasts who must learn to take a leap of faith--and take a chance on love. She had narrowly escaped the lynch mob that unjustly hanged her foster father. Now lonely Willa Hammer has nothing left--except her dog Buddy, her faith in herself, and the protection of a strange, secretive family. She joins their wagon train, headed west . . . never realizing that she is traveling to the wilds of the Big Horn Mountains, where a run-down, intrigue-ridden ranch and the arms of an untamed, hardened cowboy await her. Haunted by his past, Smith Bowman has the power to infuriate Willa and hurt her. But a love greater than the Big Horn can be theirs if they can surrender to the gentle giving of their hearts.
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Autumn Lover by Elizabeth Lowell
Returning to her Wyoming ranch at the Civil War's end, Elyssa Sutton finds it picked bare by scavengers and coveted by determined men. Yet the proud young woman vows never again to abandon her Ruby Mountain home, though it means enlisting the aid of a dark and dangerous stranger who lives for revenge alone. Hunter Maxwell has suffered from the savagery of outlaws and the faithlessness of a woman. And he will trust no female - nor will he rest until the raiders who destroyed his family pay for their crimes. A woman in, need, a man in pain, in fury and fire they must now stand as one to fight for something cherished, something lost ... and for a passion neither dreamed could live. In the brisk chill of Autumn, ravaged hearts will be reborn.
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Sight of the Stars by Belva Plain
New York Times bestselling author Belva Plain beguiles us once again with a novel that explores the bonds that sustain families—and the lies that can shatter them forever. Sweeping through the pivotal events of twentieth-century America, The Sight of the Stars chronicles four generations of one remarkable family as they journey through years of love, loss, sacrifice, and unimaginable betrayal. Dressed in a brand-new suit, with one hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket, Adam Arnring says good-bye to his family and boards a train for the fabled West. The year is 1907. Adam is nineteen years old, a young man with stars in his eyes who has always dreamed of a future in the great open spaces of America. Now, far from his New Jersey home, he takes the first step toward attaining that dream, landing a job in a small department store in a booming Texas town. Here he meets a woman who excites him beyond all measure. The exquisite, untouchable Emma Rothirsch lives in a world whose doors are firmly closed to him. But Adam is a man willing to take great risks to get what he wants. One is Emma. The other is to build a lasting business enterprise that will live on through his children and grandchildren. But just when Adam’s dreams are within reach, fate intervenes. Tragedy strikes from the trenches of World War I, setting in motion a series of events that echo down through the years. The owner of a prospering department store and the head of a growing family, Adam succumbs to a moment of weakness that culminates in an unforgivable act of betrayal. And now, as another generation prepares to take its rightful place in the family’s legendary empire, the tenuous threads of the Arnrings’ past begin to unravel, revealing a shattering secret that reaches back nearly a century. Across a teeming canvas of history, through world wars and the close of a century, The Sight of the Stars tells a deeply affecting story of family and forgiveness, guilt and redemption. Brimming with the emotional depth and moral complexity we have come to expect from this incomparable storyteller, The Sight of the Stars is about what happens when we dare to dream, and the moments that can change families forever.
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