[Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders. Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.]

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Since this is April (which includes April Fool’s Day), this month we highlight pseudonyms.

How many of these pen names do you know without cheating? Who is the real writer hiding behind? I’ve read at least one book from each of them.

Joe Hill
How many people know who Joe Hill is?  Once you see his picture there will be no denying his genes.

Robert Galbraith
Everyone knows Robert Galbraith now. When the author started using the name, they hoped to remain anonymous for a long time. They were discovered because a sharp-eyed bookstore employee found language and sentence structure similar in tone to the writer behind the pseudonym.

Benjamin Black
John Banville is someone I look forward to reading with each book he releases. As with Jonathan Carroll, another of my all-time favorite writers, Banville’s elegant prose makes me slow down and marvel at his art. Benjamin Black is his pen name, and he still has the talent to make you stop in the middle of a sentence and take in the magic of his words.

Richard Stark
I had no clue that Stark is Donald Westlake’s most successful pseudonym. I’ve read books authored by both Stark and Westlake and thought they were penned by different people. That’s how impressively Westlake hides behind his pseudonym.

John le Carré
I had no clue that le Carre is a pen name. Upon learning the reason he chose to use a pseudonym, I understand why he did so.

[Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders. Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.]

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Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper
By Geoffrey Gray
I love this story! During Thanksgiving week 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a plane in Portland, Washington bound for Seattle. When in the air, Cooper opened the briefcase he had carried on and showed a flight attendant a bomb he said he had made. He demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. Flight 305 landed in Seattle. Cooper released all the passengers, and the plane took off again. This time it was carrying Cooper, a flight attendant, and three pilots. Cooper demanded to be flown to Mexico. Sometime during the flight, he jumped out of the plane using the plane’s aft stairs. No one ever heard from him again.

Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle
By Marc Gonsalves
In February 2003 three American contractors, Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes, and Keith Stansell were travelling to South America when their plane went down. They survived the plane crash only to be captured and held hostage for over five years by FARC. At just under 500 pages, this book held me in its spell from the first page. Out of Captivity is more than a story of these three people. What initially drew me to their story was the tale of their rescue.

A team of rescuers had infiltrated FARC and had spoken with FARC members who were holding 15 hostages including Marc, Tom, and Keith. The rescuers had made plans with FARC to meet and take the hostages to another location. Even the hostages were unaware of the plan, and it wasn’t until everyone was in the air aboard helicopters that the infiltration team took off their masks and revealed that the hostages were now free and were being taken to a secure location.

Into the Abyss: An Extraordinary True Story
By Carol Shaben
In October 1984 a commuter plane crashed in Alberta, British Columbia, killing six people. Four survived. This is the story of how the four survived and the bonds they made during that time.

When I Fell From the Sky: The True Story of One Woman’s Miraculous Survival
By Juliane Koepcke
Juliane Koepcke’s parents were scientists in the South American jungle. Juliane grew up with an exceptional knowledge of the forest, and this served her well when she was just seventeen. While traveling by plane with her mother back home to South America, the plane flew into a massive thunderstorm and everyone on board died. Juliane was the only survivor, but how she survived is the story. She fell two miles while still strapped into her plane seat and crashed into the leafy canopy of the very forest she grew up in.

Lost Horizon
By James Hilton
Along with The Scarlet Letter, Lost Horizon ranks high on my all-time classics list, in the top five.
Escaping the war in China, passengers on a plane are taken to a valley in the Himalayas where time seems to have stopped. I remember reading Lost Horizon for the first time in 1978 while in eighth grade. As with The Scarlet Letter, I have read the book a few more times since then, and I like it more each time I finish.

[Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders. Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.]

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I know. I know. January had us thinking about Spring with our baseball theme. Now we’re back in winter mode. February is the heart of winter, so why not?

The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel
By Katherine Arden
Fantasy is one of my favorite genres, and like Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment and Kim Wilkins’ The Veil of Gold, The Bear and the Nightingale is a folklore tale set in old Russia (the 14^th century). Young Vasya joins the Frost King to save her village.

A Winter’s Tale
By Mark Helprin
The New York Times singled out A Winter’s Tale as one of the best works of American fiction published in the late 20th century. It’s not difficult to understand why with its timeless themes of love, the human spirit, and New York City. A theme that caught my interest is the subplot of Peter Lake’s multiple lives, as I firmly believe in past lives.

Snow
By John Banville
John Banville has long been one of my go-to writers since I first read The Book of Evidence years ago. It looks like Snow is going to be a new series with Detective John Strafford. Strafford is called to Wexford Ireland to investigate the death of a priest during the middle of a snowstorm. Will he unravel the mystery? Banville is a master (like William Trevor) of intellectual fiction without pretense. Don’t miss out on either writer.

Endurance
By Alfred Lansing
Endurance is the story of Ernest Shackleton’s plan to cross Antarctica on foot. This is a heart-pounding book.

The Night Circus
By Erin Morgenstern
Some debut novels stay with you long after you have read them, and The Night Circus is a book that continues to resonate in my heart and mind. Filled with my favorite magic, The Night Circus unfolds in a different town every night. Two young magicians take center stage in this story as one competes to better the other. As sometimes happens with two competitors, Celia and Marco develop feelings for each other. This does not bode well.

[Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders. Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.]

If you consider the pitchers and catchers report in February, America’s pastime is right around the corner and spring can’t be far behind. With that in mind, baseball is my theme for January this year. Six books this month as opposed to my normal five. The first three are fiction and the second three are nonfiction and Red Sox-centric.

Fiction:

Shoeless Joe
By W.P. Kinsella
The book that’s the basis for Field of Dreams.

The Natural
By Bernard Malamud
Robert Redford starred in the movie adaptation.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Stephen King’s tale of a girl lost in the woods and pitcher Tom Gordon’s presence guiding her through the stress.

Nonfiction:

Feeding the Monster
By Seth Mnookin
This is the early 2000s story of how The Boston Red Sox came to win in 2004 and 2007 and remained contenders.

The Teammates
By David Halberstam
A last road trip made my old Red Sox players visit Ted Williams in Florida before he passed.

Bottom of the 33^rd
By Dan Barry
The longest game in history.

[Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders. Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.]

Gary Braver
Gary Braver and I have been friends for several years now. He even wrote a glowing review of my book Arrivals and Departures.

I have read many of Gary’s books:
Elixir
Flashback
Skin Deep
Tunnel Vision

And his latest:
Rumor of Evil

Each one is a page-turner. For personal reasons, I resonate mostly with Tunnel Vision because it deals with a topic I intimately believe in.

Ben Mezrich
I discovered Mr. Mezrich upon reading Bringing Down the House about the college students who beat the odds at casinos. Another non-fiction book of his that I enjoyed was The 37^th Parallel.

Jack Finney
Time travel fiction is another one of my favorite sub-genres. It can be wildly entertaining and obsessively read. Time and Again and From Time to Time are two of Finney’s books about time travel that are not to be missed!

Ben Bova
Ben Bova is one of my favorite “hard” science fiction writers. By hard science, I mean that he writes science-fact-based fiction. Bova has written books about every planet in our solar system. If pressed against a wall, I’d have to say that Mars is my favorite planet book. Everything he writes is worth reading, however.

Charles DeLint
I recall being introduced to Charles DeLint in the late 1980s and early 1990s through Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. DeLint always appeared in these year-end books.

DeLint writes about a fictional town in Canada called Newford. I’ve read several of his Newford books and each one is better than the last. DeLint has populated his town with a set of characters and in each book, a different set of characters takes precedence, yet all the townspeople show up in every book. The Newford titles (in chronological order) are:

The Dreaming Place
From a Whisper to a Scream
Dreams Underfoot
I’ll Be Watching You
Memory and Dream
The Ivory and the Horn
Trader
Someplace to Be Flying
Moonlight and Vines
The Newford Stories
Forests of the Heart
The Onion Girl
Seven Wild Sisters
Tapping the Dream Tree
Spirits in the Wires
A Circle of Cats
Medicine Road
The Blue Girl
The Hour Before Dawn
Widdershins
Promises to Keep
Old Man Crow
Dingo
Muse and Reverie
Juniper Wiles
Juniper Wiles and the Ghost Girls

I haven’t read the whole series, but those I have read have kept me in rapt attention and I highly recommend them. Mr. DeLint also writes stand-alone books and I’ve read several of those as well.

Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders. Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.

Write it When I’m Gone
Thomas DeFrank

An excellent read for anyone who grew up during the Watergate era, as this book brings up some humorous memories of President Ford’s time in office, as well as some of the more serious tones of the era. One of my favorite things about reading history that happened when I was growing up is being able to say, “Yeah. I remember that.”

Write It When I’m Gone was just all-out fun because I was able to identify with the period being discussed in the book. It is also a valuable piece of literature for those who didn’t grow up during the time, as they can get a glimpse of what was happening during the Watergate era and beyond.

JFK and the Unspeakable
James W. Douglass

Fred R., one of Scranton Library’s regular members who also belongs to a library book club, recommended JFK and the Unspeakable to me. What a book! One of the reasons I connect with the book is that Thomas Merton, someone with whom I also have a deep connection, parallels the story here.

Another theory as to why JFK was assassinated:
During his short time in office, President Kennedy made a slow but determined shift toward seeking peace. This focus angered the military, his Joint Chiefs, and others in his administration. The anger finally boiled over into the planning and carrying out of JFK’s assassination.

Many facts in the book back up the author’s theory. This book is easy to read and was educational for me. Check it out.

The Last of the President’s Men
Bob Woodward

History is one of my favorite nonfiction genres, especially recent history that happened in my lifetime. One of my favorite eras to read about is President Nixon’s time in office: All the President’s Men. Now we come full circle with Bob Woodward’s (perhaps) final story about that time in the volatile 1970s: The Last of the President’s Men. Alexander Butterfield is the subject of Woodward’s latest book.  What’s fascinating about Butterfield is that he’s the man who installed the secret taping in the Nixon White House, the very system that helped bring down the Nixon Presidency.

Before Butterfield became a Nixon confidant, he was “stuck” in Australia. Wanting back in the game, he gambled on contacting an old friend in Washington, DC who was part of the new Nixon Administration.  Butterfield had known his friend Bob Haldeman for some time, and he contacted Haldeman to inquire about any openings on the Nixon team. Initially, there was nothing available until Haldeman created a position for Butterfield.

That first month in the Nixon White House was anything but smooth for Butterfield, as he came to realize how bizarre President Nixon behaved. But it didn’t take long for the two of them to develop a rapport. If you’re a Watergate aficionado, and you think you’ve seen it and read it all, this book will close the final chapter in that history. Worth the read.

Rawhide Down
Del Quentin Wilber

One of my favorite things about reading recent history books is knowing I lived through the time and can recognize the events. Rawhide Down is a case in point. Del Quentin Wilber does a fantastic job reconstructing the events leading up to and occurring after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Wilber goes into great detail about John Hinckley’s planned trip to DC. This is one finely written and meticulously researched book for anyone interested in knowing what happened during and immediately following the assassination attempt. 

Here are this month’s great recommendations from staff member Christopher Jennings Penders! Click on a title to place a hold. You can find previous Chris Picks through the “What to read” link at the bottom of this page or type “Chris Picks” into the search bar on our homepage.

Changing things up a bit for October. Since October is Halloween month, I will suggest a few haunted house movies that I like, along with a few scary books.

Movies You Don’t Want to Miss

These are my top four haunted house movies of all time. Everything happens psychologically, which I find more frightening than the gratuitous films being produced today. It’s what you don’t see that’s more frightening.

The Changeling with George C. Scott
One of my four all-time favorite haunted house movies (the other three are below) tells the story of John Russell, a man who lost his wife and child in a horrific automobile accident. To recover from the tragedy, John moves to Washington State and purchases a house that is later found to have a ghostly presence.

The Uninvited
Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey star as a brother and sister who buy a house on the cliffs of Cornwall, only to discover they are not the only occupants. Another psychological ghost story along the same lines as “The Changeling.”

The Haunting (Robert Wise version)
As you can probably tell by now, I’m a fan of psychological horror. “The Haunting,” directed by Robert Wise (NOT the remake), is the movie to see.

The Innocents with Deborah Kerr
Kerr stars as a new governess who comes to watch over two orphans who may be haunted by ghostly spirits.

Books

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostava

The Historian is an adventure and so much fun to read. The book opens with a series of mysterious letters and the search for the protagonist’s father. An exciting book and one I simply couldn’t put down. The length of this book may be intimidating to some, but PLEASE don’t let that prevent you from traveling down the path that leads you through this book.

There are not many books that have so enthralled me. When I came to the last hundred fifty pages of this book, I slowed WAY down because I didn’t want The Historian to end. As with many books I feel strongly about, I stopped reading for a while in order to digest the amazing nature of this piece of historical fantasy.

I cannot recommend this book more.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu

Many believe that Dracula marks the first appearance of the vampire in modern fiction. They’d be wrong.  Carmilla by LeFanu actually preceded Dracula by over twenty years.

I first read Carmilla many years ago, probably when I was in high school. The story left such a lasting impression on me because, like so many others, I wasn’t aware that there was another vampire book before Dracula.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Turn of the Screw is the basis for the above movie, The Innocents.

The Haunting of Hill by House Shirley Jackson is also the premise for The Haunting.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
The Ebola outbreak in Reston, Virginia is documented in The Hot Zone. Exciting and distressing at the same time, this book definitely held my attention. In minute detail, Mr. Preston describes the horrifying effects of the Ebola virus on humanity. Even though Preston gets down and dirty, that didn’t prevent me from turning page after page. Reading the details may well have spurred me on.

Like slowing down at an accident scene, I couldn’t help gaping at the details Mr. Preston continued to build on. That is a testament to a well-written and well-researched manuscript.

Let me just warn you upfront that The Hot Zone does its job very well, sucking you in and at the same time creating an aversion effect.

I couldn’t stop reading while wanting to look away as well.

Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
Picking up where The Hot Zone kind of left off, Demon in the Freezer is almost more engrossing and more terrifying. It tells the story of Smallpox and where the virus is kept at secret locations in freezers around the world. Thus, the title.

The virus disappeared from the world. However, it is kept hidden away and in fact, in some places, it is so well hidden that no one appears to know exactly where it is. That in itself is terrifying. Along with The Hot Zone, read Demon in the Freezer at your own peril. You won’t see the world the same way again. Another engrossing and thrilling read that I simply could not stop reading. I think you’ll feel the same way.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman wrote an unsettling short book in Coraline. It in no way means that I didn’t enjoy the book. I did. It wasn’t a book I expected from Gaiman, having read most of his fiction prior to Coraline. Part haunted house story, this book is the first taste I had of Neil Gaiman going dark. Should you want something lighter after reading Coraline, I think Neil Gaiman’s best work to date is:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Gaiman continues to pull off his magic.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a bit different from Gaiman’s other books in that the book can almost be read in one sitting. It is, I believe, the shortest book of his career. That doesn’t mean he skimped. Far from it. Gaiman made the book the perfect length. Infused with a child-like atmosphere, there is also just enough suspense to keep adults riveted as well. One thing Mr. Gaiman never has a challenge with is ending his books. This one is no exception. Pick up this quick little book and I guarantee you’ll be happier for it. This is my favorite book he has written, and that’s saying quite a bit.