The Alienist
by Caleb Carr
A serial killer is butchering boy prostitutes in New York City. Police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt enlists a reporter and groundbreaking psychologist (known as an "alienist" in 1896) to track the killer by compiling his psychological profile.
Fast-paced and gripping, infused with a historian's exactitude, The Alienist conjures up the Gilded Age and its untarnished underside: seedy tenements and opulent mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. Here is a New York during an age when questioning society's belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and mortal consequences.
Step into another time--and unforgettable terror. The year is 1896. The city is New York. The hunt is on for a baffling new kind of criminal--a serial killer. "A first-rate tale of crime and punishment that will keep readers guessing until the final pages."--Entertainment Weekly
"Gripping, atmospheric, intelligent, and entertaining." --USA Today According to Booklist, “this story boasts a veracious historical feel and a tight plot that keeps open the murderer's identity to the end.”
A Million Little Pieces
by James Frey
At the age of 23, James Frey woke up on a plane to find his 4 front teeth had been knocked out. His nose was broken and there was a hole through his cheek. He had no idea where the plane was headed of what happened over the preceding 2 weeks. He had been an alcoholic for 10 years and a crack addict for 3. When he checked into a treatment facility shortly thereafter, he was told he could either stop using or die before he reached 24.
A Million Little Pieces is Frey's acclaimed account of his 6 weeks in rehab, is one of the most graphic and immediate books ever to be written about addiction and recovery. This controversial memoir has been called "the War and Peace of addiction."
Frey narrates with an in-your-face immediacy. You cannot help but feel his sickness, pain, and anger, which is evident through his language. Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest seems an apt comparison for this work. “This book is highly recommended for teens interested in the darker side of human existence.” – School Library Journal
Winner of the National
Book Award
by Jincy Willet
This is the story of two sisters. Abigail Mather, a woman of enormous appetites, and her fraternal twin Dorcas couldn't be more different. Dorcas lives a controlled, dignified life of the mind. Though Abigail exasperates Dorcas, the two love each other. They are an odd pair, set down in an odd Rhode Island town, where everyone has a story to tell, and writers, both published and unpublished, carom off each other like billiard balls.
What is it that makes the two women targets for the new man in town, the charming schlockmeister Conrad Lowe? In Abigail and Dorcas he sees a new and tantalizing challenge. Not the mere conquest of Abigail, with her easy reputation, but a longer and more sinister game; A game that will lead to betrayal, shame and, ultimately, murder.
In her darkly comic and unsettling first novel, Jincy Willett proves that she is a true find: that rare writer who can explore the shadowy side of human nature with the lightest of touches. This is an unusual and wonderful novel that is somehow able to be at once bleak and hilarious, light-hearted and profound.
