LibraryReads is published monthly listing the top ten books published that month that librarians across the country love.  The purpose is to connect our favorite books to as many readers as possible.  “And to showcase the incredible power that public library staff has in helping to building word-of-mouth for new books, and the important role we play in creating audiences for all kinds of authors.”

               

Anyone who is regularly employed in a U.S. public library may participate by nominating books.  Whatever ten books get the most nominations goes on the list.  The book with the most nominations of all becomes the #1 pick.  These books are published throughout the month so not all the books on the October list are immediately available. 

 

The top book is “Seven Days of Us” by Francesca Hornak which seems very appropriate for the upcoming holiday season.  The Birch family is stuck in quarantine over the holidays when the eldest daughter returns from relief work in Liberia.  Seven days secluded with your family members is a new experience for the family, one that is both antagonistic and beneficial. 

               

“The Last Mrs. Parrish” by Liv Constantine involves a happily married wife with a beautiful home and family who finds a kindred spirit in Amber after her sister’s death, but nothing is as it seems.  Wiley Cash returns with “The Last Ballad” about a “little-know union hero Ella May Wiggins…during the late 1920s.  The stories of Ella, her children and friends woven throughout cement Cash’s place among our great living writers.”

               

“From Here to Eternity” by Caitlin Doughty follows “America’s favorite mortician on a tour of death cultures around the world… Honest, yet gentle and with the appropriate amount of humor.  Doughty makes the morbid very readable.”  While actress, Gabrielle Union, “touches on so many topics, including infidelity, women’s sexual health, and teaching young black men to protect themselves in a world that fears them” in “We’re Going to need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True.”

               

Tom Hanks makes the LibraryReads list with his collection of short stories, “Uncommon Type.”  “Hanks writes about characters that he would love to play in the movies had they been written.”

               

Best-selling authors Joe Hill, Alice Hoffman, Diane Chamberlain and Jennifer Egan made the October list with “Strange Weather,” “The Rules of Magic,” “The Stolen Marriage,” and “Manhattan Beach.”

               

The list usually appears in the middle of the previous month at libraryreads.org.  Older lists are still available and are a great source for reading materials.