FINDING FRANKIE by Maeve Binchy

A single young man named Noel is shocked to find that he's going to be a father. He had a brief affair with a woman who now says she's pregnant with his child and is she is terminally ill. Noel is not the best person to become a father for he spends too much time drinking, is a loner, still lives with his parents, and dislikes his "going nowhere"job. To further all these problems the social worker assigned to this case does not want Noel to have baby Frankie and seems to want him to "mess up". But many people want Noel to succeed. Emily, a visiting cousin. is a great help to Noel. People he barely knewant to help take care of Frankie. The community comes together to take turns babysitting when Noel works and attends night school. Everyone loves Frankie and wants Noel to succeed. You find yourself cheering Noel and Frankie on. The author portrays person so true to real life. Enjoyable read.

Room

Amazon's Best of the Month, September 2010

In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, "Room" is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Despite it's profoundly disturbing premise, Emma Donoghue's "Room" is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter "Room" will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time.

Amazon review.

Turtle in Paradise

Life isn't like the movies and eleven-year old Turtle is no Shirley Temple. She's smart, tough and sassy enough to know that life in 1935 doesn't always have a Hollywood ending. Her mother has started a job as a housekeeper for a lady who doesn't like children, so Turtle is sent to live with relatives she has never met in Key West. They are not thrilled to have her and Turtle feels like Little Orphant Annie, out of place and alone. Florida is nothing like New Jersey but Turtle soon adjusts to living with her Aunt Minnie and wild cousins, Kermit, Buddy and Beans. She is introduced to their "Diaper Gang" as they spend their days pulling an old red wagon around babysitting for the neighborhood babies in exchange for candy. Their mysterious secret formula for eliminating diaper rash is legendary and Turtle discovers it even works on mosquito bites. Turtle's cousins' second favorite thing to do is think up wild schemes and go searching for the missing treasure of pirates buried somewhere in the Keys. Turtle learns about her mother's childhood growing up on Curry Island in the Keys and finds there are more questions than answers to her mother's leaving before she was born. Many of the incidents in this book were inspired by the author's great-grandmother's stories of living in the Keys. A hurricane and her's mother's return all become twisted up together in a heartwarming, yet surprising, story of life in Key West during the Great Depression. You will find this newest book by Jennifer Holms in the JFic section of the Children's Room.

Ladies of the Lake

This month, the Delphi Morning Book Club is reading Ladies of the Lake, by Haywood Smith, who you may recognize as the bestselling author of The Red Hat Club. With Ladies of the Lake, Smith continues exploring women's relationships--this time among a group of sisters. Dahlia, Iris, Violet, and Rose, all with grown children of their own, have a complicated relationship. Their grandmother, in her will, grants them a nice inheritance with one catch: they must spend the entire summer, just the four of them, at her camping lodge on the lake. As you might expect, tempers sizzle and secrets are disclosed, which is possibly what Grandma wanted all along. This is the perfect book to read as the weather is heating up towards summer. Join us on March 14 for our discussion of The Ladies of the Lake.

The Book of Tomorrow

This story is told by a 16 year old girl named Tamara Goodwin. She was born into a life of luxury- her parents being the type of know-it-all parents. She never had to worry about the future as her life had een a comfortable one until the sudden death of her father. She and her mother were left with a lot of debt they neither knew about.
Eventually, they moved in with an aunt and uncle in a small village. Tamare became bored and found some interest in a traveling library. There she came upon a leather bound book with a gold clasp and padlock - no title or author. She pries it open only to find entries in her own handwriting.
This is a very unique and interesting story with a little mystery and magic included.
The ending will surprise you.

The Debt by Angela Hunt

Angela Hunt gives plenty food for thought in her novel, The Debt. Thought: "Should evil be wiped out with force or with love?" Thought: "How easily would I befriend the untouchables, hurting, or outcast slum of life?" Thought: "What kind of a Christian am I?"

Emma Rose is married to a powerful televangelist (Abel Howard - sincere and moral) who wields his power to boycott immorality in movies, televisions and books and who holds steadfastly to the idea that the "rot" of the world must be fleshed out. Emma Rose, the wife by his side doing all her wifely and pastoral duties to her fullest, has a past that was never discussed with her husband. (Not necessary, he said.) One day she receives a note-- A mysterious 28 year old man wants to meet her and she knows now her buried youth will not be buried much longer. She questions how will this affect the ministry and how will she share all the sordidness that was her existence before -- before her life was transformed?

A good read found in the religious fiction section of the library! This book is also the March 2011 selection for the “Faith-Inspired Book Club” of the Delphi Public Library.