Thanksgiving & Fall Collection

Thanksgiving is my favorite family holiday. (I say family holiday, because my REAL favorite holiday is and forever will be Groundhog day, but that is another story for another day.) With Thanksgiving, you get all the perks with none of the pressure (assuming you have weaseled your way out of the cooking responsibilities). There are no gifts to buy, no major decorations to pull down from the attic, no themed music or jolly elves. But do you know what else is lacking? Books. There are a zillion and a half (surely someone out there is working on one now) Christmas themed books, but when you try to find something related to Thanksgiving it becomes a bit difficult - but it's not impossible. If you are looking for a Thanksgiving/Fall related book, here are a few we have available for you:

Fiction - Want a good story? Here are some cozy fiction books to read after Thanksgiving dinner.

A Catered Thanksgiving: a Mystery with Recipes - Sisters and caterers Bernie and Libby Simmons hustle to find a murderer and clear their own names when the Thanksgiving turkey they prepared for the Field family explodes, killing elderly patriarch Monty. Includes recipes. 

The Winds of Autumn - Josh, an orphan raised by relatives on the family farm, faces important questions about life, love, and himself, while on the brink of manhood. This is one part of the Seasons of the Heart series - a romantic historical fiction series by Christian author Janette Oke.

Football - There is a seemingly eternal link between football and Thanksgiving. Here are a couple of our many football-related titles. 

Friday Night Lights Thanksgiving: a Mystery with Recipes - This is a nonfiction tale that reads like fiction. It's the story of a high school football program and its relationship with the town. It's also the inspiration for the acclaimed television show. 

Autumn's Mightiest Legions - It's not very often that I recommend a 50 year old nonfiction book - but this one gives a unique perspective of Texas High School Football. If you are interested in learning about early high school powerhouses and how the sport really spread its roots in Texas, this is an interesting read. 

Nonfiction - Have a thirst for knowledge? These books are about the history and people related to the first Thanksgiving.

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World - After a journey across the Atlantic, the Mayflower's passengers were saved from destruction with the help of the natives of the Plymouth region. For fifty years, peace was maintained as Pilgrims and Natives worked together. But that trust was broken with the next generation of leaders, and conflict erupted that nearly wiped out English and natives alike. 

William Bradford: Rock of Plymouth - This is a biography of one of the founders of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts and a history of the Pilgrims' difficult time during their early years in the New World.

Mary Higgins Clalrk - Author of the Month

Photo from MaryHigginsClark.com

Mary Higgins Clark is widely known as the "Queen of Suspense." Millions of copies of her books have been sold all over the world, but she is most famous for her 20+ suspense novels. Many of those novels have been turned into television movies, and two have become feature films.

Here's a snippet about her early life from her biography on MaryHigginsClark.com:

Mary Higgins Clark's fame as a writer was achieved against heavy odds. Born and raised in the Bronx, her father died when she was eleven and her mother struggled to raise her and her two brothers. On graduating from high school, she went to secretarial school, so she could get a job and help with the family finances. After three years of working in an advertising agency, travel fever seized her. For the year 1949, she was a stewardess on Pan American Airlines' international flights. "My run was Europe, Africa and Asia," she recalls. "I was in a revolution in Syria and on the last flight into Czechoslovakia before the Iron Curtain went down. After flying for a year, she married a neighbor, Warren Clark, nine years her senior, whom she had known since she was 16. Soon after her marriage, she started writing short stories, finally selling her first to Extension Magazine in 1956 for $100.

Left a young widow by the death of her husband from a heart attack in 1964, Mary Higgins Clark went to work writing radio scripts and, in addition, decided to try her hand at writing books. Every morning, she got up at 5 AM and wrote until 7 AM, when she had to get her five children ready for school. Her very first book was a biographical novel about George Washington... Read the rest of her story on her website.

Though she is now in her 80s, Clark continues to write. Her latest novel entitled Daddy's Gone a Hunting, was published in April of 2013. We have several Mary Higgins Clark books on display this month in the fiction section of the library media center. Check out one today!