How do you single out five books, out of all the hundreds coming out in 2020, for special attention? With great trepidation! Here are five very different books, all highly anticipated, making their way to our shelves in the new year. Here’s hoping it’s full of good reading. Read More ⇒

OSWEGO - A collaboration between SUNY Oswego faculty members resulted in “Lights! Camera! Execution!: Cinematic Portrayals of Capital Punishment.” Read More ⇒

By Zachary Leader. (Vintage, $22.) This second volume of Leader’s biography begins with Bellow’s ascent to best-sellerdom with “Herzog,” balancing discussions of the author’s work and personal life. In The New York Times Book Review, Mark Greif called it “brilliantly calibrated to explore Be… Read More ⇒

I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story Read More ⇒

The Season: A Social History of the Debutante Read More ⇒

Books about mental illness often reflect on how reality is experienced. In addition to the standard questions — What do we know, and how do we know it? — is another layer of inquiry: What do we know about our own minds, and what if it isn’t true? Read More ⇒

“Blade Runner,” the movie based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” takes place in a futuristic November 2019. In reality, replicants and floating cars have failed to materialize. Compare that to Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which, when it was p… Read More ⇒

Emily Dickinson, faced with a long Christmas list, famously scribbled “There is no present like a book.” OK, the word “frigate,” not “present,” is what you’ll find in modern collections of her poetry, but I’m sure she must have initially been thinking about holiday gifts. Even now, books are… Read More ⇒

Celebrity chef Bobby Flay believes his new cookbook, “Bobby at Home,” is his most important book to date. That’s because it’s a collection of his favorite recipes, the ones he is likely to serve family and friends when he’s at home. Read More ⇒

In a publishing year crowded with gear books (Instant Pot, Air Fryers, sous vide) and diet books (Keto, plant-based), it’s got to be hard for authors to stand out. As we searched through the hundreds of books that came in this year, these 11 did. From immigrant cooking to in-depth vegetable … Read More ⇒

NEWARK, N.J. — An office tower in this gritty Northeastern city seems an unlikely nerve center for theatrical inspiration. Yet here, in the sky-high studios of Audible, the audiobook and audio entertainment company, a new model for bringing drama to the people is taking shape. Read More ⇒

By Joanna Maclennan and Oliver Maclennan. (Thames & Hudson, 253 pages, $40.) Forget those manufactured “tiny houses.” Try living inside an overturned boat. Don’t shore up that collapsing wall with an expensive metal beam — use a shark’s bone. And while plaster is nice, walls built of whi… Read More ⇒

By Michael Beschloss. (B/D/W/Y, $20.) This sweeping look at presidents who led the United States through military conflict opens with a reluctant James Madison during the War of 1812 and closes with Lyndon Johnson facing defeat in Vietnam. Times reviewer Jay Winik called it “a superb and imp… Read More ⇒

Where the first lady, Melania Trump, is concerned, theories abound. Read More ⇒

On the slight possibility that you might have some reading time on Thanksgiving weekend (don’t forget to visit a local independent bookstore on Small Business Saturday!), here’s a half-dozen fresh paperbacks for your perusal. Read More ⇒

It’s tricky when it comes time to making Best of the Year lists. First, there are all the buzzy books to consider and the question of whether you’re going to end up writing the same list as everyone else. Then there’s the issue of variety — should it be five fantasy novels and five science f… Read More ⇒

Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge of Crosby, Maine is back, once again presiding over -though not always present in — 13 linked stories. Still bossy and blunt to the point of obnoxiousness, Olive has found the ideal narrator in Kimberly Farr, who captures her peremptory manner and brutal h… Read More ⇒

In 1830, when she was 14 years old, Charlotte Brontë created a series of six matchbox-size books known as The Young Men’s Magazine, complete with dramatic stories and tiny hand-lettered ads. Read More ⇒

By Andrew Delbanco. (Penguin, $18.) Delbanco, a professor at Columbia, argues that the persistent legal and moral questions posed by people who fled bondage made the Civil War inevitable. Times reviewer Sean Wilentz said this was “a valuable book, reflective as well as jarring.” Read More ⇒

By Max Hastings. (Harper Perennial, $22.99.) Hastings, a British journalist and military historian who reported on the war, chronicles the conflict and its staggering destruction, excoriating both sides for corruption and inhumanity. The United States, he argues, failed most egregiously in n… Read More ⇒

Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge Read More ⇒

Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation Read More ⇒

By David Treuer. (Riverhead, $17.) Treuer, an Ojibwe novelist and nonfiction author, brings a literary sensibility to this sweeping chronicle. It is, he notes, “adamantly, unashamedly, about Indian life rather than Indian death.” Times reviewer Ned Blackhawk called it “an informed, moving an… Read More ⇒

When Christine Druga was a little girl, she said, she would sometimes wake in the night to see a man with a wide-brimmed hat and red eyes staring through her bedroom window. Her parents didn’t believe her, so she hid under the covers whenever the man came. Once, she said, he left a handprint… Read More ⇒

MASSENA — The Massena Public Library director and Board of Trustees hope to convince the public to transition from a municipal public library to a school district public library to help secure the facility’s financial future. Read More ⇒

For most parents, asking a child to clean up is more likely to spark a tantrum than a yelp of joy. But, wouldn’t you know it, Marie Kondo, the Japanese organizing guru — and mother of two — who has sparked a worldwide clutter purge, thinks otherwise. Read More ⇒

FULTON - With an incredible story of childhood trauma and victory over life challenges, Leroy Collin’s story of faith and triumph will be featured in CNY Arts Center’s Author Spotlight from 3-5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 10. Collins book titled “The Running Back: From the Wheelchair to the NFL” wi… Read More ⇒

AUBURN - The final entry in the fall 2019 edition of Cayuga Community College’s Cultural Speaker Series will remember a legendary Central New York woman who survived spousal abuse and a shipwreck to make a fortune in business — only to see it all stolen away. Read More ⇒

By Barbara Kingsolver. (Harper Perennial, $17.99.) Two narratives, one set in the 21st century and one in the 19th, entwine in this novel about two families that occupy the same house centuries apart. Each seeks elusive shelter as it reels from its own set of disruptions. Kingsolver “has giv… Read More ⇒

Cabinets of Curiosities Read More ⇒

The Butterfly Girl Read More ⇒

The Blood of the Vampire By Florence Marryat Valancourt. 227 pp. Paperback, $16.99 Read More ⇒

The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando Read More ⇒

In his memoir “Another Bulls--t Day in Suck City,” Nick Flynn wrote of his troubled family life, focusing on his father, who had robbed a bank, gone to prison and lived much of the rest of his life on the streets of Boston. (The Robert De Niro film “Being Flynn” was based on the book.) This … Read More ⇒

By Miriam Pawel. (Bloomsbury, $20.) Pawel traces four generations of the Brown family and their 24-year political domination of California, recounting the two-term governorships of Edmund (Pat) Brown and his son, Edmund (Jerry) Brown Jr. Times reviewer Lisa McGirr found the book “fascinating.” Read More ⇒

Former Army paratrooper Erik Schlimmer has hiked thousands of miles in the Adirondacks and his experiences have resulted in a pyramid of books about hiking in the mountain range. Read More ⇒

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life Read More ⇒

By Elizabeth McCracken. (Ecco, $16.99.) In McCracken’s sixth novel, a woman of mysterious origins, found unconscious in a cemetery at the turn of the 20th century, becomes a local legend, wedding the doctor who revived her and opening a bowling alley that becomes a town landmark. “McCracken’… Read More ⇒

Music: A Subversive History Read More ⇒

OSWEGO - Author and professor Lisa Tessman of Binghamton University will discuss “Setting Ourselves Up for Moral Failure” in this year’s Warren Steinkraus Lecture on Human Ideals, beginning at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, in Marano Campus Center auditorium, Room 132, at SUNY Oswego. Read More ⇒

FULTON - Writers, thinking about taking the next step? Read More ⇒

OSWEGO - From invasive social platforms to data breaches, daily headlines paint a cautionary tale of information on the internet, which is explored in depth in a new book, “Costs of Connection,” co-authored by Ulises Mejias of SUNY Oswego’s communication studies faculty and Nick Couldrey of … Read More ⇒