WELL READ
Harmony: A Novel
By Carolyn Parkhurst ’92
Meet the Hammonds—Alexandra, Josh, 11-year- old Iris, and 13-year-old Tilly—a family struggling to cope with their brilliant teenage daughter’s increasingly disruptive autistic behavior. Frustrated and feeling isolated among friends in their Washington, D.C., community, Alexandra places her trust, and her family’s welfare, in the hands of self-proclaimed parenting expert Scott Bean, moving the family to New Hampshire to help Bean establish a residential camp for families with hard-to-manage children. At first, Camp Harmony seems like the answer to the family’s prayers: Living o the grid, Tilly thrives and the Hammonds experience a closeness they haven’t shared in years. But when cracks begin to appear in their leader’s charismatic exterior, they have no idea just how close they will come to losing more than they could ever possibly imagine. Told in alternating chapters from three distinct points of view, Harmony explores the bonds of familial love, asking the question: How far will a mother go to save her child?
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”: The Authorized Graphic Adaptation
By Miles Hyman ’85
When The New Yorker published “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, in 1948, readers were shocked and confused by the deeply disturbing tale of an American everytown where citizens gathered each June 27 to take part in an unthinkable act of ritualized violence. Just in time for the centennial of Jackson’s birth, her grandson, Miles Hyman, delivers a powerful full-color graphic adaptation of the now classic short story. In a style harkening back to an earlier time, Hyman tells the still unsettling tale in richly hued, exquisitely detailed panels as solid and weighty as a pocketful of stones.
From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decision
By Sasha Chaff ’94 and David Chaff
Sasha Chano, founder and executive director of RefugePoint (refugepoint.org), explores the crucible moments of powerful leaders in fields from business to the military, and shares his own, to show how identifying the opportunities present in the most difficult decisions and embracing the challenges presented there within can transform our lives and the lives of those around us.
Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City
By Adina Hoffman ’89
In Till We Have Built Jerusalem, Adina Ho man sifts through history to uncover the stories of three largely forgotten architects whose work helped shaped modern Jerusalem from its brief British rule through the founding of Israel: Erich Mendelsohn, a celebrated Jewish architect who arrived a refugee from Hitler’s Germany; Austen St. Barbe Harrison, an Englishman who served as Palestine’s chief government architect; and Spyro Houris, a “possibly Greek,” “possibly Arab” architect whose grand buildings still stand but who remains a mystery. Hoffman, who divides her time between Jerusalem and Connecticut, masterfully weaves together architectural history and biography, politics and religion, to shed new light on present-day Jerusalem by uncovering its multilayered past.
Animal Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution
By Alexander Pschera and Translated By Elisabeth Lauffer ’07
Today, almost 50,000 creatures, from whales to snails, are equipped with digital tracking devices, allowing scientists to gather data about how animals move and migrate. In Animal Internet, translated by Lauffer, winner of the Gutekunst Young Translators Prize from the Goethe Institute New York, Alexander Pschera suggests digital technology offers us an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover and deepen, rather than sever, our relationship with the natural world. Kirkus Reviews calls Animal Internet, “Bold and fascinating . . . A truly thought-provoking book for animal lovers and technology enthusiasts alike.”
