Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

      The Voices by F.R. Tallis is a horror story set in England in the 1970s. It tells the story of a young married couple expecting their first child, and the old Victorian house into which they have just moved. Chistopher, the husband, is a movie score composer and plans to use the spacious rooms of the house to set up his recording studio, while Laura is a former model who wants to step back from the fast paced world of fame in order to raise their daughter, Faye. Christopher soon discovers that when he plays back the recordings he makes in the house, he can hearvoices on the tape reels. Further investigation into the history of the house leads Christopher to believe that one of the voices on the tape belong to the former owner of the house, an illusionist who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Rather than be overly concerned with the fact that recording in the house seems to be picking up the voices of the dead, Christopher decides to use the ghostly re...

Having just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan offers a little bit of everything to everyone. Egan follows the lives of several individuals who are all loosely connected to each other at various points in their lives. The book starts off examining the life of Sasha, an assistant to a flourishing music producer living in New York City. Sasha is a beautiful but dark character– she’s a long time kleptomaniac with a rough past. As the novel takes off, readers learn more about Sasha’s history (through the eyes of her uncle), as well as take a peek into the lives of her boss, Bennie Salazar, former teenage friends and boyfriends, and several other motley characters with completely unique life stories all their own. Some chapters are touching and quirky (e.g. a story told entirely through the use of PowerPoint slides), while others are solid tragedies. While the concept for the book could be confusing to some, it doesn’t feel disjointed...