"Welcome to the United States of America. It's been 0 days since a mass shooting." If you haven't seen this fake road sign pop up in your social media feeds, this image spreads like wildfire the days these events happen. The fact-checking website Politifact has put together a list of the most common questions that come up when these events of gun violence happen. The Gun Violence Archive also has tracked and compiled a lot of data on gun violence and mass shootings and provides maps that chart that data. The frequency of these events coupled with the mass media attention that spreads the news far and wide mean that mass shootings aren't leaving the collective consciousness any time soon.
Fiction writers have even turned to writing full-length novels imagining what has happened in a shooter's life to cause these violent actions. Of course everyone is asking, Why? The book world is attempting to answer that question, and the list of these books keeps growing. The following recommendations include both fiction and nonfiction.
Forgive me, Leonard Peacock
Matthew Quick
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Quick Matthew
Young Adult
A day in the life of a suicidal teen boy saying good-bye to the four people who matter most to him.
We need to talk about Kevin
Lionel Shriver
FICTION Shriver, Lionel
Fiction
Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
Find the e-book on OverDrive/Libby https://icpl.overdrive.com/media/602781
- Melody
Only child
Rhiannon Navin
FICTION Navin Rhiannon
Fiction
Surviving a horrific school shooting, a six-year-old boy retreats into the world of books and art while making sobering observations about his mother's determination to prosecute the shooter's parents and the wider community's efforts to make sense of the tragedy.
Nineteen minutes
Jodi Picoult
FICTION Picoult, Jodi
Fiction
"New superiour court judge Alex Cormier is assigned to preside over the case of the alleged Sterling High School shooter. Lawyer Jordan McAffee represents Peter--the boy who, on the day of the shooting, was found in the corner of the gymnasium holding a gun to his head with a shaky hand. Detective Patrick DuCharme has one star witness, but her story keeps changing. And then there's the biggest problem of all--the star witness happens to be Judge Cormier's daughter."--From container.
How to be safe : a novel
Tom McAllister
FICTION Mcallist Tom
Fiction
Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on television as a suspect in a shooting at the school where she works. Though she is quickly exonerated, and the actual teenage murderer identified, her life is nevertheless held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. This is a piercing feminist howl written in trenchant prose, a compulsively readable, darkly funny expos? of the hypocrisy that ensues when illusions of peace are shattered.
If we had known
Elise Juska
FICTION Juska Elise
Fiction
English professor Maggie Daley and her college-student daughter struggle with guilt, fear, and the dangerous bonds of family in the aftermath of a mass shooting in their small New England town. When it is revealed that the gunman had been one of Maggie's students, she questions whether the dark, violence-tinged essay he wrote in her freshman comp seminar have been a warning. Should-- or could-- she have done something?
Shelter in Place.
Nora Roberts
FICTION/Roberts Nora
Fiction
It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video-game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived. The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever. In the years that followed, one would dedicate himself to a law enforcement career. Another would close herself off, trying to bury the memory of huddling in a ladies' room, hopelessly clutching her cell phone--until she finally found a way to pour her emotions into her art. But one person wasn't satisfied with the shockingly high death toll at the DownEast Mall. And as the survivors slowly heal, find shelter, and rebuild, they will discover that another conspirator is lying in wait--and this time, there might be nowhere safe to hide.
Hate list
Jennifer Brown
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Brown, Jennifer
Young Adult
Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.
This is where it ends
Marieke Nijkamp
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Nijkamp Marieke
Young Adult
Minutes after the principal of Opportunity High School in Alabama finishes her speech welcoming the student body to a new semester, they discover that the auditorium doors will not open and someone starts shooting as four teens, each with a personal reason to fear the shooter, tell the tale from separate perspectives.
Shooter
Walter Dean Myers
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Myers, Walter Dean
Young Adult
Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.
One breath away
Heather Gudenkauf
FICTION Gudenkau Heather
Fiction
In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. Outside the school, the town of Broken Branch watches and waits. Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility for the town's children in her hands. Will Thwaite, reluctantly entrusted with the care of his two grandchildren by the daughter who left home years earlier, stands by helplessly and wonders if he has failed his child again. Trapped in her classroom, Evelyn Oliver watches for an opportunity to rescue the children in her care. And thirteen-year-old Augie Baker, already struggling with the aftermath of a terrible accident that has brought her to Broken Branch, will risk her own safety to protect her little brother. As tension mounts with each passing minute, the hidden fears and grudges of the small town are revealed as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger who holds their children hostage.
Columbine
David Cullen
371.782 /Cullen
True Crime
Ten years in the making and a masterpiece of reportage, "Columbine" is an award-winning journalist's definitive account of one of the most shocking massacres in American history.
Find the e-book and e-audiobook on OverDrive/Libby https://icpl.overdrive.com/media/205886
- Melody
A mother's reckoning : living in the aftermath of tragedy
Sue Klebold
371.782 /Klebold
Nonfiction
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently? These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.
Find the e-book and e-audiobook on OverDrive/Libby https://icpl.overdrive.com/media/2301010
- Melody
Enough : our fight to keep America safe from gun violence
Gabrielle D. (Gabrielle Dee) Giffords
363.33 /Giffords
Nonfiction
Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords--disabled from an assassination attempt in Tucson, Arizona--and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, share their impassioned argument for responsible gun ownership and more responsible gun control laws, despite being gun owners and staunch supporters of the Second Amendment themselves.
Following the assassination attempt on her life, former Congressman Gabby Giffords wrote a couple of books about her rehabilitation and offered up solutions for responsible gun control.
- Melody
Available also as an e-audiobook through OverDrive/Libby. See https://icpl.overdrive.com/media/1354991
- Melody