Hi everyone, here are our recommended titles for the week, and while the library is closed the weekly recommendations will all be digital – eBooks & downloadable audiobooks available through the Digital Catalog.
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Recommended Reads:
All Adults Here: A Novel by Emma Straub (Format: eBook)
A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family—as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes. From the New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers.
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub’s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
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Discovering Home by Debbie Macomber (Format: eBook)
Rediscover two classic romantic stories about finding love and creating family, only from #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber.
Father’s Day: Single mom Robin Masterson’s ten-year-old son, Jeff, thinks he needs a dog more than anything in the world. And there just happens to be one right next door! But the friendly black Lab belongs to Cole Camden, the unfriendliest man in the neighborhood. Robin can understand why Cole’s solitary life has made him cold—her own much-loved husband died when Jeff was just a baby. Still, Jeff persists…and soon his mom and Cole are looking at each other in a whole new way.
Lone Star Baby: Wade McMillen might be a minister, but he’s also a man. An unmarried and very attractive one. Is it as a man that he responds to the lovely young woman who shows up in Promise, pregnant and alone? Or as a man of God? Maybe it’s both. Amy Thornton hopes to make a new life for herself and her baby, and to do that, she needs Reverend McMillen’s help, his compassion. What she wants is the love of a man named Wade…
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Blackout by Connie Willis (Format: eBook)
Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can ‘catch up’ to her in age.
But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history – to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.
From the people sheltering in the tube stations of London to the retired sailors who set off across the Channel to rescue the stranded British Army from Dunkirk, from shopgirls to ambulance drivers, from spies to hospital nurses to Shakespearean actors, Blackout reveals a side of World War II seldom seen before: a dangerous, desperate world in which there are no civilians and in which everybody – from the Queen down to the lowliest barmaid – is determined to do their bit to help a beleaguered nation survive.
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Exile Music: A Novel by Jennifer Steil (Format: eBook)
Based on an unexplored slice of World War II history, Exile Music is the captivating story of a young Jewish girl whose family flees refined and urbane Vienna for safe harbor in the mountains of Bolivia
As a young girl growing up in Vienna in the 1930s, Orly has an idyllic childhood filled with music. Her father plays the viola in the Philharmonic, her mother is a well-regarded opera singer, her beloved and charismatic older brother holds the neighborhood in his thrall, and most of her eccentric and wonderful extended family live nearby. Only vaguely aware of Hitler’s rise or how her Jewish heritage will define her family’s identity, Orly spends her days immersed in play with her best friend and upstairs neighbor, Anneliese. Together they dream up vivid and elaborate worlds, where they can escape the growing tensions around them.
But in 1938, Orly’s peaceful life is shattered when the Germans arrive. Her older brother flees Vienna first, and soon Orly, her father, and her mother procure refugee visas for La Paz, a city high up in the Bolivian Andes. Even as the number of Jewish refugees in the small community grows, her family is haunted by the music that can no longer be their livelihood, and by the family and friends they left behind. While Orly and her father find their footing in the mountains, Orly’s mother grows even more distant, harboring a secret that could put their family at risk again. Years pass, the war ends, and Orly must decide: Is the love and adventure she has found in La Paz what defines home, or is the pull of her past in Europe—and the piece of her heart she left with Anneliese—too strong to ignore?
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The Goodbye Man: Colter Shaw Series, Book 2 by Jeffrey Deaver (Format: eBook)
In this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, reward-seeker Colter Shaw infiltrates a sinister cult after learning that the only way to get somebody out . . . is to go in.
In the wilderness of Washington State, expert tracker Colter Shaw has located two young men accused of a terrible hate crime. But when his pursuit takes a shocking and tragic turn, Shaw becomes desperate to discover what went so horribly wrong and if he is to blame.
Shaw’s search for answers leads him to a shadowy organization that bills itself as a grief support group. But is it truly it a community that consoles the bereaved? Or a dangerous cult with a growing body count?
Undercover, Shaw joins the mysterious group, risking everything despite the fact that no reward is on offer. He soon finds that some people will stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden . . . and to make sure that he or those close to him say “goodbye” forever.
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The House of Kennedy written by James Patterson and read by Cynthia Fagen (Format: Downloadable Audiobook)
Those who dwell in the House of Kennedy work hard, live hard, and win at all costs. But just how much has it cost them?
The Kennedy name is synonymous with American royalty. The family commitment to public service is legendary and enduring. But all their wild charisma has been dashed by disgrace and tragedy: Assassinations. Murder. Plane crashes. Fatal accidents. Mental illness. Drug overdoses. Alcohol abuse, and plenty of sex scandals. This family of widows and fatherless children has been cursed with nearly unimaginable losses — yet even today, there remains a glamorous aura around the indomitable Kennedys.
#1 bestselling author James Patterson once again tells a spellbinding story to “maximum dramatic effect” (The Wall Street Journal)—and this one is all true.
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I’d Give Anything: A Novel by Marisa de los Santos (Format: eBook)
A profound and heart-rending story about a horrific tragedy that marks one woman and her hometown and about the explosive secrets that come to light twenty years later.
Ginny Beale is eighteen, irreverent, funny, and brave, with a brother she adores and a circle of friends for whom she would do anything. Because of one terrible night, she loses them all—and her adventurous spirit—seemingly forever. While the town cheers on the high school football team, someone sets the school’s auditorium ablaze. Ginny’s best friend Gray Marsden’s father, a fire fighter, dies in the blaze.
While many in the town believe Daniel York, a notoriously troubled local teen, set the fire, Ginny makes a shattering discovery that casts blame on the person she trusts most in the world. Ginny tells no one, but the secret isolates her, looming between her and her friends and ruining their friendship.
Over the next two decades, Ginny puts aside her wanderlust and her dreams. Moving back to her hometown, she distances herself from the past and from nearly everyone in it. She marries a quiet man, raises their daughter, Avery, and cares for her tyrannical, ailing mother, Adela. But when Ginny’s husband, Harris, becomes embroiled in a scandal, Ginny’s carefully controlled life crumbles, and, just when she believes she is regaining her bearings, the secret she’s kept for twenty years emerges and threatens to destroy her hopes for the future.
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Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History written by Erik Larson and read by Richard Davidson (Format: Downloadable Audiobook)
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history—and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.
Using Cline’s own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man’s heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac’s Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.
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Lakeshore Chronicle Summer by Susan Wiggs (Format: eBook)
The Lakeshore Chronicles have captivated thousands of readers with unforgettable characters, warm humor and engaging stories. Summer at Willow Lake and The Summer Hideaway are emotional romances must-reads!
Summer at Willow Lake: Olivia Bellamy reluctantly trades a trendy Manhattan summer for her family’s old resort camp in the Catskills to renovate the bungalow colony for her grandparents, who want one last summer together filled with fun, friends and family. A posh resort in its heyday, the camp is now in disarray and Olivia is forced to hire contractor Connor Davis—a still-smoldering flame from her own summers at camp.
But as the days grow warm, not even the inviting blue waters of Willow Lake can cool the passions flaring or keep shocking secrets at bay. The nostalgic joy of summers past breathes new promise into a special place and people…a promise meant to last long after the season ends.
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The Summer Hideaway: By #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs
Never get attached—Private nurse and protected witness Claire Turner lives by this motto. Fleeing a treacherous past, she knows no other way.
Never give up—In the twilight of his life, George Bellamy makes it his final wish to reconcile with an estranged brother. He and Claire journey to Willow Lake—where it all went wrong for him fifty years ago.
Never let go—George’s grandson, Ross, is ruled by a fierce devotion to family and a deep mistrust of the mysterious Claire…yet sparks fly whenever she’s near. In the face of wrenching loss, amid the enchantment of Willow Lake, Ross and Claire dare to risk everything for love.
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The Paladin: A Spy Novel by David Ignatius (Format: eBook)
When a daring, high-tech CIA operation goes wrong and is disavowed, Michael Dunne sets out for revenge.
CIA operations officer Michael Dunne is tasked with infiltrating an Italian news organization that smells like a front for an enemy intelligence service. Headed by an American journalist, the self- styled “people’s bandits” run a cyber operation unlike anything the CIA has seen before. Fast, slick and indiscriminate, they steal secrets from everywhere and anyone, and exploit them in ways the CIA can neither understand nor stop.
Dunne knows it’s illegal to run a covert op on an American citizen or journalist, but he has never refused an assignment and his boss has assured his protection. Soon after Dunne infiltrates the organization, however, his cover disintegrates. When news of the operation breaks and someone leaks that Dunne had an extramarital affair while on the job, the CIA leaves him to take the fall. Now a year later, fresh out of jail, Dunne sets out to hunt down and take vengeance on the people who destroyed his life.
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Pelosi written by Molly Ball and read by Frankie Corzo (Format: Downloadable Audiobook)
An intimate, fresh perspective on the most powerful woman in American political history, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by award-winning political journalist Molly Ball
She’s the iconic leader who puts Donald Trump in his place, the woman with the toughness to take on a lawless president and defend American democracy. Ever since the Democrats took back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has led the opposition with strategic mastery and inimitable elan. It’s a remarkable comeback for the veteran politician who for years was demonized by the right and taken for granted by many in her own party—even though, as speaker under President Barack Obama, she deserves much of the credit for epochal liberal accomplishments from universal health care to gays in the military. How did a 79-year-old Italian grandmother in four-inch heels become the greatest legislator since LBJ—and how will she manage her greatest challenge yet, impeachment?
Ball’s nuanced portrait takes listeners inside the life and times of this historic and underappreciated figure. Based on exclusive interviews with the Speaker and deep background reporting, Ball shows Pelosi through a thoroughly modern lens to explain how this extraordinary woman has met her moment.
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A Thousand Moons: A Novel written by Sebastian Barry and read by Kyla Garcia (Format: Downloadable Audiobook)
A dazzling new novel about memory and identity set in Paris, Tennessee, in the aftermath of the American Civil War from the Booker Prize–shortlisted author
Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in West Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive father John Cole and his brother-in-arms Thomas McNulty, this odd little family scrapes a living on Lige Magan’s farm with the help two freed slaves, the Bougereau siblings. They try to keep the brutal outside world at bay, along with their memories of the past.
But Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the Civil War, and when first Winona and then Tennyson Bouguereau are violently attacked by forces unknown, Colonel Purton raises the militia to quell the rebels and night-riders who are massing on the outskirts of town. Armed with a knife, Tennyson’s borrowed gun, and the courage of her famous warrior mother, Winona decides to take matters into her own hands and embarks on a quest for justice which will uncover the dark secrets of her past and finally reveal to her who she really is.
Exquisitely written and thrumming with the irrepressible spirit of a young girl on the brink of adulthood, A Thousand Moons is a glorious story of love and redemption.
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Why Did I Come Into This Room: A Candid Conversation about Aging by Joan Lunden (Format: Downloadable Audiobook)
In her most candid and revealing book yet, acclaimed broadcast journalist and Baby Boomer Joan Lunden delves into the various phases of aging that leave many feeling uncomfortable, confused, and on edge. In her hilarious book, Lunden takes the dull and depressing out of aging, replacing it with wit and humor. After all, laughing is better than crying-unless it makes you pee! Funny, captivating, and raw, no topic is off limits. Lunden goes where others fear to tread, openly talking about wrinkles and age spots (which Lunden insists are sunspots), expanding waistlines (no, you didn’t shrink your jeans), diminished energy (my get-up-and-go got up and went), weak pelvic floors (yes, we’re talking about leaking), hot flashes (they suck), disrupted sleep (the morning host is an expert on lack of sleep), changes in sex drive (oh yeah, she goes there), ageism (it exists and it pisses us off), and yes, the real reasons we suddenly find ourselves always searching for those car keys! Through her poignant and often laugh out loud funny personal experiences, Lunden candidly shares her anxieties and breakthroughs. Why Did I Come into This Room? also explores the science of aging, including how it impacts the body and brain, while dispelling myths and revealing useful options to stave off the aging process as long as possible.
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Be well and happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Note: Book summaries are from the publisher unless otherwise specified.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
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