Hi everyone, here are our recommended reads for the week!
*More information on the three catalogs and available formats is found at the end of the list of recommended reads*
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Weekly Suggested Reading postings are now published on Wednesdays.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, April 5, 2023.
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Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
(Available Formats: Print Book)
The epigraph of Booker Prize-winner Catton’s fine new novel is a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which is appropriate given that the spirit of the Bard is mightily present. Mira Bunting is a young Kiwi horticulturalist and founder of a New Zealander activist collective called Birnam Wood. Bunting has a habit of assuming false identities to look at listings of land she cannot afford to buy and plants crops without permission on overlooked patches of land. In essence, Birnam Wood is a guerrilla gardening group, a combination of environmental anarchists and direct-action protesters. “Birnam Wood was . . . a pop-up, the brainchild of ‘creatives’; it was organic, it was local; it was a bit like Uber; it was a bit like Airbnb,” writes Catton. Bunting herself turns trespassing into a type of performance art. But when she inadvertently meets an American billionaire, Robert Lemoine, her world and the future of the collective change in ways she could not imagine. Catton’s filmic novel features vivid characters, not all of them likable, and sharp, sizzling dialogue. Themes in the intricate plot include identity politics, national identity, and exploitation by the -super-rich. Birnam Wood is tightly wound and psychologically thrilling, and Catton’s fans and readers new to her powers will savor it to the end.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Admirers of Catton’s award-winning best-seller, The Luminaries (2013), will flock to her third novel.
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The Change by Kristen Miller
(Available Formats: Print Book, eBook, Downloadable Audiobook, Hoopla instant check out eBook & audiobook)
Miller, author of the Kiki Strike YA series, triumphs with her adult debut about three women who discover supernatural abilities during menopause, which they use to avenge murdered teenage girls in the New York beach town of Mattuck. Just as retired nurse Nessa James becomes fast friends with gym owner Jo Levison, Nessa realizes she can see ghosts again. When she was a child, her grandmother told her she had a gift, and that she’d be called upon later in life to use it, along with other similarly gifted women. Nessa intuitively seeks out unapologetic Harriett Osborne, a former ad executive who was pushed out of her career and now cultivates toxic plants like wolfsbane. Along with Jo, who can summon her fury and channel it into fiery strength, the trio attempt to bring peace to three ghosts Nessa encounters on the beach near Culling Pointe, where the billionaires live. After a client at Jo’s gym starts leaving clues about one of the ghosts, the trio is let down by police detectives who make their own motives clear. To say anything further would spoil this tightly plotted page-turner. Miller’s book is that rare treat: a suspenseful story with great pacing, memorable characters, and an engaging voice. Fantastic in every way, this fierce anthem against misogyny is a smash. – Publishers Weekly
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Conquistador: A Novel of Alternate History by S. M. Striling
(Available Formats: Print Book & eBook)
One adjustment to his radio sends John Rolfe VI, a descendant of the Virginia colonist, from 1946 into a California New World never touched by white men in Stirling’s (The Peshawar Lancers) mesmerizing new novel. Having discovered the Oakland Gate that allows one to switch secretly between worlds, Rolfe and a passel of army buddies found New Virginia, a Southern Agrarian “pirate kingdom,” and proceed to build wealth and power on both sides. Stirling cleverly switches between vignettes of New Virginian history since 1946 and the “present” of 2009, when a neo-Mafioso is plotting to take over Rolfe’s “theme park of perverted romanticism run amok.” In this luscious alternative universe, sidekicks quote the Lone Ranger and Right inevitably triumphs with panache. What more could adventure-loving readers ask for? – Publishers Weekly
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Forged In Love by Mary Connealy
(Available Formats: Print Book & Hoopla instant check out eBook)
While returning home to Pine Valley, Wyoming, after a family funeral, Mariah Stover’s father and brother are killed by the notorious Deadeye Gang. She is trapped under the stagecoach and left for dead. Mariah recovers but has amnesia. Mariah’s friends encourage her to leave town because the Deadeye Gang is known to kill all witnesses. But she is determined to continue running her family’s blacksmith shop. Clint Roberts, the owner and chef extraordinaire of the town diner, does what he can to keep her safe, but she continues to be plagued with accidents, including a snake bite and an explosion. Clint proposes marriage, but in 1870 the only acceptable careers for a married woman are being a wife or working in her husband’s business. Mariah is determined to honor her father’s memory by working as the town’s only blacksmith; she is also an ardent supporter of the suffrage movement and won’t give that up to marry. The first novel in Connealy’s new Wyoming Sunrise series offers strong female characters and a richly developed historical backdrop. – Booklist Review
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Giving The Devil His Due: A Charity Anthology Edited by Rebecca Brewer
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Featuring stories from Stephen Graham Jones, Christina Henry, Peter Tieryas, Kelley Armstrong, Linda D. Addison, Hillary Monahan and more
What if a young girl had the power to stop her tyrannical father from battering her mother ever again? What if a student had a secret weapon to end sexual assault by her predatory professor permanently? What if a housewife had unusual means to get back at her controlling husband and walk away from her marriage alive? In Giving the Devil His Due, The Pixel Project’s Audie Award-nominated and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated charity anthology, sixteen acclaimed fantasy, science fiction, and horror authors take readers on an unforgettable journey to alternative worlds where men who abuse and murder women and girls meet their comeuppance in uncanny ways. Featuring stories from Stephen Graham Jones, Christina Henry, Peter Tieryas, Kelley Armstrong, Linda D. Addison, Hillary Monahan and more which are read by some of today’s finest audiobook narrators including Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Miles, Christina Moore, Nancy Wu, Erin Moon, and Karen Chilton, Giving the Devil His Due presents sixteen stories that will make you think about the importance of justice for the victims of gender-based violence, how rare this justice is in our own world, and why we need to end violence against women once and for all.
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The Kind Worth Saving by Peter Swanson
(Available Formats: Print Book, CD Audiobook & eBook)
This isn’t exactly a sequel to Swanson’s The Kind Worth Killing (2015), though several of the characters, including the gloriously warped Lily Kintner, reappear here, but it does reprise the same creepy theme: sociopathic spiders and the not-quite-innocent flies they attempt to entrap in their labyrinthine webs (when they aren’t trapping one another). Only this time Swanson ups the ante dramatically, improvising in triple time on his theme and introducing a new queen spider to the game, Joan Grieve, who hires a private detective, Henry Kimball, to determine if her husband is cheating. Oh, but there’s so much more to it than that: Henry knows Joan from years before, when he was her teacher in high school and a tragic shooting impacted them both. And let’s not forget Lily, who was involved in her own tragedy long ago and who was investigated by Henry, with whom she now has a very odd friendship. When Henry turns to Lily for help after the matter of Joan’s philandering husband takes an unexpected turn, the stage is set for another of Swanson’s signature feats of vertigo-inducing legerdemain. It isn’t so much plot twists that keep the reader reeling here (though there are plenty of those) as it is the growing realization of the horrors lurking within the minds of seemingly ordinary people. – Booklist
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The Last Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch
(Available Formats: Print Book)
When Oxford graduate student Rosie White becomes a research assistant to famed Russian dissident Alexey Ivanov, her motives are not just scholarly. As a child, Raisa, as she was then known, and her mother fled Russia after the murders of her father and sister. When she’s not helping Ivanov search for a mysterious woman known only as Kukolka, or little doll, Rosie hopes to learn the full story behind her own family tragedy. Armed with a book of Russian fairy tales and a key to a locked drawer, deathbed gifts from her troubled mother, Rosie soon discovers that her two research projects intersect in some surprising and sinister ways. Spanning Russian history, from the 1917 Russian Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union, Loesch’s ambitious debut novel intertwines Rosie’s present-day narrative with those of Tonya, a newly married noblewoman, and Valentin, a young revolutionary. Loesch’s knowledgeable and detailed depictions of the Siege of Leningrad and Soviet labor camps and extensive cast of characters can be a bit challenging, but ultimately, all comes together in this powerfully affecting tale. – Booklist Review
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Lotería by Cynthia Pelayo
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated poet and author Pelayo shines a spotlight on Latin American culture with this new horror short story collection. Lotería gives an eerie twist to the traditional game of chance, known for its colorful illustrated cards, which is often compared to bingo. In Pelayo’s book, each image weaves an unsettling tale related to regional folklore and mythology, spanning multiple countries and sometimes going back to pre-Columbian beliefs. “”El Paraguas (The Umbrella)”” takes place amidst Mayan ruins, centering around a newly discovered cenote (a natural pit) full of sunken treasures. “”El Gallo (The Rooster)”” offers a glimpse of the legendary Chupacabras, a creature that preys on livestock. “”La Dama (The Woman)”” tells a version of the popular myth of La Llorona, the specter of a mourning mother looking for her children. “”La Canoa (The Canoe)”” visits the canals of Lake Xochimilco, focusing on the very real Isla de las Muñecas (Island of the Dolls). Horror fans will enjoy 54 original stories full of murderers, monsters, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures, reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm and Horacio Quiroga. – Booklist Review
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Our Best Intentions: A Novel by Vibhuti Jain
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Jain’s riveting debut centers on a stabbing at a high school in affluent Westchester County, N.Y. While on the way to swimming practice, sophomore Angela Singh discovers her crush, Henry McCleary, collapsed and bleeding. After realizing he’s been stabbed, she calls 911. As the story unfolds from various characters’ points of view, the question is not who stabbed Henry, but why. Students, though, are quick to vilify Henry’s assailant, Chiara Thomkins, a Black girl enrolled at the school who’s been squatting on campus. As Henry, who is white, recuperates in the hospital, Chiara goes missing, and the McClearys’ lawyer disparages Chiara for having used her cousin’s address to attend the school. Henry, meanwhile, hides the fact that he and his friend Chris met Chiara to buy weed from her, and that Chris mocked her for being “homeless,” held her down, and went through her bag. Also in the mix is Angela’s father, Babur, an Uber driver and immigrant from India who has built up a fleet of cars to afford living in the school district for Angela’s benefit, and who worries Angela’s role in the affair will hurt her future. Jain excels at revealing each character’s motivations and fears, and at how easily the truth can be distorted. This page-turner will stay with readers. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Antonia Scott was once Spain’s Red Queen, part of an elite European Union crime-fighting unit devoted to foiling master criminals–like Dr. Evil, but for real. But after a severe personal trauma, she won’t even leave her apartment and suffers debilitating panic attacks, ever at the mercy of her “medications.” Disgraced police officer Jon Gutiérrez has a chance to salvage his career by convincing Antonia to return to work. The body of a teenage boy from a wealthy family is found exsanguinated and “anointed” with olive oil, and the daughter of one of the richest men in Spain has been kidnapped. A sinister mastermind is at work who makes impossible ransom demands–not the financial kind. Antonia’s mind is “a jungle full of monkeys leaping at full speed from limb to limb,” but she bonds with Jon, and they investigate. It is a suspenseful and terrifying case for both of them, not to mention the reader. A bit of Clarice Starling and a lot of Lisbeth Salander make Antonia a thoroughly compelling character, who will return in two more translations to complete Gomez-Jurado’s trilogy, which is being adapted for streaming by Amazon. – Booklist Review
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Have a great week!
Linda Reimer
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*Information on the three catalogs*
Digital Catalog: https://stls.overdrive.com/
The Digital Catalog, is an online catalog containing eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, digital magazines and a handful of streaming videos. The catalog, which allows one to download content to a PC, also has a companion app, Libby, which you can download to your mobile device; so you can enjoy eBooks and downloadable audiobooks on the go!
All card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can check out items from the Digital Catalog.
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Hoopla Catalog: https://www.hoopladigital.com/
The Hoopla Catalog features instant checkouts of eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, comic books, albums, movies and TV series. Patron check out limit is 6 items per month.
Hoopla is a Southeast Steuben County Library service available to all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders.
The Hoopla App is available for Android or Apple devices and most smart TVs & media streaming players.
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StarCat: The catalog of physical/traditional library materials: https://starcat.stls.org
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries through out the Southern Tier Library System.
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Format Note: Under each book title you’ll find a list of all the different formats that specific title is available in; including: Print Books, Large Print Books, CD Audiobooks, eBooks & Downloadable Audiobooks from the Digital Catalog (Libby app) and Hoopla eBooks & Hoopla Downloadable Audiobooks (Hoopla app).
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Note: Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Have questions or want to request a book?
Feel free to call the library! Our telephone number is 607-936-3713.
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