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 19, 2023.
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An American in Scotland by Lucy Connelly
(Available Formats: Print Book, eBook, Hoopla instant check out eBook & Audiobook)
DEBUT Dr. Emilia McRoy really should have read that 30-page contract before moving from Seattle to Sea Isle, Scotland. After 15 years as an emergency room doctor, she fled family tragedy and burnout to take a position as the small town’s general practitioner. She learns that her new practice and home are in a deconsecrated church that comes with two employees. The town is eager to welcome the new doctor, except for a man named Smithy who refuses to drink in any pub where there’s a McRoy at the bar. Three hours later when she takes shelter in a hut during a rainstorm, Em finds Smithy dead. As she seeks help, she runs smack into Ewan Campbell, the constable/mayor/laird of Sea Isle who’s also her new boss. She’s stunned when she learns her contract says she’s the local coroner. Investigating Smithy’s death will take everything Em’s learned from British mysteries on TV, and she butts heads with Ewan at every turn.
VERDICT Connelly writes an atmospheric, character-driven debut that’s amusing at times, with a quirky, spirited cast. It has a strong sense of place that should appeal to fans of Carlene O’Connor’s Irish mysteries. – Starred Library Journal Review
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Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir by Brianna Craft
(Available Formats: eBook)
One of Ms. magazine’s “Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023”
Authentic and inspiring, Everything That Rises personalizes the realities of climate change by paralleling our relationship to the planet with the way we interact within our own homes.
Nineteen-year-old Brianna Craft is having a panic attack. A professor’s matter-of-fact explanation of the phenomenon known as “climate change” has her white-knuckling the table in her first environmental studies lecture. Out of her father’s house, she was supposed to be safe.
This moment changed everything for Brianna. For her first internship, she jumped at the chance to assist the Least Developed Countries Group at the United Nations’ negotiations meant to produce a new climate treaty. While working for those most ignored yet most impacted by the climate crisis, she grappled with the negligent indifference of those who hold the most power. This dynamic painfully reminded her of growing up in a house where the loudest voice always won and violence silenced those in need.
Four years later, Brianna witnessed the adoption of the first universal climate treaty, the Paris Agreement. In this memoir that blends the political with the personal, Brianna dives into what it means to advocate for the future, and for the people and places you love, all while ensuring your own voice doesn’t get lost in the process.
It will take all of us to protect our home.
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Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It Janina Ramirez
(Available Formats: Print Book & Hoopla instant check out Audiobook)
Historian Ramirez (Julian of Norwich) spotlights in this vibrant and accessible account remarkable medieval women including polymath Hildegard of Bingen and Margery Kempe, author of the first autobiography written in English. Diligently sifting through monastic, legal, and diplomatic materials, Ramirez unearths intriguing clues about the power medieval women held and the way they lived, despite contemporaneous efforts to remove them from the historical record. In 10th-century England, for example, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, ruled the kingdom of Mercia after her husband’s death and excelled as a military strategist against the Vikings, but is not remembered as well as her male relatives, largely because her brother “suppressed her reputation in order to bolster his position as king of Wessex.” The chapter beginnings, which recount relevant archaeological discoveries or scholarly reexaminations of primary sources, often link modern women with their medieval predecessors; in one noteworthy instance, Ramirez details how medieval scholar Margarete Kühn, with the help of Caroline Walsh, the wife of a high-ranking U.S. military official, spirited the famed Reisencodex containing the collected writing of 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen out of Soviet-occupied East Germany in 1948. Throughout, Ramirez’s adept scene-setting segues gracefully into deeper considerations of these women’s lives and work. This feminist history fascinates. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly by Katherine Sherbrooke
(Available Formats: Hoopla instant check out eBook)
When a runway model in 1940s Hollywood makes a split-second decision intended to protect those she loves, she triggers a cascade of secrets that threatens to upend her daughter’s life decades later.
After winning a prestigious fashion design contest in 1948, Aster Kelly flees the world of modeling in New York and arrives in Beverly Hills to claim her prize: a design apprenticeship with Fernando Tivoli. But Fernando has no such job available. He’s busily preparing for the opportunity of a lifetime—proving to Galaxy Studios that he is the perfect couturier for their A-list stars. The moment he meets Aster, though, he knows she’s the missing ingredient he needs and asks her to be his stand-in model for Lauren Bacall. Aster is dismayed to once again have her creative potential sidelined, but when Fernando promises to mentor her if he wins the contract, she agrees.
Aster and Fernando quickly become romantically entangled with Hollywood insiders—Aster with the head of Galaxy Studios, Fernando with their biggest up-and-coming star, Christopher Page—and Aster and Fernando’s friendship becomes essential as they navigate a glamorous and complicated existence where what’s real must often be hidden, and no one is quite who they seem. As Aster’s ambitions grow and she faces a crisis, and Fernando’s future is threatened by the judgmental Hollywood machine, Aster makes a decision that changes the trajectory of their lives forever.
Twenty-five years later, despite knowing little of her mother’s time in Hollywood and being raised well outside the reaches of fame, Aster’s daughter Lissy is poised to become a Broadway star. But when the musical gets off to a rocky start, Lissy makes a rash decision of her own in an attempt to save the show. And when long-buried secrets blindside them both, mother and daughter are forced to question everything they thought they knew.
The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly is a story about the bonds of chosen family, the cost of fame and the enduring strength of love that will keep you guessing until the last page.
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A Most Efficient Murder by Anthony Slayton
(Available Formats: Print Book & Hoopla instant check out Audiobook)
Set in 1920s England, Slayton’s appealing debut, a series launch, introduces Mr. Quayle, a self-effacing but astute amateur sleuth who serves as the secretary to the Earl of Unsworth. The earl is anticipating a joyful celebration at his castle to mark his niece Fanny’s 18th birthday when he gets upsetting news from his stoic butler, Perkins: “Forgive me, Your Lordship… I did not wish to disturb you, but there appears to be a body in the garden.” The corpse is that of a woman apparently unknown to the earl and any of the family and friends assembled for the festivities. Unsworth asks Mr. Quayle to assist the police in identifying the victim and her killer while protecting the family from as much scandal over the crime as possible. Slayton tosses in another murder, as well as the hunt for a legendary treasure trove with elements reminiscent of Conan Doyle’s “The Musgrave Ritual.” Slayton gets everything right—the fairly-planted clues, plot twists, and characters who are more than stereotypes. P.G. Wodehouse fans will want to have a look. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Night Agent by Matthew Quirk
(Available Formats: Print Book, Hoopla instant check out eBook & Audiobook)
At first, this reads like something by Samuel Beckett. Peter Sutherland spends his nights, 284 of them so far, sitting in a little room waiting for the phone to ring. It doesn’t. The phone is in the basement of the White House, and if anybody does call, Peter’s supposed to tell somebody important. On this night, the phone rings. A woman’s wavering voice: “He’s inside. He’s going to kill me.” What follows hits close to home: Russia is planting moles in U.S. government offices as part of an effort to rebuild the old Soviet Union. Peter learns quickly that the people he should report to are treacherous, forcing him to go it alone, with some help from the frightened caller. Lots of good, tense plotting and wild action here, though, like a Mission: Impossible movie, it doesn’t know when it’s time to end. A real pleasure of espionage fiction is tradecraft secrets, and Quirk doesn’t disappoint. Someone glancing at his dominant hand as he talks is being deceptive. Hydrogen peroxide, unlike bleach, will destroy DNA. – Booklist Review
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Once We Were Home by Jennifer Rosner
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Where is home when your home has been destroyed? Among the tragedies of WWII were the Jewish children separated from their families, at times forcibly taken, given new names, and instructed to follow new religions. Rosner follows her first WWII novel, The Yellow Bird Sings (2020), with this complex tale about fear, survival, and what it means to be a family as four children grapple with their identities during the war and in the decades that follow. Roger, taken to a French convent and baptized into Catholicism, is smuggled away to Spain when his relatives petition for his return. Their mother sends seven-year-old Mira and her three-year-old brother, Daniel, away from the Jewish ghetto to the relative safety of a childless couple in the Polish countryside, who tell prying neighbors the children are their niece and nephew. And in the late 1960s, Renata, a German-born Brit whose mother insisted they not mention their homeland, begins work on an archaeological dig in Jerusalem. All Rosner’s uprooted characters eventually come to Israel, seeking a path to the future while struggling with the losses of the past. – Booklist Review
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Said No One Ever by Stephanie Eding
(Available Formats: Hoopla instant check out eBook & Audiobook)
At the start of this effervescent rom-com from Eding (The Unplanned Life of Josie Hale), Ellie Reed has lost both her relationship and her Ohio medical transcription job. Chaffing under the harsh opinions of family members (especially her perfect older sister), Ellie decides to treat herself to an Airbnb in small-town Montana. But things don’t go as planned: her octogenarian hostess, Marilyn Perry, falls and shatters her kneecap immediately before Ellie hits town, leaving Ellie to deal with a menagerie of assorted animals (including two sheep, an ill-behaved dog, and a donkey); a weasely neighbor determined to buy Marilyn’s farm out from under her; and Marilyn’s hot but grumpy grandson, Warren Oliver. Convalescing Marilyn, meanwhile, is determined to track down the man she once planned to marry and enlists Ellie’s aid gaining access to helpful materials hidden throughout her house. Ellie finds purpose in this unexpected new life—and discovers potent chemistry with Warren—but her new normal is threatened when Marilyn’s uptight daughters return to town. Marilyn is a hoot, easily stealing every scene she’s in, while go-with-the-flow Ellie and rules-follower Warren make a lovely match. This is sunshine in book form. – Publisher’s Weekly Review
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Standing Dead by Margaret Mizushima
(Available Formats: Print Book, Hoopla instant check out eBook & Audiobook)
After her father was killed, Mattie Wray, her mother, and her brother were kidnapped when Mattie was only two. Now in her 30s, Mattie is still trying to put her family together, locate a sister she never knew about, and reunite with her mother. But when Mattie and her sister Julia travel to Pueblo del Sol, Mexico, they learn their mother and her second husband, Juan Martinez, have left town abruptly. Mattie returns home to her job as a deputy sheriff and K-9 handler in Timber Creek, CO, and finds a note on her door: “You’ll find him among the standing dead,” signed “A friend of your father’s.” When the sheriff’s department mounts a search, they find the body of Juan Martinez. Now Mattie is forced to reveal her mother’s story. Notes continue to appear, and Mattie’s friends are threatened and even shot. Pressure mounts quickly, and she and the supportive law enforcement team know Mattie is the ultimate target for someone who has terrorized her family for 30 years.
VERDICT Readers who have followed the story of Mattie’s family through Mizushima’s other “Timber Creek K-9” mysteries will enjoy this fast-paced, relentlessly tense installment.—Library Journal Review
Series Note: If you’d like to start reading the Timber Creek K-9 series from the beginning, check out book one: Killing Trail.
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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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