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, June 7, 2023.
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The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra
(Available Formats: Print Book, CD Audiobook, eBook, Hoopla instant check out eBook & Audiobook)
Nagendra (Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities) makes her fiction debut with an exceptional series launch. In 1921, 19-year-old Kaveri Murthy, who has a passion for advanced mathematics, lives just outside the sprawling city of Bangalore. While Kaveri and her physician husband, Ramu, are attending a reception at the prestigious Century Club, the body of a pimp is found murdered in the garden. When the deputy inspector of the local police force arrives to investigate, Kaveri confides that she saw the dead man in the garden with his hands around the throat of a beautiful woman. Kaveri’s desire to see justice done takes her from the bastions of British wealth to humble mud-floored shacks. By placing her intelligent and clear-eyed protagonists in the multilayered and multicultural milieu of colonial India, Nagendra, a university professor in Bangalore, imbues this mystery with a rich, edifying, and authentic feel. She rounds out the volume with easy-to-follow recipes for dishes like spiced rice with lentils, a welcome change from the sugary fare that culinary cozy recipes typically offer. Readers will hope Kaveri and Ramu will be back soon. Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy by Carl Sferrazza Anthony
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Presidential families historian Anthony returns to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, the subject of one of his previous books, As We Remember Her. This time, he focuses on the years 1949 to 1953, beginning with her arrival in Paris with a new Leica camera for a junior year at Smith College’s study-abroad program. The book notes she longed for independence from her “privileged, but also traumatic” past after the bitter divorce of her parents, which left her determined to resist getting married herself. After winning—and declining—Vogue’s prestigious Prix de Paris award (a year-long junior editorship with the magazine) because her mother didn’t want her to leave the country at that time, Jackie became the Washington Times-Herald’s “Inquiring Camera Girl” until forced to give up the job after becoming engaged to John F. Kennedy. Anthony mines her articles with aplomb, using the questions she posed to people on the streets of Washington, DC, as a window into her psyche. The book ends with her much-publicized marriage to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy.
VERDICT Whether she’s avoiding a traffic ticket after speeding in her car named Zelda, or translating books for Kennedy’s report on the history of France in Indochina, this portrait of young Jackie Bouvier shines with wit and intelligence. – Starred Library Journal Review
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A Death at the Party: A Novel by Amy Stuart
(Available Formats: Print Book & eBook)
Virginia Woolf meets Agatha Christie in this taut psychological thriller from Stuart (Still Here). Around midnight in a basement bathroom, Nadine Walsh, who’s hosting a birthday party upstairs for her 60-year-old mother, a bestselling thriller writer, checks the pulse of an unidentified dying man. After he dies, Nadine, who lives in “Winngrove, an affluent-but-liberal village within a city,” returns to the party without being spotted leaving the basement. Flashbacks starting early that morning follow Nadine as she prepares for more than a hundred guests that evening. Her lawyer husband doesn’t help much, nor do their two self-absorbed teenage children. She feels judged by her 24-year-old niece, who has lived with the Walshes since Nadine fell down the stairs and broke her hip six months before. She also contends with her unresolved feelings for her rags to riches mother and the lingering trauma of a family tragedy that occurred exactly 30 years earlier. Stuart’s complex lead immediately grabs the reader’s sympathy, even if she is a killer. Fans of Mrs. Dalloway, which provides the book’s epigraph, will want to check this one out. – Publishers Weekly
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The Family Bones by Elle Marr
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Olivia Eriksen, the protagonist of this mesmerizing psychological thriller from Marr (Strangers We Know), is working on her dissertation in psychology at U.C. Davis after gaining notoriety through her social media videos about her family’s extensive history of psychiatric disorders, including her great-uncle’s murder of her great-grandfather. Because her dissertation focuses on whether psychopathy is revealed at birth, Olivia decides to attend an upcoming Ericksen family reunion at a remote Oregon resort, where she’ll be able to use her relatives as primary sources. Oliva’s boyfriend, Howard Ngo, an administrator at U.C. Davis, agrees to go along in the hope that Olivia will announce their engagement to her family. After a storm rolls through Oregon that isolates Olivia, Howard, and her relatives, a family member dies and Olivia tries to discover the culprit. Meanwhile, amateur detective and podcaster Birdie Tan is investigating the cold case disappearance of Li Ming Na, last seen 10 years earlier in Eugene, Ore., who left a small child and an on-again, off-again boyfriend behind. Marr expertly builds tension by alternating between the two narratives, which eventually merge and build to an explosive conclusion. Readers will be captivated from the very first page. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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I’m Just Saying: A Guide to Maintaining Civil Discourse in an Increasingly Divided World by Milan Kordestani
(Available Formats: Print Book)
A straightforward look at the history and the art of maintaining courteous communication in an increasingly divided world.
Have you ever been in a conversation that, after volleying back and forth, ended with the words, “I’m just saying . . .”? Usually, this signals frustration, that the discussion has reached a dead end, that you haven’t made your point, and may even leave you feeling that your relationship with the other person has changed for the worse. Digital interactions, devoid of nuance and understanding, further complicate discussion. We may believe that we are superior because our opinions are the “right” ones, and in the future avoid conversations with those whose opinions differ from ours, sending us into a never-ending echo chamber.
In I’m Just Saying, author Milan Kordestani shows us that although challenging conversations can be unpleasant, they can also help us grow. Sometimes, people inspire us to change how we speak, making us better communicators in the process as we search to find common ground with those with whom we disagree. Kordestani uses contemporary case studies and personal experience to teach readers how to have constructive conversations by engaging in civil discourse—the idea that good-faith actors can reach consensus on any opinion-based disagreement. He discusses influential leaders and reflects on his successes and failures in creating The Doe, an online publication focused on civil discourse. He addresses the challenges that digital media consumption presents when seeking common ground—especially when people are only digitally connected.
Civil discourse, an essential part of democracy, is becoming rare in today’s digital age. I’m Just Saying examines discourse’s successes and the ways to rebuild it. Drawing from history, popular culture, and personal anecdotes, the book promotes effective civil discourse by providing practical advice and strategies for respect. Through story, I’m Just Saying offers insight and tools for politeness in a divided world.
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The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Imperial nostalgia and miscalculation precipitated the war in Ukraine, according to this wide-ranging study. Harvard historian Plokhy (Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front) spends the book’s first half on the historical background of the 2022 Russian invasion, surveying Russia’s domination of Ukraine from the Middle Ages through the Soviet era, recent wranglings over Ukraine’s bids to join NATO and the European Union, and the course of the low-level war that followed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support of Russian separatist militias in the Ukrainian Donbas. The book’s second half recaps the present conflict from the initial attack on Kiev to Ukraine’s counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, covering major battles; the killings of civilians by Russian occupiers; the charismatic leadership of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenski; Putin’s poor military planning and delusional expectations, and more. Plokhy’s narrative is lucid, well-crafted, and judicious—he’s especially good on the complexities of the failed Minsk accords that sought to end the war in the Donbas—and vividly conveys the war’s destruction through Ukrainians’ firsthand experiences. (“It seems to be flying straight for your head,” one woman recalls of an attacking Russian warplane; “not even into your head but right through it.”) The result is an essential account of the conflict that manages to make sense of its obscure and tangled origins. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World by Bruce Feiler
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Americans are fed narrow, outdated notions of what work means—9 to 5 days, climbing the corporate ladder, dreams of bigger offices and higher salaries—argues TV personality Feiler (Life Is in the Transitions) in this energetic challenge to status quo notions of success. After taking in the disruptions wrought on work culture by the pandemic, Feiler embarked on a “Work Story Project” in which he interviewed people across the country to discover what makes jobs meaningful. He found that most people reported having more than one job, and that definitions of success are highly individual and based on a “work narrative” rooted in personal beliefs, experiences, and lessons. Since people can be unaware of their work narrative, he suggests conducting a “meaning audit”—surveying past, present, and future priorities and perspectives—in order to assume control of the story. As well, Feiler discusses harnessing “workquakes,” or moments of professional disruption, to initiate soul-searching, and the importance of allowing oneself permission to enact a life change; he supports his arguments with examples of those who overcame difficulties to find fulfilling careers. While the abundance of anecdotes sometimes crowds out Feiler’s advice, his down-to-earth delivery and emphasis on individual agency will resonate with readers seeking direction. Those at professional crossroads will benefit. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina
(Available Formats: Print Book, eBook, Downloadable Audiobook, eBook & Downloadable Audiobook)
Who’s responsible for the disappearance of members of Louisiana’s Takoda tribe? That question, inspired by the real-life epidemic of disappearances of Native Americans in both the U.S. and Canada, drives the plot of Medina’s pulse-pounding debut. Anna Horn, one of the few from the Takoda reservation to attend high school in the nearby town, is routinely subject to bullying and harassment. Anna is also troubled by the disappearance several months earlier of 19-year-old best friends Erica Landry and Amber Bloom, who also lived on the reservation. She’s skeptical that the teens just ran off, and fears their fate is linked to an older mystery: 10 years earlier, Shelby Mire, “the last of the Takoda tribe’s official singers and Legend Keepers,” was murdered, an unsolved crime that still haunts the surviving tribe members. Then, after someone else close to Anna vanishes, she searches frantically for answers, unsure whether the disappearances are linked to a new casino that the police suspected would attract riffraff or if something supernatural is at play. Medina resolves the plot well and gracefully weaves real-life concerns about disappearing Native people into the whodunit plot. This author is off to a strong start. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Someone Else’s Life by Lyn Liao Butler
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Annie Lin, the protagonist of this unsettling thriller from Butler (The Red Thread of Fate), has recently moved from New York to Kauai, Hawaii, with her husband, Brody, and their four-year-old son, Finn. She hopes the change of scene will provide comfort and stability for Finn, who suffered a traumatic accident six months earlier, and shore up her shaky marriage. But most of all, Annie hopes to regain some semblance of normalcy after personal and professional failures, including the bankruptcy of her dance studio, have left her depressed, resentful, and difficult to be around. She’s even started to doubt her own sanity. As the family adjusts to a fragile happiness, severe weather rocks the island, and a strange woman appears at their door seeking shelter. What happens next forces Annie to question everything in her life as she wonders whether this stranger is friend or foe. Well-developed characters and plenty of local color add to the slowly simmering plot, which builds to a strong and unexpected climax. Alfred Hitchcock fans will be satisfied. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Spite House by Johnny Compton
(Available Formats: Print Books)
Compton’s chilling debut is horror with heart that puts a refreshingly modern spin on the haunted house story. On the run and in hiding from a mysterious family curse, Eric Ross and his daughters, Dess and Stacy, are desperate to find ways to make ends meet. Eunice Houghton, a wealthy eccentric, is willing to pay a substantial sum for anyone willing to stay in the Masson House, one of Texas’s most haunted buildings, and record their encounters with the supernatural. Eager to provide a better life for his daughters, Eric takes the job and is determined to see it through to the massive payday at the end. But as staying in Masson House becomes increasingly dangerous, Eric realizes that no one is telling him the entire truth about the house and its history. By changing perspectives between Eric, Dess, Stacy, and Eunice, this tense work of gothic horror provides a complex and multidimensional look at how anger, grief, and trauma can strengthen bonds of familial love. The tale’s simmering tension builds to an inevitable but thoroughly satisfying conclusion that, like the ghosts of the spite house, lingers. Even the most jaded horror fans will be wowed. – Starred Publishers Weekly 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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