Suggested Reading July 27, 2023

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  published on Thursdays.

And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Thursday, August 3, 2023 (Where did July go?!)

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Fatal Legacy by Lindsey Davis

(Available Formats: Print Book)

Davis’s 11th historical mystery featuring first-century Roman private informer Albia (after 2022’s Desperate Undertaking) is more low-key than past entries, but no less gripping. Flavia, the adopted daughter of Marcus Didius Falco (hero of a prior Davis series), is asked by her Aunt Junia, who manages a grubby feeding post, to track down two customers who stiffed her. With only vague descriptions to go on, Flavia flexes her investigative skills to track down the deadbeats, only to land a more challenging assignment from one of their aunts after she confronts them. Tranquilla Euhodia’s niece is about to be married, but her future in-laws have raised questions about whether Euhodia’s brother is a free citizen, as he claims to be, or a slave. Flavia agrees to find proof that the boy is free, digging into an old murder in the process—and before long, she has a new murder to investigate. Unable to trust her employers or old confidants, Albia sets out to prevent more bodies from piling up. As always, Davis skillfully blends humor and historical detail. This classical series still feels fresh. – Publishers Weekly

Reader’s Note: If you’d like to binge read this neat historical series, and start reading from the beginning, check out book one: The Ides of April (2013)

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The Good Ones by Polly Stewart

(Available Formats: Print Book)

When her mother dies, 37-year-old Nicola returns to her small Appalachian hometown to sell the family house. The place is rife with memories, foremost among them that of the mysterious disappearance 16 years earlier of her friend Lauren. Now, Nicola finds herself in a relationship with Warren, Lauren’s bereft husband, and working as a teacher for Warren’s younger brother, Sean, principal of the local high school with whom she had had an ambiguous relationship when they were teens. Emotional and other complications ensue, the only constants being Lauren’s continuing absence and the speculation that she’s dead, perhaps murdered; speaking of which, Nicola is now in danger herself, for she begins receiving threatening notes written in blood-red ink, saying, “No one wants you here.” Told in Nicola’s first-person voice, Stewart’s rather slow-paced story is not without its moments of welcome suspense and it will attract and engage the ever-increasing audience for domestic suspense. – Booklist

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The Last Dance by Mark Billingham

(Available Formats: Print Book, Hoopla Instant Checkout eBook & Audiobook)

Billingham (Sleepyhead) launches a cracking new mystery series featuring the charming, sarcastic British Det. Sgt. Declan Miller. Miller’s wife, Alex—also a detective—was recently murdered on the job. Afternoons spent in the company of his pet rats and punctuated by visits from Alex’s ghost are not enough to keep Declan away from work for long, though, and he returns, grieving, after a six-week hiatus. The first case assigned to Miller and his new partner, Sara Xiu, is a double murder. It initially appears that the two victims—an organized crime heir and an IT consultant—have nothing in common, but after Declan taps into a network of sources spanning his and Alex’s ballroom dancing friends, an old informant, and Alex’s ghost, he starts to fear a complex conspiracy is at hand. Meanwhile, Declan’s friend, prison snitch Gary “Chesshead” Cole, tries to find Alex’s murderer, with tragic results. Billingham imbues Miller with a brilliant sense of humor and populates the margins of this well-paced mystery with lovable, fully fleshed characters whom readers will adore. This is the author at his best. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review

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Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel by Waubgeshig Rice

(Available Formats: Print Book, eBook, Downloadable Audiobook, Hoopla Instant Checkout eBook & Audiobook)

Fall is just about to turn into winter when cell service goes out in a Anishinaabe community in Rice’s chilling post-apocalyptic novel (following Legacy). The novel centers on Evan Whitesky, a young father to two children living on a reservation in northern Canada who is attempting to relearn and maintain the traditional ways in a world where society has collapsed and electricity, cell phones, land lines, and satellites have all disappeared. In the absence of all the things that make the long, harsh winters of northern Canada easier, the community has to band together to ensure its survival, doling out canned provisions and trying to ensure running water and heat for everyone for as long as possible. When a man arrives seeking refuge from the chaos in the south, Evan and his community allow him to stay in spite of their misgivings. As the winter progresses and hunger sets in, hostility rises and small-town power struggles become a life-or-death affair. This slow-burning thriller is also a powerful story of survival and will leave readers breathless. – Publishers Weekly Review

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Climate and the Science of Denial by David Lipsky

(Available Formats: Print Book & Hoopla Instant Checkout Audiobook)

A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2023 • A USA Today Must-Read Summer Book • A Next Big Idea Must-Read Book • A Library Journal What To Read In 2023 Book

The New York Times best-selling author explores how “anti-science” became so virulent in American life—through a history of climate denial and its consequences.

In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE’S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.

With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors—Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla—who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes.

Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy—one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.

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Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Defiance by Brian Freeman

(Available Formats: Print Book)

Treadstone agents worldwide are being hunted down and killed as a U.S. government official seeks to erase all evidence of a fraught mission called the Defiance, and Jason Bourne is on the list. That puts him in opposition to an archenemy assassin known as Lennon. Next in Ludlum’s New York Times best-selling series, taken over by ITW/Macavity winner Freeman. – Library Journal Review

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The Rooster House: My Ukrainian Family Story, a Memoir  by Victoria Belim

(Available Formats: Print Book & Hoopla Instant Checkout eBook)

A Ukrainian American journalist recounts the history of her Ukrainian family within the broader context of Russian aggression since the 1930s. “I was born in Kyiv, but the first fifteen summers of my life unfolded in [Bereh] on the Vorksla River.” So writes Brussels-based journalist Belim in this poignant, gently unfolding tale. To her, the small village of Bereh was a “second home,” and her great-grandparents Asya and Sergiy were her “second set of parents.” Although she grew up in Chicago with her mother and stepfather, Belim pined for Bereh, yet she rarely visited–until 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and war broke out. Spurred by the rabid pro-Soviet stance of her uncle Vladimir, her father’s older brother, who goaded her with anti-Western propaganda, the author decided she needed to return to the Ukraine of her youth and reconnect with her aging grandmother Valentina, who lived in Kyiv but spent her summers in Bereh. The author writes movingly about helping Valentina with her cherry orchard and extensive garden and cooking traditional Ukrainian meals while weaving in painful memories of Soviet oppression–her relatives’ surviving the Holodomor of 1932-1933, when 4 million Ukrainian peasants died due to Stalin’s disastrous collectivization policy. Belim also writes about how, during the political purge of 1937, her uncle Nikodim inexplicably disappeared after being interrogated at the secret Soviet police headquarters called the Rooster House. “I thought of this uncle who had fought for a free Ukraine and who had paid the highest price as a kindred spirit,” she writes, “and I wanted to restore him to his rightful place in the family story.” While Valentina refused to revisit this haunting history, Belim was able to access Nikodim’s files and discover the truth. Throughout this powerful text, readers will encounter numerous satisfying layers. An elegant family narrative of myriad characters traumatized by the deep-seated Russia-Ukrainian struggle. – Kirkus Review

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The Shadow Girls: A Natalie Lockhart Novel by Alice Blanchard

(Available Formats: Print Book)

An upstate New York detective investigating a series of girls held captive wonders if a lost friend could have been one of them. Det. Natalie Lockhart isn’t good at waiting, especially when she’s sitting fruitlessly in the hospital room of longtime colleague Lt. Det. Luke Pittman waiting for him to come out of a coma. Luke’s a fighter, so Natalie’s hoping for the best, but the dire straits of the situation have left her shaken and questioning what her relationship with Luke really is. Sorting it all out is put on hold when Natalie is called to a particularly chilling murder scene. Sitting in the middle of Murray’s Halloween Costumes is the corpse of Randolph Holmes, onto which someone has placed a red nose like a cherry on top. When Natalie looks around for motives, she’s disturbed by a discovery in Randy’s home: binders full of detailed descriptions of girls being held captive by whomever wrote them. Are they sick fantasy or sicker fact? The information in the binders seems to dovetail with a series of women who disappeared over a yearslong span, dubbed by one reporter “The Shadow Girls.” As she learns more about the case, Natalie can’t help wondering whether Bella Striver, her childhood best friend, might have been one of these shadow girls. Whether or not she is, Natalie is determined to solve the case of her long-missing friend. Just when this police-driven story seems to wind down, there’s a bonus mystery on top. – Kirkus Review

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Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins & James L. Traylor

(Available Formats: Print Book)

A full-dress biography of the most polarizing practitioner of 20th-century crime fiction. As Collins and Traylor note, nearly everyone deplored the sex and violence of Mickey Spillane’s (1918-2006) midcentury novels about private eye Mike Hammer–though that didn’t stop the millions of readers who catapulted him to the top of bestseller lists and kept him there. Delving into Spillane’s roots, the authors examine the evolution of comic-book hero Mike Lancer into Mike Hammer, cite contemporaneous reviewers who talked up or trash-talked Hammer’s adventures, and explore Spillane’s multimedia activities during the 10 years (1952-1962) of Hammer’s absence from the printed page. (Why the long silence? Collins and Traylor believe Spillane was waiting for his disadvantageous contract with film producer Victor Saville to expire). Warning in their opening chapter of spoilers ahead, the authors proceed to summarize the mysteries and solutions of all Hammer’s early novels. They’re at their best when mapping the Spillane metaverse, which includes novels, stories, articles, comic strips, radio broadcasts, TV programs, and movies, and weakest in their uncritical praise of their subject as a plotter, stylist, Jehovah’s Witness, and human being (a verdict his first two wives might have contested). “Mickey encouraged our best efforts, all the while sharing his humanity, generosity, and down-to-earth nature,” they write. “This book reflects not just our love for his work, but for the man, with thanks for his encouragement and friendship.” Spillane’s appealing directness provides an endless stream of anecdotes. The authors conclude with a formidable array of appendices, ranging from an autobiographical fragment that takes Spillane from birth to age 14 to an essay on “Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane” to a brace of bibliographies and an account of some of their own extensive dealings with the author when he was alive and the work Collins has continued to complete since his death. Fans who’ve been waiting for a life of Spillane will gobble this up. – Kirkus Review

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The Woman in the Castello by Kelsey James

(Available Formats: Print Book, Hoopla Instant Checkout eBook & Audiobook)

In this beguiling midcentury historical fiction novel set in 1960s Italy, an ambitious American actress and single mother snags the starring role in a mysterious horror movie shooting on location in a crumbling medieval castle outside Rome…

Readers who enjoy the moody gothic allure of Kate Morton and Silvia Moreno-Garcia or the immersive settings of Lucinda Riley and Fiona Davis will be enthralled by Kelsey James’ spellbinding web of intriguing mystery, family secrets, forbidden love, and midcentury Italian flair.

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Have a great day!

Linda Reimer

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Information on the three library 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.

Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.