Hi everyone, here are our five 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 Wednesday.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, October 25, 2023.
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On an unrelated music note, today, October 18, is the 97th anniversary of the birth of Rock n’ Roll pioneer Chuck Berry.
So here is the guitar wizard with one of his best known songs:
Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry
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And now, on to our weekly book recommendations!
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The Discreet Charm of the Big Bad Wolf: A Novel by Alexander McCall Smith
(Available Formats: Print Book & Large Print)
A crime ripped from the mind of Mother Goose animates McCall’s witty fourth outing for Swedish police detective Ulf Varg (after 2021’s The Man in the Silver Saab). Fridolf Bengtsson, owner of Sweden’s largest bacon-processing business, arrives at Ulf’s office in the Department of Sensitive Crimes to report that his country cottage has been stolen—literally removed from its foundations and taken somewhere else. While Ulf investigates, he faces an additional pair of time-sensitive problems: in order to cut down on operating costs, he must select a member of his tight-knit team to transfer to another department; and his girlfriend, a veterinarian’s assistant, is nudging him to get experimental cochlear implants for his nearly deaf dog. Ulf and company are extremely pleasant company, lending this farcical mystery all the comforts of a good cozy without most of the clichés, and Smith juggles the various subplots with ease. Simply put, this is good-natured fun. – Publishers Weekly Review
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True Raiders: The Untold Story of the 1909 Expedition to Find the Legendary Ark of the Covenant by Brad Ricca
(Available Formats: Print Book & Hoopla Instant Checkout eAudio)
Ricca follows up Olive the Lionheart with another cinematic history of a European aristocrat’s adventures in distant lands. In 1909, Montague “Monty” Parker, an English nobleman and veteran of the Second Boer War, led an expedition to Palestine in search of the Ark of the Covenant. He was hired by businessmen who believed that a Finnish scholar had discovered a cipher in the Old Testament that, when decoded, provided a map to where the Ark was hidden in a network of subterranean tunnels near Jerusalem. Following the scholar’s map and the findings of an earlier British explorer, Charles Warren, Parker and his team of amateur archaeologists excavated Hezekiah’s Tunnel, believed to have been built in the 8th century BCE to provide Jerusalem with water during a siege by the king of Assyria. Ricca details the history of biblical sites including Gihon Spring, also known as the Virgin’s Fountain, where Mary was believed to have washed Jesus’s swaddling clothes, as well as a strike by local laborers, the race to beat a rival expedition funded by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and allegations that Parker stole antiquities from the Mosque of Omar. Parker’s rumored romance with Ava Astor, the estranged wife of John Jacob Astor, provides a touch of glamour. Archaeology buffs will be enthralled. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 by Matthew J. Davenport
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Davenport brings fresh insights to the 1906 earthquake and devastating, citywide fires in San Francisco. He demonstrates that improvisation played a key role in the response to the disaster, with water scarce and local news outlets paralyzed. The damages had much more painful repercussions for those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder: immigrants and impoverished residents were incinerated in cheap, wooden tenements. The same hubris, sloppiness, and lack of foresight that worsened the city’s destruction were essentially duplicated when it came time to rebuild. City leaders’ efforts to revamp San Francisco meant that quality was considered a subsidiary concern to speed, when in fact it should’ve been paramount. Developers viewed the city as a tabula rasa, and Davenport laments that sustainability and safety were “again left to market forces.” Chinese and Japanese immigrants were unfairly scapegoated, culminating in the 1924 passage of the Asian Exclusion Act. The disaster also seemed to seal the fate of Hetch Hetchy Valley, which was dammed to provide a reliable water supply to the San Francisco Bay Area. A tale both captivating and cautionary. – Booklist Review
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Murder Most Royal by S. J. Bennett
(Available Formats: Print Book)
In this third, touchingly timely work in a popular series featuring Queen Elizabeth II, Christmas festivities at Sandringham are horribly overturned when a severed hand is discovered. The eagle-eyed queen immediately recognizes the hand’s signet ring as belonging to a member of the St Cyr family, long-established friends, and she works behind the scenes with her assistant private secretary, Rozie Oshodi, to solve the murder. – Library Journal Review
Reader’s Note: As mentioned, this is the third book in the Her Majesty The Queen Investigates series. If you’d like to start reading from the beginning, check out book one: The Windsor Knot (2020).
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Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
(Available Formats: Print Book & eBook)
Hawk (Anoka) and Van Alst (Sacred City) present a heavy-hitting arrangement of 26 twisted tales from established and emerging Indigenous North American authors. The collection mixes hauntings (as in Mona Susan Power’s “Dead Owls”) and monsters (in Mathilda Zeller’s “Kushtuka”) from Native tradition, with the more mundane horrors of privileged white racism taken to extremes (in Amber Blaeser-Wardzala’s “Collections”), the devastating effects of abuse (in Kelli Jo Ford’s “Heart-Shaped Clock”), and a touch of satisfyingly violent revenge against mistreatment, both supernatural (in D.H. Trujillo’s “Snakes Are Born in the Dark”) and mundane (in David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s “Sundays”). Hawk’s own contribution, “Behind Colin’s Eyes,” evokes a visceral feeling of being trapped. Family stories and intergenerational relationships form a running theme, taking center stage in Morgan Talty’s “The Prepper,” while the dangerous power of storytelling itself comes to the fore in Richard Van Camp’s gripping “Scariest. Story. Ever.” Lifting up an exciting array of authors, this anthology will be a treat for horror fans. – Publishers Weekly Review
Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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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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Note: Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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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, 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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Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
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