Hi everyone, here are links to the weekly list of New York Times Bestsellers.
New York Times Bestsellers can be requested through StarCat (for print books) & The Digital Catalog/Libby for eBooks and Downloadable Audiobooks. Select titles may also be checked out, on demand, through the Hoopla Catalog/app.
For more information on the three catalogs skip to the section below the bestselling titles*
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New York Times Bestseller blog posts are usually published on Sundays; although the new New York Times Bestseller Lists come out, and are accessible for free through the NYT website, on Thursdays.
For the next two weeks, due to holidays closings and vacations, I’m going to provide the direct links to the New York Times Bestseller lists so you can access the bestseller lists and see what new books are popular anytime during the rest of the holiday season.
Our regular New York Times Bestsellers blog posts will resume on Sunday, January 13, 2024.
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The New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller Bestsellers
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access
StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries throughout the Southern Tier Library System.
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Also of Note: If a New York Times Bestseller isn’t yet available in any of the three catalogs, you can contact the library and request to be notified when it becomes available.
Southeast Steuben County Library Telephone Number: 607-936-3713.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
Hi everyone, here is the weekly list of New York Times Bestsellers.
New York Times Bestsellers can be requested through StarCat (for print books) & The Digital Catalog/Libby for eBooks and Downloadable Audiobooks. Select titles may also be checked out, on demand, through the Hoopla Catalog.
For more information on the three catalogs skip to the section below the bestselling titles*
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New York Times Bestseller blog posts are published on Sundays. And the next New York Times blog post will be posted in two weeks on Sunday, December 31, 2023.
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FICTION
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ALEX CROSS MUST DIE by James Patterson
The 32nd book in the Alex Cross series. When a jet is gunned down, Cross goes back into action.
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ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE by Anthony Doerr
The lives of a blind French girl and a gadget-obsessed German boy before and during World War II.
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THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese
Three generations of a family living on South India’s Malabar Coast suffer the loss of a family member by drowning.
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DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver
Winner of a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A reimagining of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in the mountains of southern Appalachia.
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THE EDGE by David Baldacci
The second book in the 6:20 Man series. Travis Devine investigates the murder of the C.I.A. operative Jenny Silkwell in rural Maine.
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THE EXCHANGE by John Grisham
In a sequel to “The Firm,” Mitch McDeere, who is now a partner at the world’s largest law firm, gets caught up in a sinister plot.
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FOURTH WING by Rebecca Yarros
Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.
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THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride
Secrets held by the residents of a dilapidated neighborhood come to life when a skeleton is found at the bottom of a well.
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HOLLY by Stephen King
The private detective Holly Gibney investigates whether a married pair of octogenarian academics had anything to do with Bonnie Dahl’s disappearance.
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THE HOUSEMAID by Freida McFadden
Troubles surface when a woman looking to make a fresh start takes a job in the home of the Winchesters.
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ICEBREAKER by Hannah Grace
Anastasia might need the help of the captain of a college hockey team to get on the Olympic figure skating team.
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IRON FLAME by Rebecca Yarros
The second book in the Empyrean series. Violet Sorrengail’s next round of training might require her to betray the man she loves.
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LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus
A scientist and single mother living in California in the 1960s becomes a star on a TV cooking show.
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THE LITTLE LIAR by Mitch Albom
The actions of an 11-year-old boy help facilitate the delivery of Jewish residents, including his family, to Auschwitz.
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RESURRECTION WALK by Michael Connelly
The seventh book in the Lincoln Lawyer series. Haller and Bosch team up to prove the innocence of a woman in prison for killing her husband.
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THE SECRET by Lee Child & Andrew Child
The 28th book in the Jack Reacher series. It’s 1992 and Reacher looks into the cause of a string of mysterious deaths.
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THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO by Taylor Jenkins Reid
A movie icon recounts stories of her loves and career to a struggling magazine writer.
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TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett
Three daughters, who return to their family orchard in the spring of 2020, learn about their mother’s relationship with a famous actor.
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NON-FICTION
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BEHIND THE SEAMS by Dolly Parton with Holly George-Warren
The country music legend shares stories about her favorite outfits she has worn on and off the stage.
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BEING HENRY by Henry Winkler with James Kaplan
The Emmy Award-winning actor shares how playing roles such as the Fonz and his struggles with dyslexia affected his life.
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THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE by Bessel van der Kolk
How trauma affects the body and mind, and innovative treatments for recovery.
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THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown
The University of Washington’s eight-oar crew and their quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
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DEMOCRACY AWAKENING by Heather Cox Richardson
The historian and author of the newsletter “Letters From an American” shares her views on the current political moment.
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ELON MUSK by Walter Isaacson
The author of “The Code Breaker” traces Musk’s life and summarizes his work on electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence.
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FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING by Matthew Perry
The late actor, known for playing Chandler Bing on “Friends,” shares stories from his childhood and his struggles with sobriety.
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GHOSTS OF HONOLULU by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll Jr.
The story of a Japanese American naval intelligence agent, a Japanese spy and events in Hawaii before the start of World War II.
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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by David Grann
The story of a murder spree in 1920s Oklahoma that targeted Osage Indians, whose lands contained oil.
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KILLING THE WITCHES by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
The 13th book in the conservative commentator’s Killing series gives a portrayal of the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Mass.
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MY EFFIN’ LIFE by Geddy Lee with Daniel Richler
The musician known for his work with the band Rush chronicles his life as the child of Holocaust survivors and his time in the limelight.
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MY NAME IS BARBRA by Barbra Streisand
The EGOT winner chronicles her journey in show business and reveals details about some of her personal relationships.
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OATH AND HONOR by Liz Cheney
The former congresswoman from Wyoming recounts how she helped lead the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6. Attack on the United States Capitol.
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OUTLIVE by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford
A look at recent scientific research on aging and longevity.
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PREQUEL by Rachel Maddow
The MSNBC host and co-author of “Bag Man” details a campaign to overthrow the U.S. government and install authoritarian rule prior to and during our involvement in World War II.
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TEDDY AND BOOKER T. by Brian Kilmeade
The Fox News host gives an account of the relationship between President Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington.
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THE WAGER by David Grann
The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.
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THE WOMAN IN ME by Britney Spears
The Grammy Award-winning pop star details her personal and professional experiences, including the years she spent under a conservatorship overseen by her father.
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Have a great week!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Search for and request books online!
eBooks & Audiobooks Through The Digital Catalog & Libby
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access
StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries throughout the Southern Tier Library System.
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Also of Note: If a New York Times Bestseller isn’t yet available in any of the three catalogs, you can contact the library and request to be notified when it becomes available.
Southeast Steuben County Library Telephone Number: 607-936-3713.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
Hi everyone, welcome to our Suggested Listening posting for this week!
Suggested Listening postings are published on Fridays; and our next Suggested Listening posting will be out on Friday, January 5, 2024.
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And here are the 10 recommended songs of the week; with our weekly thing this time around, being New Year’s music.
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The Best Is Yet To Come (2008 Remastered) [feat. Count Basie And His Orchestra]
From The Album: Nothing But The Best (2008)
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Blue Champaign by Anita O’Day
From The Album: Incomparable! (1964)
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Bringing In A Brand New Year by Charles Brown
From The Album: Cool Christmas Blues (1994)
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Happy New Year, Darling by Lonnie Johnson
From The Album: Me and My Crazy Self (2019)
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New Year’s Day by U2
From The Album: The Unforgettable Fire (1983)
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New Year’s Prayer by Jeff Buckley
From The Album: Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk (1997)
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Nothin’ New For New Year by Harry Connick Jr. with George Jones
From The Album: Harry For The Holidays (2003)
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Same Old Auld Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg
From The Album: The Innocent Age (1982)
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This Will Be Our Year by The Zombies
From The Album: Odessey And Oracle (1968)
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What Are You Doing New Years Eve by Ella Fitgerald
From The Album: Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (1960)
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Hoopla Recommend Album of the Week
And this week, for those out there who are ready to move past the holiday season – here’s an album that has no holiday music on it!
And from the album the song:
Rodeo 1: Buckaroo Holiday performed by the UCLA Symphony with Dean Anderson conducting (the recorded version features the Dallas Symphony Orchestra – and no video is available)
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Have a great holiday weekend,
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Online Catalog Links:
StarCat
The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD, etc.
The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos.
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The Libby App
Libby is the companion app to the Digital Catalog and may be found in the Apple & Google app.
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Hoopla
A catalog of instant check out items, including eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, comic books, TV shows and movies for patrons of the Southeast Steuben County Library.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
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 Wednesday.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, January 3, 2024.
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We’re on week three of our light look at some of the best books published in 2023; so many, many good mysteries and never enough time to read them all!
Here is the reading schedule for the balance of December & the first reading week in January 2024:
December 13: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 1 (12 titles)
December 20: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 2 (12 titles)
December 22: Science Fiction & Fantasy Titles (12 titles)
December 27: A selection of the best mysteries of 2023 (12 titles)
January 3: A selection of the best non-fiction books of 2023 (12 titles)
And if you wish to do a deep dive into the best of 2023 reading lists – I’ve included reference links at the end of this post.
And without further ado, here is our list of a baker’s twelve mysteries; actually there are twenty titles; as selecting just a dozen was too hard – all of them are great mysteries and among the best mysteries of 2023!
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‘All The Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham
Isabelle Drake desperately hopes to mobilize the true-crime community’s armchair detectives to find her son, Mason, who was abducted from his bedroom a year earlier. Ignoring the protests of her estranged husband, Ben, and the case’s lead detective, Isabelle speaks at CrimeCon, confiding her horror at finding Mason’s crib empty the morning he disappeared. Online detectives label Isabelle as either pitiable or plain evil: How could someone have taken Mason from the house without the dog barking? Also, doesn’t Mason’s disappearance cast suspicion on the early deaths of Ben’s first wife and Isabelle’s younger sister? The doubters don’t know that Isabelle, formerly a deep sleepwalker, has suffered untreatable insomnia since Mason vanished or that she’s obsessively tending an evidence board on her dining-room wall. Podcast host Waylon Spencer, also a crime victim, offers to investigate Mason’s disappearance, and Isabelle exposes herself even further. But Waylon has hidden motives, and when she catches him lying, Isabelle realizes that she’s been in denial about Mason’s disappearance all along. True crime’s trending appeal and Willingham’s mastery of the domestic mystery (A Flicker in the Dark, 2022) promise popularity for this one: fans of Lisa Gardner’s Frankie Elkin series will be drawn to the risky amateur-detective elements, and those who crave resolution will appreciate that Willingham tucks the story’s ends in tight. – Starred Booklist Review
(Goodreads)
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All The Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
Cosby follows Razorblade Tears (2021) with a tale that begins in tragedy in a Virginia town when a former student guns down a popular schoolteacher and then is shot to death by sheriff’s deputies. The sheriff, former FBI agent Titus Crown, faces a firestorm of publicity and a community demanding answers. It’s a racially charged situation. The victim was Black, the deputies are white, but Crown, the community’s first Black sheriff, does his damnedest to put race aside and concentrate on the central issue. Why did this young man kill his teacher? What he discovers in his search for the truth is downright chilling, and then there are his own secrets to deal with. Again Cosby’s literary skills are exceptional. His characters feel so real, his dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the story, which delves into the town’s grim past, a local church, and a far-right-wing group’s plan for celebrating the Confederacy, is of such moral complexity it wholly commands the reader’s close attention. This is a crime novel to savor and ponder.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cosby’s stature and audience grows exponentially with each book, and his latest is as topical as crime fiction gets. – Starred Booklist Review
(NPR & Time Magazine)
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Beware The Woman by Meghan Abbott
In this spine-tingling suspense yarn from Edgar Award winner Abbott (The Turnout), pregnant second grade teacher Jacy learns there’s plenty she still doesn’t know about her taciturn artist husband Jed or the family he rarely mentions—maybe a dangerous amount. The action unfolds during the couple’s summer road trip from New York City to visit Jed’s father, a retired physician, at his cottage on Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula. At first, Jacy feels transported by the surroundings and her father-in-law’s near-courtly solicitousness. (His brusque caretaker, Mrs. Brandt, is a different story.) But things shift when Jacy has a miscarriage scare and, in the aftermath, Jed aligns with his father’s alarmingly old-school notions about women and pregnancy. Rightly or wrongly, Jacy starts to feel like a prisoner. Manipulating the sense of menace like a virtuoso violinist, Abbott expertly foreshadows the wrenching family secrets that are exposed in a ferocious finale. Sinewy prose and note-perfect pacing make this a masterful and provocative deep dive into desire, love, and gender politics. Readers will be left breathless. – Publishers Weekly
(LitHub & NPR)
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Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
In this stunning serial killer thriller, bestseller Knoll (Luckiest Girl Alive) uses echoes of Ted Bundy’s real-life crimes to underline potent themes of misogyny and survivor’s guilt. In January 1978, Florida State University student Pamela Schumacher becomes the sole witness when a killer invades her sorority house, murdering two of her friends and disfiguring two others. The killings bring Pamela into contact with Tina Cannon, who’s convinced the same man murdered her friend Ruth Wachowsky four years earlier in Seattle. Together, Pamela and Tina spend decades digging up evidence that might link the crimes and find justice for their slain friends. Knoll seamlessly moves from the night of the murders and their immediate aftermath to 2021, when the man eventually dubbed the All-American Sex Killer faces his final trial. Without delving into prurient clichés, she excavates the emotional toll the murders take on Pamela and Tina, credibly tracing the ways such traumas can shape entire lives. By focusing on the women affected by her Ted Bundy stand-in instead of the nuances of his criminal psychology, Knoll movingly reframes an American obsession without stripping it of its intrigue. The results are masterful. – Starred Publishers Weekly
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Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lilly
In this excellent series launch from Lillie (For the Best), Cherokee archaeologist Syd Walker investigates the disappearances of several Native American women. Syd works for the Rhode Island branch of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency hoping to rehabilitate its image and establish trust with Indigenous communities despite its original mission to “exterminate Native people, culture, and ways of life.” When Syd’s old BIA ID badge from a college internship is found inside a skull on BIA-managed land near her Oklahoma hometown, dark memories resurface: 15 years earlier, two men wearing devil masks killed Syd’s best friend, Luna Myers, and Luna’s family. Syd narrowly escaped the tragedy. Guilt-ridden and haunted by Luna’s ghost, who regularly speaks to her, Syd hasn’t returned home since. The badge discovery draws her back, and upon her return, Syd learns that her sister Emma Lou, an opiate addict, has vanished, one of many Indigenous women to have recently disappeared from the area. Reassigned to the Oklahoma branch of the BIA by her boss, Syd begins to investigate the women’s disappearances, hoping her inquiry might finally bring her face-to-face with Luna’s killer. Lillie does an excellent job of balancing a riveting plot with a moving portrait of her troubled lead. Charles Todd fans will want to check this out. – Publishers Weekly Review
(Washington Post)
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Code of the Hills by Chris Offutt
Excellent Kentucky noir–Offutt’s third Mick Hardin novel is the best yet. Mick, a veteran Army investigator, has finally mustered out after 20 years of service, and he’s headed home to Rocksalt for a quick last look and goodbye before he retires (or exiles himself) to Corsica. Just as he arrives home, though, a body is discovered–a crusty old race-car mechanic has been killed, and Mick’s sister, Linda, the sheriff, begins investigating. Mick agrees to help her deputy, Johnny Boy, with a tricky eviction order–a father is trying to boot his son and the son’s wife from the deluxe chicken house in which they’ve been squatting–and before long the two lawmen have found not only a link to the mechanic’s murder, but a second corpse. Immediately thereafter, Linda gets into harm’s way…and with her out of action, Mick is sucked back into investigative work and given a field promotion to temporary deputy. What ensues involves cockfighting, rattlesnake-milking, a perilous trip to Detroit (and to “Ypsitucky” beyond it), and in the end Mick once again has to negotiate both the code of the hills (a reference in this case to the tradition of honor- or vengeance-killing) and the murky and tangled ethics that come into play when a law enforcer values justice above the letter of the law. Offutt once again beautifully captures both the roughness and the generosity of the inhabitants of Rocksalt, both the menace and the beauty of the eastern Kentucky landscape. The dialogue is a highlight, consistently sharp, quick, and funny; in that, Offutt is rapidly becoming a rural-noir rival to greats like Elmore Leonard. Another love letter to Appalachia with a high body count. Another bloody delight. – Stared Kirkus Review
(Kirkus Review)
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The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen
Pylväinen’s captivating latest (after We Sinners) follows the inhabitants of a tiny Swedish village in the Arctic Circle in 1852 as a pastor’s popularity begins to take off. Lars Laestadius’s church had been filling with Finns, Swedes, and native Sami who were drawn in by his wild sermons. Then, one day, Biettar Rasti, a former Sami shaman and prominent reindeer herder who’s now a drunk, interrupts a service with his own awakening on the church floor, which coincides with an earthquake. He leaves his herd to his son Ivvar and frequents the parsonage to learn scripture from Lars’s family, and Lars’s daughter Willa takes a shine to Ivvar. Ivvar, like his father, drinks and is indebted to the village storekeeper whose collection he avoids. Ivvar breaks things off with a Sami girl and begins spending time with Willa, and when Lars catches them kissing, she is shunned. Soon Willa sets off on sledges and takes refuge with the Sami, who along with Ivvar, are moving with their herds to the sea. By the end, a dean’s intervention into Lars’s temperance teachings and attempts to collect debts from the Sami culminate in tragic violence. With immersive details of Bible thumping and reindeer herding, the author evocatively captures two cultures and shows what happens when Christian mores collide with the customs of the remote Sami. This is transcendent.
(National Book Award Finalist & NPR)
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The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino
Tokyo police detective Kyoichiro Kaga discovers an unsettling personal connection to a tricky murder case in the brilliantly twisty fourth entry in Higashino’s series (after 2022’s A Death in Tokyo). Kaga’s cousin, Shuhei Matsumiya, a detective with a separate division of the Tokyo police, suspects that two strangulation murders may be linked, despite no evidence of a connection between the victims. In the first, an unidentified homeless man was believed to have perished in a fire until an autopsy revealed smoke-free lungs and strangulation marks on his neck. A few weeks later, cleaning contractor Michiko Oshitani’s decomposing remains are discovered in a spartan Tokyo apartment hundreds of miles from her home with apparent strangulation marks around her neck. Though the crimes are outside Kaga’s jurisdiction, Matsumiya seeks his cousin’s advice. Soon afterward, Matsumiya’s colleagues discover a calendar in the apartment where Oshitani died with phrases that hearken back to the death of Kaga’s mother more than a decade ago. She’d left Kaga’s father long before that to pursue another man, and among her effects was a note with the same phrases as the calendar, and in the same handwriting. Higashino metes out the plot’s surprises slowly, prioritizing Kaga’s emotional response to the investigation. This poignant fair-play whodunit is sure to thrill fans of golden age detective fiction. – Publishers Weekly Review
(NYT)
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Glory Be by Danielle Arceneaux
Arceneaux’s delightful debut cozy introduces Glory Broussard of Lafayette, La., a self-described “old, fat, black woman” whose weeks revolve around churchgoing and her gig as a small-time bookie. One Sunday, while she’s crunching numbers at her usual table in CC’s Coffeehouse, Glory strikes up a conversation with police officer Beau Landry, whom she used to babysit. Partway through their chat, he’s called to a crime scene at the home of Amity Gay, an activist nun and Glory’s best friend. Glory insists on coming along, and when they arrive, the pair finds Amity strangled by her habit—one end is knotted around her neck, the other tied to a doorknob. The police are quick to declare it a suicide, but Glory’s not convinced. Determined to find justice, she employs the help of her daughter, Delphine, a high-powered New York City lawyer, and launches an investigation that takes them through Lafayette’s elite circles in search of answers. Arceneaux successfully avoids a mountain of cozy clichés—no bookshops, baked goods, or love interest for Glory—and works potent critiques of Southern racism into her well-oiled plot. Readers will be eager to spend more time with Glory in future installments. – Publishers Weekly Review
(Washington Post)
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Invisible Son by Kim Johnson
In February 2020, after spending two months in a juvenile correction facility for a crime he didn’t commit, 17-year-old Andre Jackson is finally on his way home. His probation officer insists that Dre has been given a new lease on life, but Dre is worried about what his grandparents will think of him upon his return to the family’s rapidly gentrifying corner of Portland, Ore. Still, Dre is determined to clean up his reputation, which involves confronting his best friend Eric Whitaker, who allowed Dre to take the fall for Eric’s crime. He quickly learns that Eric is missing, and Eric’s sister Sierra—Dre’s first love—doesn’t understand why no one, not even their white adoptive parents, is looking for him. As Dre embarks on his own investigation, societal conflicts—including Covid and protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd—and Sierra’s parents’ increasingly suspect behavior, complicate matters. Smooth pacing and anticipatory tension imbue this hard-hitting mystery with a chilling atmosphere. Via Dre’s contemplative voice and a timely setting, Johnson (This Is My America) balances intrigue with socially conscious ruminations on systemic and environmental racism, and the power in reclaiming one’s narrative. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
(NPR)
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A Line In The Sand by Kevin Powers
A taut thriller linking war crimes, politics, and police work. Powers returns to the subject of war and its collateral damage that he first studied in The Yellow Birds (2012), an acclaimed debut published after his own Army service in Iraq. A Shout in the Ruins (2018) followed fallout from the Civil War and slavery. In the new book, the pivotal character is Arman Bajalan, a refugee from Iraq living in the U.S., who worked as an interpreter for the American military in Mosul in 2004. He finds a dead man in a suit lying on a Norfolk, Virginia, beach. He carries no ID, and the labels are missing from his clothes. The police team is led by the oddly named Det. Catherine Wheel. A second narrative line concerns journalist Sally Ewell, whose brother was killed in Iraq and whose current reporting centers on Decision Tree, a private military contractor on the verge of a $2 billion government deal if it can get past a congressional investigation of its roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two narratives intersect through Bajalan, who filmed a massacre of unarmed Iraqi university students by Decision Tree operatives. A week later an assassination attempt killed Bajalan’s wife and child and had him seeking a U.S. immigrant visa. It soon becomes clear that he’s still a target. Powers has a strong female character in Det. Wheel–a cool professional mercifully free of the dire flaws with which thriller writers tend to baste their lead cops. A couple of older civilians familiar with guns come in handy when the mercenaries visit. Powers has a clearly negative message about military contractors and the business of war, starting with the epigraph (“War is a racket…”), but there’s a moral ambivalence to the novel’s resolution that should spark debate. Masterful in its structure and pacing; a great read. – Starred Kirkus Review
(Kirkus Review)
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The Lost Americans by Christopher Bollen
After Cate Castle’s brother, Eric, plunges from his hotel balcony, Cairo’s police cite the testimony of Eric’s erratic behavior given by his fellow weapons contractors to justify their suicide ruling. Unconvinced, and perhaps guilt-stricken by their strained relationship, Cate arranges a second autopsy in the U.S., which finds solid evidence of murder. Eric’s employer, Polestar, responds with a huge settlement that’s contingent on the Castles’ silence and backed by an unmistakable threat to destroy Eric’s reputation. Uncowed, Cate flies to Cairo to investigate Polestar’s culpability, drawing Omar, the nephew of an acquaintance, into her dangerous quest. For Omar, this may be the risk that breaks the camel’s back: he’s already hiding his sexual identity to avoid President Sisi’s brutal morality sweeps. A bold plot twist bolsters the story’s gritty realism, revealing that the villainy behind Eric’s death shields a lot of human complexity. Bollen, known for setting thrillers in alluring locales, skillfully captures Cairo’s beauty and palpable tension, and Cate and Omar’s courage in facing hard truths gives this memorable thriller extra frisson. – Booklist Review
(Kirkus Review)
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Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood
The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award–winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.
Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean “Will” Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there’s no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what’s in Bodine’s head.
Does her disappearance have to do with the high-profile law firm whose secrets she still keeps; the violent murder of a young woman, with which Bodine had lately become obsessed; or is it the work she did with the FBI hunting Nazi spies intent on wartime sabotage? Any and all are on the suspect list, including their client, Forest Whitsun, hotshot defense attorney and no friend to Pentecost and Parker.
The clock is ticking to get Bodine back alive, but circumstances conspire to pull both investigators away from the case. Will is hot on the trail of a stickup team who are using her name—and maybe her gun—for their own ends. While Lillian again finds herself up against murder-obsessed millionaire Jessup Quincannon, who has discovered a secret from her past—something he plans to use to either rein the great detective in . . . or destroy her.
To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone. – Publisher Description
(NYT)
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My Murder by Katie Williams
In the near-future of this speculative story, Louise is still acclimating to her new life. She is one of five women who were murdered by a serial killer and brought back to life as a clone. She is in a similar body, although less physically scarred, and has all the memories of her previous life except for the murder and a short time before it. Louise attends weekly support group sessions with the other murder victims and tries to be a good wife and mother to her baby. She’s also back at her job, offering virtual reality therapy. When she has the opportunity to meet with her murderer, however, she learns more than expected, and it sends her reeling and questioning the life she was starting to settle into. Williams’s (Tell the Machine Goodnight) writing is delightfully quirky, clever, and often breathtakingly observant as she chronicles Louise’s past and present through her clone, who has to try to fit into a life that she mostly remembers but didn’t physically live through.
VERDICT Combining elements of dystopian fiction, psychological suspense, and mystery, this is a wonderfully incisive and intriguing novel that defies genres and invites contemplation. Perfect for book groups. – Library Journal Review
(LitHub, NPR & NYPL)
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Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin
A psychic astrophysicist returns to her Texas hometown to heal old family wounds and help the police solve a cold case. When Vivian Bouchet returns home to Fort Worth to bury her mother, she gets pulled back into old relationships, agreeing to help her policeman friend Mike, with whom she was once in love, with some cold cases. In addition to having a Ph.D. in astrophysics and conducting research into extraterrestrial life based on a “glimpse of artificial light” from deep space, Vivvy has psychic visions, possibly inherited from her mother, who hung her shingle as a psychic for years and was infamous for discovering a dead body buried in the yard of their rental house when Vivvy was just a girl. Mike gives her the file on a famous missing person case, that of 3-year-old Lizzie Solomon, who disappeared nearly 11 years earlier. Lizzie’s mother is serving time for her daughter’s murder though the girl’s body was never found. Mike isn’t the only one who’s interested in the case and in what Vivvy might be able to glean from old photos or Lizzie’s hair clip; Jesse Sharp, a skeptical, magnetic detective, is soon following her all over town, maybe to intimidate her into “confessing” that she’s a con artist, maybe to protect her from the fallout when a local conspiracy theorist gets her in his sights. Vivvy’s not sure, but she can’t deny the attraction between them even as she knows Jesse has secrets related to another case. Heaberlin’s evocation of the dusty, insular Texas town is the perfect backdrop, and both Jesse and Vivvy are appealingly prickly characters with believable sexual tension. Vivvy’s role as a scientist sets her apart from many fictional psychics and makes her a formidable heroine–there are rational layers to this supernatural thriller. Mysterious, sexy, and smart. – Kirkus Review
(Kirkus Review)
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The River We Remember by William Kent Kreuger
In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by a shocking murder, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling novel, an instant New York Times bestseller and “a work of art” (The Denver Post).
On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. The investigation falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.
Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.
Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of mid-century American life that is “a novel to cherish” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The River We Remember offers an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.
(B&N)
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The Secret Hours by Mick Herron
Hailed as a twenty-first-century Le Carré, Herron is a master at portraying the dark, disturbing world of espionage. His latest thriller begins with a violent confrontation at the home of retired spy Max, who’s determined to find out who’s after him and why. His quest leads him deep into the past but also reveals a bleak future for British intelligence, dubbed “the Park.” A panel is convened by the government to uncover suspected corruption in the Park; but the panel is a sham, and the government has already decided the Park’s future. Then former spy, Alison North, steps forward, promising to reveal secrets with frightening implications for British espionage. In the 1990s, North was a newbie agent sent to Berlin to check that expense claims were being appropriately filed, but her real mission was to discover what Miles, a British agent who operated in East Berlin prereunification, was up to. Decades later, Alison is still suffering the aftereffects of her experience but also still working for the intelligence services and determined to uncover the shocking truth she only partly discovered in Berlin. Gripping, cryptic, tragic, and suspenseful, this must-read will keep readers riveted from first page to last. – Starred Booklist Review
(NPR)
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The Stolen Coast by Dwyer Murphy
Jack has an unusual job. He helps people who are on the run find safe havens. It’s not strictly a legal occupation, but it pays pretty well, and it’s interesting work. Jack didn’t think he was in need of an extra jolt of excitement in his life, but when an ex-girlfriend shows up after several years with a plan to steal a fortune in diamonds, he thinks, well, why not? Murphy’s second book, following his well-received debut, An Honest Living (2022), is a terrific heist novel. The author, editor-in-chief of the popular website CrimeReads, nails all aspects of the genre, from the intriguing characters to the complicated plan, the twists and turns and reversals, and a lean, mean writing style. Some caper novels feel by-the-numbers, as though the writer had a list of boxes to check but no real enthusiasm for the material. Murphy obviously loves what he’s writing about, which means we love reading him. For fans of heist and caper stories, this one’s a must-read. – Booklist Review
(LitHub & NPR)
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The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard
From award-winning, internationally bestselling crime writer Catherine Ryan Howard comes The Trap: an unsettling mystery inspired by a series of still-unsolved disappearances in Ireland in the nineties, wherein one young woman risks everything to catch a faceless killer.
One year ago, Lucy’s sister, Nicki, left to meet friends at a pub in Dublin and never came home. The third Irish woman to vanish inexplicably in as many years, the agony of not knowing what happened that night has turned Lucy’s life into a waking nightmare. So, she’s going to take matters into her own hands.
Angela works as a civilian paper-pusher in the Missing Persons Unit, but wants nothing more than to be a fully fledged member of An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force. With the official investigation into the missing women stalled, she begins pulling on a thread that could break the case wide open—and destroy her chances of ever joining the force.
A nameless man drives through the night, his latest victim in the back seat. He’s going to tell her everything, from the beginning. And soon, she’ll realize: what you don’t know can hurt you …
(NYPL)
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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Death shouldn’t be funny or sweet or heartwarming, except maybe in a new cozy series starring Vera Wong, the widowed owner of San Francisco Chinatown’s rather decrepit Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse. That titular typo is actually intentional, meant to suggest “a very famous person, even white people know her name.” At 60, Vera’s settled into specific routines: up at 4:30 am (“late mornings are only for toddlers and Europeans”), wash, walk, text her silent son, home, cold shower, breakfast, open shop downstairs, wait for (her very few) customers. Disruption arrives one morning when she discovers a corpse on the floor. The police arrive, refuse her amazing tea, barely investigate, and leave. Vera knows she’s looking at foul play, no matter what the authorities insist. Of course, she’ll solve the case by gathering (and feeding) the most likely suspects–an alleged reporter, a supposed podcaster, the dead man’s wife, and his twin brother. Vera’s next deadly installment hasn’t yet been officially announced, but the success of Sutanto’s best-selling Aunties series certainly points to more tales of murder.
(NYPL)
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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.
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.
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.
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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Reference Links (for December 2023 & January 5, 2024; Best of 2023 recommended reads posts!)
Patchett, A., Beard, M., Myrie, C., Levy, D., Kilroy, C., O’Connell, M., Frankopan, P., Nolan, M., Enright, A., Morrison, B., Paterson, D., Li, Y., Ford, R., Heisey, M., Branigan, T., Grant, C., Thrall, N., Adegoke, Y., & Penman, I. (2023, December 3). The best books to give as presents this Christmas. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/03/the-best-books-to-give-as-presents-this-christmas
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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Here is our “Best of 2023 Science Fiction & Fantasy” post!
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The next regular recommended reading post will be up on Wednesday, December 27, 2023.
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A selection of the best Science Fiction & Fantasy novels of 2023; twenty titles instead of twelve as previously promised, as it was just so hard to choose just twelve titles! Enjoy!
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Cassandra In Reverse by Holly Smale
Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is 31, stuck in a PR job she hates, and struggling in her relationships because she cannot pick up on emotional cues. After a bad breakup followed by getting fired, Cassie has a meltdown and unexpectedly discovers the ability to travel back in time. Attempting to reset the present by changing the past, Cassie finds herself questioning if she can get it right or if she should be trying at all. From her on-point referencing of ancient Greek life and mythology as a pathway to understanding the world to acknowledging the frustration people feel with her to her seeing colors instead of perceiving emotions, Cassie’s quirks make her uniquely lovable. In her adult debut, Smale, author of the teen Geek Girl series, combines well-developed characters with laugh-out-loud humor as she slowly reveals truths about past events, current troubles, and her protagonist’s undiagnosed autism. Readers will be drawn into Cassie’s life and won’t want to leave. This neurodiverse tale is ripe for discussion and makes a great read-alike for The Rosie Project (2013), by Graeme Simsion; Oona out of Order (2020), by Margarita Montimore; and The Boys (2022), by Katie Hafner. – Starred Booklist Review
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The Deep Sky: A Novel by Yume Kitasei
A ship that left Earth 10 years ago, a crew trained to complete a single mission, and one saboteur hidden among them. Asuka Hoshino-Silva is one of 80 people bound for a far-off planet with the hope of starting a new civilization. After a rigorous training and selection process that began when the crew members were 12 years old, their spaceship finally launched, and they have spent the last 10 years in stasis. Upon awakening, they have found new troubles looming back home and old conflicts surfacing among themselves. For Asuka, this means she isn’t reading her mother’s letters from Earth and isn’t talking to her one-time best friend on the ship. Her problems get worse when Asuka finds herself at the center of an attack meant to sabotage the mission. With every crew member under suspicion, can Asuka uncover the truth, or will old alliances and rivalries tear the crew apart? The present narrative unfolds between flashbacks depicting Asuka’s early hardships due to climate change, tension with her Latine father and Japanese mother, and conflicted feelings about representing Japan on the mission, adding depth to the plot and creating a strong, character-driven, and accessible tale. There are no cis men among the crew members, all of whom are expected to be inseminated and produce offspring as part of the mission. They’ve been recruited from many nations, producing a refreshingly diverse cast that also realistically reflects real-world issues and conflicts. Can something new be built, or is the crew doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? Cerebral SF, tackling both humanitywide problems and the smaller but ever present conflicts closer to home. – Starred Kirkus Review
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The Future by Naomi Alderman
Alderman follows her global, breakthrough hit, The Power (2017), with a high-tech drama involving an eclectic group of characters, including a survivalist influencer, the daughter of a cult leader, and three tech moguls as the world undergoes a drastic change. Lai Zhen, famous for her savvy survivalist instruction videos, is captivated when she meets Martha Einkorn, who fled her father’s cult and eventually became the personal assistant to a tech guru whose social media network revolutionized the way people communicate with each other. Despite their chemistry and several passionate nights together, Martha ghosts Zhen, or at least that’s what Zhen assumes until she finds herself targeted by an assassin from Martha’s father’s cult, and her life is saved by AUGR, a program Martha secretly installed on her phone. Zhen goes underground and resolves to track Martha down, something that proves easier said than done. Massively ambitious in scope, Alderman’s latest novel takes some wild turns as it tackles themes as heady as wealth inequality, social media manipulation, technological advancements, and human nature itself, managing to be both critical and hopeful in equal measure.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Alderman’s fans and readers who relish provocative, headline-hot adventures will be ready to pounce. – Booklist Review
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Great Transition: A Novel by Nick Fuller Googins
Googins in his smart debut imagines a near-future where net-zero emissions are reached after catastrophic climate change. Larch and Kristina lose their loved ones to wildfires and preventable diseases, respectively, and fall in love after meeting as volunteers in a flooded New York City. They then start a family in the utopian city of Nuuk, Greenland. Fifteen years later, their daughter, Emi, laments their marital rift, which formed over their divergent political views. As the world is readying for a Day Zero celebration to commemorate the first day of net-zero, Kristina remains angry over past atrocities committed by “climate criminals.” Larch, however, is complacent with the new world. Not wanting to celebrate, Kristina volunteers to harvest crops in New York. Larch and Emi, meanwhile, attend the festivities and become entrapped in a terrorist attack. It turns out that those responsible for exploiting Earth’s resources remain alive and in power and will murder to keep it that way. Googins overlays an affecting family story on the speculative material, conveying Kristina’s disenchantment after she realizes the man she married wasn’t a fellow revolutionary after all. Climate fiction fans will enjoy this. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey
A desperate scientist. A selfish rogue. A caring child. And the fate of infinite realities. At the beginning of this multiverse-spanning tale, an unnamed narrator tells us we’re going to hear the stories of three individuals: first, Hadiz Tambuwal, an accidental genius; second, Essien Nkanika, an impoverished man willing to do anything to survive; and finally, Topaz Tourmaline FiveHills, a sentient rabbit whose choices changed the course of history. From that confident and intriguing opening, we jump right into Hadiz’s story. She’s a scientist working in a research station in Nigeria who can see the end of civilization coming and finds it terribly inconvenient that this collapse might interrupt her work. She’s looking for dark energy but instead stumbles on a way to hop into alternate universes. We soon learn that thousands of these alternate universes are governed by an empire called the Pandominion that invented cross-universe travel long ago and doesn’t care for people making unsanctioned trips. But with Hadiz’s Earth in the midst of civilizational collapse and environmental catastrophe, she’s left with no choice but to hop sideways to another Earth–and unknowingly set in motion a reality-altering chain of events. The result is sort of a space opera that never goes to space, instead spanning thousands of alternate Earths, including multiple Earths where evolution took a different path and the dominant sentient species is descended from rabbits, hedgehogs, or others of our mammalian cousins. The plot doesn’t map onto a traditional hero’s journey arc and feels all the fresher for it. Short, action-packed chapters keep the pace brisk, and each character we meet, however briefly, is vividly and empathetically drawn. A genuine treat for SF fans: an epic multiverse tale that moves like a thriller. – Starred Kirkus Review
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Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
DEBUT Torzs’s debut novel features a wonderfully realized and atmospheric world and a plot filled with unexpected twists. It takes place in modern-day Vermont, where a family plagued by tragedy, including two half-sisters, guards a collection of books that contain, and are themselves, spells. Esther, the eldest sister, is immune to magic, and her presence counteracts the protection wards over the collection. To save her sister, the books, and likely herself, she has fled and changes locations every year (living most recently in Antarctica). Meanwhile, in London, lives Nicholas, a scribe who inherited his family’s legacy of writing the spell books, as well as the burden of protecting them. But from what, or whom? Over time he learns the perceived danger might not be as he thought.
VERDICT Torzs does a fantastic job creating a gripping and suspenseful story that keeps readers on their toes and wanting more. Fans of The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern will love this magic- and suspense-filled novel. – Starred Library Journal Review
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Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us the third and final novel in an extraordinary space opera trilogy about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man’s discovery will save or destroy us all.
Idris Telemmier has uncovered a secret that changes everything – the Architects’ greatest weakness. A shadowy Cartel scrambles to turn his discovery into a weapon against these alien destroyers of worlds. But between them and victory stands self-interest. The galaxy’s great powers would rather pursue their own agendas than stand together against this shared terror.
Human and inhuman interests wrestle to control Idris’ discovery, as the galaxy erupts into a mutually destructive and self-defeating war. The other great obstacle to striking against their alien threat is Idris himself. He knows that the Architects, despite their power, are merely tools of a higher intelligence.
Deep within unspace, where time moves differently, and reality isn’t quite what it seems, their masters are the true threat. Masters who are just becoming aware of humanity’s daring – and taking steps to exterminate this annoyance forever.
The Final Architecture Series
Shards of Earth
Eyes of the Void
Lords of Uncreation
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Murtagh by Christopher Paoloini
Murtagh and Thorn must defend Alagasia from a shadowy new threat in this sequel to Inheritance (2011). In an Alagasia that’s at last free from tyrannical King Galbatorix, Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn, cannot free themselves from the stain of association. As the pair hide their identities, Murtagh works to uncover the mystery behind a cryptic warning from Umaroth. Defending himself against an attack by informant Sarros, Murtagh is horrified to learn that a witch named Bachel has created an amulet that protects against even the Name of all Names. Seeking Bachel, Murtagh returns to Gil’ead, where he risks discovery by those who knew him from Galbatorix’s court. Werecat Carabel promises information about Bachel and her Dreamers if Murtagh rescues kidnapped werecat children. Murtagh and Thorn must confront the scars left by their enslavement by Galbatorix if they hope to succeed. Murtagh’s point of view is kept vividly distinct, and it contains a visceral anger over injustices that are expressed at a new level of intensity. He’s particularly protective of children in a way that wasn’t displayed by previous series protagonists. The psychological scars from both Murtagh’s enslavement and his childhood abuse are well portrayed and shape his characterization in meaningful ways. In a welcome change, Thorn is no longer merely a plot vehicle; with the intimate rider-dragon bond on display, a terrified, confused young dragon still learning who he is shares center stage. A much-needed follow-up centering a beloved character. – Kirkus Review
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Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel
From Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes an original and subversive fantasy adventure.
This isn’t the kind of fairy tale where the princess marries a prince.
It’s the one where she kills him.
Marra — a shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter — is relieved not to be married off for the sake of her parents’ throne. Her older sister wasn’t so fortunate though, and her royal husband is as abusive as he is powerful. From the safety of the convent, Marra wonders who will come to her sister’s rescue and put a stop to this. But after years of watching their families and kingdoms pretend all is well, Marra realizes if any hero is coming, it will have to be Marra herself.
If Marra can complete three impossible tasks, a witch will grant her the tools she needs. But, as is the way in stories of princes and the impossible, these tasks are only the beginning of Marra’s strange and enchanting journey to save her sister and topple a throne.
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On Earth as It Is on Television by Emily Jane
When spaceships hover over Earth’s major cities for an extended period of time and leave without doing anything, humans struggle with the way forward, particularly a few beings that live in the Los Angeles area. The departure of the spaceships starts a domino effect for some, but this isn’t a novel about fighting the aliens or the politics of how to deal with them but about family and love. It turns out the aliens have been on Earth for the past 19 years and have created relationships against orders from the home planet. They aren’t sure what the future holds, but they want to protect their loved ones. Cats, television, and bacon all play important roles in the book; cats can perceive things humans can’t and are given powers that help the characters find their way, and the funny way television changes the aliens’ minds about their own culture is quite the commentary on our world. A compelling plot with some quirky features makes this book a great entry for a new sf reader. – Booklist Review
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Reformatory by Tananarive Due
When her brother Robbie gets six months at the notorious Gracetown Reformatory for Boys for kicking a white boy who said something indecent to her, Gloria Stephens is -devastated–and furious. Points of view alternate between Gloria, whose efforts to get Robbie released are aided by her elderly godmother, Miz Lottie, and Robbie, who suffers the horrors of Gracetown and its sadistic Warden Haddock. Gracetown is populated by more than the living, however, and Robbie has an unusual ability to see the haints of boys who died at the school. Haddock wants him to use his ability to help destroy the haints, threatening torture if he refuses, but the haints beg him not to, with a different kind of danger on offer if he assists the warden. Due brings the horrors of Jim Crow Florida to life, with human monsters who are far more chilling than anything supernatural. With fully realized characters and well-placed twists, she ratchets up the tension until the final, extraordinary showdown. Recommend to those who enjoyed Sarah Read’s The Bone Weaver’s Orchard (2019), LaTanya McQueen’s When the Reckoning Comes (2021), or Due’s short-story collection, Ghost Summer (2015), which features other tales set in the same part of rural Florida. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new novel from horror legend Due is always big news, so expect lots of interest for this one. – Booklist
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The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
DEBUT After he is separated from his shadow at birth, Fetter is without foundation. He’s raised by a messianic figure in a cult where summoning devils and murder are part and parcel of his education. As an adult, he flees to Luriat, a city on the brink of cataclysmic change, where he discovers a new obsession with the Bright Doors. No one knows what is behind them–some believe there are whole worlds, and some believe there is nothing–and Fetter grapples with the unnerving caste system as he digs deeper into the doors’ purpose. The threads of the plot are confusing at times, and there is a fair bit of info-dumping. That being said, this novel is driven by the worldbuilding, which is grandly elegant and immersive. Fetter is a relatable character who strays from his destiny, and his journey provides commentary on the threats of oppression and indoctrination. VERDICT Dreamlike and inventive, this unusual novel is a complicated read that ably pairs the mundane with the mystical. – Library Journal Review
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The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet Witch by Melinda Taub
Taub’s (Still Star-Crossed) adult debut reexamines Pride and Prejudice through a new lens with a light touch. Allowing Lydia Bennet to recount her own story, this retelling imagines that she is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and thus born a witch. Also, Kitty Bennet is actually a cat that Lydia has bewitched to appear human. Jumping around in time, with witty asides and honest commentary, Lydia relates how she came to run away from home, why she ended up with Wickham, and more. Full of spell-casting garden parties, demons, hidden jewels, vibrant dances, backstabbing, and societal slights, this is vividly descriptive, frothy fun. While Pride and Prejudice has been retold from Lydia’s perspective before, her frank, humorous, narration of her own misadventures in Taub’s version adds a great deal, as does the magical intrigue. The concluding author’s note comments on the many influences, stories, and myths that fused to become Lydia’s story, including which bits came from Jane Austen and what Taub made up herself.
VERDICT A funny, lighthearted read recommended for those who love a retelling with a dash of magic and a witty heroine. – Library Journal Review
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Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Bestseller Moreno-Garcia (The Daughter of Doctor Moreau) takes readers behind the scenes of 1993 Mexico City’s horror movie industry in this powerful and chilling thrill ride. Lifelong film buffs Montserrat and Tristán have remained best friends since childhood, though their lives take very different turns, with Montserrat going into the underpaid, male-dominated audio editing space and Tristán rising to and falling from soap opera stardom. Tristán finds a similarly fallen friend in his new neighbor, Abel Urueta, a once legendary director whose career was destroyed by the unfinished mess of his last film. Abel claims the screenplay was written by Nazi occultist Wilhelm Ewers, who meant to use the film to cast a luck spell, but following Ewers’s sudden death the spell was inverted. Abel convinces Montserrat and Tristán that finishing the film with him will finish the original spell and bring them all luck—only for their endeavors to draw forth something very different from the dark. Combining real history with unsettling magic, Moreno-Garcia effortlessly ties explorations of misogyny, addiction, antisemitism, and racism into a plot that never falters from its breakneck pace. The narrative shifts effortlessly between fantasy, horror, and romance, helmed by a well-shaded cast. The complex female characters are particular standouts. This is a knockout. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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A Study In Drowning by Ava Reid
A young woman faces her past to discover the truth about one of her nation’s heroes. When Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at her university in Llyr, wins the competition to design Hiraeth Manor for the estate of the late Emrys Myrddin, national literary figure and her favorite author, it is the perfect opportunity to leave behind a recent trauma. She arrives to find the cliffside estate is literally crumbling into the ocean, and she quickly realizes things may not be as they seem. Preston, an arrogant literature student, is also working at the estate, gathering materials for the university’s archives and questioning everything Effy knows about Myrddin. When Preston offers to include her name on his thesis–which may allow her to pursue the dream of studying literature that was frustrated by the university’s refusal to admit women literature students–Effy agrees to help him. He’s on a quest for answers about the source of Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad, a romance about a cruel Fairy King who marries a mortal woman. Meanwhile, Myrddin’s son has secrets of his own. Preston and Effy start to suspect that Myrddin’s fairy tales may hold more truth than they realize. The Welsh-inspired setting is impressively atmospheric, and while some of the mythology ends up feeling extraneous, the worldbuilding is immersive and thoughtfully addresses misogyny and its effects on how history is written. Main characters are cued white. A dark and gripping feminist tale. – Kirkus Review
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Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
Newitz (The Future of Another Timeline) performs a staggering feat of revolutionary imagination in this hopeful space-opera built from three interconnected novellas. “Settlers” opens on Destry Thomas, a ranger with the Environmental Rescue Team on corporate-owned planet Sasky, as she stumbles on a fiercely independent underground society, Spider City. Discovery puts Spider City at risk, while showing Sasky’s surface-dwellers a new possible future. In “Public Works,” a crew of bots and hominins grows from uneasy colleagues to found family while trying to design a planetwide public transport network. They’re undermined at every step by their corporate overlords, until they reach Spider City, where every being is a person, and a radical new solution presents itself. “Gentrifiers” sees a planetwide housing crisis bring together a sentient train, Scrubjay, and Moose, a cat journalist. As unrest erupts across Sasky’s big cities, Scrubjay and Moose race to lend aid, in the process uncovering a shocking secret that could be key to breaking the corporate stranglehold over the planet. Newitz masterfully grapples with questions of embodiment and personhood, exploring the power of coalition and the impossibility of utopia under capitalism. With the ethos of Becky Chambers and the gonzo imagination of Samuel R. Delany, plus a strong scientific basis in ecology and urban planning, this feels like a new frontier in science fiction. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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To Shape A Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
DEBUT The great dying had decimated the Indigenous population, and the island of Masquapaug, while considered part of New Anglesland, still kept much of its traditional life. Lost in the years were the dragons, the Nampeshiwe, but when young teen Anequs finds a dragon egg and the hatchling bonds with her, she is celebrated as Nampeshiweisit, one of her people linked to a dragon. Dragons used to live among the people and help dance away the autumn storms and bring bounty to the island. The Anglish that have conquered their lands have their own rigid ideas of raising dragons, along with their bonded. If Anequs doesn’t attend an Anglish dragon school, her dragon Kasaqua will be killed, so she agrees to go. In a strange land and school, surrounded by those who believe they are better than her, Anequs must not only prove that she and Kasaqua can learn what they need to control their power but also show they can do it as themselves.
VERDICT Blackgoose blends Indigenous history with fantastical beasts, taking themes of inequality and social agency in new directions. An excellent crossover novel for adults and young adults alike. – Library Journal Review
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Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
In a land where curses are real and binding, a young weaver discovers that teasing them apart is wrapped in unexpected consequences. Hardinge has a rare gift for crafting strange and original worlds, and here she’s in top form as she chucks two teenagers into webs of deadly magic and conspiracy in Raddith, where curse eggs are illegal but readily available to be cast by anyone out of spite or hatred. The journey takes rude, ill-tempered Kellen, whose unique talent for unravelling affects not only curses, but any woven garment or item in his vicinity, and his constant (in every sense) companion Nettle, seemingly “meek and inoffensive if you didn’t know her,” from the populous capital of Mizzleport to swampy wilds haunted by terrifying creatures to eldritch Moonlit Market (where everything, including memories and daydreams, is vulnerable). The author gradually brings Kellen (and readers) to an understanding that curses are not always undeserved, that those who bestow them may be damaged but are not invariably evil, and that perhaps we all have the capability to control the hatred that fuels them. Along with weaving in frequent desperate straits and near brushes with disaster, she embroiders her tale with memorable lines; a romantic subplot involving a rider bonded to a demonic horse and, by the end, even more so to his loving husband; and a cast of characters who are memorably distinct. The cast presents White. Brightening toward the end, frightening throughout, psychologically acute. – Starred Kirkus Review
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Witch King by Martha Wells
In this new high fantasy, Wells creates a vast fantasy world in which demons and expositors battle. When Witch King and legendary demon Kai wakes in an underwater prison, his immediate reaction is rage. With his partner Ziede and new friend, Sanja, he sets out into the world to find out who imprisoned them and why–and what it means for the politics of their world. Meanwhile, in alternate chapters, we start at the beginning: how Kai first became a central figure in the war between demons, witches, and the mysterious Hierarchs. As always, Wells writes exciting action scenes that pepper this expansive, vivid plot, though the writing sometimes gets bogged down in exposition and untangling the vocabulary of the Rising Empire. Still, the characters are bright and exciting, rooted by Kai, this villainous, pain-powered demon with a soft, loyal center, and the relationships that push and pull between these characters. High-fantasy fans will want to dig into this new, inventive world from one of our sf and fantasy masters. – Booklist Review
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Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Winner: 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novella
Winner: 2022 Hugo Award for Best Series
In Where the Drowned Girls Go, the next addition to Seanan McGuire’s beloved Wayward Children series, students at an anti-magical school rebel against the oppressive faculty
“Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you’ve already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.”
There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again.
It isn’t as friendly as Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.
And it isn’t as safe.
When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her “Home for Wayward Children,” she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn’t save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster.
She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming…
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.
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.
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.
Hi everyone, welcome to our Suggested Listening posting for this week!
Suggested Listening postings are published on Fridays; and our next Suggested Listening posting will be out on Friday,
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And here are the 10 recommended songs of the week!
As the solstice has just passed, and I love the changing of the seasons; I’d just like to say – welcome winter and the corresponding beauty that it brings.
And to celebrate the winter season, this weeks’ recommended listening post features ten songs of the winter season.
Enjoy!
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Cold Weather Blues by Muddy Waters
From The Album: Folk Singer (1964)
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Freeze An’ Melt by Eddie Lang’s Orchestra
From The Album: Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang Columbia and Okeh Sessions, Vol. 3 (2018)
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I’ll Keep You Warm All Winter by Ted Weems and his Orchestra
From The Album: N/A
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I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm by Frank Sinatra
From The Album: Ring-A-Ding-Ding! (1961)
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Midnight Sleighride by The Sauter Finegan Orchestra
From The Album: Directions In Music (1988)
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Ring Out, Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull
From The Album: Songs From The Woods (1977)
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Urge For Going by Joni Mitchell
From The Album: Hits (1996)
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Valley Winter Song by Fountains of Wayne
From The Album: Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)
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Winterlude by Bob Dylan
From The Album: New Morning (1970)
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Winter Song by Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson
From The Album: The Hotel Café presents… Winter Songs (2009) by Various Artists
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Hoopla Recommend Album of the Week
Winter Solstice (2019) by John McCutcheon
And from the album, which heads up does feature mostly Christmas music (but the dulcimer sounds great!), the song:
Down In Yon Forest / New Year’s Eve by John McCutcheon
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Wishing you a relaxing weekend,
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Online Catalog Links:
StarCat
The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD, etc.
The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos.
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The Libby App
Libby is the companion app to the Digital Catalog and may be found in the Apple & Google app.
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Hoopla
A catalog of instant check out items, including eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, comic books, TV shows and movies for patrons of the Southeast Steuben County Library.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
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 Wednesday.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, December 27, 2023.
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So many books, so little time!
This is our second week of talking a look at the best books of 2023!
Our recommended reading posting schedule, containing a selection of the best books of 2023, is as follows:
December 13: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 1 (12 titles)
December 20: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 2 (12 titles)
December 27: A selection of the best mysteries of 2023 (12 titles)
January 3: A selection of the best non-fiction books of 2023 (12 titles)
And, as a bonus, just in you case you need something extra to read over the one of the long holiday weekends this month, on December 22, I’ll post a list containing twelve of the best Science Fiction & Fantasy titles of 2023.
And if you wish to do a deep dive into the best of 2023 reading lists – I’ve included reference links at the end of this post.
And without further ado, here is our second dozen of, among best of 2023, fiction recommended reads!
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The Fraud by Zadie Smith
The New York Times bestseller • One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year • Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly
“[A] brilliant new entry in Smith’s catalog . . . The Fraud is not a change for Smith, but a demonstration of how expansive her talents are.” —Los Angeles Times
From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.
Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.
The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .
Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”
(Recommended by: Library Journal & NYT)
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Glassworks by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s first novel is a generation-spanning epic of family, inheritance, and identity. In Boston in 1910, woman of means Agnes Carter brings Czech glass artist Ignace Novak to create botanical and zoological models for “”the university”” (Harvard). Agnes’ and Ignace’s shared passion for the natural world sustains Agnes as she struggles against the limits imposed by her new and violent marriage. In 1938, Edward Novak leaves his parents in Chicago to apprentice at a glass workshop in Boston. After constant failures, he finds hope in Charlotte Callaghan, heir to a communion wafer company. In 1986, queer window washer Novak cares for her father and her community in New York. Her best friend, Felix, drags her to a Broadway show, where Novak’s life collides with that of young actress Cecily Wonder. Novak Brightman, who goes by Flip, struggles to stay afloat in 2015, while her twin sister, Tabitha, manages their aging mother’s care. Stuck living with her ex-girlfriend, Flip sees only her broken relationships and failures. These intertwined stories explore isolation and connection. With richly drawn characters and deft storytelling, Glassworks is a beautifully crafted, memorable debut. – Starred Booklist Review
(Recommended by: Good Housekeeping)
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Heaven & Earth Grocery Story by James McBride
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, WASHINGTON POST, AND TIME MAGAZINE
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
(Recommended by: B&N Book of the Year, Good Housekeeping, NPR, NYPL & Time Magazine)
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Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
ONE OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Post, She Reads
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
(Recommended by: B&N & Time Magazine)
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Lone Women by Victor LaValle
World Fantasy Award winner LaValle (The Changeling) returns with a haunting historical horror novel. In 1915, Adelaide Henry flees her California hometown following the death of her parents, for which she feels responsible. Inspired by a testimonial from a single woman who took advantage of a loophole in a homesteading opportunity offered by the federal government, Adelaide makes the trek to Montana with a mysterious steamer trunk in tow. The trunk contains her deepest, darkest secrets, and as her journey unfolds, readers will get a sense of creeping wrongness about the object, which, Adelaide is adamant, must remain locked at all times. When she arrives in Montanna, Adelaide is unprepared for the harsh winter and the unfamiliar ways of her neighbors: “A woman on her own, a Black woman out here in Montana, far from the Black community she’d known in Lucerne Valley, must remain vigilant for her own sense of safety. In truth, she’d never been around so many white people.” As she adjusts to her new life, she finds that escaping her past is not as easy as she hoped, and that her secrets, once out, could spell death for everyone around her. A counter to the typical homesteading narrative, this moody and masterful western fires on all cylinders. Readers are sure to be impressed. – Publishers Weekly Review
(Recommended by: LA Times & Time Magazine)
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The New Earth by Jess Row
Critic Row’s magisterial latest (after the essay collection White Flights) traces the complex dynamics of a New York City family on a geopolitical scale. In 2000, Wilcox patriarch Sandy, a lawyer, narrowly avoids disbarment after unwittingly aiding a client of fraud. A year later, his wife, Naomi, a geophysicist at Columbia University, reveals that her biological father was Black. Then, in 2003, their youngest child, Bering, is fatally shot by an Israeli Defense Force sniper while protesting the Israeli occupation of Palestine’s West Bank. After Bering’s death, her oldest brother, Patrick, goes to Nepal to become a monk. Sandy and Naomi’s marriage, meanwhile, has been faltering since the late 1970s, when they founded a Zen monastery in Vermont, and following a failed suicide attempt a decade after Bering’s death, Sandy leaves Naomi and retreats to Vermont, where he takes a vow of silence. Middle child Winter, a 20-something immigration lawyer, is marrying Zeno, an undocumented citizen, and wants nothing more than the family to be together at their wedding. Winter and Naomi also butt heads, big time, on race (Naomi insists they’re white; Winter identifies as multiracial). As the Wilcoxes reckon with the limits of what they can bear, Winter’s request proves tough to meet. Moments of levity draw the reader in (Sandy on shaving his head: “I look like Mr. Clean, he thinks, allowing himself one glimpse in the mirror, or Yul Brynner”), and the author pulls off many moving metafictional moments (Sandy, again, sensing the text of Row’s novel: “He feels it embrace him, one animal embracing another; it smells like wet fur”). This is Row’s best work yet. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
(Recommended by: NPR)
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North Woods by Daniel Mason
This remarkable new novel from Mason (The Winter Soldier) is the story of the United States from precolonial times through the present day and beyond, from the perspective of a single house in Western Massachusetts. As the often-tragic tales of its various residents are recounted, Mason employs an array of literary styles and genres, including the Indigenous-abduction narrative, folk ballads, letters, true-crime pulp journalism, insect erotica, and contemporary speculative fiction. Beginning with young lovers running away from their Puritan community, the novel visits (among others) an obsessive apple cultivator and his eccentric twin daughters, a landscape painter whose friendship with a writer blossoms into forbidden love, a phony clairvoyant who for the first time detects real spirits, and a man with schizophrenia who is aware of the ghosts inhabiting the property. Throughout, and especially during times when the house lies vacant, the natural history of the land over time is compellingly portrayed.
VERDICT Although the novel spends varying amounts of time with each successive set of characters, Mason depicts all of their stories with sympathy, sensitivity, and affectionate humor. Epic in scope and ambitious in style, this book succeeds on all counts. Highly recommended. – Starred Library Journal Review
(Recommended by: Library Journal, NPR, NYT & Time Magazine)
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Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews
“You should be reading Sebastian Barry. [He] has a special understanding of the human heart.” —The Atlantic
“A prose stylist of near-miraculous skill. . . Barry reaches deep into the messenger bag of mystery fiction and turns the whole business inside out . . . marvelous.” —The Washington Post
“An unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers.” —Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
From the five-time Booker Prize nominee and 2018-2021 Laureate for Irish Fiction, a virtuosic, profound novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets
Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family: his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.
A beautiful, haunting novel in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God’s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.
(Recommended by: Longlisted for Booker Prize & Time Magazine)
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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
It’s dark. There’s a knock on the door. Eilish, a microbiologist, doesn’t want to answer but she does, the baby squirming in her arms, two older kids squabbling over the TV remote, the oldest not home yet, neither is her husband, an administrator with Ireland’s teachers’ union. It’s him the men want, two secret police officers with the increasingly brutal National Alliance. As everything goes inexorably from bad to worse for this loving family, we are privy to Eilish’s churning thoughts, strategies, anger, and love. Her husband disappears. Restrictions and deprivations multiply. In a moment of lucidity, Eilish’s increasingly senile scientist father says, “if you change ownership of the institutions then you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief . . . change what you and I call reality.” Irish writer Lynch (Beyond the Sea, 2020) conveys the creeping horror of a fascist catastrophe in a gorgeous and relentless stream of consciousness illuminating the terrible vulnerability of our loved ones, our daily lives, and social coherence. Eilish muses over the fragility of the body, its rhythms and flows, diseases and defenses. The body politic is just as assailable. A Booker Prize finalist, Lynch’s hypnotic and crushing novel tracks the malignant decimation of an open society, a bleak and tragic process we enact and suffer from over and over again. – Booklist Review
(2023 Booker Prize winning title)
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River Spirit by Leila Aboulela
The spellbinding new novel from New York Times Notable Author and Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela about an embattled young woman’s coming of age during the Mahdist War in 19th century Sudan.
Leila Aboulela, hailed as “a versatile prose stylist” (New York Times) has also been praised by J.M. Coetzee, Ali Smith, and Ben Okri, among others, for her rich and nuanced novels depicting Islamic spiritual and political life. Her new novel is an enchanting narrative of the years leading up to the British conquest of Sudan in 1898, and a deeply human look at the tensions between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. In River Spirit, Aboulela gives us the unforgettable story of a people who—against the odds and for a brief time—gained independence from foreign rule through their willpower, subterfuge, and sacrifice.
When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they’re taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power – the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam – Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur’an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with Yaseen as her inconsistent lifeline. Everything each of them is striving for – love, freedom, safety – is all on the line in the fight for Sudan.
Through the voices of seven men and women whose fates grow inextricably linked, Aboulela’s latest novel illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with thehistory of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. River Spirit is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age, and unshakeable devotion – to a cause, to one’s faith, and to the people who become family.
(Recommended by: NYT)
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Tom Lake by Ann Pratchett
Lara’s three twentysomething daughters are back home in northern Michigan, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown, just in time to harvest the cherries. Emily has already committed herself to the family orchard and farm and her other great love, neighbor Benny. Maisie discovers that she can continue her veterinarian studies by caring for their neighbors’ animals. Only Nell, an aspiring actor, is distraught because of their isolation, but all are ravenous for distraction as they work long hours handpicking cherries, so they insist that their mother tell them, in lavish detail, the story of her romance with a future megawatt movie star. Lara strategically fashions an edited version for her daughters, while sharing the full, heartbreaking tale with the reader. Patchett (The Dutch House, 2019) attains new dimensions of beauty and resonance as she elegantly needlepoints Lara’s life onto the template of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the first play New Hampshire high-schooler Lara acts in, the play that catapults her to Hollywood, then to summer stock at Tom Lake in Michigan, where she comes under the spell of voraciously sexy and ambitious Peter Duke. As this spellbinding and incisive novel unspools, Patchett brings every turn of mind and every setting to glorious, vibrant life, gracefully contrasting the dazzle of the ephemeral with the gravitas of the timeless, perceiving in cherries sweet and tart reflections of love and loss.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Superlative storyteller Patchett, who recently added the National Humanities Medal to her many awards, is always a must-read for myriad fiction lovers. – Booklist Review
(Recommended by: B&N, NPR & Time Magazine)
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Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
Ever since they met at Yale as freshmen, June Hayward has watched Athena Liu grow into a writer and best-selling author, while June can barely get publishers to look twice at her debut. When Athena dies in a freak incident, June finds and rewrites her friend’s unpublished manuscript about Chinese laborers, passing it off as her own under the racially ambiguous pen name, Juniper Song. The book receives rave reviews, and June skyrockets to the best-seller list, much to the joy of her publishers and literary agent. The public loves Juniper Song. But things quickly spiral downward when accusations of plagiarism arise on social media, and June can’t stop seeing Athena’s ghost haunting her wherever she goes. When her new status is threatened, though, June realizes she will do whatever it takes to stay at the top. In a moment when racial equity and diversity are constant buzzwords, Kuang (The Poppy War, 2018) illustrates the pernicious and codependent relationship between the empowered and the oppressed and explores how one cannot exist without the other. Her magnificent novel uses satire to shine a light on systemic racial discrimination and the truth that often hides behind the twisted narratives constructed by those in power. – Starred Booklist Review
(Recommended by: B&N, Library Journal & Time Magazine)
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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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Reference Links (for December 2023 & January 5, 2024; Best of 2023 recommended reads posts!)
Patchett, A., Beard, M., Myrie, C., Levy, D., Kilroy, C., O’Connell, M., Frankopan, P., Nolan, M., Enright, A., Morrison, B., Paterson, D., Li, Y., Ford, R., Heisey, M., Branigan, T., Grant, C., Thrall, N., Adegoke, Y., & Penman, I. (2023, December 3). The best books to give as presents this Christmas. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/03/the-best-books-to-give-as-presents-this-christmas
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.
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.
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.
Hi everyone, here is the weekly list of New York Times Bestsellers.
New York Times Bestsellers can be requested through StarCat (for print books) & The Digital Catalog/Libby for eBooks and Downloadable Audiobooks. Select titles may also be checked out, on demand, through the Hoopla Catalog.
For more information on the three catalogs skip to the section below the bestselling titles*
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New York Times Bestseller blog posts are published on Sundays. And the next New York Times blog post will be posted in two weeks on Sunday, December 24, 2023.
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FICTION
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ALEX CROSS MUST DIE by James Patterson
The 32nd book in the Alex Cross series. When a jet is gunned down, Cross goes back into action.
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ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE by Anthony Doerr
The lives of a blind French girl and a gadget-obsessed German boy before and during World War II.
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THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese
Three generations of a family living on South India’s Malabar Coast suffer the loss of a family member by drowning.
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DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver
Winner of a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A reimagining of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in the mountains of southern Appalachia.
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THE EDGE by David Baldacci
The second book in the 6:20 Man series. Travis Devine investigates the murder of the C.I.A. operative Jenny Silkwell in rural Maine.
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THE EXCHANGE by John Grisham
In a sequel to “The Firm,” Mitch McDeere, who is now a partner at the world’s largest law firm, gets caught up in a sinister plot.
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FOURTH WING by Rebecca Yarros
Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.
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THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride
Secrets held by the residents of a dilapidated neighborhood come to life when a skeleton is found at the bottom of a well.
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HOLLY by Stephen King
The private detective Holly Gibney investigates whether a married pair of octogenarian academics had anything to do with Bonnie Dahl’s disappearance.
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THE HOUSEMAID by Freida McFadden
Troubles surface when a woman looking to make a fresh start takes a job in the home of the Winchesters.
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ICEBREAKER by Hannah Grace
Anastasia might need the help of the captain of a college hockey team to get on the Olympic figure skating team.
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INHERITANCE by Nora Roberts
After the death of her mysterious uncle, a graphic designer receives an inheritance that stipulates she must live in a haunted Victorian house for at least three years.
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IRON FLAME by Rebecca Yarros
The second book in the Empyrean series. Violet Sorrengail’s next round of training might require her to betray the man she loves.
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LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus
A scientist and single mother living in California in the 1960s becomes a star on a TV cooking show.
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THE LITTLE LIAR by Mitch Albom
The actions of an 11-year-old boy help facilitate the delivery of Jewish residents, including his family, to Auschwitz.
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RESURRECTION WALK by Michael Connelly
The seventh book in the Lincoln Lawyer series. Haller and Bosch team up to prove the innocence of a woman in prison for killing her husband.
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SERPENT AND THE WINGS OF NIGHT by Carissa Broadbent
The first book in the “Crowns of Nyaxia” series. Oraya enters a tournament held by the goddess of death.
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TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett
Three daughters, who return to their family orchard in the spring of 2020, learn about their mother’s relationship with a famous actor.
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NON-FICTION
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BEHIND THE SEAMS by Dolly Parton with Holly George-Warren
The country music legend shares stories about her favorite outfits she has worn on and off the stage.
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BEING HENRY by Henry Winkler with James Kaplan
The Emmy Award-winning actor shares how playing roles such as the Fonz and his struggles with dyslexia affected his life.
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DEMOCRACY AWAKENING by Heather Cox Richardson
The historian and author of the newsletter “Letters From an American” shares her views on the current political moment.
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ELON MUSK by Walter Isaacson
The author of “The Code Breaker” traces Musk’s life and summarizes his work on electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence.
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FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING by Matthew Perry
The late actor, known for playing Chandler Bing on “Friends,” shares stories from his childhood and his struggles with sobriety.
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GHOSTS OF HONOLULU by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll Jr.
The story of a Japanese American naval intelligence agent, a Japanese spy and events in Hawaii before the start of World War II.
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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by David Grann
The story of a murder spree in 1920s Oklahoma that targeted Osage Indians, whose lands contained oil.
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KILLING THE WITCHES by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
The 13th book in the conservative commentator’s Killing series gives a portrayal of the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Mass.
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THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE GLORY by Tim Alberta
The author of “American Carnage” looks at divisions within the American evangelical movement.
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MY EFFIN’ LIFE by Geddy Lee with Daniel Richler
The musician known for his work with the band Rush chronicles his life as the child of Holocaust survivors and his time in the limelight.
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MY NAME IS BARBRA by Barbra Streisand
The EGOT winner chronicles her journey in show business and reveals details about some of her personal relationships.
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OATH AND HONOR by Liz Cheney
The former congresswoman from Wyoming recounts how she helped lead the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6. Attack on the United States Capitol.
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OUTLIVE by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford
A look at recent scientific research on aging and longevity.
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PREQUEL by Rachel Maddow
The MSNBC host and co-author of “Bag Man” details a campaign to overthrow the U.S. government and install authoritarian rule prior to and during our involvement in World War II.
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THE WAGER by David Grann
The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.
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THE WOMAN IN ME by Britney Spears
The Grammy Award-winning pop star details her personal and professional experiences, including the years she spent under a conservatorship overseen by her father.
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Have a great week!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Search for and request books online!
eBooks & Audiobooks Through The Digital Catalog & Libby
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access
StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries throughout the Southern Tier Library System.
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Also of Note: If a New York Times Bestseller isn’t yet available in any of the three catalogs, you can contact the library and request to be notified when it becomes available.
Southeast Steuben County Library Telephone Number: 607-936-3713.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos.
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The Libby App
Libby is the companion app to the Digital Catalog and may be found in the Apple & Google app.
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Hoopla
A catalog of instant check out items, including eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, comic books, TV shows and movies for patrons of the Southeast Steuben County Library.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
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 Wednesday.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, December 20, 2023.
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So many books, so little time!
And speaking of time, it is that time of the year again – the time when the best books of the year lists come out!
So I’ve compiled a list of great best-of-2023 reads, from a variety of sources, including NPR, The New York Times, LitHub, Time and more for your perusal.
The recommended reading schedule for the next month is as follows:
December 13: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 1 (12 titles)
December 20: A selection of the best fiction books of 2023, part 2 (12 titles)
December 27: A selection of the best mysteries of 2023 (12 titles)
January 3: A selection of the best non-fiction books of 2023 (12 titles)
And, as a bonus, just in you case you need something extra to read over the one of the long holiday weekends this month, on December 22, I’ll post a list containing twelve of the best Science Fiction & Fantasy titles of 2023.
And if you wish to do a deep dive into the best of 2023 reading lists – I’ve included reference links at the end of this post.
And without further ado, here is our first dozen of, among best of 2023, fiction titles!
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Absolution by Alice McDermitt
A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.
A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers, about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world. – Publisher Description
(Recommended by: Good Housekeeping, LA Times, NPR, NYPL & Time Magazine)
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The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Peters’ debut combines narrative skill and a poignant story for a wonderful novel to which many readers will gravitate. In 1962, an Indigenous Mi’kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, the novel follows the painful reverberations of Ruthie’s disappearance across five decades. Peters wisely never makes the reader wonder if Norma is Ruthie; we know that she is, which allows more compelling questions to come into focus. How much do Joe’s subsequent life events and choices trace back to this first major trauma? Is his lifelong guilt justified? How does Norma/Ruthie reconcile love for the white mother who stole her from her birth mother and for the white aunt who saved her from a lonely childhood but knew the secret all along? The story is told in braided strands, and it is a testament to Peters’ ability that both strands fascinate. Indigenous stories like this matter, and while little is easy for Peters’ characters, in the end, for all of them–even for those who stole a small child–there is hope. – Starred Booklist Review
(Recommended by: B&N)
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The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
In a small town outside of Dublin, an economic downturn spells trouble for the once-affluent Barnes family at the heart of this latest from Murray, perhaps best known for the Booker Prize–shortlisted Skippy Dies. For Cass, finishing up high school, it’s the worry that her parents won’t be able to send her to university. For her little brother, PJ, it’s the illogical fear that they will send him away to boarding school. Shopaholic mother Imelda is forced to curtail her spending and sell off some of her treasures. For father Dickie, who has lived in the shadow of his dead brother, a beloved football star, it’s the disgrace of running his father’s car business into the ground. Will Grandfather return from his golfing life in Portugal to set things right and save the family from those who threaten them, including a gang of local thugs, a Polish blackmailer, an online predator, and a crackpot survivalist, or will it all implode? VERDICT This is a big, multilayered book full of secrets and surprises. But not a word is wasted in this unsettling, character-rich, devilishly plotted page-turner. – Starred Library Journal Review
(Recommended by: Booker Prize shortlist, LitHub, NYT & NYPL)
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Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Financial Times, Slate, The Chicago Public Library, Kirkus, The Telegraph
A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick
“[A] savagely satirical thriller.” —People
The Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.
Birnam Wood is on the move . . .
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.
But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival. – Publisher Description
(Recommended by: NPR & Time Magazine)
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Biography of X: A Novel by Catherine Lacey
Named one of the Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times, the New Yorker, Vulture, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Time, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Lit Hub, and Amazon. National Bestseller. Winner of the 2023 Brooklyn Library Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
“A major novel, and a notably audacious one.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.
When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM knows where X was born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, and which finally, in the present day, is being forced into an uneasy reunification.
A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows CM as she traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America’s divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. At last, when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.
Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.
(Recommended by: LA Times, LitHub, NPR, Publishers Weekly & Time Magazine)
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Blackouts by Justin Torres
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, BookPage, The New York Public Library, Powell’s
A Must-Read: The New York Times, Time, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Boston Herald, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, The Bay Area Reporter, Datebook, Electric Literature, The Stacks, Them, Publishers Weekly
“Sweeping, ingenious . . . A kiss to build a dream on.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories—personal and collective.
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book—Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns—and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan’s tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?
A book about storytelling—its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change—and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Justin Torres’s Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative. A marvel of creative imagination, it draws on testimony, photographs, illustrations, and a range of influences as it insists that we look long and steadily at what we have inherited and what we have made—a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. A reclamation of ransacked history, a celebration of defiance, and a transformative encounter, Blackouts mines the stories that have been kept from us and brings them into the light. – Publisher Description
(2023 Nation Book Award Fiction Winner)
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Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwane Adjei-Brenyah
Reader’s Note: This novel, as you might expect from the description of the plot, contains graphic violence – so just FYI, before you start to read!
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE
“Like Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so…illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing.” —The Washington Post
“This book will change you!…A masterpiece.” —Jenna Bush Hager, The Today Show’s #ReadWithJenna
She felt their eyes, all those executioners…
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.
Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review). – Publisher Description
(Recommended by: B&N, Library Journal, National Book Award Finalist, NYPL & NYT)
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Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, BookPage
“Dazzling” –Walter Mosley, The New York Times Book Review.
It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It’s strictly the straight-and-narrow for him — until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated – and deadly.
1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney’s endearingly violent partner in crime. It’s getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook – to their regret.
1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole country is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. (“Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!”), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney’s tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted.
CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.
(Recommended by: NPR & Time Magazine)
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The Cuban Heiress by Chanel Cleeton
An NPR Books We Love selection for 2023
“An unforgettable read that should be at the top of every TBR list.”—NPR
In 1934, a luxury cruise becomes a fight for survival as two women’s pasts collide on a round-trip voyage from New York to Havana in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s page-turning new novel inspired by the true story of the SS Morro Castle.
New York heiress Catherine Dohan seemingly has it all. There’s only one problem. It’s a lie. As soon as the Morro Castle leaves port, Catherine’s past returns with a vengeance and threatens her life. Joining forces with a charismatic jewel thief, Catherine must discover who wants her dead—and why.
Elena Palacio is a dead woman. Or so everyone thinks. After a devastating betrayal left her penniless and on the run, Elena’s journey on the Morro Castle is her last hope. Steeped in secrecy and a burning desire for revenge, her return to Havana is a chance to right the wrong that has been done to her—and her prey is on the ship.
As danger swirls aboard the Morro Castle and their fates intertwine, Elena and Catherine must risk everything to see justice served once and for all.
(Recommended by: NPR)
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Day by Michael Cunningham
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Cunningham follows a Brooklyn family over the span of three years. Cunningham focuses his first novel since The Snow Queen (2014) on two siblings–Isabel, a flinty photo editor, wife, and mother of two; and Robbie, her softhearted younger brother, who lives in the attic of her brownstone–and the rest of their somewhat loosely defined family, glimpsing them in snapshots of time over three years: “April 5, 2019: Morning,” “April 5, 2020: Afternoon,” and “April 5, 2021: Evening.” During the course of those days, which comprise the three sections of the book and are punctuated by the pandemic, Isabel’s marriage to aging musician Dan deteriorates; her two children, precocious elementary-schooler Violet and angsty preteen Nathan, struggle and grow; and Dan’s brother, bad-boy artist Garth, contends with his deepening feelings for his friend Chess and the child they share, Odin. But it is Robbie–the sweet emotional center of the family, whom everyone adores; who is trading an unfulfilling role as a schoolteacher for a life of exotic travel and, eventually, he hopes, medical school; and who has amassed a significant Instagram following under the guise of an alter-ego, Wolfe–whose life changes most dramatically. Writing with empathy, insight, keen observation, and elegant subtlety, Cunningham reveals something not only about the characters whose lives he limns in these pages, but also about the crises and traumas, awakenings and opportunities for growth the world writ large experienced during a particularly challenging era–and about the way people found a way to connect with one another and themselves as individuals in a time heightened by love and loss. This subtle, sensitively written family story proves poignant and quietly powerful. – Kirkus Review
(Recommended by: LitHub)
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Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal
** SELECTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AS 1 OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR **
** INCLUDED ON THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 **
“At The New York Times Book Review, I think it’s fair to say we were dazzled by the way the author creates . . . a miniature masterpiece of narrative tension and compression” – Emily Eakin, “The Book Review” podcast
In this gripping tale, a Russian conscript and a French woman cross paths on the Trans-Siberian railroad, each fleeing to the east for their own reasons
Perfect for fans of Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Eastbound is both an adventure story and a duet of two vibrant inner worlds.
In mysterious, winding sentences gorgeously translated by Jessica Moore, De Kerangal gives us the story of two unlikely souls entwined in a quest for freedom with a striking sense of tenderness, sharply contrasting the brutality of the surrounding world.
Racing toward Vladivostok, we meet the young Aliocha, packed onto a Trans-Siberian train with other Russian conscripts. Soon after boarding, he decides to desert and over a midnight smoke in a dark corridor of the train, he encounters an older French woman, Hélène, for whom he feels an uncanny trust.
A complicity quickly grows between the two when he manages to urgently ask—through a pantomime and basic Russian that Hélène must decipher—for her help to hide him. They hurry from the filth of his third-class carriage to Hélène’s first-class sleeping car. Aliocha now a hunted deserter and Hélène his accomplice with her own inner landscape of recent memories to contend with.
(Recommended by: NYT)
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The Faraway World: Stories by Patricia Engel
Engel follows up her New American Voices Award–winning novel Infinite Country with a strong collection of 10 short stories. The stories primarily focus on the Colombian diaspora in the United States and Cuba and are tied together by events of misfortune and trauma as well as pervasive feelings of isolation and melancholy. A twin on the cusp of adulthood is left behind after her sister goes missing and is forced to grapple with her uncertain future and her parents’ failing marriage as they desperately await their child’s return. A young woman begins unknowingly and then knowingly helping her boyfriend run drugs for money to begin their lives together. A grieving woman must find a new resting place for her brother after his grave is ransacked. Engel writes with empathy and care, deeply exploring the inner world of her characters, and despite using first-person perspective, she keeps the stories from being melodramatic by having them told in retrospect. The result is a peek into rich, fully realized characters and their lives.
VERDICT Engel’s character-focused short stories are thought-provoking and intense; readers of literary fiction will enjoy this masterfully written collection. – Library Journal Review
(Recommended by: Good Housekeeping & LitHub)
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Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Reference Links (for December 2023 & January 5, 2024; Best of 2023 recommended reads posts!)
Patchett, A., Beard, M., Myrie, C., Levy, D., Kilroy, C., O’Connell, M., Frankopan, P., Nolan, M., Enright, A., Morrison, B., Paterson, D., Li, Y., Ford, R., Heisey, M., Branigan, T., Grant, C., Thrall, N., Adegoke, Y., & Penman, I. (2023, December 3). The best books to give as presents this Christmas. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/03/the-best-books-to-give-as-presents-this-christmas
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.
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.
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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Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Tech Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 