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 Wednesdays.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, March 6, 2024.
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The Atlas Maneuver by Steve Barr
1945. In the waning months of World War II, Japan hid vast quantities of gold and other stolen valuables in boobytrapped underground caches all across the Philippines. By 1947 some of that loot was recovered, not by treasure hunters, but by the United States government, which told no one about the find. Instead, those assets were stamped classified, shipped to Europe, and secretly assimilated into something called the Black Eagle Trust.
Present day. Retired Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is in Switzerland doing a favor for a friend. But what was supposed to be a simple operation turns violent and Cotton is thrust into a war between the world’s oldest bank and the CIA, a battle that directly involves the Black Eagle Trust. He quickly discovers that everything hinges on a woman from his past, who suddenly reappears harboring a host of explosive secrets centering around bitcoin. The cryptocurrency is being quietly weaponized, readied for an assault on the world’s financial systems, a calculated move that will have devastating consequences. Cotton has no choice. He has to act. But at what cost?
From the stolid banking halls of Luxembourg, to the secret vaults of Switzerland, and finally up into the treacherous mountains of southern Morocco, Cotton Malone is stymied at every turn. Each move he makes seems wrong, and nothing works, until he finally comes face-to-face with the Atlas Maneuver.
Reader’s Note: The Atlas Maneuver is the eighteenth book in the Cotton Malone series; If you’d like to read the series from the beginning check out book one: The Templar Legacy.
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Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux
This tightly focused novel relates how a young man, as yet unformed, gradually finds his own identity. In 1921, Eric Blair, 19 and newly hatched from Eton, sets sail for Burma on a posting to the Indian Imperial Police. There he will oversee native policemen–Burmese and Indian. From the start, his peers see Blair as an outsider. He feels like one too, alienated from them by height (his nickname is “Lofty”), bookishness, and latent humanitarianism. At every subsequent posting of Blair’s, something goes wrong and he’s shuffled off to the next posting to get rid of him. The crassness of his fellow Englishmen and their indifference toward local concerns affront him, driving him to writing as escape. Eventually, he returns to England, laid up by fever, and resigns. Succeeding in his new focus, the man renames himself George Orwell, and his experiences in Burma became background for an anticolonial novel, Burmese Days, and two of what will become his most famous essays, “A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant.”
VERDICT The prolific Theroux (The Mosquito Coast) has long been a expert writer of fiction and travel narratives, so this biographical historical novel, about the young adult life of the soon-to-be George Orwell, is a natural for him. – Library Journal Review
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The Guest by B. A. Paris
New York Times bestselling author B. A. Paris captivated psychological thriller readers everywhere with Behind Closed Doors. Now she invites you into another home full of heart-pounding secrets, in The Guest.
Some secrets never leave.
Iris and Gabriel have just arrived home from a make-or-break holiday. But a shock awaits them. One of their closest friends, Laure, is in their house. The atmosphere quickly becomes tense as she oversteps again and again: sleeping in their bed, wearing Iris’ clothes, even rearranging the furniture.
Laure has walked out on her husband—and their good friend—Pierre, over his confession of an affair and a secret child. Iris and Gabriel want to be supportive of their friends, but as Laure’s mood becomes increasingly unpredictable, her presence takes its toll.
Iris and Gabriel’s only respite comes in the form of a couple new to town. But with them comes their gardener, who has a checkered past.
Soon, secrets from all their pasts will unravel, some more dangerous than they could have known.
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The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R. King
In their latest appearance (after Castle Shade, 2021), Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell are looking forward to spending some time with Sherlock’s son, Damian Adler, a well-known artist, and his family. When they arrive in the village of Délieux, France, a caretaker with a shotgun greets them and tells them that the family has fled an intruder. Sherlock immediately sets out to find Damian, while Mary, nursing a sprained ankle, stays in the house. She discovers several shipping crates in Damian’s studio; in them, she finds an antique lamp that appears to be a type of zoetrope and a journal written in code. As she works to decipher the journal, she realizes that its pages are linked to scenes on the lamp, telling the story of a young woman in India fleeing from her home. Further study leads Mary to think that this relates to Damian and Sherlock’s’ family. Readers will enjoy learning about the Holmes family as they uncover interesting information about the history of India and the role and status of women in Victorian England. – Booklist Review
Reader’s Note: The Lantern’s Dance is the eighteenth novel in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, if you’d like to binge read series from the beginning, check out book one: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.
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Lone Wolf by Gregg Hurwitz
It’s not Evan Smoak’s usual case, tracking down a child’s missing dog; he got guilted into it. But the dog’s trail leads Evan, the former government assassin also known as Orphan X, to something more familiar: a murdered man, a ruthless killer, and a whole lot of mystery. The ninth Orphan X novel is as tightly plotted as the previous eight, and just as suspenseful. Evan continues to be a strong, enigmatic series lead–each book reveals a little more about the man, but there’s a lot left to be revealed–and Hurwitz continues to dazzle the reader with cleverly staged action sequences and wonderfully villainous antagonists. (In this case, a chillingly efficient female assassin known as the Wolf seems like a match for Evan in nearly every way.) Fans of the series will be lining up to read this one, and because each book works just fine as a stand-alone, new readers can jump right in. Keep ’em coming! – Booklist Review
Reader’s Note: As mentioned, Lone Wolf is the nineth book in the Orphan X series, if you’d like to binge read from the beginning, check out book one simply titled: Orphan X.
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Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment by Allen C. Guelzo
Princeton University professor Guelzo opens chapter one of his newest book by telling readers that the word democracy occurs only 137 times in Abraham Lincoln’s writings. That does not mean, however, that democracy was unimportant to the sixteenth president. In fact, Guelzo continues, Lincoln saw it as “the most natural, the most just, and the most enlightened form of human government.” As the subject of thousands of studies, Lincoln is one of American history’s most written-about individuals. It is therefore a welcome surprise to read such fresh insights as Guelzo musters here. Many readers will be familiar with Lincoln’s folksiness and his approach to race, but what about his economic policies? His views on industrialization? His ideas for commercial regulation? These get short shrift in popular biographies. Especially intriguing is the final chapter, “What If Lincoln Had Lived?” which imagines him leading a far less dysfunctional Reconstruction after the Civil War. In an era when democracy’s death is shouted from the front page of seemingly every U.S. newspaper, it is comforting to read that Abraham Lincoln, at least, thought the effort to maintain it was not in vain. – Booklist Review
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Three-Inch Teeth by C. J. Box
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett faces two different kinds of rampaging beasts—one animal, one human—in this riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C.J. Box.
A rogue grizzly bear has gone on a rampage—killing, among others, the potential fiancé of Joe’s daughter. At the same time, Dallas Cates, who Joe helped lock up years ago, is released from prison with a special list tattooed on his skin. He wants revenge on the people who sent him away: the six people he blames for the deaths of his entire family and the loss of his reputation and property.
Using the grizzly attacks as cover, Cates sets out to methodically check off his list. The problem is, both Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett are on it.
Reader’s Note: Three-Inch Teeth is the twenty fourth book in the Joe Picket series. If you’d like to binge read the series from the beginning, check out book one: Open Season.
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Village In The Dark: A Novel by Iris Yamashita
Yamashita’s riveting sequel to 2023’s City Under One Roof sets a chilling murder mystery against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness. Detective Cara Kennedy has come to believe that her husband and son died in a natural accident. After Cara discovered and buried the pair’s remains in the Talkeetna forest near where they disappeared on a hike, she takes leave to cope with her loss. But when investigators find a series of photographs in a deceased gang member’s possession, including an image of Cara and her family, she suspects foul play. Fueled by grief, Cara makes a startling discovery—the people in each of the gang member’s photographs are either dead or missing. Among them is Mia Upash, a quiet young woman who grew up in hiding from an abusive man and harbors key secrets that may connect each of the missing people. Enlisting the help of her former partner J.B. Barkowski, Cara sets out to find Mia, uncovering dark truths that endanger herself and her colleagues along the way. Yamashita maintains a breakneck pace throughout—some might argue that she jumps into the investigation a little too quickly—but dispels any initial vertigo with memorable characters and a stunning conclusion. Readers will be glued to the page. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Orange follows up his PEN/Hemingway-winning There There with a stirring portrait of the fractured but resilient Bear Shield-Red Feather family in the wake of the Oakland powwow shooting that closed out the previous book. The sequel is wider in scope, beginning with stories of the family’s ancestors before catching up to the present. Those ancestors include Jude Star, who barely survives the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in what is now Colorado as a youth and is sent to a prison in St. Augustine, Fla., where he’s forced to learn English and read the Bible. Jude later works as a farmhand in Oklahoma and raises his son Charles, who is sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. As a young man in the early 1900s, Charles drifts into San Francisco, where he becomes addicted to morphine while contending with the trauma of forced assimilation and unspecified abuse at Carlisle (“There is something deeper down, doing its dark work on him some further forgotten thing, but what is it? His life is about knowing it is there but not ever wanting to see it”). In the present, high school freshman Orvil Red Feather recovers at home in Oakland after being struck by a stray bullet during the powwow. Like Charles, he becomes addicted to opiates and struggles to connect with his cultural identity after his grandmother neglects to share details about their Cheyenne heritage. With incandescent prose and precise insights, Orange mines the gaps in his characters’ memories and finds meaning in the stories of their lives. This devastating narrative confirms Orange’s essential place in the canon of Native American literature. – Publishers Weekly Review
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What Have We Here by Billy Dee Williams
Eighty-six-year-old Star Wars actor Williams provides a candid look back at his life and career in this genial debut memoir. Williams grew up in New York City in the 1940s and landed his first role, at seven years old, via his mother, who worked as a secretary for a Broadway producer. Bigger stage roles soon followed, and he eventually succeeded James Earl Jones as the lead in the original Broadway production of August Wilson’s Fences in 1988. Williams’s breakout film role was opposite Diana Ross in 1972’s Lady Sings the Blues, in which his charm and good looks led the press to dub him “the Black Clark Gable.” Following that success, he turned down several roles in Blacksploitation films, fearing they’d “put in a box,” and his career stalled until George Lucas’s desire to racially diversify the Star Wars series led to Williams being cast as Lando Calrissian in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. Williams ruminates on his professional triumphs, disappointments (including being passed over for the role of Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s Batman), and friendships (he counted Laurence Olivier and James Baldwin among his peers), as well as his three failed marriages and his love of painting. Even as he catalogs losses and missteps, Williams writes with the panache and suavity that characterize his screen presence. The result is a heartfelt Hollywood self-portrait. – Publishers Weekly Review
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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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Information on the three library catalogs
Digital Catalog: https://stls.overdrive.com/
The Digital Catalog, is an online catalog containing eBooks, eAudiobooks, and digital magazines. You can use your library card and checkout/download content to a PC; you can also use the companion app, Libby, to access titles on your mobile devices; so you can enjoy eBooks and eAudiobooks on the go!
All card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can check out items from the Digital Catalog.
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Hoopla Catalog: https://www.hoopladigital.com/
The Hoopla Catalog features instant checkouts of eBooks, eAudiobooks, comic books, albums, movies and TV shows. Patron check out limit is 10 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 mobile devices, PCs, Macs*, smart TVs & media streaming players.
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StarCat: The catalog of physical/traditional library materials: https://starcat.stls.org
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries through out the Southern Tier Library System.
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*You must have an active Internet connection to access Hoopla content on a Mac.
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