Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
Weekly Suggested Reading Five postings are published on Wednesdays.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, May 1, 2024
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How to End a Love Story: A Novel by Yulin Kuang
DEBUT Helen’s successful YA novels are being adapted into a TV series, and she happily accepts a position as a screenwriter on the project. When she shows up to the writing room, however, she finds the one person she never wanted to see again: Grant, now an established producer. Thirteen years have passed since Helen’s little sister died in a car accident–and Grant was at the wheel of the car that hit her. Helen has never forgiven him, and the idea of working together seems incomprehensible. As they begin to unravel each other’s stories, they get embroiled in an ultra-steamy yet emotionally knotty relationship that becomes all-consuming. Helen tries hard to deny her attraction to the man she’s hated for so long, and Grant struggles to convince Helen that their love is real. Told in alternating points of view, this captivating novel is a sexy and emotional read that deals with the aftereffects of trauma in a realistic and heartrending way.
VERDICT Readers looking for a contemporary romance with a passionate and grand love story, characters that leap off the page, and an original storyline will relish screenwriter and director Kuang’s debut novel.-Starred Library Journal Review
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A Killing On The Hill by Robert Dugoni
A gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.
The Great Depression. High-level corruption. And a murder that’s about to become Seattle’s hottest mystery. It’s the kind of story that can make a reporter’s career. If he lives to write about it.
Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill–an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.
The victim, Frankie Ray, is a former prizefighter. His accused killer? Club owner and mobster George Miller, who claims he pulled the trigger in self-defense. Soon the whole town’s talking, and Shoe’s first homicide is fast becoming the Trial of the Century. The more Shoe digs, the more he’s convinced nothing is as it seems. Not with a tangle of conflicting stories, an unlikely motive, and witnesses like Ray’s girlfriend, a glamour girl whose pretty lips are sealed. For now.
In a city steeped in Old West debauchery, Shoe’s following every lead to a very dangerous place–one that could bring him glory and fame or end his life.
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Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky
Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski hasn’t been herself since one of her cases ended in tragedy. Friends persuade her to head to Kansas for a college basketball game featuring her protege Angela. When Angela’s housemate Sabrina goes missing, V.I. reluctantly agrees to help search for the young woman. With no support network in Lawrence, and the police suspicious of her motives, V.I. finally finds Sabrina almost dead in a drug den on Yancy Hill. It gets worse: the FBI shows up to question V.I. about kidnapping the girl, and the police don’t believe her. When V.I. returns to the drug house, she finds the body of a woman who had been stirring up trouble in town. Now V.I. is suspected of kidnapping and murder, and she only has two junk men and an ambitious young reporter to turn to for help. As V.I. investigates the death, she finds evidence that connects the land around Yancy Hill with Lawrence’s industrial future and Kansas’s bloody past before the Civil War. VERDICT History buffs will appreciate Paretsky’s exploration of Kansas’s violent past, while V.I. fans will be eager to read the latest in the award-winning series (after Overboard). – Library Journal Review
Reader’s Note: Pay Dirt is the twenty second novel in the V.I. Warshawski series. If you’d like to start reading from the beginning of the series, check out book one: Indemnity Only.
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The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page
In the annals of broadcast journalism, Barbara Walters is legendary. Acclaimed for her monumental “gets,” Walters interviewed a veritable who’s who of twentieth-century politicians and celebrities, amassing a master class trove of spirited and probing interrogatories that famously reduced her subjects to tears. In an era when the business of broadcast news was a firmly established old boys club, Walters took a battering ram to those clubhouse doors when, in 1976, she became co-anchor of ABC Nightly News. Not only was her position unprecedented, her million-dollar annual salary was record-shattering. Walters had toiled for decades in the trenches as a PR operative, low-level news writer, and participant in puff pieces on morning television; peers questioned her worthiness. Her career was forged during the days of second-wave feminism, and Walters was a highly visible target for the industry’s and the nation’s entrenched misogyny. Beyond the professional battles, her personal life suffered as well, through multiple marriages and a fractured relationship with her adopted daughter. Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, presents an impeccably researched and deeply sourced biography and a respectful and balanced portrait of this groundbreaking icon of American journalism. – Starred Booklist Review
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A Step Past Darkness: A Novel by Vera Kurian
In 1995, Wesley Falls, Pennsylvania, is controlled by the megachurch Golden Praise, led by charismatic pastor Jim Priess. Local teen Jia Kwon is hiding her psychic visions, unwilling to give the pious townspeople ammunition against her. Then Jia, best friend Padma, top jock Casey, Queen Bee Maddy, bad boy James, and loyal Kelly are assigned to a team history project about the local mine. While exploring, they witness Golden Praise elders tossing six teens into the mine’s virtually bottomless Heart. With that, their focus shifts to discovering the connection between the murders, Golden Praise, and the disturbing aura Jia senses around Priess. After unearthing reality-shaking secrets, they take action and believe that they’ve freed Wesley Falls from evil. But when Jia returns 20 years later to help find a missing person, she finds Maddy’s body and a new minister at Golden Praise who bears an unsettling resemblance to Priess. Jia summons the gang back to Wesley Falls to avenge Maddy and finish what they started as kids. Through flashbacks and the gang’s emotionally powerful reunion, Kurian draws readers in, invoking strong Goonies vibes. Here, as in her debut, Never Saw Me Coming (2023), Kurian creates unforgettable characters, breathless suspense, and original plotting. A must-read for fans of C. J. Tudor and Jennifer McMahon.
Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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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
The 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 content on 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 on demand 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 companion app, also called Hoopla is available for mobile devices, smart TVs & media streaming players.
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StarCat: The catalog of physical/traditional library materials: https://starcat.stls.org
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries through out the Southern Tier Library System.
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Have questions about how to access Internet based content (i.e. eBooks, eAudios)? Feel free to drop by the Reference Desk or call the library and we will assist you! The library’s telephone number is: 607-936-3713.
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Tech & Book Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 