Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
Weekly Suggested Reading Five postings are usually published on Wednesdays, unless Monday is a holiday and then they are published later in the week.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, February 26, 2025.
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Dream Girl Drama by Tessa Bailey
Bestseller Bailey follows The Au Pair Affair with another irresistible sports rom-com. After a difficult childhood with a struggling single mother, Sig Gauthier basks in his newfound financial comfort as a member of the Boston Bearcats hockey team. When his truck breaks down while he’s driving through Connecticut with a dead cellphone, he walks into a nearby country club for help, where he meets Chloe Clifford, a beautiful blonde harp player. The pair are smitten from the first glance and share a passionate kiss. There’s just one thing standing in the way of their relationship: Sig’s absentee father, who wants back into his life, happens to be engaged to Chloe’s mother. After Chloe moves to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music and play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the pair try to avoid each other—and their feelings—to stave off a scandal that would put both their futures in jeopardy. But the chemistry between these soon to be stepsiblings is explosive and ignoring it proves impossible. Readers who don’t like the instalove trope may not buy into the immediate connection between the leads, but Bailey backs it up with thoughtful characterization and red-hot sex scenes. This is a winner. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Half a Cup of Sand and Sky by Nadine Bjursten
Rich with longing, heartbreak, romance, and intrigue, Bjursten’s standout debut centers on Amineh, a bright young girl eager to avoid the spotlight but who finds herself caught in the tumultuous events sweeping toward the Iranian revolution. In 1977, amid student protests, Amineh, a student of Persian literature, strives to focus on her studies even as the University of Tehran is convulsed in conflict, at a moment when poets and writers, now “tired of metaphor,” dare to speak out for freedom and human rights. “The air around her felt charged, as if something new was hiding in its folds,” Bjursten writes, but for Amineh that charge isn’t just the fervor for change. She has met Farzad, a well-meaning man who is afraid of becoming his father but at the same time committed to fighting for a better country.
With sweeping details and a life-drawn story full of political unrest, murder, and romantic uncertainty, Bjursten immerses readers in a life, a nation, and an era. Amineh is a loving, relatable protagonist, striving to fit in, to write her parent’s story in a novel, and then to survive as a wife and mother performing her duties even as “her inner world flattened.” Her perceptions illuminate a fractious, world-altering moment too rarely dramatized in English but also its complex fallout and the challenges, especially for a woman, of finding fulfillment afterwards. The novel sweeps across decades, attentive to the textures of life and hard compromises, but Bjursten moves the story briskly, and the slight romantic undertones provide relief.
Bjursten’s prose is clear, polished, and touched with poetry and insight but never getting in the way of the heart of the story: a woman fighting for her family, love, and freedom from political injustice. Well-drawn characters and a tangible sense of living through history will grip readers of realistic and historical fiction, especially as Amineh dares to tell her own story. The final pages will bring tears.
Takeaway: Powerful novel of regret, love, loss, and the Iranian revolution. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Medici Return by Steve Berry
Five centuries ago, Pope Julius II asked the powerful Medici family for a favor–a very expensive favor–and made a promise, a Pledge of Christ, that the debt would be repaid. But it never was. And now, someone who claims to be a descendant of the Medici family (which history says died out 300 years ago) has come forward to demand repayment. Enter Cotton Malone, former U.S. government operative turned rare-book dealer. The nineteenth Malone thriller finds him trying to find one of two copies of the Pledge of Christ for his former bosses. At stake: the future of the Catholic Church, the fate of Italy, and the truth about the Medicis. (But no pressure, Cotton.) There is a formula to the Malone novels–a present-day mystery tied to an ancient mystery, some deliciously evil bad people, lots of scrapes and near misses–but it’s such a winning formula that we never tire of it. Cotton, too, is a marvelous character: world-weary but not jaded, cynical but not close-minded, and intensely curious. Berry’s fans will be delighted. – Booklist Review
Reader’s Note: The Medici Return is the nineteenth book in the otton Malone series. If you’d like to binge read from the beginning, check out book one: The Templar Legacy.
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Presidents at War: How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents, from Eisenhower and JFK Through Reagan and Bush by Steven Gillon
Steven M. Gillon, New York Times bestselling author of America’s Reluctant Prince, is back with the story of how WWII shaped the characters and politics of seven American presidents.
World War II loomed over the twentieth century, transforming every level of American society and international relationships and searing itself onto the psyche of an entire generation, including that of seven American presidents: John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.
The lessons of World War II, more than party affiliation or ideology, defined the presidencies of these seven men. They returned home determined to confront any force that threatened to undermine the war’s hard-won ideals, each with their own unique understanding of patriotism, sacrifice, and America’s role in global politics.
In Presidents at War, Gillon examines what these men took away from the war and how they then applied it to Cold War policies that proceeded to change America, and the world, forever. A nuanced and deeply researched exploration of the lives, philosophies, and legacies of seven remarkable men, Presidents at War deftly argues that the lessons learned by these postwar presidents continue to shape the landscape upon which current, and future, presidents stand today. – Publisher Description
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The Quiet Librarian by Allen Eskens
Library patrons know her as “The Sweater Lady.” To Serbians, she’s “The Night Mora.” Her friends call her Hana Babic. But when this quiet librarian fled Bosnia 30 years ago, she was Nura Divjak, a woman running from war and hiding a deadly secret. Now living a mundane life in Minnesota, Hana thinks her past is behind her until her best friend is murdered, and a detective comes looking for answers. Can Hana find the killer and keep her secret? No typical whodunit, this is an intense and emotional story about grief, loss, and the horrors of war. Hana is a woman who, we learn, had to grow up too fast and whose family experienced horrific violence from those they considered friends. Eskens (Saving Emma, 2023) doesn’t hold back in his descriptions of the Bosnian War and the brutality it wrought. Hana is a compelling character readers can’t help but root for, even if they disagree with her actions. The Quiet Librarian will make readers contemplate their definition of justice and the decisions humans make when trapped in terrible situations. This book is perfect for fans of intense, bleak mysteries and those who like fiction featuring real-life history. — Booklist Review
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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 