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, April 23, 2025.
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I See You’ve Called in Dead: A Novel by John Kenney
Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.
As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live.
Thurber Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author John Kenney tells a funny, touching story about life and death, about the search for meaning, about finding and never letting go of the preciousness of life.
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The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips
In a remote cave in western Pakistan, the carnage from a raid on a drug baron reveals a gold-plated mummy whose cuneiform-embellished sarcophagus bears tales of untold riches. For archaeologist Dr. Gul Delani, the opportunity to examine the rare find of a mummy prepared in the Egyptian manner should be a career-defining achievement. Instead, she becomes the drug lord’s target. As her inspection progresses, Delani’s mind stays dually focused on the three-year-long, unfruitful investigation into the disappearance of her beloved teenage niece, Mahnaz, who is approximately the same age as the young woman preserved before her. The tale of the lost princess, the alleged daughter of King Xerxes, fascinated Mahnaz, but could it also have caused her death? Delani’s quest for justice for both young women takes her from Pakistan’s desert caves to its sinister street world to its fetid underground sewers. Inspired by an actual antiquities scandal, Phillips introduces a sleuthing archaeologist in a debut thriller and series starter that efficiently combines the historian’s thirst for research with a criminologist’s pursuit of retribution. – Booklist Review
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Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward by Melinda French Gates
In a rare window into some of her life’s pivotal moments, Melinda French Gates draws from previously untold stories to offer a new perspective on encountering transitions.
“You don’t get to be my age without navigating all kinds of transitions. Some you embraced and some you never expected. Some you hoped for and some you fought as hard as you could.” – Melinda French Gates
Transitions are moments in which we step out of our familiar surroundings and into a new landscape—a space that, for many people, is shadowed by confusion, fear, and indecision. The Next Day accompanies readers as they cross that space, offering guidance on how to make the most of the time between an ending and a new beginning and how to move forward into the next day when the ground beneath you is shifting.
In this book, Melinda will reflect, for the first time in print, on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation. The stories she tells illuminate universal lessons about loosening the bonds of perfectionism, helping friends navigate times of crisis, embracing uncertainty, and more.
Each one of us, no matter who we are or where we are in life, is headed toward transitions of our own. With her signature warmth and grace, Melinda candidly shares stories of times when she was in need of wisdom and shines a path through the open space stretching out before us all.
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Rabbit Moon: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh
It is early Sunday morning in Shanghai’s deserted financial district when a car careens around the corner and strikes Lindsey Litvak. The hit-and-run leaves the 22-year-old in a coma and her family searching for answers. Why was she living hundreds of miles from Beijing, where she told them she was teaching English? Why is the closet in her sparse apartment filled with designer dresses and high heels? As Lindsey’s divorced parents seek information and her 11-year-old sister, away at summer camp, awaits word from the hospital, layers of family history are revealed in this engrossing novel. Before Lindsey dropped out of college and moved to China, where the Litvaks had gone to adopt her sister years earlier, she had a teenage affair with a married man. That relationship and its sudden end are at the core of the secrets threatening to tear this family apart. Capturing both the possibilities of reinvention and the scars carried from a traumatic past, Haigh’s (Mercy Street, 2022) searing novel examines the interplay between choice and chance. – Booklist Review
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The Railway Conspiracy by SJ Rozan & John Shen Yen Nee
The theft of a dragon-taming mace leads Judge Dee Ren Jie and his colorful sidekicks to a multinational conspiracy rooted in 1924 London. Disguising himself as the fantasy villain Springheel Jack, Dee finds recovering the mace from Count Vladimir Voronoff and his Japanese conspirator, Isaki, child’s play, even as his capers bewilder his friends and helpers: Professor Lao She, pickpocket Jimmy Fingers, and Sgt. Hoong. But returning the mace to the merchant Wu Ze Tian only complicates the problems Dee had hoped to resolve. Voronoff insists from his prison cell that Madam Wu had given him the mace he’s accused of stealing. Although Madam Wu throws an elaborate party to thank Dee, one of her distinguished guests, leading banker A.G. Stephen, is poisoned shortly afterward; a Communist Party rally Lao attends leads to another murder; and a bombing during the Autumn Moon Festival claims six more lives. Slowly but surely, Dee perceives the outlines of a monstrous plot to overturn the Russian revolution and reinstall the czar, shore up the power of the Japanese emperor, and, most concerning for Dee, anoint the treacherous military Commander Zhang Zuo Lin, emperor of China. In a new world order in which Dee and his comrades can trust neither rabid Communists nor the equally blinkered nationalists arrayed against them, they must depend on Dee’s storied mental acuity–and their own impressive talents for martial arts combat. Though readers will know how this history turns out, it’s fascinating to watch the conflict of ritual and revolution. – Kirkus 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 four library catalogs
The Digital Catalog aka Libby: 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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Kanopy Catalog: https://www.kanopy.com/en
The Kanopy Catalog features thousands of streaming videos available on demand.
The Kanopy Catalog is available for all Southern Tier Library System member library card holders, including all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders!
You can access the Kanopy Catalog through a web browser, or download the app to your phone, tablet or media streaming player (i.e. Roku, Google or Fire TV).
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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 