Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
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An Enemy in the Village by Martin Walker
A real estate agent’s death sends shockwaves through the idyllic town of St. Denis, leading Bruno, Chief of Police, to suspect that there’s more to this tragedy than meets the eye.
When Bruno stumbles upon a motionless figure in a car parked at a scenic overpass on the ridge of the Vézère valley, he’s ready to investigate. Inside, he finds a suicide note and the dead body of Monique, a successful businesswoman who rented châteaus to wealthy expats. It seems like an open-and-shut case.
But Bruno can’t shake the suspicion that something sinister lurks underneath this tidy narrative. After he delivers Monique’s final messages to those most important to her, malicious gossip about Bruno begins to spread through the village. One thing leads to another, and soon Bruno faces pressure to resign from the job. Despite this disturbing turn of events, Bruno remains Bruno, never one to turn down a fine meal with good company in the French countryside. In the course of inquiry, he meets Laura—and her dog, which happens to be the same breed as his beloved basset hound. As sparks fly and Bruno realizes just how much he has at stake, he races to find out what really happened to Monique, before he loses his badge, his new love—or something even worse.
Reader’s Note: An Enemy in the Village is the eighteenth book in the Bruno mystery series. If you’d like to start reading the series from the beginning, check out book one Death in the Dordogne (2008) aka Bruno, Chief of Police.
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Death of an Ex: A Vandy Myrick Mystery by Delia Pitts
Delia Pitts expertly writes about family, race, class, and grief in her mysteries. Vandy Myrick captured readers’ and critics’ hearts in Trouble in Queenstown. She returns in Death of an Ex, where Vandy tries to piece together what brought her ex-husband’s life to an end.
Queenstown, New Jersey, feels big when you need help and tiny when you want privacy. For Vandy Myrick, that’s both a blessing and a curse. Now that Vandy’s back in “Q-Town,” her services as her hometown’s only Black woman private investigator have earned her more celebrity—or notoriety—than she figured.
Keeping busy with work helps Vandy deal with the grief of losing her daughter, stitching the seams, cementing the gaps. The memories will always remain, and they come crashing back to the surface when her ex-husband, Phil Bolden, walks back into her life. Promising everything, returning home, restoring family. Until she answers her door to the news that Phil has been murdered. And Vandy decides Phil is now her client.
It’s hard to separate the Phil that Vandy knew from the one Queenstown did. She sees him—and their daughter—in Phil’s son, who attends a prestigious local high school. She sees the layers of a complicated marriage with his wife. She sees all of Phil’s various roles: parent, husband, businessman, philanthropist. But which role got him killed?
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Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern
Thoughtful memoir by the former prime minister of New Zealand. Ardern’s story opens at a nervous crossroads: She may or may not be on the verge of assuming the leadership of her country, depending on the entanglements of parliamentary backroom brokering, and she may or may not be pregnant. It turns out that she both wins the job and is with child, which leads to the first of many critical moments she faces, with a sharp question raised: “Is it okay for the prime minister to take maternity leave while in office?” The scrutiny was already intense. At 37, Ardern was the country’s youngest leader in more than a century and a half, was a woman, was a leader of the leftist Labour Party–and, incidentally, was a lapsed Mormon. For all that, Ardern writes, in her first 100 days in office she and her team pushed through numerous reforms, including world-leading work on combating climate change, committing her country to carbon neutrality by 2050, “not because we want to…but because we have to.” No sooner did Ardern say those words than did news break of the Christchurch mass shootings of Muslim New Zealanders, which prompted changing gun laws that involved “debating the line between meaningful reform and onerous burden.” Add to that, soon after, the ravages of Covid-19. Thanks to a lockdown and general conformity to social distancing rules, New Zealand’s life expectancy increased, Ardern notes. But even so, a swirl of online conspiracy theories fueled a kind of homegrown MAGA movement whose members even occupied Parliament, as if to ape the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack. It’s small wonder that Ardern resigned in 2023, a decision she relates with pained honesty about whether she had the will to continue in the job. An account of life in the political trenches that is alternately inspiring and dispiriting. – Kirkus Review
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Inside Job by Daniel Silva
Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon must solve the perfect crime in the dazzling new tale of murder, greed, and corruption from #1 New York Times bestselling novelist Daniel Silva.
Sometimes the only way to recover a stolen masterpiece is to steal it back . . .
Gabriel Allon has been awarded a commission to restore one of the most important paintings in Venice. But when he discovers the body of a mysterious woman floating in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, he finds himself in a desperate race to recover a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.
The painting, a portrait of a beautiful young girl, has been gathering dust in a storeroom at the Vatican Museums for more than a century, misattributed and hidden beneath a worthless picture by an unknown artist. Because no one knows that the Leonardo is there, no one notices when it disappears one night during a suspicious power outage. No one but the ruthless mobsters and moneymen behind the theft — and the mysterious woman whom Gabriel found in a watery grave in Venice. A woman without a name. A woman without a face.
The action moves at breakneck speed from the galleries and auction houses of London to an enclave of unimaginable wealth on the French Riviera — and, finally, to a shocking climax in St. Peter’s Square, where the life of a pope hangs in the balance. An elegant and stylish journey through the dark side of the art world and the Vatican’s murky finances, An Inside Job proves once again that Daniel Silva is the reigning master of international intrigue and suspense.
Reader’s Note: An Inside Job is the twenty-fifth book in the Gabriel Allon series. If you’d like to start reading the series from the beginning, check out book one: The Kill Artist (2000).
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Woman in Suite 11: A Novel by Ruth Ware
Fans of The Woman in Cabin 10 who might have wondered whatever happened to Laura “Lo” Blacklock will find the answers here. It has been ten years since her disastrous cruise on the Aurora, when she witnessed a murder and almost got herself killed. She managed to turn her trauma into a best-seller, Dark Waters, but since then, she has married and is living in New York City with her husband and two young sons. Believing that her career as a travel journalist is pretty much over, she is surprised when she receives an invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel. Lo’s fans will be ecstatic at her decision to accept, which of course leads to yet another death-defying adventure for her, but readers who are not so keen on embracing the somewhat improbable might struggle with the ensuing drama. The original book was adapted into a Netflix film starring Keira Knightley, set to debut next autumn, and likely to spark interest in this sequel for new fans. – Booklist Review
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Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Weekly Suggested Reading Five postings are usually published on Wednesdays, unless Monday is a holiday and then they are published later in the week.
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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 