Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
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Fog And Fury by Rachel Howzell Hall
She’s a new PI in a beautiful seaside town. It’s dirtier than it looks—and more dangerous too—in a twisting novel of suspense by the Anthony Award–nominated author of These Toxic Things.
After ten years on the force, LAPD cop Sonny Rush relocates with her elderly mother to peaceful Haven, California, to join her godfather’s burgeoning PI business. What crimes could possibly happen in a town nicknamed “Mayberry by the Sea”? Sonny’s first case: find Figgy, a missing goldendoodle last seen sporting a Versace collar. At least scouting out a dognapper gives Sonny a chance to get to know her new neighbors.
Forty-eight hours in town and Figgy’s disappearance entangles Sonny in an unwelcome reunion with her ex, one of Haven’s wealthiest citizens. And when the body of a teenage boy is found along a popular hiking trail, Sonny is drawn into a web of strange beyond anything she ever saw in LA.
Then comes a local’s warning: question everything. Haven hides secrets that could destroy its idyllic facade. Or destroy Sonny first.
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Heartbreaker: A Memoir by Mike Campbell
“An exhilarating account. . . . an exemplary music memoir.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A fast-paced, tender-hearted rock ’n’ roll memoir for the ages, Mike Campbell’s Heartbreaker is part rags-to-riches story and part raucous, seat-of-the-pants adventure, recounting Campbell’s life and times as lead guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Mike Campbell was the lead guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the band’s inception in 1976 to Petty’s tragic death in 2017. His iconic, melodic playing helped form the foundation of the band’s sound, as heard on definitive classics like “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” “Learning to Fly” and “Into the Great Wide Open.”
Together, Petty and Campbell wrote countless songs, including some of the band’s biggest hits: “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “You Got Lucky” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” among them.
From their early days in Florida to their dizzying rise to superstardom to Petty’s acclaimed, platinum-selling solo albums Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers, Petty never made a record without him. Their work together is timeless, as are the career-defining hits Campbell co-wrote with Don Henley (“The Boys of Summer”) and with Petty for Stevie Nicks (“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”).
But few know of the less-than-glamorous background from which Campbell emerged—a hardscrabble childhood on the north side of Jacksonville, often just days ahead of homelessness, raised by a single mother struggling on minimum wage. After months of saving, his mother bought him a $15 pawnshop acoustic guitar for his sixteenth birthday. With a chord book and a transistor radio, Campbell painstakingly taught himself to play.
When a chance encounter with a guidance counselor inspired him to enroll in the University of Florida, Campbell—broke, with nowhere else to go and the Vietnam draft looming—moved into a rundown farmhouse in Gainesville, where he met a 20-year-old Tom Petty. They were soon inseparable. Together they chased their shared dream all the way to Los Angeles, where Campbell would meet his destiny, and the love of his life, Marcie.
It was an at-times grueling dream come true that took Campbell from the very bottom to the absolute top, where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would remain for decades, creating an astonishing body of work.
Brilliant, soft-spoken and intensely private, Campbell opens up within these pages for the first time, revealing himself to be an astute observer of triumphs, tragedies and absurdities alike, with a songwriter’s eye for the telling detail and a voice as direct and unpretentious as his music.
An instant classic, Heartbreaker is Mike Campbell’s heartfelt portrait of one throwaway kid’s lifesaving love of music and the creative heights he achieved through luck, collaboration, humility and extraordinary talent.
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Indian Country by Shobha Rao
From the award-winning author of Girls Burn Brighter, a couple from India—so different from generations of white colonialists who came before them—move to Montana, only to discover the secrets the land holds in this stunning literary novel.
Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organization in India that helps street children, often lost to the world of human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges.
Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam.
Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar’s white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister who stayed behind in India whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place.
When a colleague of Sagar’s is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man’s arrogance and expansionism?
Just like the Ganges river that dominates Sagar’s dreams, throughout the novel runs short historical stories of settlers who conquered, both the west and India, who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand.
A bold, ambitious, stunningly beautiful yet brutal novel about colonialism and the rippling ramifications still felt today, Indian Country is a tour de force modern-day classic.
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The Secret Market of the Dead by Giovanni De Feo
Just beyond the waking edges of Lucerìa, an 18th-century town in the kingdom of Naples, lies the Night: an enigmatic fiefdom governed by seven immortals and fueled by Moira, the power to reshape one’s destiny.
On this porous border separating Day from Night, Oriana spends her time fantasizing about becoming a smith in her father’s forge and eavesdropping on whispered tales of beasts and men who roam the nocturnal realm. But in the Night, these stories come alive, as Oriana saw for herself after she inadvertently trespassed into the Secret Market of the Dead, where vendors hawk Moira to those desperate enough to accept its immeasurably steep price.
Years later, when her father chooses her twin brother to succeed him, Oriana challenges her sibling to a series of trials to determine the forge’s true heir. But as the twins’ fierce competition escalates, with the town and her own family set firmly against her, Oriana realizes that to break free from the stifling confines of Day, she must once again embrace the Night—and, as always, everything comes with a cost.
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We Don’t Talk about Carol by Kristen Berry
Six Black girls from the same neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, disappeared in the mid 1960s. After her grandmother’s death, Sydney Singleton brings their stories and cases to the forefront when she finds a photo of her Aunt Carol, who was one of the missing girls. Tracing her way back through the neighborhood, with important clues shrouded in the shadows of family dynamics, Sydney unravels the girls’ cases and contends with both her immediate family trauma and her struggles with starting her own family. Berry explores issues with police and media favoritism, the historical context for Black families not allowing anything negative to be publicized, and how these factors combined to keep this 60-year-old case unsolved. Berry also highlights the world of true-crime podcasts and internet sleuths who can help solve a crime, if the right amount of respect is applied. Media coverage of missing Black girls, generational abuse, and trauma are deftly brought forth in this nail-biting debut thriller. – 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 