Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
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6:40 to Montreal: A Novel by Eva Jurczyk
Jurczyk’s new novel (after That Night in the Library) is an intense, claustrophobic nod to the Christie classic Murder on the Orient Express. Writer Agatha’s husband Teddy has bought her a ticket on the Toronto to Montreal train. The six-hour trip will take them through areas with limited satellite connection; Teddy hopes that this will offer Agatha uninterrupted time to work on her next novel. Agatha has been struggling to write due to health issues, and she isn’t sure that this will work, but she agrees to the trip for her own reasons. Her hope of a peaceful journey is soon dashed when she sees a woman who’s been stalking her in the car. Then, after just a couple hours of travel, the train stops abruptly. As Dorcas, the only staff person in the first-class car, tries to keep the passengers calm, they soon discover that they’re trapped, one of the passengers is dead, and that any of the rest of them could be the killer.
VERDICT The slow build, as each choice and event makes their situation more dire, gives the novel an intense pace that will keep readers turning pages. For readers of Gillian McAllister and Lisa Lutz.–Library Journal Review
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Black Wolf by Louise Penny
The 20th Chief Inspector Gamache novel picks up mere weeks after the events of The Grey Wolf (2024); Gamache and his team are still catching their breath after barely stopping a domestic terrorist attack in Montreal. The mastermind, a man Gamache had called the Black Wolf, is behind bars. But, as this excellent novel opens, Gamache is having second thoughts: what if the man in prison is not the Black Wolf? What if he’s still out there, planning something just as terrifying as what might have taken place in Montreal? Penny is one hell of a writer: her Gamache novels, and the political thriller she co-wrote with Hillary Clinton (State of Terror, 2021), are tightly plotted and beautifully written. This one’s a bit different, though; while normally a gentle, thoughtful man, Gamache appears to be under more internal pressure here than we’ve seen before, as though he’s demanding something of himself that he might not be able to deliver: absolution for letting the Black Wolf get away. An absolute must-read. –Booklist Review
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The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon
Remembering the Mighty Fitz, half a century later. Bacon, author of The Great Halifax Explosion, offers a superb education in geography, seamanship, and history to tell the story of the gigantic Great Lakes ore carrier that sank in a 1975 storm, killing all 29 crew members. He opens with an overview of the Great Lakes, whose waves and currents turn out to be as nasty as those in salt water. Between 1875 and 1975, they claimed at least 6,000 ships and 30,000 sailors–averaging one shipwreck a week. As Bacon writes in arresting prose, “These freighters battled waves twenty feet or more, faced eighty-mile-per-hour winds, and crashed into lighthouses, ports, piers, bridges, shoals, jagged shores, and each other. They faced fires and explosions onboard, hundreds of tons of ice weighing their ships down, water flooding into their pilothouses and cargo holds, and fog, the one element that could make even the most seasoned mariner stop in his tracks, praying for luck.” Narrowing his focus, Bacon describes the mines of Minnesota and Wisconsin that required massive carriers to transport their ore south to refineries in Chicago and Buffalo and points in between. The carriers were designed primarily for profit (carrying the maximum load) and to pass through narrow locks leading from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. Designers paid less attention to their ability to handle the Great Lakes on bad days. Since no crewman survived, details of the disaster are spotty, but Bacon makes the most of them, delivering biographies of crewmen, their duties, descriptions of the storm, increasingly fraught messages from the Fitzgerald before they ceased, interviews with victims’ families, and a discussion of the lessons learned. The author makes theFitzgerald the centerpiece of a broad account of Great Lakes shipping, the careers and daily lives of the crews–and the industries, cities, and bars that feed them–and tales of other sinkings. A gripping account of a maritime disaster. –Kirkus Review
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The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong
When Samantha Payne’s grandfather dies, she figures she won’t even get a mention in the will. After all, she hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, not since her father took his own life after being accused of murdering a child at their lakefront cottage. Her grandfather always insisted her father was innocent, despite Sam having caught him burying the child’s body, his clothing streaked with blood.
But when she does attend the reading of the will at the behest of her aunt, she discovers that her grandfather left her the very valuable lakefront property where the family cottage sits. There’s one catch: Sam needs to stay in the cottage for a month. To finally face the fact she was wrong and her father was innocent, in her grandfather’s words.
Traveling to Paynes Hollow, Sam is faced with the realities of her childhood and the secrets kept hidden in the shadows of her memories. When her aunt goes missing a couple days into their stay, Sam begins to question everything again. Plagued by nightmares and paranoia, she begins hearing sounds in the forest and seeing shapes crawling from the water as the rippling waves of the lake promise something unspeakably dark lurking just below their surface.
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Slowly Dying Cause by Elizabeth George
In her twenty-second Inspector Lynley book since the series began in 1988 (most recently, 2022’s Something to Hide), George again delivers a winner. At its heart, it’s a murder mystery, but there’s lots more here: family unity and disintegration, love, hatred, sex, lies, suspicion, guilt, and infidelity. Michael Lobb, owner of a tin-and-pewter business in Cornwall, is found stabbed to death in his workshop. The underresourced local cops have plenty of potential suspects–particularly Lobb’s much-younger current wife, his ex-wife, and his kids. But they quickly uncover damning evidence pointing to Goron Udy, a simple-minded young man who worked for Lobb. Udy is quick to confess, saying only that “it needed to be done.” Inspector Thomas Lynley and DS Barbara Havers are visiting Lynley’s Cornish estate and quickly find themselves involved in the investigation, turning up new evidence that lends an even more tragic note to the already heartrending case. This is vintage Lynley, the supremely clever detective whose gentle humanity is always quietly present. Despite the sheer number of characters, subplots, and twists and turns, this is George at her best; she delivers a stunning must-read for Lynley fans new and old. –Booklist
A Slowly Dying Cause is the twenty-second book in the Inspector Lynley Series. If you’d like to start reading the series from the beginning check out book one: A Great Deliverance.
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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 