Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
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Death and Dinuguan by Mia P. Manansala
In Manansala’s series closer (following Guilt and Ginataan), Lila Macapagal is back to solve one last mystery in Shady Palms, IL. The Brew-ha Cafe she runs with her two best friends is thriving, but a recent spate of burglaries of women-owned local businesses has the whole town on edge. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Lila is excited to spend the day with her boyfriend, Jae, and to partner with the new chocolate shop run by Jae’s cousin Hana. But romance must wait when the chocolate shop is vandalized, Hana is severely injured in an attack, and her business partner and best friend Blake is murdered. Lila and her friends and family vow to investigate the crimes, bringing both Hana’s attacker and Blake’s killer to justice. Their inquiries lead them toward a jealous ex-husband, an acquaintance with boundary issues, and some security system inconsistencies. As always, Lila’s cleverness prevails.
VERDICT This final installment in Manansala’s cozy “Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery” series will leave readers satisfied with more delicious Filipino and Filipino fusion recipes, another mystery solved, and beloved characters who find fulfillment. – Library Journal Review
Reader’s Note: Death and Dinuguan is the sixth book in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery Series. If you’d like to binge read from the beginning, check out book one: Arsenic and Adobo.
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A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Desperation permeates Majumdar’s long-awaited second book, another exquisitely wrenching novel after her glorious debut, A Burning (2020). “These problems have been happening for a long time, but you people did not notice,” a worker remarks about a near-future Kolkata, besieged by worsening climate crises. The problems include food shortages and extensive flooding. “You people” are the privileged who somehow still have access to (meager) meals and (mostly) dry homes. Ma, widowed Dadu, and two-year-old Mishti are such people, anticipating the final week they will spend in their native city before they escape to Michigan to join Ma’s husband, who moved six months previously for a research position in Ann Arbor. They miraculously have legal passports and visas in hand, their flight’s scheduled to depart in seven days. Despite all the preparations and precautions, they couldn’t know that Boomba, so thin from deprivation, could fit through the kitchen window and steal Ma’s purse. The police won’t help, but those priceless documents must be recovered, at any cost. A neighbor’s camera, a stolen t-shirt, and word-of-mouth lead to a collision. Boomba knows too much; he wants even more. Ma is trapped, but she must get her family out. Majumdar brilliantly blurs right and wrong, ethics and legality. In such frenzied times, who is the guardian and who is the thief can never be clear. – Booklist
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Good Spirits: A Novel by B. K. Borison
Nolan Callahan’s been stuck since drowning off the coast of Ireland in 1902, forced to be the Ghost of Christmas Past who helps the living come to terms with their lives. Nolan diligently hunts his assignments and takes them to their pasts in the hopes they’ll be able to move on to their present and future; maybe, someday, so will he. When Nolan receives his latest assignment, he’s befuddled. Why would anyone think the gorgeous, whimsical Harriet York, purveyor of antiques, incapable of saying no or accepting a compliment, could be a bad person? Or stuck? As Nolan leads Harriet into her past, his magic starts to spin out of control, and he begins to both hope and fall in love for the first time in a century. Unsure what this means for himself or for Harriet, Nolan decides to risk forever remembering a woman he loves, even if he’ll someday lose her as she moves on with her life. VERDICT An emotional and lightly magical holiday romance from Borison (First-Time Caller) that’s perfect for readers who enjoyed Ashley Poston’s The Seven Year Slip or Laurie Gilmore’s The Christmas Tree Farm.-Library Journal Review
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The King’s Ransom by Janet Evanovitch
Gabriela Rose, recovery agent extraordinaire, can find just about anything. Too bad she can’t seem to lose her gorgeous-but-infuriating ex-husband Rafer Jones. And now he needs her help. His cousin, Harley, is in trouble…big trouble.
As the president of a too-big-to-fail bank, he invested an astronomical amount of money in insuring some of the world’s most priceless artifacts at the urging of his board. It seemed like a low-risk, high-reward business move, so he jumped in with both feet. But recently, these insured pieces started going missing and worse, there’s no paper trail of Harley being directed to make these risky investments. Unless the artwork can be recovered soon, it looks like Harley is going to be heading to jail as the fall guy for an ingenious crime.
Gabriela knows what she must do: travel around the world with Rafer to find the missing works of art, keep Harley out of jail, and save both his skin and his bank. Along the way, she’ll encounter corruption, threats, murder, mysterious dark forces behind a global conspiracy to destroy the world’s wealth, and a nefarious villain who will stop at nothing to bring the world to the brink of ruin.
Reader’s Note: The King’s Ransom is the second book in The Recovery Mystery Series. If you’d like to start reading at the beginning, check out book one: The Recovery Agent.
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The Marriage Method by Mimi Matthews
Matthews returns to the intrigue-filled Victorian England world of her “Crinoline Academy” series in this sequel to Rules for Ruin. Nell Trewlove has spent her life within the walls of the Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies, first as a student, and now as a teacher. After the events of Rules for Ruin, newspaperman Miles Quincy is showing too much interest in the school and its subversive student body, trained to use their skills to advance the causes of women. To protect the illusion that the school’s extraordinary students are merely orphans, Nell is forced to leave the familiarity of the school, where she is respected for her brilliance and not pitied for her limp, and travel to London to satisfy Miles’s curiosity. Unfortunately, the collision of her weak leg, her crinoline, and a jumpy cat send Nell and Miles straight into the appearance of impropriety–and then into a marriage of convenience. To save the school, as well as Miles’s newspaper, Nell and Miles must join forces to find a missing orphan and solve the murder of a gossip columnist, all the while navigating their new marriage. VERDICT A sequel that’s just as much adventurous, swoony fun as its predecessor. – Library Journal 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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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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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 