Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
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Before You Were Anne by Emiko Jean
After a woman is killed and her daughter vanishes, detective Chelsey Calhoun uncovers a legacy of violence and survival that spans from Japan to Seattle in this propulsive novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Return of Ellie Black.
A murdered woman. A missing daughter. A truth buried across two continents.
Married, pregnant, and thriving in her career, Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life finally feels whole, until an explosive new case shatters everything. A mother is dead. Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Naomi, has disappeared. And the search will awaken questions about Chelsey’s own origins—questions she’s spent a lifetime afraid to ask.
The victim called herself Anne Walker. But she was born Rika Takahashi, and her journey from a remote Japanese farm to suburban Seattle conceals decades of deception. Across Tokyo’s shadowed underworld, an isolated Idaho town, and years of carefully constructed lies, Rika reinvented herself at every turn. But she was always running—from someone, or something.
Now, Chelsey must find Naomi before she becomes the next victim. But the deeper she delves into Rika’s hidden life, the more she discovers: some secrets are worth killing for. And the most dangerous truths may be the ones closest to home.
Told in three interwoven voices, Before You Were Anne is a gripping suspense novel about the lies that bind families and the sins that echo across generations.
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Paper Ghosts by Sarah Addison Allen
Over the generations, the reclusive Wester matriarchs are feared by their neighbors, as they seem to have second sight, knowing personal things about others and using this information to manipulate them. In 1976, Alice Wester is raising her granddaughter Willamena “Wills” Wester and controlling her life, including the man she is supposed to marry, only allowing Wills to choose her friends. When Wills is betrayed by those friends and rebels against Alice by planning to leave, a tragedy occurs, tying Wills to Wester House. Years later, Wills vows not to make the same mistakes with her own granddaughter Bailey, who, along with her father, Wills’s son, comes to live with her when Bailey’s mother dies. However, to protect Bailey, she repeats her grandmother’s mistake, sending Bailey away until Bailey returns and learns the truth about her grandmother’s past and her own life-changing night. Allen slowly reveals secrets, showing the lengths a family will go to protect their own.
VERDICT Allen’s (Other Birds) latest atmospheric, compelling novel is populated with well-drawn characters, including ghosts, and laced with magical realism. It’s sure to please her fans as well as those of Alice Hoffman.–Library Journal Review
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Promised Land by Henry Wise
The mysterious disappearance of Georgia swamp-dweller Lucas “Rainbo” Boon creates a pressure cooker of conflict in Edgar winner Wise’s expert sequel to Holy City. After Rainbo’s truck is found crashed and bloodstained in the Snakefoot swamp, Sheriff Mills launches an investigation with the help of his deputies, Will Seems and Tania Jameson. As the search party—including Rainbo’s troubled teenage grandson, Buck, and Buck’s anxious mother, Diane—plunges into the treacherous swamp, already-strained family bonds among Rainbo’s kin fray further. Eventually, Buck and a local woman named Arlene Davis, both skilled trackers, lead Will to a remote camp where chilling discoveries deepen the mystery. When Rainbo is found gravely wounded and the FBI uncovers his hidden identity, the investigation draws the surrounding community into a web of betrayal and violence that puts Buck in harm’s way. Wise’s vivid evocation of the Southern landscape and nuanced cast of flawed, fully realized characters imbue his sophomore novel with brooding suspense and emotional depth, solidifying him as a formidable voice in literary crime fiction. It’s a home run. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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A Time of Witches by Madeline Martin
Two women, bound by blood and betrayal, must break silence across centuries—or be silenced forever, in the dazzling new novel by New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin.
Lilith Legare’s life is unraveling. Since her mother’s death, strange things have been happening – plants turn toward her touch, animals linger in her path, and the birthmark on her arm has started tingling. Worse still is her recurring nightmare of being burned alive at the stake.
Her search for answers brings her from Savannah to England, to the decaying Brackenmere Manor where the past blurs with the present. There, Lilith discovers a legacy she never asked for and along with it, the threat of peril. History must be rewritten, or she too will die.
In 1645 Suffolk, Sybil Brantham stands accused as a witch. An educated, wealthy widow, she is branded a threat by men who fear her independence. As arrests begin and suspicion abounds, Sybil must protect her younger sister, even as betrayal takes root within her household.
Across centuries, Lilith and Sybil are bound by blood and by danger. To save themselves, and each other, they must confront the silence that has stolen women’s power for generations—and dare to claim their voices before it’s too late.
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Under Story by Chloe Benjamin
Benjamin (The Immortalists) blends speculative fiction and romance in this sui generis story of an erstwhile couple who discover a parallel universe. Laurel Salter, a mycologist, divorces her physicist husband, Eli, leaves her position at U-W Madison, and takes a job as a dishwasher at the remote McMurdo Station in Antarctica, determined to get as far away as possible from her life. (Benjamin hints early on that Laurel suffered a devastating loss, the details of which are gradually revealed.) One day, researchers discover a coruscating light source, which they dub the Arc. News of the phenomenon draws physicists to the base, including Eli, much to Laurel’s chagrin. Because the Arc gives off inverted neutrinos, Eli thinks it proves his theory that there is a mirror universe, a Duoverse, where time runs backward. Laurel, stirred by Eli’s passion for his theory, persuades him to enter the Arc with her, and they find themselves in another realm where time indeed flows in reverse. Their goal is to stay for three years and undo the tragedy that tore them apart, then return to the known universe. Benjamin holds the reader’s attention with well-conceived depictions of the Duoverse, where people age in reverse from death to birth, but the heart of the story is in Laurel and Eli’s desperate attempt to mend their lives and recover their love. This captivates.
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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 