Hi everyone, here are our recommended reads for the week!
*More information on the three catalogs and available formats is found at the end of the list of recommended reads*
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Weekly Suggested Reading postings are now published on Wednesdays.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, May 17, 2023.
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Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling
(Available Formats: Print Book)
In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp—but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she’ll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.
Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero’s inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo.
Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.
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A Door In The Dark by Scott Reintgen
(Available Formats: Print Book, eBook & Downloadable Audiobook)
Six teenage wizards are stranded in the wilderness after a spell goes awry in this pulse-pounding series launch from Reintgen (the Ashlords duology). Balmerick University scholarship student Ren Monroe may be talented, but she lacks the connections necessary to secure employment at one of the wealthy, powerful political houses in the hierarchical city of Kathor. That is, until disaster strikes. Ren and five classmates—including two house heirs—are traveling via portal when something misfires and drops them in the Dires, a distant, desolate place where dragons once dwelled and monsters still roam. One person mysteriously dies in transit, inspiring distrust among the survivors, but since Kathor is too far for transport via sorcery, the group must join forces to return on foot. Though the long, dangerous trek is further complicated by limited resources, Ren determines it a serendipitous opportunity to impress the heirs and obtain placement in one of their houses—provided that they all live. Reintgen combines inventive worldbuilding, intricate plotting, and a strongly developed, racially diverse cast to craft a twisty tale of classism, redemption, and revenge. Tense prose and escalating environmental, magical, and social conflicts foster constant fear for the characters’ fates. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Hang The Moon by Jeannette Walls
(Available Formats: Print Book, Large Print, CD Audiobook, eBook & Downloadable Audiobook)
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.
Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out.
Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.
You will fall in love with Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled.
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In The Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune
(Available Formats: Print Book & Downloadable Audiobook)
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots—fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans.
When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.
Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?
Inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door.
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The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk
(Available Formats: Print Book)
“American Indians were central to every century of U.S. historical development,” argues Yale historian Blackhawk (Violence over the Land) in this sweeping study. He begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers in Mexico and Florida in the 16th century, before shifting to French and British colonization efforts in the Northeast and the Ohio River Valley. In both instances, Native communities endured extreme violence and devastating epidemics, while employing fluid survival strategies (fighting, relocating, converting to Christianity, trading, intermarrying) that influenced imperial ambitions and behavior. Blackhawk also makes a persuasive case that in the wake of the Seven Years’ War and the expulsion of French forces from the interior of North America, “the growing allegiances between British and Indian leaders became valuable fodder in colonists’ critiques of their monarch,” helping to lead to the Revolutionary War. In Blackhawk’s telling, “Indian affairs” remained a potent political and social issue through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the New Deal and Cold War eras, as the removal of more than 75,000 Native children to federally funded boarding schools between the 1870s and 1920s and the dispossession of nearly a hundred million acres of reservation land during the same time period gave rise to a new generation of activists whose efforts to regain Native autonomy reshaped U.S. law and culture. Striking a masterful balance between the big picture and crystal-clear snapshots of key people and events, this is a vital new understanding of American history. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway: A Novel by Ashley Schumacher
(Available Formats: Print Book)
Since her mother’s death, Madeline “Gwen” Hathaway has been determined that nothing in her life will change ever again. That’s why she keeps extensive lists in journals, has had only one friend since childhood, and looks forward to the monotony of working the ren faire circuit with her father. Until she arrives at her mother’s favorite end-of-tour stop to find the faire is under new management and completely changed.
Meeting Arthur, the son of the new owners and an actual lute-playing bard, messes up Maddie’s plans even more. For some reason, he wants to be her friend – and ropes her into becoming Princess of the Faire. Now Maddie is overseeing a faire dramatically changed from what her mother loved and going on road trips vastly different from the routine she used to rely on. Worst of all, she’s kind of having fun.
Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway is filled with a wise old magician who sells potion bottles, gallant knights who are afraid of horses and ride camels instead, kings with a fondness for theatrics, a lazy river castle moat with inflatable crocodile floaties, and a plus-sized heroine with a wide open heart… if only she just admits it.
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Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
(Available Formats: Print Book, eBook & Downloadable Audiobook)
The thought-provoking latest from Slocumb (after The Violin Conspiracy) centers on fictional early 20th-century composer Frederick Delaney, celebrated for the brilliant music he produced before apparently losing his talent later in life.
In the present day, the powerful Delaney Foundation calls in Bernard “Bern” Hendricks, an expert on the composer’s work, after they discover a previously unknown handwritten score of a Delaney opera. Delaney claimed to have lost his only copy of the work, and the clumsy score he recreated flopped when staged in 1936. Overjoyed to find that this version reflects Delaney’s genius, Bern accepts the foundation’s invitation to authenticate it. With the aid of a technology expert friend, Bern identifies cryptic markings on its pages as references to Josephine Reed, a Black musician who was sometimes seen with the white Delaney.
When their investigation suggests Reed may have created the great music Delaney claimed as his, the foundation turns threatening in order to protect its namesake’s reputation. Gripping chapters set in the 1920s and 1930s vividly evoke Reed, Delaney, and the racial inequities that fueled their relationship, though the present-day narrative never fully gels. This exploration of the ways race, power, and modern music intersect lands as a timely page-turner. – Publishers Weekly Review
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The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything Kara Gnodde
(Available Formats:Print Book)
With the offbeat charm of The Rosie Project and generous warmth of The One Hundred
Years of Lenni and Margot, a wry, moving debut novel about a pair of unforgettable siblings and a love triangle of sorts—one with math as its beating heart.
Meet Art and Mimi Brotherton. Devoted siblings and housemates, they’re bound together by the tragic death of their parents. Mathematical genius Art relies on logic, while Mimi prefers to follow her heart.
When Mimi decides she needs more from life than dutifully tending to her brilliant brother, she asks for his help to find love. Art agrees, but on one condition: that she find her soulmate using a strict mathematical principle. Things seem promising, until Mimi meets Frank: a romantic, spontaneous stargazer who’s also a mathematician. Despite Mimi’s obvious affection for the quirky Frank, Art is wary of him from their very first encounter.
As Art’s mistrust of Frank grows, so do Mimi’s feelings, and the siblings’ relationship is brought to a breaking point. Something about Frank doesn’t quite add up, and only Art can see it . . .
The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything is a tender, intelligent and uplifting novel about brothers and sisters, true love in all its forms, and how the answers to life’s biggest questions follow a logic of their own.
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With My Little Eye: A Novel by Joshilyn Jackson
(Available Formats: Print Book & eBook)
Meribel Mills, the winning narrator of this solid suspense novel from bestseller Jackson (Mother May I), says she’s 37 “according to IMDb,” but admits she’s 42 “if I went strictly by things like my birth certificate and facts.” Meribel’s major claim to fame is the sitcom Belinda’s World, in which she performed while in her 20s. Still active fan sites and message boards help get her job offers, but they have also attracted a deranged fan. When she realizes that someone has broken into the Los Angeles home she shares with her 12-year-old daughter, she accepts a role in a TV series to be filmed on location in her former hometown of Atlanta. As she says, “I… traded perfect year-round weather for the sticky-hot swamp air of a state I hated, all to make us safe.” But nowhere is safe in the age of the internet, and the stalker’s sinister messages start arriving at her new doorstep. Whom can she trust? Her ex-husband, her new boyfriend, the helpful new neighbor? Jackson, a former actor herself, wryly describes the actor’s life while providing just enough twists and an event-filled if somewhat hasty finale. Those looking for escapist fun will be rewarded. – Publishers Weekly Review
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Have a great week!
Linda Reimer
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*Information on the three catalogs*
Digital Catalog: https://stls.overdrive.com/
The Digital Catalog, is an online catalog containing eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, digital magazines and a handful of streaming videos. The catalog, which allows one to download content to a PC, also has a companion app, Libby, which you can download to your mobile device; so you can enjoy eBooks and downloadable audiobooks 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 instant checkouts of eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, comic books, albums, movies and TV series. Patron check out limit is 6 items per month.
Hoopla is a Southeast Steuben County Library service available to all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders.
The Hoopla App is available for Android or Apple devices and most smart TVs & media streaming players.
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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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Format Note: Under each book title you’ll find a list of all the different formats that specific title is available in; including: Print Books, Large Print Books, CD Audiobooks, eBooks & Downloadable Audiobooks from the Digital Catalog (Libby app) and Hoopla eBooks & Hoopla Downloadable Audiobooks (Hoopla app).
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Note: Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Have questions or want to request a book?
Feel free to call the library! Our telephone number is 607-936-3713.
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