Ashley Winstead – Tech & Book Talk at SSCL

Suggested Reading Five: August 12, 2026

August 12, 2026August 3, 2026 Linda Reimer

Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!

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Dominion by Jean Kwok

Rubi Morningtail has no memories from before the Annihilation that destroyed her home and forced her to migrate to the Silver Tyger Dominion. Making her way with her ribbon-dancing and a little singing magic, Rubi and her guardian Edith are barely getting by. When a raging battle tyger appears on her doorstep and Rubi wounds her, the metal mage Blake Axefire has Rubi thrown into the Bonding, where tygers bond with their riders and slaughter everyone else. Surprisingly, Rubi survives and is bonded with the tyger she once hurt. Now Rubi prepares with Blake’s elite group to join other Dominion warriors to reseal the Anchors that keep the demon realm closed. Escaping demons and rebel uprisings are the least of Rubi’s problems, because she must discover the truth about her past and her power, and figure out if the attraction she has for Blake is worth changing her future.

VERDICT Kwok (The Leftover Woman) launches a romantasy trilogy with an intricately crafted magic system and a romance that will keep readers clamoring for the next in the series. – Library Journal Review

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Hot Girls Murder Club: A Novel by Ashley Winstead

Ten years ago, when her younger sister Georgia was brutally murdered, and the Los Angeles police were unable to bring her killer to justice, Sage Scout realized if she wanted justice she would need to deliver it herself. Since then, Sage has become a famous singer/songwriter while simultaneously collecting a circle of friends, all equally talented and driven women, around her. The group soon earns the sobriquet “Hot Girl Murder Club” when, one after another, powerful individuals who have up until now evaded justice suddenly get their karmic comeuppance. However, what begins as a joke quickly becomes very real when LA Police Detective Grey Holloway charges Sage with murder. From this ingenious premise, Winstead (The Future Saints) fashions a wickedly clever novel that not only delivers all the jaw-dropping twists readers crave but also offers up a thoughtful exploration of the costs that can come from taking justice into one’s own hands.

VERDICT Written with a razor-sharp sense of humor and graced with a memorable cast of relatably messy characters, this sleekly plotted novel of suspense is simply superb. – Library Journal Review

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A Summer of Stars by Liana Cincotti

Fake relationship terms and conditions: do not fall in love. After a messy breakup, it feels like the entire world hates tennis superstar Luna Aldridge. With her reputation ruined and her career at risk, the only way to repair it is a PR stunt: fake-dating Hollywood’s golden boy, Kieran Alexander. There’s just one problem … Luna can’t stand him. For Kieran, the feeling is mutual. He’s about to lead a big-screen love story, but his dating history is jeopardizing the film’s success. His team believes the world needs to see him wildly in love. And who better than Luna, the person he loathes most?

Soon, Luna and Kieran spend the summer posing for cameras, sharing red carpets and flying around the world for the tennis circuit. But the more they pretend, the more they question if they can keep their hearts, and their careers, together. Especially with everyone watching …

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We Will See You Bleed: A Novel by Ron Currie

This prequel to The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne (2025) answers a lot of questions readers may have had about how the fictional character, Babs, a stalwart town supporter and grandmother, came to run a drug empire in the Little Canada neighborhood of Waterville, Maine (the neighborhood and town are real). Currie takes us back to 1984, when Babs was a struggling but strong young woman. Times are hard. A strike at the paper mill, the lifeblood of the small town, has been going on for more than a year (the strike is loosely based on the strike around this time in nearby Jay, Maine). Drug dealers and strikebreakers swoop in. The women, led by Babs, are the strong organizers against these forces. Currie often over-describes, and his use of second person singular for Babs’ thoughts and actions (for example, “And so you sat swatting bugs in the heat”) is a confusing and strained literary device. Nevertheless, this novel is a good character study and historical crime story for the patient reader. – Booklist Review

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The Wild Beneath: A Novel by Kelly Anderson

Annie MacLeod always knew she was different, growing up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, navigating by stars and swimming with sea creatures alongside her parents and best friend Evan. But when a tsunami shatters her world, Annie is stranded on land and forced to confront how eccentric she is. In the wreckage, she rescues a wordless man named Walker, who emits a hum only she can hear.

Their connection is instant, electric. Walker’s touch gives Annie visions of the ocean’s hidden world, a life she’s never known but feels inexplicably drawn to. Yet even as she is pulled toward him, Evan—the steadfast love who has always been there—remains on dry land, offering the stability she may have to leave behind. Annie is torn between Evan’s grounding presence and Walker’s magnetic secrets. But then, Walker vanishes, along with the answers she needs about who she really is.

Six years later, Annie has left the sea and buried the past—until Walker’s otherworldly sound returns, pulling her back toward the ocean and the life she abandoned. The truth under the water is more ancient than she ever could have known, and Annie must confront a choice that will test her heart and determine her future.

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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.

Suggested Reading Five: January 21, 2026

January 21, 2026December 29, 2025 Linda Reimer

Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!

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Future Saints by Ashley Winstead

Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife) focuses on the demise of a women-led rock band in her latest. Told through the perspective of the bandmates, manager, and fans, this emotionally charged novel opens as the Future Saints perform at a nearly empty venue. The members of the Future Saints are on the cusp of giving up on everything–the music, their fans, and themselves–when lead singer Hannah closes the show with a new song that sets the internet on fire with its grief and honesty. The Future Saints are rocketed to a level of popularity that flummoxes the bandmembers as well as their new manager, Theo. As poor choices are made, captured for social media, and regurgitated within the band itself, they begin writing new music that captures their changed situation as well as their sadness at the death of their former manager, Ginny, who was also Hannah’s sister. Hannah ultimately confronts her grief in a dramatic way, bringing the story full circle and allowing catharsis. The novel’s satisfying epilogue places each character in the future where they need to be. VERDICT Fans of Stephanie Clifford’s The Farewell Tour will enjoy. – Library Journal Review

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George Falls Through Time: A Novel by Ryan Collett

George’s life in present-day London keeps hitting new lows. He already lost his job and boyfriend, he’s about to lose his flat, and now, having taken a dog-walking gig, he has lost two of the six dogs that he was walking in the park. While a panicked George searches for the missing dogs, he observes the London he knows falling away. Somehow, he has traveled through time, and the only thing he can find out is that he’s in the 28th year of a King Edward’s reign (1300 CE). Time-travelling is brutally hard when you’re going backward: the language is foreign to George, and dragons, apparently, are known to exist in this world, which he can’t quite believe. He is thrown into prison, eventually escaping with the help of a man named Simon. Then George is brought before the king, who presents him with a plastic Coca-Cola bottle and demands an explanation. VERDICT Collett’s (The Disassembly of Doreen Durand) time-travel novel is a marvelously lovely queer retelling of the story of St. George and the dragon. Readers who loved Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time will enjoy this too. – Library Journal Review

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Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson

Thirty-five words. That’s the length of the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, the one that begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and ends with “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In between, there is talk of equality and sacrosanct rights. It’s a lot to pack into a single sentence, but award-winning biographer Isaacson cogently honors the wisdom it took to create it. Its authors–Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams–struggled over concerns such as, who, precisely, should be included in “We” and whether “inalienable”” would be a better choice than “unalienable.” Glimpses into such behind-the-scenes polishing of the most important of our country’s foundational documents would be fascinating in and of itself, but as the Declaration’s 250th anniversary draws near, Isaacson’s granular analysis serves as a more potent lesson. Our nascent nation was freeing itself from Britain’s tyrannical rule, the facts of which are specifically enumerated in the body of the Declaration. Re-reading these grievances through the lens of today’s politically fraught atmosphere is a chilling but necessary exercise. In Isaacson’s expert hands, those 35 words, and the ones that come after them, gain a new level of clarity and relevance, and inspire deepened appreciation. – Booklist Review

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The Infamous Gilberts: A Novel by Angela Tomaski

DEBUT Margaret Gilbert has long lived with her three daughters and two sons in Thornwalk, a once-stately English manor, until, in 2002, the keys to the manor are about to be handed over to a new owner who plans to transform the estate into a luxury hotel. But first, Maximus, who lives in a cottage on the property, walks readers through a more than 60-year history of the Gilbert family and their home. Tomaski’s sad, sometimes funny debut novel thrives on its personalities. There’s Hugo, the eldest Gilbert son, who plans to take over the family’s failing business after their father dies; Jeremy, the wanderer who disappears for long stretches at a time; and the three Gilbert daughters dreaming of love, whose poor choices as they try to marry into wealth cloud and complicate the family’s fate. Tomaski offers strong characterization as each Gilbert reveals the weaknesses and gullibility that will ultimately contribute to the family’s downfall as they struggle with the implications of marrying for money versus clinging to the hope of regaining lost love.

VERDICT Readers of Tomaski’s immersive multigenerational saga will be pulled into the lives of the Gilbert family. Recommended for fans of big English novels about people who cannot help themselves. -Library Journal Review

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No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done: A Novel by Sophie Hannah

The twistiest murder mystery you are ever likely to read? A story about a family that does the unthinkable?

Both? Or something else altogether?

You think it will never happen to you.

The doorbell. The policeman. The words that turn your world inside out: I’m afraid there’s been an incident…

For Sally Lambert, those words mean only one thing—danger. Not just for her family, but for Champ, their loyal and beloved dog. A single accusation, a neighbor’s grudge, and suddenly the Lamberts are trapped in a nightmare with no escape.

Unless they make one.

Most people would never run. Most people would never leave behind everything they know to protect an animal who can’t defend himself. But for Sally, Champ is more than a dog—he’s one of her children. And most people aren’t the Lamberts.

No one has ever done this before. No one has ever gone this far. But the Lamberts have never been quite like any other family…

New York Times bestselling author Sophie Hannah spins an unexpected tale of suspense in No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done, an unsettling reflection on how far we’ll go for those we love.

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