Hi everyone, I realized today, I forgot to publish the Suggested Reading posts for September 16 & 23 – so here they are!
And I’ll make sure the next batch of Suggested Reading five posts are published on the right dates.
So, basically, we have a suggested reading 10 post this time!
Have a great weekend!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
Mandel revisits a character from her second novel, The Singer’s Gun (2010), in this sophisticated, layered look at societal breakdown. Readers are reintroduced to Ari Waker, who has served an 18-year prison sentence after being convicted of taking out a hit on her cousin. Ari reemerges in 2031 in what is no longer the United States: the country has fallen and splintered into separate and often unstable nation states. Ari first makes her home in Los Angeles, part of the Republic of California, where she attends a strange party with her roommate, during which the doppelgangers of two-party guests appear and the host vanishes. The repercussions of this reverberate over the next several decades and throughout two timelines. As in her previous title, Sea of Tranquility (2022), Mandel jumps through time and multiple perspectives to create a thoroughly unique narrative that requires deep involvement and attention to detail. “”If you live long enough, you become a migrant from another timeline,”” one of her characters observes in a statement that is both literal and thematic in this multifaceted, sprawling exploration of two very different futures for a country that stands on the brink of massive change. As ever in her own wholly original and singular way, Mandel offers up a completely compelling, richly rendered yarn that’s sure to generate both major interest and discussion.–Starred Booklist Reivew
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Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult
Picoult revisits a character from one of her beloved previous books in this latest entry, which follows Molly, who lost her mother on 9/11. She was just a baby but her mother’s death shaped her life, motivating her to pursue a career in disaster relief. In the present day, Molly is head of the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response in Rhode Island. She’s fallen hard for and wed Jesse Fitzgerald, a polygraph expert Picoult fans will recognize as the troubled teen arsonist from My Sister’s Keeper (2004), who is almost a decade and a half older than her. When Molly discovers she’s pregnant, she struggles with the implications of bringing a child into her life given her career, but then she’s thrown a major curveball that leads her to question everything she thought she knew about herself and her family. Picoult never shies away from difficult subject matter, and here she shines a light on postpartum psychosis and the devastating fallout both the condition and its under-diagnosis can cause. A few late-in-the-game melodramatic developments don’t undercut what is ultimately a powerful and deeply affecting exploration of grief, loss, guilt, and enduring love. — Starred Booklist Review
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A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau
A sharp, captivating historical mystery about two queer women in turn-of-the-century New York, for fans of Lavender House and A Most Agreeable Murder
There can be a blurry line between what is ethical and what is legal.
Margot Baxter Harriman took the reins of B&H Foods after her father passed. It’s not easy being a business woman in 1912, but she is determined to continue what her grandparents started decades ago, no matter what it takes.
So when Margot finds Mrs. Gilroy, her father’s former assistant, dead in the office with a half-finished note confessing to nebulous misdeeds at B&H, she seeks out help from a very discreet, private investigator to figure out what’s going on. Her company, and her good name, are at stake if scandal breaks…and she could lose everything, including her freedom.
Loretta “Rett” Mancini has run her father’s investigation operation since he started becoming increasingly forgetful. When Margot offers her the chance to look into the potential scandal with B&H, she jumps at it.
But the more the two dig in, the more it becomes clear that Margot’s company may be too far lost…and someone is willing to kill them both to keep things quiet.
Charming and witty, Cathy Pegau’s A Murderous Business is perfect for fans of Lev Ac Rosen, Enola Holmes by Nancy Springer, and the Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney mysteries by Claudia Gray.
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Never Say Die: A Memoir by Ke Huy Quan
Memories of a child star turned Oscar winner. With wit, charm, and gratitude, Quan traces his history from the time he was a child in Vietnam in the 1970s through winning an Oscar and other major awards for the role of Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). As ethnic Chinese, Quan and his parents and eight siblings were persecuted in Vietnam after the war before making their way to a refugee camp in Hong Kong and then on to Los Angeles. He describes with care and attention a harrowing experience that involved much uncertainty and a year-long separation from his mother and three of his siblings. In 1982, he says, his life split again into “before and after,” when, on a whim, he auditioned for a movie role and was cast as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), followed by the role of Data in The Goonies (1985). He relates with enthusiasm and affection stories of being mentored by Steven Spielberg, taught to swim by Harrison Ford, and hanging out with other cast members in a motel. After The Goonies, film roles dried up for Quan, but he doesn’t neglect the story of what he calls “the lost years”: He went to film school at the University of Southern California, served as a stunt man and assistant director in several films, and met the woman, Echo, who would become his wife. He brings to life the challenges and rewards of filming Everything Everywhere, for which he had to create “three versions of the same man, each with his own physical language and way of moving through the world.” A touching account of a life with more than its share of ups and downs.– Kirkus Review
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When America Roared How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, the Country—and Led Us to Today by Jonathan Kaufman
The panoramic story of the 1980s, exploring the triumphs and failures of the decade that shaped the 21st century more than any other, from a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who witnessed the transformations firsthand
In January 1980, America seemed broken. Inflation raged. Interest rates topped 20 percent. Americans were held hostage in Iran. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with impunity. Japan was eating American manufacturing alive. Three networks controlled what Americans watched. China had been closed for 30 years.
Ten years later, everything had changed. The economy was booming. The Soviet Empire was collapsing. American businesses were competitive again.
In this immersive, character-driven narrative, Jonathan Kaufman lays bare the contending ideologies—and people—who battled for control of business, media and politics in the 1980s, shaping the way we live today. As Ronald Reagan and conservatives pummeled the Democratic party, as Jack Welch redefined leadership at Fortune 500 companies, and as deregulation spearheaded by Mark Fowler allowed television to become the hundreds of specialized and partisan channels we watch now, the groundwork was laid for our current economic and political conflicts. The decade also launched transformative social and political movements. Karen Nussbaum and Jane Fonda galvanized a struggling women’s movement, Evan Wolfson spearheaded the gay community’s legal fight against a hostile government, and Barack Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer in Chicago—all building long-lasting movements whose success progressives can learn from today.
From pivotal moments in board rooms and court rooms, to cultural touchstones like the birth of hip hop and of conservative talk radio, as well as the author’s eyewitness experiences in Tiananmen Square and Prague, When America Roared is the riveting story of how the 1980s built the world we live in, for better and for worse. It is the decade that made us—and the key to understanding where we go from here.
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Buzzard by Inez Ray
DEBUT Midwife Mae is one of the last abortion providers in a fractured former United States. After being arrested, she’s put to work as a nurse in Buzzard, a training camp for teen drone operators. When a pregnant teen begs for help, Mae has to decide whether to keep her head down or stand up for her beliefs. Years later, a government representative hoping to expose Buzzard’s corporate sponsor tracks Mae down to ask for her story, forcing her to revisit the secrets she discovered during her time there. This is a modern cousin of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, reflecting contemporary anxieties with its high-tech, climate-impacted future. The abortion doula perspective adds a new and welcome twist to speculative fiction exploring reproductive rights, as Mae–like everyone–has to choose between her principles and keeping herself and her family safe. Ray’s other point-of-view characters (the government representative Sona and one of Mae’s sons left to fend for himself after her arrest) are less fleshed out, primarily serving to support Mae’s story. VERDICT Ray’s debut, a timely post-Dobbs dystopia, is likely to attract attention and get readers talking.–Library Journal Review
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Fury In Death by J. D. Robb
Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her seasoned colleagues at the NYSPD, along with her dashing husband, businessman and police consultant Roarke, are in a race against time to solve a string of brutal murders. The mystery revolves around who is targeting top employees of the bioengineering firm Banner-Wyst and why. The sheer savagery of the victims’ beatings makes it difficult to believe only a single assailant was involved, especially given the staff’s high-security measures. However, the violent deaths appear isolated to the victims, with their family and friends safe from harm. Dallas’s instincts lead her to conclude that these are deeply personal attacks, driven by profound trauma and rage rather than a motive of financial gain. Following a trail of suspicious offshore accounts, Dallas works to unravel a 13-year-old mystery. What she and her team discover is a level of corruption, greed, and evil almost too shocking to believe.
VERDICT Readers will be on the edge of their seats with this latest intricately crafted thriller in Robb’s bestselling series (following Stolen in Death).
Reader’s Note: This is the sixty third book in the In Death Series. If you’d like to binge read from the beginning, check out book one: Naked In Death.
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Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women’s Movement and the Future of American Politics by Micki McElya
Women on parade. Feminist historian McElya uses the 1968 Miss America pageant as an anchor for a wide-ranging, comprehensive cultural history of the anti-war, civil rights, and women’s liberation movements that converged to protest the event. Drawing on a wealth of sources–including memoirs, published interviews, biographies, and histories–McElya recounts the origins and activities of the many contingencies that roiled American society: the National Organization for Women, National Women’s Party, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Jeannette Rankin Brigade, NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Students for a Democratic Society, Yippies, Miss Black America Pageant Organization, and several factions of the women’s liberation movement. Hardly cohesive and often fractious, the movement comprised three main blocs that competed to set goals: “One faction thought the women should meet primarily as a reading and study group to better understand the sources of their oppression and build the theoretical foundations for liberation; another faction urged focusing mostly on direct-action protests; and the third faction…argued that the foundations for liberation would be found only through consciousness raising (CR), which should be the core of the group’s work.” They were united, however, over their view of the cultural significance of the pageant, which they believed demeaned and trivialized women. McElya traces the history of the pageant, from its beginnings in post-World War I America, when it mirrored the “anti-radicalism” and “anti-immigrant politics” of mainstream America; Bess Myerson, the first Jewish winner, in 1945, confronted unabashed antisemitism. The Miss Black America Pageant, protesting the event’s long history of racism, augmented the scope of women’s anger. McElya’s narrative is well-populated with activists (liberal and conservative), politicians (and their wives), reporters, and pageant contestants, among a huge cast. Prodigious research informs a lively contribution to women’s history.–Starred Kirkus Review
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Story Telling: A Writing Life by Isabel Allende
In this charming and welcome celebration of the magic and power of literature, Allende (My Name Is Emilia del Valle, 2025) reflects on her experiences, from joys to tragedies, dreams, and inspiring mentors. Beginning with her early days as a journalist in Chile through her exile in Venezuela, life in California, and travels around the world, writing has been Allende’s constant companion. She now shares her knowledge and insights, covering all the basics and beyond, with openness and a disarming vulnerability. In 10 chapters, each with fitting quotes from the likes of Margaret Atwood and Pablo Picasso, she muses on the topic at hand–story, plot, characters, sex and violence, even the why of writing–followed by suggestions, concrete advice, and strategies for moving forward with a writing practice. Allende also recounts her triumphs, mistakes, and lessons learned from challenges and triumphs over the years, creating an invaluable master class for anyone beginning a literary journey and a pleasing and illuminating read for anyone interested in this author’s process and life story. Allende’s uplifting examples, encouraging suggestions, and passion for writing, reading, and literature make this a gem not to be missed.–Starred Booklist Review
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Three Graces of Pearl Street by Elizabeth Wellington Rollins
DEBUT This auspicious debut by Rollins introduces the three memorable Valentini women. The matriarch of the Italian American family, 96-year-old Graziella, runs her family and her church’s food pantry in Mamaroneck, NY; her daughter Grace is a psychology professor who is navigating divorce proceedings and a midlife crisis; and her granddaughter Ella is searching for her place and purpose in the world. After years apart, the women move in together. Graziella’s kitchen is her command center, where she dispenses wisdom and feeds family, friends, and neighbors. The new living situation causes family secrets, old rivalries and grudges, and hidden heartbreaks to bubble up, flavoring the story with humor and heart. There are alternating chapters narrated by each of the three Valentini women, allowing their individual stories to unfold and connect as each protagonist finds herself speaking truth to power. Rollins seasons the narrative with celebrations, conflicts, and the confidence gained as each character finds her authentic self. VERDICT With as many layers as Graziella’s lasagna, this is a story that will satisfy readers for a long time.–Library Journal Review
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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.
