Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
Sayaka Murata’s slim novel Convenience Store Woman is the Tokyo-set tale of self-described “foreign object” Keiko Furukura, a loner in her mid-30s who does not quite fit in with or understand the society around her, yet excels in her role as a konbini employee.
Murata’s themes and her oddball protagonist are similar to Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Even so, Murata’s is a wholly original story, with its own thought-provoking musings on what normal behavior and happiness can look like, despite the expectations of family and peers.
Hail Bristol is back. If you follow my MADreads reviews (and really, you should <g>) you'll know that I loved K. B. Wagers Indranan War trilogy. In that trilogy Hail was introduced as the last remaining heir to an empire she wasn't sure she wanted. Events conspired to force her to take on the responsibility, and once taken there was no going back. Hail is the Empress of the Indranan Empire and she's hoping that now that the civil war is over, she and her people can take some time to regroup and rebuild.
There are a few tropes that will always hook me when it comes to historical romance. One of those tropes, the marriage of convenience, is the underpinning for Burrowes' latest in her Windham Brides series. What starts out as an attempt by the heroine, Charlotte Windham, to have a brush with scandal so that she can avoid further London seasons, turns into a marriage to Lucas Sherbourne, her unwitting accomplice.
Thanks to the popularity of Netflix’s series The Crown (and the constant drumbeat of stories about Meghan and Harry vs. Kate and William) there has been a resurgence of interest in one of the Windsor family's most fascinating characters, Princess Margaret. Younger sister of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret has to be arguably the most polarizing royal figure of her era.
In her latest novel Nicola Moriarty delves into the perils of social media and how easily small things can become big things and go horribly awry.
In this first of a series Sonnier offers a vibrant and fast-moving tale that melds steampunk and magic to great effect. Arabella is the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of England's most powerful family of witches. As such she was expected to do great things. But Arabella has aged past the point where her powers should have been revealed with nary a spark of talent showing, much to the dismay of her mother and delight of some of her more competitive sisters.
The Wisconsin Book Festival released its 2018 festival schedule on August 21. The four-day festival will take place October 11-14, 2018, in and around Madison Public Library’s Central Library in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. The festival will feature more than 60 events over four days with plenty of opportunities to meet authors, discover new books or favorite writers, and have books signed. See the full festival lineup at wisconsinbookfestival.org.
Everyone’s favorite boy wizard is turning twenty this year! Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone first hit shelves in 1997, sparking a cultural phenomenon that’s still going strong. To celebrate, Overdrive is offering free access to the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ebook between August 27 and September 10. Enjoy reconnecting with favorite characters or take the opportunity to introduce a new generation to the series.
A young blacksmith's apprentice named Greta discovers a lost tea dragon at the market and uncovers the forgotten world of the Tea Dragon Society. The book follows a year of seasons starting with spring and the developing friendships between Greta, the tea dragon masters, Hesekiel and Erik, and a mysterious and shy girl named Minette.
This isn't your typical mysterious death mystery. The death that starts the book off is explained in the first chapter, so now what? Turns out the now what is quite a lot and all of it good.
In a time not too far in the future in an America that seems all to scarily possible at times, half the population has been silenced. For fans who have binged through The Handmaid's Tale (and/or read the book) Vox can be your next dystopian read.
As readers and publishers head into fall, the year’s publishing trends show no signs of stopping. Crunching the numbers, Publisher’s Weekly reports that Americans seem to be embracing reality, at least of the printed variety: nonfiction sales are up 5% from last year, driven in large part by political titles. It comes at the cost of fiction sales, which are down about the same amount. Not surprisingly, publishers are responding by bringing out and promoting their big nonfiction titles, and as September marks the start of the fall publishing push, some of those titles are hitting sh
There are people who don't recognize good and bad. They appear normal, even charming, but lack conscience and empathy. They see others as objects to use for their own benefit. They are called psychopaths. They are out there, wandering among us, and there's nothing we can do about it.
Liz Nugent's Lying in Wait is about just such a person. The path to who this person is and what they are willing to do leads the reader on a terrifying maze of twists and turns of shock and second-guessing, and in my case, a little shrieking.
Get off your devices. That’s right, just set them aside, grab this book and open to the title page spread where you will see the cutest!!, most adorable, awwww- inspiring photograph of a mama three-toed sloth and her baby in their natural environment. And that’s just the title page.
In Guillory's second contemporary romance the hero's best friend from book one (The Wedding Date) gets his chance to find love - even if he's convinced that he doesn't have the time or space in his life for it.
"Ghosting" according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication. Several recent reports tout it as the new toxic behavior. It's cowardly, it's destructive and it doesn't resolve anything.
Do you want something funny to read? I ran across a Publishers Weekly article where an essayist with a new book listed her 9 favorite essay collections. Below is her list, along with her new book.
Not only is this an open letter to the women who will run the world one day, it's also a first-hand account of what it was like to be a part of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and how future candidates (and all of us) can learn from the way a woman candidate was treated and how upcoming elections will be different.
Resourceful cook Kat Holloway has a new mystery to solve in the second of this historical mystery series. Though Kat is still the cook for Lord Rankin's household in Victorian London, but the people she's cooking for have changed a bit (after the events of Death Below Stairs). Lord Rankin has departed for the country and Lady Cynthia, though nominally chaperoned by an aunt and uncle, is left mostly to her own devices.
