After the death of her mother, Torie Nash, a teenager in the 1940s, runs the household on her family’s successful peach farm in Iola, Colorado. Torie’s life is consumed by backbreaking work and caring for her father, brother and uncle, until her head is turned by drifter Wilson Moon, a Native American displaced from his tribal land. Torie is drawn to Wilson’s unique perspective and beauty, but soon discovers that the small-minded neighbors in her small town don’t appreciate people who are different – or those who associate with them. When tragedy occurs, Torie makes a decision that will that forever change the course of her life.
Based on a true historical event––the intentional flooding and destruction of the town of Iola, Colorado, Go As a River by Shelley Read explores the ideas of home, racism and the loss of childhood and innocence. Set against the often-harsh landscape of mountains and forests that eventually become Torie’s home, this beautifully descriptive and sometimes heartbreaking novel will be enjoyed by fans of Where the Crawdads Sing. Place your hold today.
Books about books are always a hit, and it seems like every month there’s a new book in this category. If you’re a bonafide bookworm, a bright-eyed bibliophile, or a beaming booklover, here are some recent and upcoming bookish reads.
Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence–until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru.
London, 1938: The bookstore just doesn’t feel the same to Gertie Bingham ever since the death of her beloved husband Harry. Bingham Books was a dream they shared together, and without Harry, Gertie wonders if it’s time to take her faithful old lab, Hemingway, and retire to the seaside. But fate has other plans for Gertie.
When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend’s struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn’t easy. Bell River’s literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat.
Hope Sparrow has mastered the art of outrunning her tragic past, learning never to stay anywhere too long and never to allow anyone control over her life again. Coming to Wanishin Falls in search of her family’s history already feels too risky. But somewhere in the towering stacks of this dusty old bookshop are the books that hold Hope’s last ties to her late mother–and to a rumored family treasure that could help her start over.
The Cambridge Bookshop is a haven for Tess, Caroline, Evie, and Merritt, who are all navigating the struggles of being newly independent college women in a world that seems to want to keep them in the kitchen. But when a member of the group finds herself shattered, everything they know about themselves will be called into question.
Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She never thinks of herself as lonely…but still she looks forward to that time every day when old curmudgeon Arthur McLachlan comes to browse the shelves and cheerfully insult her. Their sparring is such a highlight of Sloane’s day that when Arthur doesn’t show up one morning, she’s instantly concerned. And then another day passes, and another.
We’re starting to experience some beautiful, sunny days here in Northeast Ohio now that it’s June, so it is very fitting that June is Great Outdoors Month!
There are plenty of ways to spend some extra time outdoors, but if you’re looking for some ideas, look no further!
Detectives Alex Cross and John Sampson join forces again to protect the Cross family from a shadow force advancing on the nation’s capital, in the latest addition to the long-running, extremely popular series.
Stone Barrington faces down a deadly foe in the latest thrilling adventure in the #1 New York Times best-selling series. Following a string of adventures, Stone Barrington is enjoying some downtime in New York City when a chance encounter introduces him to a charming new companion. Too bad she also comes with the baggage of a persistent ex-boyfriend intent on retribution.
Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in 15th-century China.
Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children 5-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and 7-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S., where she’s separated from her mother.
Unearthing the perfectly preserved body of a female warrior in Southeast Asia, archeologist Riley Smith and Eve Duncan seek answers about this extraordinary past life, leading Riley to make a discovery that will change history if she can survive long enough to share it with the world.
As WWII ends, Elise returns to Paris to reunite with her daughter only to find her friend Juliette, the woman she entrusted her daughter with, has seemingly vanished without a trace, which leads Elise on a desperate search to New York and to Juliette one final, fateful time.
A young man shocks his adoptive mother by flying to Cape Cod and walking unannounced into the bookstore owned by his birth mother and her grandfather and surprising them, forcing both women into addressing their assumptions about motherhood.
Steven Smith has a heartbreaking story. A difficult upbringing sent him down the wrong path and he ended up in prison for ten years, due to his involvement with the notorious criminal Harrison family. Upon his release, Steven becomes obsessed with the disappearance of Miss Iles, a former teacher who went missing after taking his class on a field trip 40 years previously. Steven believes that on that trip, Miss Iles was investigating prolific children’s author, Edith Twyford and a secret code she supposedly had written into her books. Steven also believes that if the code is solved, it will lead to hidden treasure. When Steven goes missing searching for that treasure, all that remains are audio files that have been recovered from his iPhone 4.
Written in transcript form, this unique mystery lets the reader follow along Steven’s many misadventures as he investigates and finds other people who are searching for the code and even more who will stop at nothing to keep him from it.
The Twyford Code by Janice Hallet is a multilayered read that will thrill fans of puzzles, acrostics and word play. Place your hold today and prepare to be amazed.
Summer is a favorite season for many, although I do not include myself in this statement. I am an autumn soul (so much so that I have a maple leaf tattooed on my arm and an orange cat named Pumpkin Waffles) but I do appreciate every season and enjoy what each one has to offer. For me, summer is holiday picnics enjoying my mom’s famous macaroni and potato salads, mango rose sunsets shimmering like spilled paint across Lake Erie, golden lightening bugs bejeweling blades of grass, and evening ice cream excursions. It’s taking day trips to parks and gardens, toasting marshmallows over a blazing campfire, watching fireworks erupt in explosions of vibrancy and of course, reading beneath the dappled shade of an oak tree while sipping a mason jar of lavender lemonade. In literature, important events often play out in these golden months, especially in coming-of-age novels where summer is the setting for growth, change, and new beginnings. It is the season for romance in many a story. Couples finding love beneath the infinite empyrean paradise that is a summer sky. Summer magic can be found in the foaming bubbles of ocean waves kissing the sand, in the kaleidoscopic colors of a carnival or in the glittering stars bursting from a sparkler. It is easy to see why this is the season that receives so many accolades from authors and is perhaps the most popular seasonal setting in stories of all genres. Here are some literary quotes about summertime!
“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
– Henry James
“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.” – Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” – Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
– John Lubbock, The Use of Life
“In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.” ―Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
“The castle grounds were gleaming in the sunlight as though freshly painted; the cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkling lake, the satin-green lawns rippled occasionally in a gentle breeze: June had arrived.”
―J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
“All in all, it was a never to be forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which,
in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” —L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date”-William Shakespeare Sonnet 18
“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
“One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”-Jeanette Walls The Glass Castle
School is out for the summer and the sun is finally shining which means that it’s time to pick up a beach read! Whether you’re reading from the beaches of Lake Erie, a tropical paradise, or even in your own backyard, embrace the relaxing summer vibes with a new beachy read.
In a hidden enclave in Sag Harbor, affectionately known as SANS–Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Nineveh–there’s a close-knit community of African American elites who escape the city and enjoy the beautiful warm weather and beaches at their vacation homes. Against the odds, Olivia Jones has blazed her own enviable career path and built her name in the finance world. But hidden behind the veneer of her success, there is a gaping hole. Mourning both the loss and the betrayal of Omar, a surrogate father to her and her two godsisters, Olivia is driven to solve the mystery of what happened to her biological father, a police officer unjustly killed when she was a little girl.
At age ninety-two, Tish Darling is the matriarch and protector of what’s left of the Darling family fortune, including the decades-old beach house, Riptide. Located on the crook of Cape Cod, it’s a place she once loved but has not returned to in decades, since a tragic family accident one perfect summer day. Still, she is determined to keep Riptide in the family. Even if that means going back there on the cusp of her granddaughter’s wedding. Even if it means revealing someone else’s truth.
Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in the city. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn’t.
Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But the cracks in Hollis’s perfect life–her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline–grow deeper. So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”–one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife–she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.
In New York City winter never seems to loosen its hold and for South Carolina transplant Maggie (born Magnolia after the fairest summer flower) the balmy beach weather of April back home on Sullivan’s Island feels like a distant memory. Until a phone call from her sister, Violet, changes everything. Gran, the treasured matriarch, has fallen into a coma after a car accident caused by Maggie’s troubled mother, Lily. But once Maggie returns, she finds that her hometown of Sullivan’s Island holds even more secrets.
As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerly’s year-round caretaker and a descendant of the island’s settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility. While Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes.
It’s 1947 and Rose and her husband Jim Mackie flee to the quiet country English village of Kent with their three-year-old daughter Susie, in search of a life away from London and Jim’s family of ne’er-do-wells. When they are offered work and a place to live by a local couple, Rose thinks they can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
A war-weary 41-year-old, former government operative, Elinor White is also looking to live out her days peacefully in Kent. Upon meeting newcomers, Elinor makes it her business to know their business. When she learns that the Mackie brothers have visited, threatening Rose and Susie if Jim doesn’t return to assist with their next big job, Elinor decides that violence against women and children just won’t do. Coming out of hiding, Elinor vows that she will protect the young family and uses her Home Office connections in to attempt to take on the dangerous and powerful London Mackies. Unfortunately, she may get more than she bargains for when events from her own past catch up to her along the way.
The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear is a departure from her beloved Maisie Dobbs’ series. This mystery introduces readers to a deeply affected and damaged, yet likeable and intelligent character in Elinor White, a woman who began a life in espionage while still a teen in Belgium and who is conflicted about her need to commit violence in order to protect others.
Told through alternating time lines, The White Lady is emotional and suspenseful, well-researched historical fiction with plenty of twists that will keep you turning its pages. While the author has said this book is not the start a new series, this reader is left wishing for a bit more time spent with the fascinating Miss White.
Don’t believe me; investigate on your own! Place your hold on The White Ladytoday and see what you think.
Sam is an entomologist who finds herself in a familiar habitat- her childhood home. Since the passing of her Gran Mae, the house has seemed different. Her mother, Edith now lives alone amongst the thriving rose bushes, left to her own devices with the help of a handyman. As Sam moves back in, she’s welcomed back into the world of Southern hospitality, British procedurals, and boxed wine. Not to be outdone, the eccentric neighbors are just as eccentric as ever, with vultures rehabilitating and a one-man neighborhood watch a few doors down.
But the house isn’t quite as Sam remembered. Gone are the vibrant colors and signature maximalist tendencies of her mother. Instead, her Gran Mae’s stark style has come back in multiple shades of neutral. Sam’s not convinced that her mom’s odd behavior isn’t a result of an undiagnosed condition and the home’s transformation could be a result.
Sam’s not the only visitor to the house- she wakes up in the middle of the night to swarms of ladybugs making themselves at home in her room. Soon she is left questioning why exactly the house feels so off, and it turns out that the picture-perfect styling is hiding something ugly.
This is a southern gothic novel that definitely dabbles in magical realism. The characters are engaging and the audiobook narrator is superb. If you’re a fan of spooky Southern tales, this is definitely a book for you.
Read it or Weep 