Imagine walking into a glittering version of a department store, wandering around and taking in the magic of merchandising. Except in The Dallergut Dream Department Store, the only merchandise you’ll see are dreams. Imaginative dreams by the finest dream makers are stocked alongside the discount dreams with slight imperfections or lackluster themes. Among it all is Penny, the newest employee at the famed store. Dallergut himself interviews and hires Penny. As she finds her footing, she realizes that the mystical world of sleep can be carefully orchestrated. The regulars come through and purchase dreams of flying, eating, and otherworldly realms as their payments of wonder and flutter are deposited into the store’s vault. Penny gets to know the regulars and suggests dreams for them with practiced specificity. But not all dreams are pleasant. The market for nightmares is also met in this whimsical, mundane, and fantastical world of sleep.
As Penny discovers the business of dreams, intriguing side characters abound. The quiet plot of this book is by no means flashy, but the the world of dreamy magic pulled me in with this enveloping book. Translated from the original Korean bestseller, if you enjoyed Before the Coffee Gets Cold or Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, you’ll enjoy the world of this magical department store.
Summer isn’t quite over yet! Coffee shops may be debuting their fall drink menu but according to the calendar we have a whole month left of summer. In honor of the dog days of summer, here are some of the most-read books of the past few months. If you’ve already read the hottest titles, we’ve got readalikes for them too. So pick up a book and enjoy the summer sun while it lasts!
Click on the title to request the print book, or check out the digital collection.
Mysterious wealthy newcomers, the Richardsons, have bought a lavish house. But when it burns to the ground and their employee goes missing, the island is in for plenty of drama.
“You must be our new neighbors!” Mrs. Lowell gushes and waves across the picket fence. I clutch my daughter’s hand and smile back- but the second Mrs. Lowell sees my husband a strange expression crosses her face. In that moment I make a promise. We finally have a family home. My past is far, far behind us. And I’ll do anything to keep it that way.
Before moving in with the Crouch family, Juno thought Winnie and her husband, Nigel, had the perfect marriage, the perfect son–the perfect life. Only now that she’s living in their beautiful house, she sees the cracks in the crumbling facade are too deep to ignore.
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.
While on her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod, Rocky, sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, relives the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers, coming face-to-face with her family’s history and future and accepting she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.
Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long.
In a last-ditch effort to rescue her brand from the brink of irrelevance, Boston fashion influencer Melanie Karlsen finds herself in a rural fishing village on the east coast of Canada. The only thing scarier than nature itself? The burly and bearded B and B owner and fisherman, Evan Whaler
On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage.
Deciding to illustrate a disturbing, secret handwritten manuscript from her late Pulitzer Prize-winning father, aspiring artist Haven Marbury is plunged into a nightmarish world when a monstrous creature appears.
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways. Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor.
When Luna O’Shea is unceremoniously fired from her frustrating office job, she tries to count her blessings: she’s a proud trans woman who has plenty of friends, a wonderful roommate, and a good life in New York City. But blessings don’t pay the bills. Enter Jean-Pierre, a laissez-faire trans man and the heir to a huge culinary empire–which he’ll only inherit if he can jump through all the hoops his celebrity chef grandfather has placed in his path.
Across centuries two women, Melina Green and Emilia Bassano, one a modern playwright and the other her Elizabethan ancestor, each fight societal expectations to have their voices heard on the stage in a world that silences female playwrights.
Sweeping across centuries, and stretching from Mesopotamia to London, this stunning novel follows a trio of characters living in the shadows of one of the greatest epic poems of all time. Nineveh and its Remains as they become entwined by a single drop of water.
While on their honeymoon at McAlpine Lodge, GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton must solve a murder when the Lodge’s manager is found dead, and investigating the McAlpine family and other guests, they realize everyone here is lying about their past, lying to their family, lying to themselves.
As a huge manhunt is launched to find a local politician’s daughter, Cork O’Connor. and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police, when the body of a young Ojibwe woman is found, uncover a connection to the missing teenager one that places his own grandson in the crosshairs of a killer.
Bound by friendship and a quest for justice, the members of the Sisterhood investigate when two young women go missing in Mountain Valley, Oregon, in the latest addition to the long-running series following Rock Bottom.
Cut off from his comrades at The Campus just when he needs them most, Jack Ryan, Jr. finds himself in the middle of an international conspiracy that may be too much for even him to handle.
LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan investigates what appears to be a fatal car-jacking, but uncovers details about the victim that suggests there’s more going on, in the fourth novel of the series following The Devil You Know.
SHE WHO KNOWS
When she receives The Call, which has never happened to a female in the history of her village, 13-year-old Najeeba must journey with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake where her presence changes everything and her family will never be the same.
Abandoned by her free-spirited mother and raised by an emotionally distant father, Allegra finds solace in books and love, only to face the harsh realities of war and its impact on her husband, who returns from Afghanistan nearly unrecognizable.
An FBI Special Agent poses as a cleric in New York’s notorious Five Points slum to help catch a dangerous serial killer, in the latest addition to the long-running series following The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.
When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications.
When her childhood hero, Francis Keen, the woman behind a famous advice column, is brutally murdered, Alex takes over as her replacement and begins receiving threatening letters, drawing into her inter her predecessor’s murder, which takes her all the way up to the power centers of Manhattan where a killer waits.
Accused of a break-in he did not commit, Phineas Bishop, a nighttime security guard at a private investigator’s office resolves to track down the intruder and earn back everyone’s trust. By the author of Cheater.
A money-grabbing tech genius shares her deeply personal story of how she, after the FBI said “these are not the kind of crimes Black people are smart enough to commit,” pulled off an ingenious white-collar scheme, stealing $40 million dollars, and after receiving an outrageous prison sentence, orchestrated her own release.
Moving to a run-down Cornwall village, author Berit Gardner, when a man blows up during a tea party, decides to snoop around to both help the police and gain ideas for her new book, discovering the villagers are using this murder as an opportunity to attract tourists to Great Diddling.
After freeing themselves from captivity at the hands of the false King of the Gods, Sera and Nyktos race to maintain peace in the Shadowlands, in the fourth novel of the series following A Fire in the Flesh.
Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list! Click on the book title to go to our catalog and place a hold!
Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan investigates a deadly fire in a Washington, DC neighborhood called Foggy Bottom with a colorful past and ties to gangs in the present, in the latest addition to the long-running series following The Bone Hacker.
PI Clay Edison, when a case of simple fraud explodes into an elaborate con game stretching back decades and involving countless victims, follows the evidence to a tiny town on California’s remote Lost Coast where he discovers the price of truth is higher and deadlier than he ever could’ve imagined.
When a plot to destroy the United States is uncovered, the lives of a shadowy Russian defector, a beautiful Norwegian intelligence officer and a deadly American spy are intertwined as, in the fog of war, friends can appear as enemies and enemies as friends and when in doubt, there is no doubt.
Best Interest Attorney, Stella Hudson, takes on the case of an 8-year-old girl who witnessed the death of her nanny amid her parents’ ugly divorce and realizes that everyone is a suspect.
In 1968 London, obituary writer Liz Houghton, to break into the newsroom at a London newspaper, helps her best friend, a police officer, investigate a high-profile case and uncovers a mystery dating back to World War II that is linked to the recent disappearance of a young girl and a murder.
When Cricket Sadler asks her to find out who killed her beloved husband Harlan during the Mad Hatter Masquerade, tea shop owner Theodosia realizes the killer might have mistaken Harlan for his crazy son a slum landlord who recently injure a woman in a boating accident.
Sigma Force is summoned to help search for a missing trove of ancient books after a Vatican archivist is murdered near the Kremlin, in the latest addition to the long-running series following Tides of Fire.
In 1950s Hollywood, when an unknown Mexican ingenue is cast as Salome, a star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary heroine, she becomes the object of envy of Nancy Hartley, a bit player who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.
Whether you’re in the dreaming phase of vacation planning or on vacation as you’re reading this, if you’d like to add a bookish spin to your time away, here are a few options for your next vacation-inspired read. Pick a book based on the location and enjoy a literary vacation!
A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear.
Britta is a wife, mother and businesswoman who concentrates on her family and running clinic that specializes in suicide prevention. Meanwhile, her business is connected to an outfit that supplies terrorist organizations looking to employ suicide bombers.
When her happy life in 1991 Croatia is shattered by civil war, ten-year-old Ana Juric is embroiled in a world of guerilla warfare and child soldiers before making a daring escape to America, where years later she struggles to hide her past.
The story of a Great Female Chef, celebrated as one of the best in a world where men dominate, and the way that her pursuit of love, pleasure, and gustatory delights helped shape her life and career.
Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.
Attorney Jane Smith takes on the case of an unlucky man accused of killing a family of three in the Hamptons and potentially a second family in the third novel of the series following Jane Effing Smith.
When the body of Diana Brewer is discovered in a hayfield by a local farmer, sleepy little Fairfield, Vermont, a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects and a place of fear and paranoia where everyone wants answers.
Spending a lifetime together, Joseph and Evelyn, when Evelyn receives a tragic diagnosis and he cannot live without her, decide, in one year’s time, to end their lives on their own terms, and decide to create new memories to cherish and make peace with the legacy they will leave behind for their family.
While transcribing the sequel to Veronica St. Clair’s 1993 hit phenomenon, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights, Agnes discovers the true and terrifying events that inspired the original novel and must set free the stories of all the women traumatized and victimized by Wyldcliffe Heights, a former psychiatric hospital for “wayward women.”
Told in rotating first-person voices, this irresistibly voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich, wealthy and ultra-wealthy follows Charlotte, Sunset Academy’s alpha mom, who’s up for PTA president until Melody, a wide-eyed transplant from Kansas, emerges as her rival while a white-collar crime investigation threatens to take down the whole institution.
Told in rotating first-person voices, this irresistibly voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich, wealthy and ultra-wealthy follows Charlotte, Sunset Academy’s alpha mom, who’s up for PTA president until Melody, a wide-eyed transplant from Kansas, emerges as her rival while a white-collar crime investigation threatens to take down the whole institution.
Reconceiving our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women’s roles within it, from Cleopatra to Boudica, Sappho to Fulvia, and countless others, an award-winning classicist documents how women of antiquity are undeniably woven through the fabric of history, and in this monumental work, finally take center stage.
The 2024 Olympics begin today in Paris, France! The XXXIII Olympiad will be the sixth Olympic Games hosted by France and the third Olympic Games hosted in the “City of Love.” From cardboard beds to the launch of Olympic breakdancing, this Olympic Games is already full of stories. If you’re caught up in the quest for gold, here are a few Olympic-themed reads.
In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.
For Sera Wheeler, the Olympics is the reason for everything. It’s why she trains thirty hours a week, starves herself to under 100 pounds, and pops Advil like Tic Tacs. For her mother, Charlene, hungry for glory she never had, it’s why she rises before dawn to drive Sera to practice in a different state, and why the family scrimps, saves, and fractures.
Grace Henderson has been a star of the US Women’s National Team for ten years, even though she’s only 26. But when she’s sidelined with an injury, a bold new upstart, Phoebe Matthews, takes her spot. 22-year-old Phoebe is everything Grace isn’t–a gregarious jokester who plays with a joy that Grace lost somewhere along the way.
At eight years of age, Samia lives to run. She shares her dream with her best friend and neighbor, Ali, who appoints himself her “professional coach.” Eight-year-old Ali trains her, times her, and pushes her to achieve her goals. For both children, Samia’s running is the bright spot in their tumultuous life in Somalia. She is talented, brave, and determined to represent her country in the Olympic Games.
The past seven years have been hard on Avery Abrams: after training her entire life to make the Olympic gymnastics team, a disastrous performance ended her athletic career for good. Her best friend and teammate, Jasmine, went on to become an Olympic champion, then committed the ultimate betrayal by marrying their controversial coach, Dimitri.
Simone Biles’ entrance into the world of gymnastics may have started on a field trip in her hometown of Spring, Texas, but her God-given talent, along with drive to succeed no matter the obstacle, are what brought her to the national spotlight during the Olympic Games and have catapulted her ever since–including 25 World Championship medals.
Katie Ledecky has won more individual Olympic races than any female swimmer in history. She is a three-time Olympian, a seven-time gold medalist, a twenty-one-time world champion, eight-time NCAA Champion, and a world record-holder in individual swimming events. Time and again, the question is posed to her family, her coaches, and to her–what makes her a champion?
Growing up in New Jersey as the only African American Muslim at school, Ibtihaj Muhammad always had to find her own way. When she discovered fencing, a sport traditionally reserved for the wealthy, she had to defy expectations and make a place for herself in a sport she grew to love.
Making a deal to keep her smuggler father out of prison, Ruby Weaver agrees to help the Feds break up a bootlegging ring in 1920s Blue Moon, Montana, in the third novel of the series following A Calder at Heart.
In 1881 England, assistant librarian for the Hereford cathedral, Hecate Cavendish, who can see ghosts, guards an ancient chained library where some lost souls become her dearest friends, others seek her helping in finding peace and others threaten the lives of everyone she loves.
Describes the true story of Ashland, Ohio detective Kim Mager who used psychological expertise to unravel the crimes of serial killer Shawn Grate, known as “The Ladykiller,” through a series of high-stakes interviews during which he confessed.
While dealing with his dead wife’s yet-to-be-solved murder and a briefcase containing a pair of severed hands, unconventional Detective Declan Miller finally has leverage against Wayne Cutler, whom he suspects killed his wife, which lands him in a mess he might not be able to dance his way out of.
A warrior who cannot be killed, known simply as “B,” wants to die and a U.S. black-ops group has promised they can help with that if he helps them in return, but when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event points to a force even more mysterious than B himself.
Diagnosed a pathological liar with unimaginable skeletons in his family’s closet, crusading attorney Leo Balanoff, when his fingerprints show up on the murder weapon used to kill a ruthless drug dealer, is forced to go undercover for the FBI, finding himself backed into a corner, but has a few more cards left to play.
While investigating his brother’s mysterious death in South Dakota, Arliss Cutter returns to Alaska after the discovery of a woman’s body in the permafrost indicates the two have things in common in the sixth novel of the series following Breakneck.
Sixteen years after the disappearance of her sister, Grace, and Grace’s boyfriend Adam, Leyna, when something strange happens, returns home to find answers, and as a wildfire sparks, tempers flare and intentions turn deadly because someone knows what really happened that night?—?and how good the forest is at keeping its secrets.
Finally, we reach Part Four. It’s all been building towards this: the 1936 Olympic Games.
There are a lot of tough decisions to make for Coach Al Ulbrickson in assembling the varsity team. He even drops Joe from boat one, though a month later he is moved back to the first boat, making the Olympics-hopeful boat. The final lineup is: Herbert Morris, Charles Day, Gordon Adam, John White, James McMillin, George Hunt, Donald Hume, Robert Moch, and Joe Rantz. But their work is far from over. They’ve got to make it to Berlin, and to do that, they must succeed at the Olympic Time Trials in New Jersey.
The men packed up as though they were headed to Germany and took a train to the east coast. With a now-signature come from behind victory, the Washington team was Olympics-bound! However, they needed to fund their own way, and fast. I thought it was admirable that Coach Ulbrickson kept the money issue a secret from the team, to keep them focused on their goal. Fortunately, the whole of Washington is supporting them, and they manage to raise $5,000 and set off for Europe, to put their skills to the most challenging test of all.
The voyage over was difficult: Hume became ill, people got seasick, some gained weight from lack of exercise, an Olympian even got expelled from the Games due to excessive drinking. Meanwhile, Germany, of course, was ramping up their wide-scale oppression but their propaganda team did their best to present a welcoming, peaceful facade. When the Americans arrived, they were impressed with the warm energy and had no idea of what was looming in the shadows.
Practice began and the Americans had the opportunity to view the other countries’ rowing teams: disciplined Germany, similar Britain, calm Netherlands. The Americans were still struggling to work together but slowly, they began to open up to each other and grow stronger. At the preliminary race, the Americans won and set a new world record, even with an ill Hume. The next day was the final and the Americans were at a disadvantage with the worst lane position. The weather was raging and when the race began, the American and British teams didn’t even notice! Even knowing the outcome, I was glued to the page, unsure of how a team so behind could make up the difference and emerge victorious.
The second to last chapter was told masterfully, every detail of the race on the page. But nothing beats archival footage to see pieces of the race. The video below in particular shows just how close the race was, with the American boat just barely winning gold. It was an extraordinary moment and after reading about the trials those men went through, what a glorious, well-deserved end!
Discussion questions for Part Four:
Of course, we know the results of the 1936 Olympic Games. However, while reading about the race, what emotions did you experience? Were you so immersed in the story that you felt, for a moment, that the boys could lose?
We were able to get a lot of Joe Rantz’s personal life told in this story. Throughout the book and in the epilogue, we learn more about the other members of the boat. Did you wish the author was able to provide a deeper dive on any other person in the book? Who would you want to know more about and why?
Thank you for joining our online discussion! Keep the conversation going with two All-Ages book discussions coming up:
Tuesday, July 23, 7:00-8:00pm in the Green Room at the Library OR Tuesday, July 30, 10:30-11:30am at the Rocky River Senior Center at 21014 Hilliard Blvd.
And join us on Friday, July 26 at 12pm: we will be showing The Boys in the Boat at our Movie Matinee!
Read it or Weep 