- December 19, 2018
Promise
Minrose Gwin
The 1936 Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak is one of the deadliest ever recorded in U.S. history. Minrose Gwin’s 2018 historical novel, Promise, is about this dangerous F5 tornado that hit Tupelo, Mississippi and surrounding areas, without warning, causing wide-spread devastation during the 16-hour rampage which resulted in the deaths of 454 people and ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
Joanna Cannon
When I started this book, I told a colleague that I was predisposed to dislike it because the first few chapters are told from the perspective of 10-year-old Grace. Too charming for me, I thought.
I stuck with it though, and I am glad. There are ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought A Divided Town Together
Amy Bass
From Kirkus Reviews:
United by a common dream, high school soccer players overcome racism in a town in Maine.
Lewiston was once a nearly all-white mill town on the verge of economic collapse. Then hundreds of Somali refugees poured into the ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
One word of advice if you pick up A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window: be prepared to clear your schedule. Once you get into the story, you won’t be able to walk away.
Anna Fox, once a child-psychologist who seemed to have it all, is suffering from ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
The Paris Architect
Charles Befoure
During the French Occupation, Lucien Bernard, a gifted, ambitious, unemployed, 35-year-old Parisian architect, despite his best attempts to remain uninvolved in the war, finds himself living a dangerously duplicitous life, engaged to design arsenals for the Reich, and on the other hand, accepting secret commissions by a prospective wealthy client who intends ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
The Immortalists
Chloe Benjamin
Here’s the premise of this story: in 1969, four siblings between the ages of seven and 14 summon up the courage to take a trip from their New York City apartment to visit a psychic in lower Manhattan. Her ability, she claims, is that she can tell people the date of ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
10 Things I Can See From Here
by Carrie Mac
Maeve is utterly sick and disgusted with people’s banal response to her anxiety. She’s heard it all. “Just relax!” they say. “Calm down! Smile! It will all be okay!” Blah, blah, blah. Sure, she thinks, when there are a million ...
Read more… - December 19, 2018
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry
Fredrik Backman
After her grandmother dies, eight-year-old Elsa is entrusted to deliver a batch of letters to people her grandmother had somehow wronged in life. While it sounds simple enough, the story that Backman constructs around this basic plot line is rich with details and quite entertaining. ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
Public Library and Other Stories (2016)
Ali Smith
What better way to conclude National Library Week than with a quick review of Ali Smith’s short story collection, an homage to public libraries?
Smith is one of England’s best novelists; this book was published in 2015, at a time when budget cuts were forcing the closure of ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
Children of Blood and Bone (2018)
Tomi Adeyemi
On an alternate African continent, there used to be magic. There used to be healing magic. There used to be killing magic. There is no magic any more, as the king has silenced it. He has acquired all of the magical artifacts and taken them away from those who ...
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