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Monday, February 5, 2018
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Feel the Love in February
It might be a little cliche to spotlight romance in February, but it's hard to resist romantic love in all its up and downs. Old love, new love, true love and love that defies even the greatest stress makes for great reading. Here are a few titles that capture romance in all its messy glory.
Questions? Email madtech@madisonpubliclibrary.org
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Last Night With the Duke
by Amelia Grey
The Duke of Griffin has never lived down his reputation as one of the Rakes of St. James. Now rumors are swirling around London that his twin sisters may bear the brunt of his past follies. Hiring a competent chaperone is the only thing Griffin has on his mind—until he meets the lovely and intriguing Miss Esmeralda Swift. Esmeralda considered herself too sensible to ever fall for a scoundrel, but that was before she met irresistibly seductive Griffin. His employment offer proves too tempting for her to resist. She can't afford to be distracted by his devilish charms because the stakes are so high for his sisters' debut Season. . .unless one of London's most notorious rakes has had a change of heart and is ready to make Esmeralda his bride.
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The Wedding Date
by Jasmine Guillory
Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist. On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century—or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...
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The Music Shop
by Rachel Joyce
It is 1988. On a dead-end street in a lonely suburb there is a music shop that stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless, and the adrift; Frank, the shop's owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music. Terrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind.
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Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
by Ada Calhoun
We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. In Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which "the first twenty years are the hardest." Calhoun's funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. "What a burden," Calhoun calls marriage, "and what a gift."
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My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward: A Memoir
by Mark Lukach
In love at eighteen and married by twenty-four, blessed with a healthy son, Mark and Giulia’s marriage seemed a storybook romance. But at various times throughout their marriage, Giulia suffered severe and unexpected psychotic breaks that landed her in the psych ward, sometimes for weeks at a time. Everything that seemed secure now teetered on the edge of an abyss—how could their marriage survive? A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Lukach's is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife's mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers' faith in the power of love.
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The Argonauts
by Maggie Nelson
The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.
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Midwinter Break
by Bernard MacLaverty
A retired couple, Gerry and Stella Gilmore, fly from their home in Scotland to Amsterdam for a long weekend—a holiday to refresh the senses, to do some sightseeing, and generally to take stock of what remains of their lives. Their relationship seems safe, easy, familiar. But deep hidden uncertainties divide them. Gerry, once an architect, is forgetful and set in his ways. Stella is tired of his lifestyle, worried about their marriage, and angry at his constant undermining of her religious faith. Things are not helped by memories that have begun to resurface of a troubled time in their native Ireland. As their midwinter break comes to an end, we understand how far apart they are—and whether their shared life is enough to save their marriage.
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Before I Do
by Barbara Freethy
Nicholas Hunter is a sexy, rich entrepreneur, but he has two left feet, and to his dismay, they are getting in the way of his latest merger. His Argentinian contact insists Nick learn the tango—or the million dollar deal is off! Nick storms into Isabella Martinez's dance studio and demands she be his teacher and his partner. Isabella reluctantly agrees. What she knows and Nick has yet to find out is that the tango is more than a dance. Like love, it invades the heart, the mind and the soul...
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Until There Was You
by Kristan Higgins
Posey Osterhagen can't complain. She owns a successful company, she's surrounded by her lovable, quirky family and she has a boyfriend—sort of. Still, something's missing. Something tall, brooding and criminally good-looking...like Liam Murphy, the bad boy who once broke her heart and is now back in town. She should be giving him a wide berth, but it seems fate has other ideas...
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