Being together is what matters / Lo que importa màs es estar juntos
MADreads
Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
Cold cases and basket cases
Anne Capestan knew she’d be punished for her itchy trigger finger, but the sentence is like no other she’d ever heard of. After firing one too many bullets, the Parisian police commissaire was lucky to still have her job, but is stunned when she learns that she is to lead a new police squad in charge of cold cases. But Capestan’s squad consists entirely of the police officers that have run afoul of the police judiciare, and since they cannot be fired, they can at least be relegated to some brigade, starved of funds and support until they quit in frustration.
At what point does a slow fire turn into a conflagration?
Paula Hawkin's latest mystery thriller takes the reader on a twisty tour down a London towpath full of murder and mayhem. A towpath in England is a path beside a canal or river, used by people or animals towing boats, also called a towing path. A considerable amount of action in this novel takes place on the towpath as characters travel to and from a neighborhood of houseboats. This provides a noteworthy setting.
So much bookish goodness
With the announcement of NPR's Books We Love I realized it's that time of year. The lists of best books are pouring in and I know that not only are we interested in them as readers ourselves, they also give us great ideas for books to gift to the other readers in our lives. So for those of you searching for your next read or even more desperately searching for that perfect gift, here is a by-no-means-comprehensive best lists to give you a start.
Who was Peggy Smith?
There’s nothing particularly unusual about Peggy Smith. She’s an old lady living in an assisted living facility beside the sea, spends her days noting passersby in her notebooks and reading her beloved crime novels that fill her apartment. Even her death isn’t out of the norm--sudden and apparently peaceful in her chair overlooking the sea. But something about the death unsettles her carer, Natalka. How could a woman who was still spry enough to climb flights of stairs die of heart failure when her pills were within reach? Why are so many of the books in Peggy’s apartment dedicated to her,
Here be ghosts
Longer nights have returned, so what better time to indulge with a gripping ghost story, or THREE!
If your family dares to read these three fantastic chapter books (suitable for most 9-10 year olds and older), you'll not only enjoy satisfying supernatural encounters, you'll also bravely face the uncomfortable truths revealed as past and present collide!
Titles are listed in order of both increasing length and thematic complexity.
Kent State more than 50 years later
To this day there is argument about what happened at Kent State on May 4, 1970. What's certain is that tensions were high. America was at war in Vietnam, the nation was divided in their support of President Nixon, young men were living in fear of the draft, and students were protesting the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Many students at Kent State thought the bombing escalated a war that the United States was supposedly withdrawing from and were peacefully protesting on Friday, May 1 on the Commons, a large grassy area in the middle of campus.
Who gets to decide?
If you heard that someone got stuck when trying to cross the border, would you think of San Ysidro, El Paso or maybe Laredo? I admit, I did. But this story takes place at the Canadian-American border. This graphic novel, illustrated by Natasha Donovan, is an adaptation of Thomas King's 1993 short story. A Blackfoot boy in Alberta tells how when he was about twelve years old, his seventeen year old sister moved to Salt Lake City. The tension between Laetitia and her mother feels very real.
Buddha and bharal
The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen’s melancholic and metaphor-laden Himalayan travelogue, a true story, is an essential, definitional work of 1970s American literature. It is also one of my favorite books of all time.
The rain brings more than water
The graphic novel adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor's short story "On the Road" takes the reader on a journey that connects the mind and body with an infinite past of cultural heritage. Chioma, a young Nigerian-American police officer from New York City, visits family in a small, rural Nigerian village during a terrible storm and unleashes an unidentified power. Chioma's western sensibilities try to reconcile what's happening but she struggles, even with the help of her family.
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