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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
Nicola King is used to pressure. As the lead chemist for her family’s cosmetics brand, Queen Couture, she’s the genius behind the brand’s biggest hits and a leading figure in the perfume world that has her rubbing elbows with the elite of the fashion and entertainment industry. At least, that’s the image Nicola likes to project.
If you want to know what the secret jellyfish handshake is, you'll have to read this book.
Nigerian-Canadian immigrant Azere has known since she was a child that she would marry a Nigerian man. This is something she promised her dying father when she was twelve years old after her family had newly arrived in Canada. This promise and her mother's ongoing fear that their Nigerian culture will be lost has been a driving force in Azere's entire life. Though she is now a successful copy writer in an advertising firm and lives an independent, adult life in every other way, she continues to go on dates with the men her mother picks.
Let’s face it; some kids prefer to read non-fiction. These are the kids who are fascinated with almanacs and world records books. If you’ve got one of these kids in your house, check out the new DK findout! non-fiction series for kids. Aimed at ages eight to twelve, the series titles cover high-interest topics and each installment includes quizzes, photographs, illustrations, and sidebars with expanded explanations, fast facts and interviews with experts.
Milla Vane takes the reader deeper into the realms she has created with her second in her Gathering of Dragons fantasy/romance series and I couldn't be more thrilled. This is both a tightly written, imaginatively drawn fantasy novel and a deeply angsty romance between two extremely honorable people. And the cover isn't bad either.***
White Bird is a stunning graphic novel about one of the ugliest events in history. Set in France during World War II, White Bird tells the story of Sara and Julien, classmates at a rural school in a Nazi occupied village. Sara doesn't want to get her beautiful red shoes wet when all of the Jewish students are rounded up and marched to the woods one day. She's able to sneak away and hide without understanding what's happening.
The 1960s was an especially rife period for political assassinations, but for years, one of the most famous deaths of the decade—the killing of United Nations General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold—was officially an accident. The downing of the general secretary’s plane in the skies of Rhodesia (modern Zambia) in the early hours of September 18, 1961, has long been cast in doubt, almost from the moment the burnt out remains of the plane and its fifteen crash victims were discovered in the sweltering jungle (the sole survivor would later die in hospital after making some intriguing comments).
This isn't your typical mysterious death mystery. The death that starts the book off is explained in the first chapter, so now what? Turns out the now what is quite a lot and all of it good.
This is a tribute to one of society's most enduring yet under-recognized relationships: female best friends. Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman met at a Gossip Girl viewing party when they were in their mid-twenties and struggling to start their careers. They've seen each other through heartaches and heartbreaks, job triumphs and disasters, health scares and holidays. More than a decade later, these are their stories of real-life and recognizable female friendship. I saw myself in their stories and if you've been nurturing your own big friendships, you will, too.
