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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
Jo Jones has a lot to think about. The Hollywood screenwriter and former child actress has just signed on pen her biggest project yet, a big budget action flick featuring an iconic American comic book character, while dialing back her involvement in her successful television drama series. She’s bracing for the inevitable blowback that will come when the fanboys hear their favorite comic will be written by a woman, and an Asian American one at that.
A behind the scenes look at the private life and idiosyncrasies of Winston Churchill and his circle during his first year as Prime Minister balanced with a behind the scenes look at Hitler’s circle especially Hess, Goring, and Himmler. At one point Larson references a letter from a man lamenting how the press of his position and duties limit him from not doing what he would prefer to do—which is spend time in the country with his wife and children. The writer was Heinrich Himmler.
I'm always looking for something different to read, something out of my comfort zone, which poetry is. I ran across the below list in a Publishers Weekly article "An Antiracist Poetry Reading List" So if you've wondered where to start with poetry, the list below is a place to start.
There is a long history -- from Marquis de Sade to Jean Genet to Iceberg Slim -- of the incarcerated writing great books inspired by what got them there. Nico Walker, a former war medic turned heroin-addicted bank robber now doing time in a Kentucky federal prison, has clearly mined his own biography for his debut novel, Cherry, a nasty blister of a book that shows a lot of promise but is ultimately hamstrung by its limited point-of-view.
It’s the fall of 2016 and Darren Mathews feels like a seismic change has happened. The African-American Texas Ranger isn’t just bracing for whatever changes will be coming to law enforcement following the election, but his personal life is equally posed on the brink of change. After the events of Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke’s first book in the Highway 59 series, Mathews thought he had reached a precarious sense of peace. His marriage to lawyer Lisa ha
Memorial Day has come and gone and it's unofficially summer in Wisconsin. I read Waiting for Tom Hanks over the long week-end and it was the perfect book to kick off my quarantine summer reading. It's available as an eBook and audiobook from OverDrive and the wait list is short.
As the daughter of the Earl of Leicester the author has lived a life in a culture of social elites, in many ways a culture that has mostly vanished except for that of the British royal family. A great deal of the book looks at the author’s family, how things are done and not done in their tradition. Following a family tradition of directly working with the royal family, Anne Glenconner served as a Lady in Waiting for Princess Margaret from 1971-2002 and a good portion of the book details that period.
Sharon Bolton is one of those writers who is always coming up with new ways to thrill. Her characters are always sharp and complicated and she doesn't ever seem to tell the same story twice. Thus we come to her newest, The Split, a thriller set at the remote Antarctic island of South Georgia where glaciologist Felicity Lloyd is too late to catch the last boat off the island before winter locks them in. And even worse, she's convinced her ex-husband (and stalker) has made it onto the island from that last ship and now she's trapped with him for possibly months to come.
Like Mary's Little Lamb, Moose the dog follows her favorite human, Zara, to school in search of love and stories. When attempts to help Moose say "Goodbye" become more madcap than her parents or teachers can handle, Zara thinks of a brilliant solution: "Hello," therapy dog Moose!
Many a bride or groom in history have been plagued by meddlesome relatives with opinions, solicited or otherwise, on the proper course a couple should—or shouldn’t—take in the path to wedded bliss. There is, after all, one’s happiness at stake. But let’s for a moment take a moment to feel for the offspring of that great matriarch, Queen Victoria. The queen and her beloved husband, Prince Albert, were graced with nine children, who in turn begat 42 grandchildren.
