MADreads

Looking for something to read or listen to?  There are many titles to choose from in the Wisconsin Digitial Library with your public library card. Since March is Women's History Month, why not check out some nonfiction books about women? Below are a few suggestions. I tried to choose ones that are available now (or at least were when I was writing this post). There are many more if you do a subject search "Women's Studies".

The Pinney afternoon book group recently read the book Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Most of us knew before reading it that it was a National Book Award winner and it took place in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. The book was a real look at living in poverty in Mississippi and what it means to be a family. As with many reads, the group had mixed feelings about the book. Some people felt like it was a great book. Others thought that it was too challenging to read and didn’t finish it.

How about some light-hearted fun and mayhem? This mystery series dates from the mid 20^th century, and begins with The Norths Meet Murder. The Norths are a couple living in New York City who inadvertently get involved in homicide. Of the two, Pam North is easily the more interesting character in that her thought process appears to jump from A to G and back to B but somehow she is almost always correct in her assessments and since she also leaps before she looks this is a concern for her publisher husband Jerry.

The Lusitania has recently been sunk. World War I is ongoing and the United States is trying to stay neutral. That is the setting for a new historical mystery set in 1915 New York City. The main character of A Front Page Affair is a privileged young woman journalist who has started working at the New York Sentinel. Capability Weeks, aka Kitty, works for the Ladies page editor as an apprentice. Her first assignment is to cover a society party, the Independence Day gala north of the city. At the party a man she has interviewed has been shot and killed.