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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
I can't imagine any book topping this one for me in 2019. The snappy and shocking title is one of the reasons I love it so much. It's funny, smart, and helpful in a cuddly way, despite the whopper of a title. The authors Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark are the true crime comedy podcast stars of My Favorite Murder and their podcast provides background for the book. True crime is what brought Karen and Georgia together and how and why they have a fabulous book deal.
Gosh, I loved this book. I really, really loved it. I am so happy that it exists. A sincere thank you for the ARC, @KokilaBooks!
It’s almost August! School is a mere month away, but there’s still some time to squeeze in the last of summer’s big titles. On to the top offerings for this month:
The news of the recent passing of Italian novelist Andrea Camilleri means a great loss to the mystery readers, as Camilleri was particularly known for his Inspector Montalbano series set in contemporary Sicily. Yet the late-blooming Camilleri (he wrote his first novel in his sixties) was remarkably prolific, writing close to a hundred novels in a variety of genres, notably historical fiction. Born in Sicily, Camilleri had a knack for mining the island’s rich history and culture.
This is recommended reading in tandem with A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson.
Ask anyone about a notorious shipwreck, and they will more than likely respond with the Titanic disaster of 1912. Yet a mere three years later, another grand ocean liner met an equally disastrous fate, the repercussions of which would be felt far beyond those immediately involved. The Lusitania was the giant Cunard liner that many felt could not, would not fall victim to Germany’s submarine warfare against British shipping. It’s an intriguing story, and when told by Erik Larson in Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, it becomes an intensely personal, vivid tale.
It's 1946 and a young widow named Grace Healey stumbles upon a suitcase left under a bench in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. At the same moment, a former British special agent named Eleanor Trigg is hit by a car outside the station and killed instantly. What follows next is a tangled web of intrigue, espionage, heartbreak and heroism.
I grew up loving the work of Janet and Allan Ahlberg, so I was thrilled when I discovered Fairy Tales for Mr. Barker – a picture book written and illustrated by their daughter, Jessica Ahlberg. This cumulative story follows Lucy and her dog, Mr. Barker, through a series of fairy tales.
This is one of those books that I'm going to proclaim as universally beneficial. I can't imagine a person living on planet Earth who wouldn't be able to take away something from this book, starting with the shocking reality of the title Born a Crime. Trevor Noah, comedian, actor, and Jon Stewart's successor as host of The Daily Show was born in 1984 in South Africa to a black mother and a white father. His parent's interracial relationship was illegal under apartheid law, so therefore his birth was a crime.
