“I think maybe it’s the things we don’t want to talk about that are the things people most want to hear.”
Willowdean Dickson is many things. She’s a girl for one. She’s from South Texas. She works in a fast food joint called Harpy’s with an absolute dreamboat of a boy. She and her best friend Ellen are probably the biggest teenage fans of Miss Dolly Parton. She’s absolutely wise beyond her years, and she’s fat. As Willow says, “it’s not a cuss word. It’s not an insult. At least not when I say it.”
Nicki Price has just arrived in the Big Easy with her newly minted private detective's license and the desire to get to work right away, hopefully with her cousin Nate Price who has his own detective agency. Nicki plans to use her investigative skills to not only help Nate and make some money but to solve her father's murder from years ago. Nate tries to put Nicki off but she won't be deterred and follows Nate to a client meeting and manages to insinuate herself into the investigation of a recent murder.
Evelyn Wolfe, black ops CIA intelligence officer, is looking for her kidnapped sister. When the van supposedly holding her sister explodes, Evelyn is knocked out and scooped up by ex-CIA agent and current Ageis Security agent (and former lover) Zane Archer. Archer is out to get Eve for something that happened on their last mission together. Now both are implicated in the bombing that injured several innocent bystanders. When Eve wakes up, she and Archer must set aside their differences while they clear their names and find Eve's sister. Who can they trust?
I picked up The Soul of an Octopus because, ten years ago, I was utterly enamored with Sy Mongtomery’s The Good Good Pig. My expectations were so high that the contrast between what I learned about the inner lives of octopuses, and the Stockholm Syndromesque relationships between them and their keepers, quickly became too disappointing—and too tiring—for me to enjoy.
Viann Rossignol is a loving mother and wife who lives in a small, country town. She has a best-friend who has a daughter the same age as hers and even though she has experienced loss with multiple miscarriages, she still remains content with her life. Her younger sister Isabelle is a rambunctious young woman living in Paris. She always looks for a battle and is not afraid to stand up for herself. Since she and Viann were given up as children by her distant father, Isabelle has always gotten herself thrown into and out of boarding schools across France.
The Local Writers committee is pleased to announce Celeste Seay has won Johnson County Library’s #IHeartU short story contest with her entry A Good Fit. Seay’s story was chosen for its response to the theme of love and the quality of description. Of her writing she says:
Don’t be turned off by the title; Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a stimulating book that aims to entertain while educating and expanding the way one thinks.
Do you ever dream of working with monkeys in the Costa Rican rainforest? How about teaching English in Thailand, or helping orphans in India? Well John Marshall did and in a radical move to connect better with their teenage son and daughter, he and his wife quit their jobs and took a six month voluntourism break from life. Wide Open World is the story of how six months moving around the globe volunteering changed all of their lives forever.
From trapping and trading along the Missouri River to commerce at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, Civil War conflicts and dominance at the stockyards, Kansas City continues to be a major player in our country's history. The Shawnee Indian Missionis one of Kansas City's many historical treasures etched with story and a captivating history of its own.
