Enchanting language, lush scenery, a romping, completely factual story and a rascally, joyful raccoon are the fixings for this adorable and happy memoir by Sterling North.
Second in The Walter Day series, The Black Country finds Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad called to a small mining town to investigate the disappearance of a child and his parents. Secrets, superstition, and massive amounts of snow are only a few of the challenges Day and his colleagues face once they arrive in The British Midlands. The town is in the grips of a plague, calling on Dr. Kingsley to not only treat the ill but also re-educate the town doctor as well.
Power, lust, fear, and destruction are all words that could describe the story of Serena by Ron Rash. The novel's namesake, Serena, is an eerily beautiful woman who is obsessed with money and the destruction of both nature and her enemies. She is married to George Pemberton, the owner of a timber company responsible for clearing a large portion of the North Carolina landscape in 1929. One side of the story describes Serena's push to rid the landscape of trees and beasts alike.
Private Detective, Cormoran Strike gets roped into taking a case by Leonora Quine to locate her missing husband, with a somewhat dubious promise of payment by Quine's editor. In pondering why he's taken on such a ridiculous case, Strike comes to realize that he did it out of sheer boredom. Coming off the fame of solving the headline grabbing murder of Lula Landry (see: Cuckoo's Calling), Strike has made a bit of a name for himself amongst the rich and want-to-be famous. Trouble is, the only investigative needs they have are following philandering spouses and girlfriends.
In 1963 Jim Crow segregation laws were in effect in Mississippi. Nine year old Starla Claudelle last saw her mama when she was three and her daddy works on an oil rig in the Gulf, leaving Starla to be raised by her strict grandmother. Sassy Starla spends a good deal of time grounded and when her grandmother threatens to send her to reform school, Starla takes off for Nashville to find her mama. She accepts a ride from a black woman named Eula traveling with a white baby.
Whoever thought learning about what gives you gas would be so much fun? Mary Roach's Gulp explores all the things I never thought would be in this book—smuggling objects, sewing parts of rats closed, Elvis, etc. I couldn't stop talking about this book and telling my friends and family what I was learning about. It's like the Magic School Bus for adults!
In Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil, Deborah Rodriguez offers an account of Afghan life from a unique vantage point as an American beautician serving local and foreign women in Kabul, where she not only ran a salon but also operated a beauty school.
"Why are we here? What is love? Is there a Loch Ness monster? Does God send text messages?" These four lines, and "Jessie's Girl," were about all I had to go on before cracking open Rick Springfield's debut fiction novel. It follows an early thirties, recently divorced, recovering slacker as he ponders his existence. It leads him on a quest that ends up with a 1-800 hotline to God, a recently "freed" nun, and a date with the Loch Ness monster.
This fall, Johnson County Library has been looking at race: stereotypes, self-awareness, and what it means to look beyond the surface. We’ve invited you to tell us how you have been affected by race. Justin Carter, in the following essay, shares his experience. As a suburban white woman, it’s easy to subconsciously, or otherwise, believe that issues of race don’t happen in my community, my city, or even my state. My country, sure, but that’s Missouri. That’s the other United States.
Life hasn’t been easy for Jim Stark, the protagonist of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim. His old apartment isn’t his anymore, his lover Alice has been murdered, and, oh, yeah, he’s just spent the last 11 years in hell. Returning to Los Angeles to murder the cohorts who sent him to hell, Stark finds himself in the middle of something bigger, with the fate of the world at stake. In this showdown, the bad guys are terrifying and the good guys are only good by comparison. And Stark?
