Martha Cade, a middle-aged midwife in the small 1830s town of Trinity, Pennsylvania, has always done what she can to help her family and community. She feels born to it. It's a calling, if you will. But long, tiring hours in times of medical need are not all that come with the job.
If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s a good psychological thriller. I’m not alone – it seems like every year there’s a flood of books that are all trying to be the next Gone Girl or Girl on the Train.
What had she just done? She had obediently opened a door and stepped through into blackness, without even knowing if there was a floor on the other side.
Do not believe the title of this book. Jahren has a dog, but he isn’t a Labrador. (Coco is actually a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.) But read it anyway! You’ll learn so much.
There’s the harsh reality of how scientists procure funding, which Jahren explains eloquently. You’ll learn what a scientist does in the field, and how, with a dash of why. And how red tape can render that work all for naught. You’ll learn what true friendship looks like, and you might understand mental illness a little bit better.
Due to the untimely death of a local clergy who'd enlisted Letty Murphy's services, she must now flee her life of prostitution at the White Dove Saloon. She takes on a new persona, Sister Leticia. Her accomplice, Eulis Potter, the town drunk and local gravedigger, also takes a new identity as the Reverend Randall Ward Howe. Although in most ways an unlikely pair, Letty and Eulis are a good match in that they both want what a new life can provide.
For lovers of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Love in Lowercase, by Francesc Miralles, shares many of the same elements, but with a lighter touch; philosophical, humorous, it is a story of loneliness and love, coincidence – and cats.
To the Bright Edge of the World deserves all the praise it has been receiving. In 1885, newly-married Colonel Allen Forrester leads a small group of men on an expedition into untamed Alaska Territory to explore the possibilities for future settlements and trade routes. He leaves his pregnant wife, Sophie, behind and they exchange letters, writing about the hardships they each face while away from the other.
Antoinette Conway and her partner, Stephen Moran, are rookies and outsiders on the Dublin Murder Squad. Just as they're about to finish up their night shift, the boss gives them another dud case: Aislinn Murray has been reported dead via an anonymous call to a local police station. It was obviously her boyfriend, with whom she had a dinner date planned. Open-and-closed. So why does the boss put a senior detective, Breslin, on the case to watch over them? And why does his help seem more like obstruction?
