@ Your Library
Ten days left in May! How did we get here? I know, day by day, but this year has definitely been strange and hard to quantify. My reading habits have changed as well. I am reading either deep, thought provoking non-fiction or light silly fiction. So I went out looking for something different that I might find appealing. Here is what I’m thinking about reading next.
A Stroke of Malice by Anna Lee Huber is the newest title in the Lady Darby mysteries. The cover is dramatic and makes me want to read it, so maybe I’ll start with it and not worry about the earlier titles until I see if I like the series. The series is set in 1830’s England and the newest title takes place during a Twelfth Night Party in Traquair, Scotland. I love Twelfth Night and the idea of a party in a castle in Scotland in January sounds downright spooky.
The title of this one grabbed me first and while the cover isn’t great the description draws me in. Curious Toys by Elizabeth Hand is set in the sweltering summer of 1915 in Chicago’s underworld as the daughter of a carnival fortune teller dresses as a boy and joins a gang roaming Chicago’s Riverview amusement park.
The Oregon trail has always fascinated me and Westering Women by Sandra Dallas imagines a train heading west to the gold mines of Goosetown with forty-three women and two reverends. I like the idea of a group of women basically heading west on their own to create a new future.
Jane Oliver has been a coast guard captain and is ready for retirement after thirty years providing search and rescue. But tragedy strikes and she suddenly finds herself trying to prevent war on the moon. The premise of Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole is so cool, I really hope it can live up to my expectations.
Sometimes I like a really long book. The Eighth Life (for Brilka) by Nino Haratischvili is set on the edge of the Russian Empire. A family prospers because of a delicious chocolate recipe. The recipe has been passed down through the generations with great solemnity and caution. The caution is because the recipe is for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste. Tumble through years and generations in this ‘glorious old book in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends.’ This is definitely a time commitment as it is over 900 pages, but it sounds delicious.
Coming Up for Air by Sarah Leipciger is described as being about the transcendent power of storytelling and the immeasurable impact of every human life and starts with a woman taking her final breath on the banks of the Seine in 1899.
And finally, what happens when a star dies only eight light years away. Supernova Era by Cixin Liu imagines such a future for the inhabitants of earth. Somehow, it seems appropriate as we look to our future.