Staff Recommendations
Daryl M.
Pages
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Meet Me at the Museum
by Youngson, Anne.
August 13, 2018
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A woman, who has worked on a farm in Bury St. Edmunds, England for her entire adult life, has dreamed for decades of visiting the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark with her best friend to see The Tollund Man, a naturally preserved mummy discovered in a peat bog. When her friend dies, she sends a grief and regret-filled letter to the museum, which is answered, cautiously, and a bit clumsily, by one of the museum’s curators. Over the course of the following year, the two develop a regular correspondence through which they forge a connection and friendship upon which both will come to rely.Meet Me... Read Full Review
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Deep Roots
by Emrys, Ruthanna.
July 23, 2018
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In recent years H.P. Lovecraft and his works have become increasingly problematic. His personal views on race permeate his stories resulting in fiction that is, at best, challenging to enjoy for many readers. As a result, there currently tend to be three approaches regarding Lovecraft’s fiction: those who love it, those who hate it, and those who choose simply not to read it. But there is now a fourth group of readers that is developing: those that are fascinated with the works of authors like Ruthanna Emrys, who use Lovecraft’s mythos as jumping-off points to create incredibly thoughtful,... Read Full Review
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Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
by Harkup, Kathryn,
July 9, 2018
Call Number: 823 S545Har
2018 is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus. In the intervening two centuries, Shelley’s novel, originally published anonymously, has become her most famous and well-known work and an international icon. The name Frankenstein has become shorthand for both mad scientists running amok and their monstrous creations (which also tend to run amok!). So, it is fitting that during this bicentennial year, Dr. Kathryn Harkup, a UK based scientist and writer, would investigate the woman behind the novel and the science... Read Full Review
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Time was
by McDonald, Ian, 1960-
June 18, 2018
Call Number: SF
Anyone who has spent time in bookstores or libraries has found them: short notes, usually handwritten, tucked away in books to be found by the latest reader of the title. Typically, they are ad-hoc bookmarks, inadvertently left behind by a previous reader. When you find one of these, what do you do? Do you throw the note away, assuming it is trash, or do you place it back in the book? If you choose to put it back, do you read it before you do so? What if you found a note, read it and discovered that it was not arbitrarily left in the book, but quite consciously placed there for someone else... Read Full Review
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Witchmark
by Polk, C. L.
May 29, 2018
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Dr. Miles Singer is a man with secrets. First, his name isn’t really Miles Singer, it is Sir Christopher Hensley. He is a child from an aristocratic family of magic users who are deeply entrenched in Aeland’s government. While it is true that he is a doctor and a veteran, however he was never meant to be either. He was meant for a life of servitude to his sister, acting as a booster or battery, for her magical power. So he ran away, hiding his magical abilities and noble background, to pursue a life serving as a physician and psychiatrist working with other war veterans in the wards of... Read Full Review
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Pride and Prometheus
by Kessel, John,
May 7, 2018
Call Number: SF
What if Mary Bennett, Elizabeth Bennett’s younger sister from Pride and Prejudice, encountered Victor Frankenstein at a social event in London? What if, upon meeting Victor, the serious and studious Mary became quite taken with the withdrawn, troubled, and also quite brilliant, Frankenstein? What would happen? This is the question entertainingly explored by John Kessel in his new novel Pride and Prometheus.Mary Bennett and her younger sister, Kitty, are both beginning to realize that their chances of finding a suitable husband are dwindling rapidly. While Mary prefers to... Read Full Review
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The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America
by Kendzior, Sarah,
April 16, 2018
Call Number: 320.973 T871Ke
The results of the 2016 presidential election left many stunned. Over the course of the day, and into the evening, political pundits continued to predict Clinton would prevail, even as the Trump campaign gained significant leads and the election ended in a Trump victory. But there was at least one person who was not surprised: Sarah Kendzior, an academic researcher and St. Louis based journalist, could see the writing on the wall that others missed, and became one of the first credited with predicting the outcome. Between 2012 – 2014, Kendzior wrote a series of essays, originally published by... Read Full Review
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The tangled lands
by Bacigalupi, Paolo,
April 9, 2018
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Imagine a world where magic is not only real, but it is available to anyone, allowing them to do almost anything. However, when that magic is used, there is a cost. When a spell is cast, regardless of the reason behind it or whether it is for a great or a small thing, someone, somewhere will fall into a deathlike sleep and never awaken. If you knew this, and had lived with the consequences of others’ spells, or had loved ones that had, would you still cast that spell? This is the compelling question explored in The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell.Jhandpara was... Read Full Review
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Mister Tender's girl
by Wilson, Carter (Novelist),
March 12, 2018
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In May, 2014, two twelve-year-old girls, from Waukesha, Wisconsin, lured a classmate into the woods, held her down and stabbed her 19 times with a kitchen knife. Left for dead, the victim was able to drag herself out of the woods and get close to a nearby road, where she was discovered and medical assistance was called. After being apprehended, both of the girls, who committed the stabbing, claimed to have done so to gain the favor of Slender Man, a fictional character about whom they had read online. Now, nearly four years later, Carter Wilson has used what has become known as “the Slender... Read Full Review
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The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
by Goss, Theodora
July 3, 2017
Call Number: M
Many classic horror novels, including Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and The Island of Dr. Moreau, have almost no female characters. If there is a woman included, often she is relegated to being a servant or, more often, a victim. She is rarely featured as a protagonist and NEVER a monster. Dr. Theodora Goss, of Boston University, wrote her doctoral dissertation on these missing female voices and has addressed it directly in a most enjoyable way by writing The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s... Read Full Review
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The underground river : a novel
by Conway, Martha,
June 19, 2017
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The year is 1838. The tensions between the Northern and Southern states over the issue of slavery, which will ultimately culminate in the Civil War in 1861, are roiling. May Bedloe is a young, single woman working as a seamstress. She creates and repairs the costumes worn by her cousin, Comfort Virtue, an actress performing in theatres throughout the Northeastern United States. May and Comfort are travelling on the Moselle, a riverboat making its way along the Ohio River, the natural division between the North and the South. Comfort is performing in one of the riverboat shows. Over dinner... Read Full Review
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A Conjuring of Light
by Schwab, Victoria,
June 5, 2017
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In A conjuring of light, the third and final book in the Shades of Magic fantasy series, Victoria Schwab takes readers back to her world of four different Londons, that are filled with magic, adventure, and a threat from Black London which may destroy all four worlds.At the end of A gathering of shadows (the second book in the trilogy), the situation was tense. Kell, the Antari from Red London who can travel between worlds, was in mortal danger. The threat to Kell was also a threat against the Arnesian Prince, Kell’s brother Rhy. There seemed to be no way to save Kell, a... Read Full Review