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Welcome to Book Buzz! The following books will arrive at the Cochrane Public Library in February 2026. Click on the book to place your holds today! |
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To Kill a Cook
by W. M. Akers
Nobody in Manhattan eats better than Bernice Black. It’s 1972, and she is the city’s busiest restaurant critic, juggling her fiance and his two young sons with demands of fine dining. Bernice talks fast, walks faster, has a razor-sharp wit and no patience for anything--or anyone--that gets in her way.
When she stops by the famed restaurant of her favorite chef and mentor, Laurent Tirel, early one morning, she stumbles across a horrific scene in the Laurent's severed head, perfectly preserved in a flawless mold of jellied aspic.
Her meeting with the cops assigned to the case proves only one thing–they know nothing about food or the seedy underworld that BB Black has made her home. With layoffs looming, Bernice makes the gamble of her career—she promises her editor she can catch Laurent’s killer before the week is out.
To Kill a Cook is a delicious, witty, fast-paced mystery with a lovable, unforgettable protagonist at it center.
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Weavingshaw
by Heba Al-Wasity
Three years ago, Leena Al-Sayer awoke with a terrible power.
She can see the dead.
Since then, she has hidden herself from the world, knowing that if she ever reveals her curse she will be locked away in an asylum.
When her beloved brother, Rami, falls fatally ill, Leena is faced with a terrible Let him die or buy the expensive medicine that will save his life by bartering the only valuable thing she has—her secret.
The Saint of Silence, a ruthless merchant who trades in confessions and is shrouded in unearthly rumors of cruelty and power, accepts her bargain, for a deadly price. Leena must find the ghost of Percival Avon, the last lord of Weavingshaw—or lose her freedom to the Saint forever.
As Leena’s search takes her and the Saint to Weavingshaw, she finds the estate and the surrounding moors to be living things—hungry for blood and sacrifice. Fighting against Weavingshaw’s might, Leena must also fight her growing pull toward the enigmatic Saint himself, whose connection to Percival Avon remains a mystery.
As the house begins to entomb them, time is running out on their desperate hunt for answers.
For Leena has come to see that here in Weavingshaw, the dead are not hushed—and some secrets are better left buried with them.
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Finders Keepers
by Natalie Barelli
Dear Diary. Today I'm going to kill her. Love, Rose.
When Rose discovers her troubled past splashed across the pages of a bestselling book, she knows her carefully constructed life is about to unravel.
The author, Emily Harper, claims the story is fiction, but Rose knows better. Desperate to find out how Emily discovered her deepest secrets, Rose ingratiates herself into the author's life, posing as an eager assistant and adoring fan.
But as Rose gets closer to the truth, long-buried memories resurface. Slowly, the horrifying events of her teenage years come into focus, revealing that sometimes, the people you trust the most are the ones you should be most afraid of.
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Death of a Groom
by M. C. Beaton
Love is in the air in Lochdubh! Love, and murder...
It is February and the Scottish Highlands village of Lochdubh is dealing with heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
Sergeant Hamish Macbeth can handle the weather, but with a surprise influx of high-society visitors for a Valentine's Day wedding at Tommel Castle Hotel, he has bigger problems. The guest list includes not one, but two women from his own romantic past!
And Hamish isn't the only one disrupted by the arrival of the wedding party. The groom - the supposedly suave and sophisticated Darius Palmerston - is involved in a series of incidents in the local pub. Tensions between guests and villagers escalate until, on the night of the wedding, Darius is found dead in the dining room - the cake-cutting sword plunged into his chest.
Hamish suddenly has a murder investigation on his hands, and one with a very long list of suspects.
With Lochdubh's rumour mill in overdrive, and with emotions and accusations running high, can Hamish keep a cool enough head to catch the killer?
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The Crossroads
by C. J. Box
Marybeth Pickett gets the call she has always her husband Joe is in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head.
Joe was found in his pickup at Antler Creek Junction, a crossroads connecting three ranches. Each road leading to a dangerous family. Each family with a different bone to pick with the local game warden. Marybeth and the new sheriff assume that Joe was ambushed by one of the families, but they have no idea which one since Joe didn’t say where he was going or why.
With Joe unconscious and fighting for his life with Marybeth at his side, Sheridan, April, and Lucy split up and investigate each of families to uncover the truth of what happened to their father, before it’s too late.
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Book of Forbidden Words
by Louise Fein
1552, Against a backdrop of turmoil, suspicion, and paranoia, the printing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives one day at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas.
1952, New Milly Bennett, lonely and unmoored, is a seemingly ordinary housewife with a secretive past. Balancing the day-to-day boredom of keeping house and struggling to find her way with the mothers at her children’s school, she finds her life taking an unexpected turn as conspiracies spread amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. When a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, she is reluctantly pulled into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world.
From the risky backstreets of sixteenth-century Paris to the unpredictable suburbs of mid-twentieth century New York, the stakes couldn’t be higher when, 400 years apart, Milly, Lysbette, and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.
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The New Neighbors
by Claire Douglas
When Lena helps her teenage son gather sounds for his media studies project, she doesn't expect her boom-microphone to pick up a conversation between her neighbours, the Morgans.
And she’s certain they are planning a crime.
Her family and friends tell her that she must have misheard. After all, the Morgans are a well-respected, upstanding couple in their early sixties. They’ve never been in trouble with the law.
Yet Lena can’t stop thinking about it. Because what if she hasn’t misheard? What if she can prevent something awful happening?
After all, stopping it could help ease her conscience about her own dark past . . .
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I'm Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home
by Fergus Craig
When former serial killer Carol takes her place in a luxury retirement home, she begins to find her feet with a small new group of friends. If she can only keep her past hidden, maybe she has a chance at happiness.
That's when she discovers that, absurdly, every other one of Sheldon Oaks residents was involved in the law somehow. It's not long before her true identity is leaked, and when a former police commissioner resident is murdered, naturally all eyes turn to her...
Now she must solve the case to prove her innocence—just as her new friends start their own investigations into whether there is more than one killer at Sheldon Oaks.
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Good Daughtering: The Work You've Always Done, the Credit You've Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough
by Allison M. Alford Phd
Daughters often grow up believing their role in the family is simple: love your parents, help out when you can, and carry on the traditions that bind you together. But adulthood reveals a more complicated reality—one where women take on the invisible labor of emotional caregiving, crisis management, and unspoken expectations that leave them stretched thin and unseen.
So, what is “daughtering”? If you’re a woman, it’s the unpaid, invisible work of holding a family together. In Good Daughtering, Dr. Allison M. Alford—a leading researcher in family communication—unpacks the untold story of adult daughters and the quiet, essential work they do. Drawing on years of groundbreaking research and personal interviews, she explores how societal expectations, gender roles, and generational dynamics shape the experiences of daughters in ways that are often misunderstood or overlooked.
From the subtle ways women navigate generational expectations to the emotional weight of balancing their own lives with the needs of their parents, Good Daughtering reveals the complexities of a role too often taken for granted. Full of sharp insights, relatable stories, and actionable tools, Dr. Alford’s approach invites women to reflect on their relationships, recalibrate their roles, and reclaim joy in their lives.
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Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria
by Loubna Mrie
Loubna Mrie was raised a staunch Syrian Alawite—a member of the same insular, historically oppressed Muslim sect as then-President Hafez al-Assad. Her mother’s father helped plan the coup that saw Hafez seize power in 1970 and bring the Alawites out of hiding and into a position of total control; her father was intimately involved in Hafez’s government as an enforcer and assassin. In her household and community at large, the president was seen less as a political figure and more as an object of near-religious devotion.
When the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011, and popular discontent with the rule of Hafez’s son, Bashar al-Assad, triggered large-scale protests and prodemocracy rallies across the country, Loubna sought out an antigovernment demonstration out of curiosity and found herself forever changed by what she genuine passion for a better future for all Syrians being brutally repressed by government forces. When she returned to her grandparents’ home in Damascus, her jeans spattered with fellow protesters’ blood, her grandmother called her a traitor. Unable to ignore her political awakening, Loubna plunged ahead into a life of activism—in opposition to both the regime and her abusive father—with unimaginable consequences.
An account that includes her mother’s murder as a direct consequence of her resistance activities and the kidnapping and execution of her American boyfriend, Peter Kassig, at the hands of the Islamic State, Defiance is a searing, ground-level view of surviving the unendurable at the flash point of one of the most visible and least understood wars in recent history, from a perspective that is rarely considered, let alone heard—that of a Syrian Alawite woman.
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The Company of Owls
by Polly Atkin
Circumscribed by a chronic illness to her cottage and the surrounding area, Polly Atkin turns to the trees and the animals among them for companionship—especially the owl siblings who surprise and delight her.
As Atkin watches the owls grow from curious fledglings into sleek raptors, she contemplates the act of survival and our place within it: When should a human intervene? When should nature take its course? What do the owls know that we do not?
The owls encourage her to think differently about solitude and community, individuality and belonging, rest and retreat. And with them as her companions, she weighs the many types of company we keep—in our relationships, in the darkness, and in our entanglement with the digital world that connects us across continents.
A call to find joy in unexpected places, The Company of Owls teaches us to listen when all around us seems like clamor and noise
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Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection
by Paul Eastwick
Over the past few decades, a buzzy new branch of science has spread a deeply flawed story about romantic relationships. Cloaking itself in the language of incontrovertible Darwinian fact, evolutionary psychology claims that our minds have been shaped by primal drives that pit the genders against each other, from the myth that men are wired to be promiscuous to the notion that wealth, status, and beauty are the ultimate aphrodisiacs.
Drawing on pathbreaking research—including original experiments from his own lab—UC Davis psychology professor Paul Eastwick reveals that these stories bear little resemblance to how pair-bonding really works. While beauty and charisma factor into first impressions, their influence fades fast—after a few months, we barely agree on who's "desirable." From ancestral times through the present, Eastwick shows, lasting attraction has been built through gradual, often mundane moments that forge strong attachment bonds. Ultimately, he offers a liberating new paradigm for finding meaningful, exciting relationships, showing
Why the traits we often look for in a partner—personality, lifestyle, values, and humor—are poor predictors of compatibility, and what behaviors and experiences we should focus on instead Why someone's tendency to “date around” or their reputation as a player has little bearing on their long-term relationship potential Why the most secure relationships offer a "safe haven" and "secure base" for each partner, and how to cultivate them in new and existing relationships By excavating the hidden history of human mating, Eastwick paints a radical new picture of the roots of enduring chemistry. Distilling evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology into accessible insights, Bonded by Evolution explains why we so often choose dating strategies that make us miserable and how to use a more evolved approach.
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Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play
by Keza MacDonald
What magical mushroom could have turned an unassuming playing card company, founded in Kyoto in 1889—whose tile cards were closely associated with gambling and Japan’s criminal underworld—into one of the dominant cultural forces of the 21st century, with characters as memorable as any from the Disney or Marvel universes?
A lifelong gamer and a renowned video games journalist, Keza MacDonald digs down to Nintendo’s experimental roots, tracking the company’s rise with each new revolutionary product and exploring the driving force of these creative triumphs (and occasional failures!): Nintendo’s willingness to take risks, to place long-term goals over short-term profits.
Leaping from game to game, Super Nintendo tells the remarkable story of the people who brought us Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, and more—not to mention the SNES, N64, Gameboy, Wii, Switch and a host of other wacky gizmos, from the Power Glove to the Rumble Pack to Nintendo Labo—and charts the delights they’ve offered over the decades.
MacDonald draws on private interviews with the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario who continues to leave his stamp on the company, and even a recent trip to the secretive Nintendo HQ—making her one of the few Western journalists ever to set foot inside the building.
A carousel of wonders, Super Nintendo whisks you back to the couch in the den, a controller in your hands for the very first time, staring up at a screen of infinite possibilities.
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Crave, Cook, Nourish: 80+ Recipes and Expert Guidance for Healthy, Happy Nutrition
by Steph Grasso
The internet is filled with diet fads and nutrition misinformation, and registered dietitian Steph Grasso is here to steer you clear of all of it. In her debut cookbook and nutrition go-to, Steph debunks diet culture and offers up fun and easy ways to make healthy, accessible, and affordable food choices. Crave, Cook, Nourish subscribes to the notion that all bites are good bites when Why restrict your favorite foods when you can simply add more nutrients to your plate?
Steph lays out the basic building blocks of nutrition so you can make healthful choices with ease. Starting with a brief history of diet culture, Crave, Cook, Nourish is packed with tips and hacks to make grocery shopping and meal prep feel like second nature.
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The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg--And the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema
by Paul Fischer
In the summer of 1967, as the old Hollywood studio system was dying, an intense, uncompromising young film school graduate named George Lucas walked onto the Warner Bros backlot for his first day working as an assistant to another up-and-coming, largely-unknown filmmaker, a boisterous father of two called Francis Ford Coppola. At the exact same time, across town on the Universal Studios lot, a film-obsessed twenty-year-old from a peripatetic Jewish family, Steven Spielberg, longed to break free from his apprenticeship for the struggling studio and become a film director in his own right.
Within a year, the three men would become friends. Spielberg, prioritizing security, got his seven-year contract directing television. Lucas and Coppola, hungry for independence, left Hollywood for San Francisco to found an alternative studio, American Zoetrope, and make films without answering to corporate capitalism.
Based on extensive research and hundreds of original interviews with the inner circle of these Hollywood icons, The Last Kings of Hollywood tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how, over the next fifteen years, the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema.
By the early 1980s, they were the richest, best-known filmmakers in the world, each with an empire of their own. The Last Kings of Hollywood is an unprecedented chronicle of their rise, their dreams and demons, their triumphs and their failures ― intimate, extraordinary, and supremely entertaining.
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