NEXT LITERARY SALON - Wednesday, July 9th, 5pm
Join us the 2nd Wednesday of the month to share favorite books, authors, or series. Literary Salon is a no-rules book club where you bring whatever you're reading to a round of interested listeners. You are welcome to come and be a listener, too. Fourteen(!) people shared the following 20 books in June. Please join us at the next Lit Salon on Wednesday, July 9th at 5pm. Check lopezlibrary.org or email Beth for current information. Happy Summer Reading!  
Recommendations
Buzz : the nature and necessity of bees
by Thor Hanson

The conservation biologist and award-winning author of The Triumph of Seeds and Feathers presents a natural and cultural history of the bee that traces its evolution and varieties while evaluating the environmental hazards placing them at risk.
The bees in your backyard : a guide to North America's bees
by Joseph S. Wilson & Olivia Messinger Carril

The ultimate bee book for bee enthusiasts and experts alike
The Bees in Your Backyard provides an engaging introduction to the roughly 4,000 different bee species found in the United States and Canada, dispelling common myths about bees while offering essential tips for telling them apart in the field.The book features more than 900 stunning color photos of the bees living all around us--in our gardens and parks, along nature trails, and in the wild spaces between. It describes their natural history, including where they live, how they gather food, their role as pollinators, and even how to attract them to your own backyard. Ideal for amateur naturalists and experts alike, it gives detailed accounts of every bee family and genus in North America, describing key identification features, distributions, diets, nesting habits, and more.
  • Provides the most comprehensive and accessible guide to all bees in the United States and Canada
    Features more than 900 full-color photos
    Offers helpful identification tips and pointers for studying bees
    Includes a full chapter on how to attract bees to your backyard
Bird Cloud : a memoir
by Annie Proulx

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Brokeback Mountain describes her purchase of 600 wilderness acres in Wyoming and construction of a library-centric home where she contemplated her rich family history, including a river boat captain ancestor who met historical figures.
The book of lost friends : a novel
by Lisa Wingate

"...a new novel inspired by little-known historical events: a dramatic story of three young women on a journey in search of family amidst the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who rediscovers their story and its vital connection to her own students' lives. In her distinctive voice, Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual "Lost Friends" advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold off. Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now-destitute plantation; Juneau Jane, her illegitimate free-born Creole half-sister; and Hannie, Lavinia's former slave. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following dangerous roads rife with ruthless vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and eight siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the seemingly limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope. Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poorrural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt--until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, seems suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything"
Murder your employer : the McMasters guide to homicide
by Rupert Holmes

Preparing you for an education you'll never forget, this introduction to The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of homicidal arts, follows students as they prepare for graduation by getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live. Illustrations.
Been wrong so long it feels like right
by Walter Mosley

Detective King Oliver fulfills his grandmother's dying wish to reunite with his estranged father while also protecting a missing woman and her daughter from a powerful billionaire, in the third novel of the series following Every Man a King.
The end of order, Versailles, 1919 : Versailles, 1919
by Charles L. Mee

Puts the spotlight on the Versailles meeting in which Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George discussed the world situation after the war and negotiated what they hoped would be a longlasting peace.
Silesian station
by David Downing

Summer, 1939. British journalist John Russell has just been granted American citizenship in exchange for agreeing to work for American intelligence when his girlfriend Effi is arrested by the Gestapo. Russell hoped his new nationality would let him safely stay in Berlin with Effi and his son, but now he's being blackmailed. To free Effi, he must agree to work for the Nazis. They know he has Soviet connections and want him to pass them false intelligence. Russell consents, but secretly offers his services to the Soviets instead--not for anything too dangerous, though, and only if they'll sneak him and Effi out of Germany if necessary.It's a good plan, but soon things become complicated. A Jewish girl has vanished, and Russell feels compelled to search for her. A woman from his past, a communist, reappears, insisting he help her reconnect with the Soviets, who turn out to demand more than Russell hoped. Meanwhile, Europe lurches toward war, and he must follow the latest stories--to places where American espionage assignments await him.
 
Cassandra in reverse
by Holly Smale

After an extraordinarily bad day during which Cassandra Dankworth's boyfriend breaks up with her and she is fired from her job, she wakes up the next day and has the chance to do it all again, differently.
All the wild that remains : Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West
by David Gessner

An award-winning nature writer follows in the footsteps of two American writers who personified the Wild West, visiting their birthplaces and the sites they wrote about and discusses the future of the region, now plagued by droughts, fires, fracking and drilling.
What Water Holds
by Tele Aadsen

Tele Aadsen met the sea as a child when her parents traded jobs as veterinarians for a migratory life shared with sea birds, salmon, and fishermen. In the mist of the Tongass rainforest, Tele learned to explore life within endless shades of gray, coming to know firsthand how fine the line between life and death and the precarious balance of sea, land, and sky. She’s spent the four decades since trolling for salmon in Southeast Alaska. In What Water Holds, a series of lyrical essays first shared at Oregon’s FisherPoets Gathering, Tele examines questions of equity, identity, community, the changing climate, and sustainability with loving, detailed attention, revealing the complexities within their many shades of gray. Weaving stories of what lies beneath the surface and the possibilities beyond, What Water Holds speaks to anyone who has fallen under the spell of the sea, struggled to find their own uncharted path, and wrestled with big philosophical questions—in short, anyone seeking to live a full, deeply considered life.
Birding to change the world : a memoir
by Trish O'Kane

A writer and educator specializing in environmental justice and climate change chronicles her bird-watching journey and shares what she has learned from each new bird she's observed about life, social change and protecting the environment. Illustrations.
Everything is tuberculosis : the history and persistence of our deadliest infection
by John Green

The author tells the story of Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone, sharing the scientific and social histories of tuberculosis, the world's deadliest disease, and how humanity's choices can shape the disease'sfuture
Vera Wong's guide to snooping (on a dead man), Book 2
by Jesse Q Sutanto

When a young woman searching for a missing friend leads Vera to the mysterious murder of influencer Xander Lin, she delves into his enigmatic life, uncovering secrets and identities to help her future daughter-in-law, Officer Selena Gray, solve the case.

Book 1: Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
Sex at dawn : the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality
by Christopher Ryan

Two psychologists aim to reframe our understanding of lust, monogamy and family through a discussion on human sexuality based on research in anthropology, primatology and anatomy and defend their theory that humans evolved in interdependent, promiscuous groups.
The sequel (Book #2)
by Jean Hanff Korelitz

"Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she's taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and solved the mystery of the anonymous plagiarism accusations that tormented him. Now she is living her life, content to enjoy her husband's royalty checks in perpetuity, but literary celebrity continues to beckon, and this time the book in question is her own debut novel, The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write and publish a universally lauded best seller? Then, in the wake of The Afterword's great success, Anna begins to receive anonymous accusations of her very own. Surely there is no one out there who still knows the truth about her colorful life, so who is sending her these excerpts of a justly lost manuscript by a justly unpublished author? Who knows her true name and origins? Who understands the exact nature of her many, many transgressions? Anna has come too far, and worked too hard, to lose this life. She cannot rest until she has eradicated the threat and reclaimed, definitively and permanently, her sole and uncontested right to her own story"

Book 1: The Plot
Careless people : a cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism
by Sarah Wynn-Williams

An insider account charting one woman's career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them
Belly button book
by Sandra Boynton

This laugh-out-loud board book invites little ones to the beach where they will find bare-bellied hippos, including one tiny baby who only says BEE BO! Illustrations.
Busy airport
by Louise Forshaw

"Young children will love playing with this bright and colorful board book with a gentle rhyme and wonderful illustrations by Louise Forshaw"
Fundamentally : a novel
by Nussaibah Younis

"A wickedly funny and audacious debut novel following a heartbroken academic as she lands in Iraq to lead a United Nations-backed deradicalization program created to reform ISIS brides When Dr. Nadia Amin, a long-suffering academic, publishes an article on the possibility of rehabilitating ISIS brides, the United Nations comes calling, offering an opportunity to lead a deradicalization program for the ISIS-affiliated women held in Iraqi refugee camps. Looking for a way out of London after a painful, unexpected breakup, Nadia leaps at the chance. In Iraq, Nadia quickly realizes she's in over her head. Her direct reports are hostile and unenthused about taking orders from an obvious UN novice, and the murmurs of deradicalization being inherently unethical and possibly illegal threaten to end Nadia's UN career before it even begins. Frustrated by her situation and the unrelenting heat, Nadia decides to visit the camp with her sullen team, composed of Goody Two-shoes Sherri who never passes up an opportunityto remind Nadia of her objections; and Pierre, a snippy Frenchman who has no qualms about perpetually scrolling through Grindr. At the camp, after a clumsy introductory session with the ISIS women, Nadia meets Sara, one of the younger refugees, whose accent immediately gives her away as a fellow East Londoner. From their first interaction, Nadia feels inexplicably drawn to the rude girl in the diamantâe headscarf. She leaves the camp determined to get Sara home. But the system Nadia finds herself trappedin is a quagmire of inaction and corruption. One accomplishment barely makes a dent in Nadia's ultimate goal of freeing Sara . . . and the other women, too, of course. And so, Nadia makes an impossible decision leading to ramifications she could have never imagined. A triumph of dark humor, Fundamentally asks bold questions: Who can tell someone what to believe? And how do you save someone who doesn't want to be saved?"
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