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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. Ten readers - welcome to four new participants! - shared the following books in April. Please join us at the next Lit Salon on Wednesday, May 8th at 5pm. Check lopezlibrary.org or email Beth for current information. Happy Spring Reading!
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Something about the sky
by Rachel Carson
Adapting to picture book format an essay that has never been published in its entirety from a pioneering environmentalist, a cut-paper master brings this wonderous ode to clouds and the natural world to vivid life, in this art-meets-science tribute to curiosity and wonder.
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Good bad girl
by Alice Feeney
When a baby is stollen from a stroller and someone at a nursing home is murdered, four women who distrust each other must investigate together.
READER NOTES: Loves this author, but this newest book was disappointing. Highly recommends the following by Feeney:
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Rock paper scissors
by Alice Feeney
When Amelia wins a free weekend getaway to a remote venue in the Scottish highlands, she views this as the perfect opportunity to reconnect with her husband Adam, but the trip has the opposite effect as she no longer recognizes the person she married.
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Sometimes I lie
by Alice Feeney
Depicts the harrowing experiences of a coma patient with shut-in syndrome who, while unable to move or speak, must listen to those around her to figure out what happened and who is responsible for her injuries.
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Daisy Darker
by Alice Feeney
A family gathering for their matriarch's 80th birthday in her crumbling, gothic house on a tiny island begin disappearing one by one.
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The tea girl of Hummingbird Lane : a novel
by Lisa See
Explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter, who has been adopted by an American couple, tracing the very different cultural factors that compel them to consume a rare native tea that has shaped their family's destiny for generations. Historical fiction.
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Spirit whales & sloth tales : fossils of Washington state
by Elizabeth A. Nesbitt
"From trilobites near the Idaho border and primitive horses on the Columbia Plateau to giant bird tracks near Bellingham and curious bear-like beasts on the Olympic Peninsula, fossils across Washington State are filled with clues of past life on Earth. With abundant and well-exposed rock layers, the state has fossils dating from Ice Age mammals only 12,000 years old back to marine invertebrates more than 500 million years old. In Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales, paleontologist Elizabeth A. Nesbitt teams upwith popular science writer David B. Williams to offer a tour through more than a half billion years of natural history. Following an introduction to key concepts, twenty-four profiles--each featuring a unique plant, animal, or environment--tell stories of individual fossils, many of which are on display in Washington museums. The paleontology of Washington is brought to life with details of the fossils' discovery and extraction, their place in geological time, and the insights they provide into contemporary issues like climate change and species extinction"
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The Mars house : a novel
by Natasha Pulley
A queer sci-fi novel about a marriage of convenience between a Mars politician and an Earth refugee.
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Year of wonders : a novel of the plague
by Geraldine Brooks
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England. A first novel.
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The Last Town on Earth
by Thomas Mullen
Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a mill town called Commonwealth votes to quarantine itself in the wake of the 1918 flu pandemic, setting up guards to prevent anyone from coming in or out, but a violent confrontation with a tired, hungry, and cold soldier will have devastating repercussions for the entire town.
Another recommended pandemic book.
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A Gift upon the Shore
by M. K. Wren
Amid the collapse of civilization, Mary Hope and Rachel Morrow, two survivors of the devastation wreaked by natural disasters and nuclear war, create a cache of books in an attempt to preserve the past.
And another one!
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The beekeeper's apprentice : or, On the segregation of the queen
by Laurie R. King
Featuring a new preface, a rerelease of a debut entry in the series that introduced Sherlock Holmes's protégée Mary Russell finds her partnering the master detective in Wales, where they search for the kidnapped daughter of an American senator.
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Sun house
by David James Duncan
Exploring the American search for meaning and love, this breathtaking novel follows the journeys of an unforgettable cast of characters who arrive in the healing lands of Montana where they find comfort in the company of spiritual refugees, urban sophisticates, road-weary musicians and local cowboys.
READER NOTES: This book took her longer than normal to read with its many characters (at least 20) and length, but she wants to read it all over again immediately.
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I always loved you : a story of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas
by Robin Oliveira
A tale inspired by the romance between Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas finds young Mary struggling with self-doubt after being rejected by the Paris Salon before entering into a tempestuous relationship with a fellow artist.
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There there
by Tommy Orange
A novel—which grapples with the complex history of Native Americans; with an inheritance of profound spirituality; and with a plague of addiction, abuse and suicide—follows 12 characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. A first novel.
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An elderly lady is up to no good
by Helene Tursten
Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and... no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late eighties, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way. Over the course of her adventures--or misadventures--this little bold lady will handle a crisis with a local celebrity who has her eyes on Maud's apartment, foil the engagement of her long-ago lover, and dispose of some pesky neighbors. But when the local authorities are called to investigate a dead body found in Maud's apartment, will Maud finally become a suspect?
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An elderly lady must not be crossed
by Helene Tursten
"Just when things have finally cooled down for 88-year-old Maud after the disturbing discovery of a dead body in her apartment in Gothenburg, a couple of detectives return to her doorstep, ruining a perfectly good afternoon. Though Maud deftly dodges their questions with the skill of an Olympic gymnast a fifth of her age, she wonders if suspicion has fallen on her, little old lady that she is. The truth is, ever since Maud was a girl, death has seemed to follow her. In these six interlocking stories, memories of unfortunate incidents from Maud's past keep bubbling to the surface, each triggered by something around her: an image, a word-even a taste. Meanwhile, certain Problems in the present require immediate attention. Luckily, Maud is no stranger to taking matters into her own hands . . . even if it means she has to get a little blood on them in the process"
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Lopez Island Library 2225 Fisherman Bay Rd Lopez Island, Washington 98261 360-468-2265www.lopezlibrary.org |
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