Book of the Week: YA dystopian novel is timely
The Girl With All the Gifts By M. R. Carey (science fiction/416 pages, 2014) The Girl With All the Gifts is set in a dystopian future in which most of humanity has been wiped out by a mysterious fungal infection, and is now populated by flesh-eating zombies. However, this is not your typical “zombie” story with humans trying to escape from the walking dead. The Girl With All the Gifts has a complex plot and well-developed...
Book of the week: Two lives weave together
The Alice Network By Kate Quinn (historical fiction/308 pages/2019) The Alice Network is an historical novel set in two time periods – 1915 and 1947 – and tells the tales of two fascinating women in alternating chapters. The story begins in 1947. American college student, Charlotte “Charlie” St. Clair, is unmarried and newly pregnant. She comes from an affluent family and her French mother has brought Charlie to Europe to take...
Book of the week: Find your style of order
Organizing for your Brain Type: Finding You Own Solution to Managing Time, Paper, and Stuff By Lanna Nakone (nonfiction/276 pages/2005) Ever wonder why you just can’t get organized? Despite how hard you try. Despite how many organizing contraptions you’ve bought. Well it’s not you, it’s your brain. You’ve been trying to fight your brain’s natural process. Instead of fighting it, work with...
Book of the Week: Trace Elements
Trace Elements Author: Donna Leon (Mystery, 278 pages, 2020) Commissario Guido Brunetti and his co-worker, Claudia Griffoni are called to a hospice to hear the words of a dying young woman. The patient, Benedetta Toso, says that her husband, Vittorio Fadalto, took “bad money” from someone to pay for her care. And then Fadalto dies in a motorcycle accident soon after. Was it just an accident? Did Fadalto, an exhausted and grieving...
Book of the week: Ghosts abound
A House of Ghosts By W. C. Ryan (372 pages, mystery, 2019) It is the winter of 1917 and Kate Cartwright is in London in the intelligence service working on codebreaking. But she is asked by her superior to join her parents and her former fiancé to a house party at Blackwater Abbey, an island off the Devon coast. Lord Highmount, an armaments manufacturer, has arranged for a séance with a spiritualist. He and his wife are hoping to...