With July Fourth coming up, the Adult Services staff would like to offer a red-white-and-blue shout-out to you, our patrons. We’ve missed you, and judging from the lovely comments we’ve heard on the phones lately, you’ve missed us, too. It’s been almost a month since the staff returned to work in the Main Library. There’s been a lot to get […]
We’ve recently discovered ListChallange.com, an online quiz-making platform, whose users apparently are avid readers! Folks after my own heart. Users have created lists related to various genres of books, but the lists I’ve most enjoyed are more eclectic, including this one: 1000 Books You May Have Actually Read This comprehensive list includes the classics you read in high school or […]
June 1940. The German Army sweeps into Paris and sets up headquarters at The Hotel Ritz. In order to survive– and to strike a blow against their Nazi ‘guests’ the hotel’s director, Claude Auzello, and his beautiful American actress wife, Blanche throw themselves into spinning a web of deceit working for the French Resistance. But one secret threatens to imperil both their lives– and to bring down the legendary Ritz itself. — adapted from jacket […]
“Lowry’s masterpiece” about a fateful Day of the Dead in a small Mexican town and one man’s struggle against the forces threatening to destroy him ( Los Angeles Times). In what the New York Times calls “one of the towering novels of [the twentieth] century,” former British consul Geoffrey Firmin lives alone with his demons in the shadow of two active volcanoes in South Central Mexico. Gripped by alcoholism, Geoffrey makes one last effort to salvage his crumbling life on the day that his ex-wife, Yvonne, arrives in town. It’s the Day of the Dead, 1938. The couple wants to revive their marriage and undo the wrongs of their past, but they soon realize that they’ve stumbled into the wrong place and time, where not only Geoffrey and Yvonne, but the world itself is on the edge of Armageddon. Hailed by the Modern Library as one of the one hundred best English novels of the twentieth century, Under the Volcano stands as an iconic and richly drawn example of the modern novel at its most lyrical. […]
June is Pride Month, and AAPLD is pleased to share books from our virtual and print collections that provide insight into the history, challenges and joys, faced by members of the LGBTQ community. Whether you’re a member of the community, a supportive ally to a friend or family member, or if you’d just like to know more about the experiences […]
“Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late 1960s Chicago and narrated by 10-year-old Karen Reyes, Monsters is told is told through a fictional graphic diary employing the iconography of B-movie horror imagery and pulp monster magazines. As the precocious Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her beautiful and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a Holocaust survivor, we watch the interconnected and fascinating stories of those around her unfold”–Front cover flap. […]
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has caused a national outcry. Not only is our nation forced to confront racial disparities in policing, but also generations of systemic racism against people of color. Reading can provide different perspectives and promote understanding, which are crucial as America searches for new approaches and solutions. AAPLD is proud […]
Mrs. Grace Humiston was an amazing lawyer and a traveling detective during a time when no women were practicing those professions. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. The first female U.S. District Attorney, she made groundbreaking investigations into modern-day slavery, and the papers gave her the nickname of fiction’s famous sleuth. One of her greatest accomplishments was solving the cold case of a missing eighteen-year-old girl, Ruth Cruger. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls, but it came with a price: she learned all too well what happens when one woman upstages the entire NYPD. In the literary tradition of In Cold Blood and The Devil in the White City, this true-crime tale is told in spine-tingling fashion and has important repercussions concerning kidnapping, the role of the media, and the truth of crime stories. But the great mystery of this book-and its haunting twist ending-is how one woman became so famous only to disappear. […]
L.A. in the late sixties. Sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, the sex and drugs are thrilling but it’s the rock and roll Daisy loves most. By the time she’s twenty her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend. — adapted from publisher info […]
In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, on which she discovers an enrichening passion for music. Yet after she marries, her husband insists the family emigrate to America—and loses her piano in the process.
In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy is burdened by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara’s career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer—and the secret history of her piano—will Clara be set free to live the life of her choosing. […]
