Month: February 2023

The Nail Biters (03/21/2023): The Last Thing He Told Me
Book Clubs

The Nail Biters (03/21/2023): The Last Thing He Told Me

February 22, 2023 Book Clubs, Nail Biters

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.

With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists, and evocative family drama, The Last Thing He Told Me is a riveting mystery, certain to shock you with its final, heartbreaking turn. […]

Happily Ever After (03/20/2023): A Curious Beginning
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (03/20/2023): A Curious Beginning

February 21, 2023 Book Clubs, Happily Ever After

The New York Times bestselling author of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries returns once more to Victorian England and introduces intrepid adventuress Veronica Speedwell….

London, 1887. After burying her spinster aunt, orphaned Veronica Speedwell is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry—and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as with fending off admirers, Veronica intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

But fate has other plans when Veronica thwarts her own attempted abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron, who offers her sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker, a reclusive and bad-tempered natural historian. But before the baron can reveal what he knows of the plot against her, he is found murdered—leaving Veronica and Stoker on the run from an elusive assailant as wary partners in search of the villainous truth. […]

Digital Resources

Get Your Craft On with CreativeBug

February 17, 2023 Digital Resources

If you can’t get enough of crafting, be sure to check out one of Algonquin Area Public Library’s most exciting online resources, CreativeBug.com . The site contains a plethora of craft ideas, and projects, plus live and recorded classes covering everything from sewing, perfume-making, quilting, sketching, cooking, plant care, creating home decor, and so much more. Choose from thousands of […]

Library Reads (03/16/2023): The Knockoff
Book Clubs

Library Reads (03/16/2023): The Knockoff

February 17, 2023 Book Clubs, Library Reads Book Club

An outrageously stylish, wickedly funny novel of fashion in the digital age, The Knockoff is the story of Imogen Tate, editor in chief of Glossy magazine, who finds her twentysomething former assistant Eve Morton plotting to knock Imogen off her pedestal, take over her job, and reduce the magazine, famous for its lavish 768-page September issue, into an app.

When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Eve, fresh out of Harvard Business School, has fired “the gray hairs,” put the managing editor in a supply closet, stopped using the landlines, and hired a bevy of manicured and questionably attired underlings who text and tweet their way through meetings. Imogen, darling of the fashion world, may have Alexander Wang and Diane von Furstenberg on speed dial, but she can’t tell Facebook from Foursquare and once got her iPhone stuck in Japanese for two days.

Under Eve’s reign, Glossy is rapidly becoming a digital sweatshop—hackathons rage all night, girls who sleep get fired, and “fun” means mandatory, company-wide coordinated dances to Beyoncé. Wildly out of her depth, Imogen faces a choice—pack up her Smythson notebooks and quit, or channel her inner geek and take on Eve to save both the magazine and her career. A glittering, uproarious, sharply drawn story filled with thinly veiled fashion personalities, The Knockoff is an insider’s look at the ever-changing world of fashion and a fabulous romp for our Internet-addicted age. […]

Unicorns and Spaceships (03/14/2023): She Who Became the Sun
Book Clubs

Unicorns and Spaceships (03/14/2023): She Who Became the Sun

February 15, 2023 Book Clubs, Unicorns and Spaceships (formerly Book Wizards)

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…”

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness. […]

Forever Young (03/13/2023): A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome
Book Clubs

Forever Young (03/13/2023): A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome

February 14, 2023 Book Clubs, Forever Young

I am ugly. There’s a mathematical equation to prove it.

At only eight months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome — a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it.

Growing up, Ariel and her sister endured numerous appearance-altering procedures. Surgeons would break the bones in their heads and faces to make room for their growing organs. While the physical aspect of their condition was painful, it was nothing compared to the emotional toll of navigating life with a facial disfigurement.

Ariel explores beauty and identity in her young-adult memoir about resilience, sisterhood, and the strength it takes to put your life, and yourself, back together time and time again. […]

Stranger than Fiction (03/07/2023): Bitch: On the Female of the Species
Book Clubs

Stranger than Fiction (03/07/2023): Bitch: On the Female of the Species

February 8, 2023 Book Clubs, Stranger Than Fiction

A fierce, funny, and revolutionary look at the queens of the animal kingdom.

Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces—all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser.

Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted.

In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun. […]

Spinecrackers (03/03/2023): Clap When You Land
Book Clubs

Spinecrackers (03/03/2023): Clap When You Land

February 4, 2023 Book Clubs, Spinecrackers

In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people…

In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.

Separated by distance—and Papi’s secrets—the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered.

And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other. […]

Book Lists

Genealogy Reads – Memoirs

February 3, 2023 Book Lists, Genealogy, Reading Suggestions

Look for these memoirs at the library. You will be fascinated by these personal stories of genealogy and family history. The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir by William C. Griffeth Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir by Alan Cumming Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, […]