Chilling Reads for Hispanic Heritage Month

Chilling Reads for Hispanic Heritage Month

September 15 through October 15 marks Hispanic Heritage Month, a long-standing celebration of Hispanic contributions to all facets of society. With a number of young Hispanic horror writers generating plenty of book-world buzz, it's the perfect time for some frighteningly good reading; right on the cusp of Halloween season.

Visit the Hispanic Heritage Month display in the Adult Services area at the Main Library, and discover why these up-and-coming authors are making their mark.

Our Share of the Night by Mariana Enriquez - His father could find what was lost. His father knew when someone was going to die. His father had talked to him about the dead who rode in on the wind. The dead travel fast.

Gaspar is six years old when the Order first come for him. For years, they have exploited his father's ability to commune with the dead and the demonic, presiding over macabre rituals where the unwanted and the disappeared are tortured and executed, sacrificed to the Darkness. Now they want a successor. Nothing will stop the Order, nothing is beyond them. Surrounded by horrors, can Gaspar break free?

Spanning the brutal decades of Argentina's military dictatorship and its aftermath, Our Share of Night is a haunting, thrilling novel of broken families, cursed inheritances, and the sacrifices a father will make to help his son escape his destiny.

Book cover of Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas - As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.

Book Cover of Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero - 1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years.

The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting.

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro - Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.

Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.

When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.

Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.

But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers—and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever.

AAPLD welcomes author Nick Medina

AAPLD welcomes author Nick Medina

Algonquin Area Public Library is excited to celebrate the success of local author Nick Medina, whose debut thriller Sisters of  the Lost Nation, has  garnered both critical acclaim, and commercial success, with two events this fall.

On Tuesday, October 24, at 7:00 p.m., the library will hold an online discussion about the novel with patrons from other local libraries. Register here, and we'll reserve a copy of the novel for you to pick up.

On Monday, November 6, at 7:00 p.m., we'll welcome Nick for "Behind The Book," a live presentation at the Lake In The Hills Village Hall, where he'll discuss his novel, his writing, and take questions from the audience. Space is limited, so save the date! Registration opens Sept. 20.

Published earlier this year by Random House, the novel tells the story of Anna Horn, a young Native girl driven to find  answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe’s reservation. Anna's quest leads her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself.

Sisters of the Lost Nation weaves Native folklore with truths that we feel in our bones to create a story that is as beautiful as it is sad, as powerful as it is frightening, as familiar as it is otherworldly.”
Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor and The Hunger

“Who’s responsible for the disappearance of members of Louisiana’s Takoda tribe? That question, inspired by the real-life epidemic of disappearances of Native Americans in both the U.S. and Canada, drives the plot of Medina’s pulse-pounding debut….Medina resolves the plot well and gracefully weaves real-life concerns about disappearing Native people into the whodunit plot. This author is off to a strong start.”
Publishers Weekly

Medina, who was born in Chicago has a long fascination with local legends and folklore, and has gone in search of Resurrection Mary, the “Italian Bride,” the “Devil Baby,” and other Windy City ghosts. He was inspired to write the novel after reading a Chicago Tribune article about the disappearance of a young Native woman. A member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, Medina was also influenced by stories told by older family members, and the eerie atmosphere of the bayou. The novel features several supernatural myths and legends, while also shedding light on the epidemic of missing and murdered Native and Indigenous women and girls.

He has degrees in organizational and multicultural communication, has worked as a college instructor and enjoys playing guitar, when he's not writing or exploring haunted cemeteries.

Discover September’s Library Reads

Discover September’s Library Reads

Even if vacation season is over, books offer a great escape to another time and place. This month's Library Reads take you to such varied locales as present-day India, a comfortable suburban neighborhood, or 17th century Jamestown, along with absorbing stories, and fascinating characters.

Library Reads are ten new releases chosen each month by librarians across the country as their favorites. Browse the books here, or stop by the Main Library, where recent Library Reads picks can be found on the square shelf beside the New Releases display.

Read something you loved? Leave a review in Beanstack! Log into your account, click Add A Review, and share your thoughts. Did you have a favorite character, or scene? Did it make you laugh, cry, or afraid to turn off the lights? Let us know! We'll feature some of your reviews here on the Adult Services page, and in library social media!

Literary Fiction

The Museum of Failures by Thrity UmbrigarAn immersive story about family secrets and the power of forgiveness from the bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club pick Honor.

When Remy Wadia left India for the United States, he carried his resentment of his cold and inscrutable mother with him and has kept his distance from her. Years later, he returns to Bombay, planning to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl—and to see his elderly mother again before it is too late. She is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life.

Struck with guilt for not realizing just how ill she had become, Remy devotes himself to helping her recover and return home. But one day in her apartment he comes upon an old photograph that demands explanation. As shocking family secrets surface, Remy finds himself reevaluating his entire childhood and his relationship to his parents, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself. Can Remy learn to forgive others for their human frailties, or is he too wedded to his sorrow and anger over his parents’ long-ago decisions?

Surprising, devastating, and ultimately a story of redemption and healing still possible between a mother and son, The Museum of Failures is a tour de force from one of our most elegant storytellers about the mixed bag of love and regret. It is also, above all, a much-needed reminder that forgiveness comes from empathy for others.

Romance

Things We Left Behind by Lucy ScoreBest-selling author Lucy Score returns with the third book in her popular Knockmont series, with a second-chance romance about a corporate raider who keeps his heart guarded, and the spirited librarian he can't forget. Lucian Rollins is a lean, mean vengeance-seeking mogul. On a quest to erase his father’s mark on the family name, he spends every waking minute pulling strings and building an indestructible empire. The more money and power he amasses, the safer he is from threats.

Except when it comes to the feisty small-town librarian that keeps him up at night…

Sloane Walton is a spitfire determined to carry on her father’s quest for justice. She’ll do that just as soon as she figures out exactly what the man she hates did to—or for—her family. Bonded by an old, dark secret from the past and the dislike they now share for each other, Sloane trusts Lucian about as far as she can throw his designer-suited body.

When bickering accidentally turns to foreplay, these two find themselves not quite regretting their steamy one-night stand. Once those flames are fanned, it seems impossible to put them out again. But with Sloane ready to start a family and Lucian refusing to even consider the idea of marriage and kids, these enemies-to-lovers are stuck at an impasse.

Broken men break women. It’s what Lucian believes, what he’s witnessed, and he’s not going to take that chance with Sloane. He’d rather live a life of solitude than put her in danger. But he learns the hard way that leaving her means leaving her unprotected from other threats.

It’s the second time he’s ruthlessly cut her out of his life. There’s no way she’s going to give him a third chance. He’s just going to have to make one for himself.

Adventure

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff - A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive.

A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.

 

Thriller

Perfectly Nice Neighbors by Kia Abdullah - A riveting and timely thriller, Perfectly Nice Neighbors asks the question: When your dream home comes with nightmare neighbors, how far will you go to keep your family safe?

Salma Khatun is hopeful about Blenheim, the safe suburban development into which she, her husband, and their son have just moved. The Bangladeshi family are in desperate need of a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like just the place.
Soon after they move in, Salma spots her white neighbor, Tom Hutton, ripping out the anti-racist banner her son put in the front garden. Choosing not to confront Tom, Salma takes the banner inside and puts it in her window instead. But the next morning, she wakes up to find her window smeared with paint.
This time she does confront Tom, and the battle lines between the two families are drawn. As racial and social tensions escalate and the stakes rise, it's clear that a reckoning is coming...
And someone is going to get hurt.