The New Albany Public Library
Staff Picks -- see what the Library staff is reading
LaRee Bates:
Fiction-
The French Gardener by Santa Montefiore
A rambling country estate may have lured Miranda and David and their children from their elegant London lifestyle, but not even the enchantment of once magnificent gardens, or fascination with an abandoned cottage can mend the emotional and physical chasm that is deepening between them. Left alone while David returns to London during the week, Miranda is overwhelmed by establishing a new home, dealing with an unruly child, and maintaining her own career. Her prayers are seemingly answered when a charismatic Frenchman suddenly appears with an offer to restore the gardens to their former glory. As the friendship between Miranda and Jean-Paul grows, so do her suspicions about David’s fidelity, leading Miranda to seek refuge in an abandoned diary that details a passionate tryst between the estate’s former owner, Ava, and her intriguingly unnamed gardener. Montefiore crafts a sweetly provocative romance that transitions seamlessly from Miranda’s contemporary marital discord to Ava’s past affair.
Nonfiction-
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson.
Torqued by drama and taut with suspense, this absorbing narrative of the 1900 hurricane that inundated Galveston, Tex., conveys the sudden, cruel power of the deadliest natural disaster in American history. Told largely from the perspective of Isaac Cline, the senior U.S. Weather Bureau official in Galveston at the time, the story considers an era when "the hubris of men led them to believe they could disregard even nature itself." As barometers plummet and wind gauges are plucked from their moorings, Larson (Lethal Passage) cuts cinematically from the eerie "eyewall" of the hurricane to the mundane hubbub of a lunchroom moments before it capitulates to the arriving winds, from the neat pirouette of Cline's house amid rising waters to the bridge of the steamship Pensacola, tossed like flotsam on the roiling seas. Most intriguingly, Larson details the mistakes that led bureau officials to dismiss warnings about the storm, which killed over 6000 and destroyed a third of the island city. The government's weather forecasting arm registered not only temperature and humidity but also political climate, civic boosterism and even sibling rivalries. America's patronizing stance toward Cuba, for instance, shut down forecasts from Cuban meteorologists, who had accurately predicted the Galveston storm's course and true scale, even as U.S. weather officials issued mollifying bulletins calling for mere rain and high winds. Larson expertly captures the power of the storm itself and the ironic, often catastrophic consequences of the unpredictable intersection of natural force and human choice.
Scott Keeney:
Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser.
Poems that make you sigh “Ahhh” fill this Pulitzer-winning collection from the nation’s poet laureate. Gentle, rural observations about lone farm windows and lonely farm widows; a lifelong, lone fisherman, anchored but barely tethered to the world, “fishing far from the tourist cabins shining like rivets.” Simple language, profound insights, an astute eye…great stuff.
YR F Kristin Kladstrup: The Book of Story Beginnings
“Last night dad changed himself into a bird and flew away, Mom. And Earl is actually our cat. Only his name’s not Earl. It’s Oscar.” And that’s just the beginning. Magic potions, magic notebooks, and a pirate captain with seven orphan children as crew transport an Iowa family across a sea that fills their cornfield to an island ruled by a cat-loving king and a bird-loving queen. It’s a full meal for fantasy lovers, laden with transformations, time travel, hidden treasures, and talking animals…a treat.
Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis. "Then the slug set off and glided around my wrist and arm" encapsulates the eerie weirdness of Davis' short stories, some as short as three words. She dwells on the everyday, houses, rooms, relatives, with a perceptively skewed viewpoint, noting clay as it squeezes up through decaying house floorboards or a fugitive fly flitting in a bus restroom, "small, illegal." Unique, compelling fiction.
Diane Moody:
Fiction-
Tess Monaghan mystery series by Laura Lippman. First in the series is Baltimore Blues. Losing her job as a reporter, Tess Monaghan accepts a friend's request to follow his fiancée. Utilizing her journalist's instincts, Tess learns that the woman is a kleptomaniac and may be having an affair with her boss. After revealing her findings, the boss is murdered and Tess's friend is accused. Now it is up to Tess to learn the identity of the real killer.
Nonfiction -
Dark Remedy: the impact of thalidomide and its revival as a vital medicine by Trent Stephens
Tells how the infamous drug that caused a medical disaster has made a comeback as a life-saving treatment for autoimmune disorders. Stephens teaches anatomy and embryology at Idaho State University.
John Burton:
Thirst, Poems by Mary Oliver 811.6 Oliver
I like poems. Maybe I like them because they are often short and sweet. They go for the jugular, heart, or soul often in an almost instantaneous manner. Most poetry I find inaccessible, so when I find a poet who reaches me in a fashion that resonates within I am ready for more. Mary Oliver reports on the mundane events and sights of her life and the natural world that surrounds her. I can relate to her experiences and find that I come away with a new and refreshed sensibility with regards to what she reports and that I clearly did not see so well the first time around. Her poems start innocently enough. They end in revelation.
Lynn Kaufman:
Oregon Coast Magazine:
If you live in or near Oregon, live at the coast, visit the coast, are planning a trip or just like to dream and scheme, Oregon Coast is a great magazine. It is informative and colorful. While not as glitzy as the more generic coastal magazine, it is targeted and useful. Just Jayne "Escape and Learn" (Portland, OR United States)
Fiction
Maggie by Charles Martin. . Sequel to The Dead Don’t Dance
"When Maggie opened her eyes that New Year's Day some seventeen months ago, I felt like I could see again. The fog lifted off my soul, and for the first time since our son had died and she had gone to sleep--some four months, sixteen days, eighteen hours, and nineteen minutes earlier--I took a breath deep enough to fill both my lungs."
Life began again for Dylan Styles when his beloved wife Maggie awoke from a coma. In this poignant love story that is redolent with Southern atmosphere, Dylan and Maggie must come to terms with their past before they can embrace their future. Life in Digger, S.C., is beginning to return to normal or so it seems. Together, Dylan and Maggie try to rebuild a life interrupted, grieve the loss of their son and ponder trying for another baby. But as the couple pick up the pieces of their relationship, tragedies are just around the corner. "What makes the broken whole?" Dylan wonders. "How does deep-down pain, interwoven like sinew, come untangled?"