Adult Fiction

It’s International Cake Day!

/ Mary / Leave a comment

July 20th is International Cake Day! Here’s a low-calorie way to celebrate the day.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Being able to taste people’s emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

 

 

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlin
In this irresistible memoir, the #1 “New York Times” bestselling author writes about her life and the lives of women today, looking back and ahead–and celebrating it all–as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all that stuff in our closets, and more.

 

Wedding Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke
Hannah is marrying Ross Barton, her college crush, but not before she can solve the murder case of nasty celebrity chef Alain Duquesne found stabbed to death in the Lake Eden Inn’s walk-in cooler.

 

 

Eat Cake: A Novel by Jeanne Ray
Ruth draws on her talent for concocting delectable cakes and desserts when her family begins to disintegrate around her–her husband loses his job, her mother moves in, and her long-estranged father shows up at the door with no place to go.

 

 

Have Your Cake and Kill Him, Too by Nancy Martin
When the tycoon owner of a spectacularly tacky sports bar is killed, Nora Blackbird suspects a secretive politician, a shady former rock star doubling as a pastry chef, and a dangerous aristo-brat on the verge of stardom.

 

My BEA Wishlist – New Books I Can’t Wait to Read

/ Louise / Leave a comment

I recently attended Book Expo America, an annual conference for booksellers, librarians, and others in the book industry. Held in New York City at a giant convention center, it’s a book lovers’ wonderland of authors and publishers showcasing their upcoming books. For someone like myself who rates authors right up their with rock stars, it’s an intense couple of days of fangirling and serious listmaking of new books that I simple MUST READ! Some of these just came out recently, some are due out later in the year, all look awesome. Let me spread the wealth by sharing a few so you can put them on your list:

Children’s Books:

YA Books:

Adult Books:

Many of these books are listed in our catalog and can be placed on hold right away, some of them are too new to be in our catalog yet, but will be soon!

Classic Read: The Ladies of Missalonghi

/ Mary / Leave a comment

ladies2I recently revisited an old favorite, a  short novel set in Australia in the early 1900’s. The Ladies of Missalonghi, a tale by Australian author Colleen McCullough, has a rather dismal start. Missy Wright, a thirty-three year old spinster, lives in the town of Byron with her widowed mother and crippled aunt. The three women scrape along in genteel poverty, the victims of manipulative and greedy richer relatives. Their days are always the same: meager meals, chores, and the endless handicrafts that they create to fill the empty hours.

Missy, who believes her lack of beauty and lack of money have doomed her to never marry, has one escape from the dreariness of her life. She borrows novels from the local lending library and imagines the most spectacular adventures in her mind. The librarian, a distant relation named Una, is bright and vivacious and very interested in Missy, who is generally considered a non-entity by her other relatives.

Slowly, as Missy interacts with Una, she begins to change. She stops letting local shopkeepers push her around. She stands up against a rude and condescending cousin. She takes walks alone in the bush, experiencing the beauty of her natural environment, an experience that has always been denied her in the interest of keeping her “safe”.

Missy’s evolution is an unconventional fairy tale. No one rescues her; she saves herself. Una is an example for Missy to follow rather than a fairy godmother who grants requests. There is a prince of sorts–John Smith, a mysterious newcomer to the town of Byron who is not searching for a princess but running from his past.

This short tale can be read in one sitting. Through-out the story, I kept  wondering if Missy’s newfound strength would backfire. Could she possibly stand up to an entire town, not to mention a tradition of systematic discrimination against the poor widows and spinsters in her family? Would those richer relations turn and crush her? Would her mother and aunt, who are so steeped in family tradition, even support her in her quest for freedom? There were a few surprises before I discovered the answers to these questions.

This light yet lovely tale is enjoyable.  A recommended read for those who like light romance with descriptive settings.

Like Romance Novels but Hate the Covers? Here’s one solution.

/ Louise / Leave a comment

I’m going to come clean – I’m a romance reader. There, I’ve said it. There can be some  stigma about the genre, though. Smart women don’t read romance. Romance is poorly-written schlock. It’s paperback porn. And the covers – oh the covers! – don’t exactly help overcome these assumptions about the quality of romance books.

Well, I’m a smart woman. I’m not a fan of bad writing. And the porn argument is pretty sexist. One thing I can’t argue with, though, are the covers; so many of them are just awful.

Like every genre, they’re not ALL gems, but these cheesy covers dumb the books down considerably. So what’s a romance-loving, cover-cringing reader to do?

E-books! We can read the books we like without flashing the eyebrow-raising covers around. Until the publishers figure out that romance readers don’t need a disembodied torso on the cover to sell copies, I will do most of my reading with a digital book.

These are just a few books I’ve loved in which the cover (and sometimes even the title!) had little or nothing to do with the actual story. If I were going by the covers, I probably wouldn’t have picked up these books, and would have missed some great reads:

 

 

 

Lucky for me, the library has digital copies of these titles, plus a LOT more. Cheshire Library has a large collection of all types of ebooks (including romance) available to download with your CPL card to your device of choice.  Our OverDrive platform has over 1500 romance ebooks available to check out, while our hoopla platform has over 1000. Enough to keep the most voracious reader supplied with happy endings.    

10 Books on the Small Screen in 2017

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Adapting a novel for the big screen can be a tricky business, but novels adapted for small screen are expanding in popularity. Game of Thrones has been wildly successful at it. So has Outlander.  No longer confined to a two-hour movie-length,  popular books can be adapted more faithfully as a television series, without the best bits getting cut for time.

2017 is seeing a boom in book-to-television adaptations, and we can’t wait to see some of our favorites brought to life on the small screen. If you’re a read-it-before-you-watch-it person, add these to your TBR list:

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (Netflix)

1After the sudden death of their parents, the three Baudelaire children must depend on each other and their wits when it turns out that a distant relative  is determined to use any means necessary to get their fortune.

13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher (Netflix)

9When Clay Jenkins receives a box containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends the night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah’s voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (Netflix)8

Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Hulu)4

In a dystopian future, women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Starz)

3Just released from prison, Shadow encounters Mr. Wednesday, an enigmatic stranger who seems to know a lot about him, and when Mr. Wednesday offers him a job as his bodyguard, Shadow accepts and is plunged into a dark and perilous world.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (HBO)

2An annual school Trivia Night ends in a disastrous riot leaving one parent dead in what appears to be a tragic accident, but evidence shows it might have been premeditated.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (HBO)

6Returning to her hometown after a long absence to investigate the murders of two girls, reporter Camille Preaker is reunited with her neurotic mother and enigmatic, thirteen-year-old half-sister as she works to uncover the truth about the killings.

The Cormoran Strike series by J.K. Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith (BBC/HBO)tumblr_olhnnlisda1rmidh1o2_r1_1280

This three part series follows Cormoran Strike, a wounded war veteran-turned-private detective struggling to get by in Central London.

The Midnight, Texas series by Charlaine Harris (NBC)

5Midnight, Texas, a dried-up, one traffic light town, gets shook up when a mysterious new resident, Manfred Bernardo, moves in.

 

The Terror by Dan Simmons (AMC)

7Captain Crozier must find a way for his crew to survive the deadly attacks of a sea monster, in this novel loosely based on the mid-nineteenth-century Arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin.