Nevermore: Read My Pins, Clay's Quilt, Once There Were Wolves, Beartown

 

Reported by Garry

 

Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box by Madeleine Albright. Part illustrated memoir, part social history, Read My Pins provides an intimate look at Albright's world-spanning bureaucratic life through the brooches she wore. Her collection is both international and democratic—dime-store pins share pride of place with designer creations and family heirlooms. Included are the antique eagle purchased to celebrate Albright's appointment as secretary of state, the zebra pin she wore when meeting Nelson Mandela, and the Valentine's Day heart forged by Albright's five-year-old daughter. Read My Pins features more than 200 photographs, along with compelling and often humorous stories about jewelry, global politics, and the life of one of America's most accomplished and fascinating diplomats. Our reader said that this book is “really beautiful” and full of stories that go along with the reasoning of why Albright wore what pins she did and at what times.  KM

 

Clay’s Quilt is the debut novel of now-bestselling author Silas House. Set in the rural hollers of Free Creek, Kentucky, this novel features Clay Sizemore who is a motherless young man in his mid-twenties who falls in love with Alma, a vibrant young woman on the run from an abusive husband. Our reader pointed out that even though Clay is the nominal main character, this novel particularly focusses on the women in his life and their effects on him as well as their struggles. House’s prose is very realistic in its descriptions of the small Eastern Kentucky towns that he set this book along with its two companion books The Coal Tattoo and Parchment of Leaves. House grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and our reader noted how very well developed and believable the characters are in this book.  AH

 

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy is a modern-day murder mystery set in the wilds of the Scotland highlands. Inti Flynn is a biologist who is in charge of reintroducing grey wolves to the Highlands – a task met with skepticism and fear by the local farmers. Inti’s belief that “her” wolves would never hurt a human are put to the test when a local farmer ends up dead in what looks suspiciously like a wolf attack. As Inti joins the investigation, it quickly becomes clear that the man she is falling in love with may also be a prime suspect in the slaying.  BM

 

Beartown by Frederik Backman. Loyalty to friends, duty, and the burden of truth collide in this character study of the people of a slowly dying Nordic town. The Beartown high school hockey team is poised to go to the World Championships when one of the star players rapes a young woman. The ramifications ripple through the town, leaving confusion, distrust, and anger in their wake. Backman, whose book A Man Called Ove is considered a modern classic, brings his trademark wit, insight, and pathos into the mindset of the characters that populate his hockey obsessed small, northern town.  MP

 

Also mentioned:

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama

Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father by Sally Cabot Gunning

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Azimov and Robert Silverberg

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Lightness of Water and Other Stories by Rhonda Browning White

Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings by Kenneth R. Ginsburg

2018 World Almanac edited by Sarah Janssen

The Saints of Swallow Hill by Donna Everhart

The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls edited by Jessica Spotswood

In The Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians by Jake Page

Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

 

New Books:

Our Best Intentions by Vibhuti Jain

Two Wars and a Wedding by Lauren Willig

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

Tremors in the Blood:  Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector by Amit Katwala

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence by David Waldstreicher