And the beginning of what we all hope is a very happy Labor Holiday Weekend for you all, dear readers!  Just a reminder, we’ll be closed this Saturday and Monday (September 2 and 4) in observation of the holiday, but that still leaves plenty of time to come in and grab a few books to take along on your long-weekend excursions!  Here are a few that have ambled onto our shelves this week and are eager to make your acquaintance!

Glass Houses: Fans of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache novels will be delighted to hear that his fourth adventure–one that will force the Canadian police inspector to do quite a bit of soul searching.  When a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines one cold November day, Armand Gamache and the rest of the villagers are at first curious. Then wary. Through rain and sleet, the figure stands unmoving, staring ahead.  Gamache suspects the creature has deep roots and a dark purpose. Yet he does nothing, hoping his discretion is the right decision.  But when the figure vanishes overnight and a body is discovered, Gamache struggles with actions he set in motion that bitter November, even as an accused prisoner is brought to trial. As the court case wears on through the sultry summer, Gamache will find his own conscious under intense examination, as well.  This series is a favorite among a number of our patrons (all of whom, clearly, have excellent taste), and they will thus be pleased to know that critics are hailing this book as a triumph of an already sensational series.  Library Journal, for example, gave this book a starred review, noting “The award-winning Penny does not rest on her laurels with this challenging and timely book. Though touched by the evils of the outside world, Three Pines remains a singular place away from time.”

My Absolute Darling: I have to say, whenever I see a Stephen King blurb on the front of a book, I sit up and take notice.  Whenever I heard that the King blurb in question came unsolicited because he just loved the book that much, I consider it a must read.  This is just such a book.  In this stunning debut Gabriel Tallent tells of Turtle Alveston, fourteen trained survivor who roams the woods along the northern California coast. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school and to her life with her father–until Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her.  This book has been making some very serious waves, not only for the writing style, but for Tallent’s ability to create a heroine who is unlike any you’ve ever met before.  As Stephen King put it, “The word ‘masterpiece’ has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one.”

Rogue heroes : the history of the SAS, Britain’s secret special forces unit that sabotaged the Nazis and changed the nature of war: Britain’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II’s African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel’s desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war material. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS’s remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in the Africa and then on the Continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow.  This fantastic story of real-life espionage finds an excellent narrator in Ben McIntyre, who has already brought some of the spy world’s best stories to light.  The Boston Globe agrees, calling this work “a thrilling saga, breathtakingly told, full of daring and heroes…One of the many virtues of this volume… is the surprising small asides tucked into these pages, tiny truths that give the book depth along with derring-do.”

Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption: In the summer of 1988, Willie J. Grimes, a gentle spirit with no record of violence, was shocked and devastated to be convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to life imprisonment. A quarter-century later, Grimes’ was an innocent man, thanks to an investigation spearheaded by his relentless champion, Christine Mumma, a cofounder of North Carolina’s Innocence Inquiry Commission. The  commission, founded in 2006, remains a model organization unlike any other in the country, and one now responsible for a growing number of exonerations.  In this well-researched and equally well-told story, Benjamin Rachlin presents Grimes’ story, the botched evidence and testimony that led to his incarceration, and the quest for the truth that set him free.  Though Rachlin focuses on the details of the case with a precise legal eye, there is also a lot of big-picture commentary on the American criminal justice system that kept and held Grimes unfairly for so long.  Publisher’s Weekly gave this debut work a starred review, praising it as “An absorbing true-crime saga . . . Rachlin’s debut combines a gripping legal drama with a penetrating exposé of the shoddy investigative and trial standards nationwide . . . His narrative offers a moving evocation of faith under duress.”

The Golden House: Salman Rushdie’s newest book is already being hailed as a modern American epic, and drawing comparison’s to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby–a comparison not easily made.  Set during the inauguration of Barack Obama, the story follows Nero Golden, a strangely named, and untraceable enigmatic billionaire who takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family.  Golden has brought along his three adult sons, all of whom exhibit elaborate phobias, harbor explosive secrets, and spark with talent.  Our guide to the Goldens’ world is their neighbor René, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household, diving deep into their mystique, their quarrels, and their reality, even as reality outside begins to shift treacherously.  Critics all agree that Rushdie remains one of the foremost authors of our times, bringing magnificent insight and and an irrepressible love to every story and ever character he creates.  Booklist gave this newest release a starred review, cheering that it is “A ravishingly well-told, deeply knowledgeable, magnificently insightful, and righteously outraged epic which pos­es timeless questions about the human condition.”

Until next week, beloved patrons, happy reading!

And a very happy Friday to you, dear readers!

There are only a precious handful of days left before “summer” is “officially over”…theoretically and emotionally, if not actually meteorologically.  So we’ll keep it simple today, and simply hope that you have the opportunity to enjoy every last delightful, carefree, memorable moment of summer.  And that you wear sunscreen.  And bring a hat.  And a book–perhaps like one of the ones listed here!

See What I Have Done: A huge hit in the UK and Australia, Sarah Schmidt’s  fictionalized study of the Lizzie Borden trial has already caused a lot of feelings among the Library staff.  When her father and step-mother are found brutally murdered on a summer morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden – thirty two years old and still living at home – immediately becomes a suspect. But after a notorious trial, she is found innocent, and no one is ever convicted of the crime.  Meanwhile, others in the claustrophobic Borden household have their own motives and their own stories to tell: Lizzie’s unmarried older sister, a put-upon Irish housemaid, and a boy hired by Lizzie’s uncle to take care of a problem.  Schmidt uses this well-known, but still under-studied trial to ask questions about violence, feminism, and history that has been gaining attention around the world–and been compared to Shirley Jackson, which is some incredible praise.  The Guardian weighed in, as well, noting that “Schmidt’s unusual combination of narrative suppression and splurge makes for a surprising, nastily effective debut.”

Emma in the Night: Wendy Walker’s twisty, dark psychological thriller is sure to have fans of Ruth Ware and Paula Hawkins delighted, and fulfill all your desires for a creepy, jaw-clenching investigation.  One night three years ago, the Tanner sisters disappeared: fifteen-year-old Cass and seventeen-year-old Emma. Three years later, Cass returns, without her sister Emma. Her story is one of kidnapping and betrayal, of a mysterious island where the two were held. But to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Abby Winter, something doesn’t add up. Looking deep within this dysfunctional family Dr. Winter uncovers a life where boundaries were violated and a narcissistic parent held sway–and where one sister’s return might just be the beginning of the crime.  Though Walker’s story is a good-time thriller, she also considers very seriously the effects of mental illness and personalities disorders within families, making this book all the more gripping and unsettling for it’s close description of real-life troubles.  Publisher’s Weekly agrees noting in their starred review of this novel, “In this searing psychological thriller…Walker’s portrayal of the ways in which a narcissistic, self-involved mother can affect her children deepens the plot as it builds to a shocking finale.”

Yesterday: Hailed as “the thriller of the summer”, Felicia Yap’s book is another novel of dark psychological suspense, but this book looks to a future where memory itself is a precious commodity, and class is defined by who gets to remember.  Those on the top are permitted two days worth of memory, while most are afforded only one.   The only way to understand your spouse or your child or your mother is to jog your brain with daily e-diaries. And then imagine someone is murdered. How do you find a killer when all who are involved have their memories constantly reset? Claire and Mark are a surprising mixed-marriage that on the surface seems brilliant. Claire is a conscientious Mono housewife, Mark a novelist-turned-MP Duo on the political rise. But when a woman turns up dead, and she is then revealed to be Mark’s mistress, their perfectly constructed life begins to fall apart.  Yap’s debut changes perspectives with a rare deftness that makes this story richer, rather than more confusing, and she challenges convention and genres with impressive confidence.  Newsweek declared this book “A 2017 literary event”, which, considering how saturated the market on psychological dramas becomes every summer, it quite an impressive statement.

Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music:  American culture has a soundtrack–from every film, every documentary, every memory that is mass-produced, there is a score to accompany it.  And those songs, almost always, have to do with the body and with sex.  In this fascinating study, Ann Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form. Powers takes us from nineteenth-century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-twentieth century rock-and-roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars.  In her dizzying tour through American music and gender history, she continually demonstrates how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song. This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America’s anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom, making for a book that will have all fans of pop culture, music, gender, history, and art, sitting up to take notice, and has critics, academics, and artists singing it’s praises.  One such outlet is Library Journal, which gave this book a starred review, noting “With precision and wit, and across multiple musical genres, Powers contextualizes the complicated interplay of gender, sex, and race inherent in popular music within and against the backdrop of America’s puritanical founding.”

Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World: In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.  Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naive sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country–and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline.  Her memoir is an insightful, deeply moving, and strangely bittersweet tale, not of violence or prejudice, but of heartbreak, pain, and self-discovery, not only for her, but for the nations she considers, as well.  This book is earning not only glowing, but passionate reviews from across the world, with Booklist declaring that “”Hansen’s must-read book makes the argument that Americans, specifically white Americans, are decades overdue in examining and accepting their country’s imperial identity . . . Hansen builds her winning argument by combining personal examination and observation with geopolitical history lessons. She is a fearless patriot, and this is a book for the brave.”

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading!