If you’re like most people, you can’t say much about Presidents McKinley and Garfield except that they were two of the four presidents, along with Lincoln and Kennedy, who were assassinated while in office. This book can fix that. It’s the story of writer and NPR contributor Sarah Vowell visiting all the sites related to our four assassinated presidents and their untimely deaths in her “assassination vacation.” Mixing dark humor with honest feeling, she visits graves, death sites, presidential libraries, homes, theaters, and more, in hopes of better understanding these four fallen leaders. In the process, she pulls not only from primary and contemporaneous sources, but also from modern ones. She quotes historic letters and newspaper articles alongside conversations with tour guides and impersonators she meets along the way. It makes for an eclectic but absorbing read, jumping from a harrowing first-person account of McKinley’s shooting to the nondescript plaque that marks the spot today.
Vowell’s witty writing style will appeal to fans of David Sedaris, and her storytelling makes the experience feel very personal. If the idea of a morbidly funny road trip through our nation’s history sounds like fun to you, you’ll want to pick this one up. Audiobook Lovers: The author narrates this book, giving an impeccable reading of her own lines with a dry, deadpan delivery that complements the writing perfectly. However, her high, lispy voice may turn off some listeners.
Jonathan and Billie are the perfect couple. They met on public transit, fell in love at first sight, and got married on a beach two weeks later. Nearly two decades later, they have a house in Berkeley, an environmentally-conscious teen daughter, and a seemingly perfect life. Billie is a stay-at-home mom who loves yoga and hiking, and Jonathan has worked his way up the ladder at a tech magazine. But their perfect life comes at a price. Jonathan is a workaholic, and Billie, a wild child in her youth, begins to grow bored and disillusioned with their life together. So, Billie decides to take a page from Cheryl Strayed's playbook and hike out her problems solo on the Pacific Crest Trail. Instead, she vanishes on her hike, leaving behind only a lone boot.
A year later, with Billie close to being declared legally dead, their daughter Olive begins to have hallucinations (or are they visions?) of her mother, very much alive. As Jonathan and Olive begin searching for answers, they find a tangle of secrets in Billie's past that makes them question everything about the woman they loved and thought they knew.
Janelle Brown weaves a compelling, twisty tale that will keep readers turning the page and guessing right up until the last sentence. A great summer read, perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.
This is the (mostly) true story of the world's first computer. British inventor Charles Babbage designed the "Difference Engine," the earliest predecessor to modern computers. In turn, his friend and confidant, Ada Lovelace, illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron, wrote the world's first computer program for it. In reality, sadly, the Difference Engine was never built. The design and the programming were technically correct, but theoretical. But who cares about reality? It's far more fun to imagine that they did build it, and then used it to further their rollicking steampunk adventures!
This graphic novel, with its charming black-and-white art, imagines what kinds of adventures they might have gone on, which is delightful on its own, but the truly amazing part is that the whole book is littered with footnotes and full-page spreads about the real Lovelace and Babbage. The author did a huge amount of original research about the oft-overlooked pair, and the way she swirls fact with fiction is masterful. If you're a fan of biography and/or steampunk, you'll want to give this a look.
Agnieszka’s village lies at the edge of The Wood, a dark and sinister forest full of monsters and magic. They survive only by the mercy of The Dragon, a great and powerful wizard, but his mercy has a price. Every ten years, he descends on the village and chooses a girl to become his servant. The girls are never the same when they are released. Everyone has always known who will be chosen this year, Kasia, the good and brave and beautiful. So when the day comes and the Dragon chooses her unremarkable friend Agnieszka instead, everyone is stunned, especially Kasia and Agnieszka. So Agnieszka goes to his tower, and finds that nothing is as she expected. The Wood is advancing, huge and ominous, and if they aren’t able to stop it, it will devour her village and everything and everyone in it. And the Dragon isn’t what she expected either...
This is a tale deeply rooted in Russian folklore and fairy tales, but it subverts a lot of the tropes you usually see in the fairy tale genre. Not every author can build an atmosphere like this, both tense and whimsical. The descriptions of the forest are legitimately frightening, and the style of magic they use is really something different. Agnieszka isn’t your average fairy tale heroine, and the Dragon isn’t your average hero (or villain, or romantic lead, for that matter). If you’re a fan of dark fairy tales, give this a chance. It’s one of the best.
This is a book about plagues. More surprisingly, it’s a humorous book about plagues. Jennifer Wright, author of It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History, manages to balance being informative about a very depressing topic while maintaining a witty, upbeat writing style. The book progresses chronologically from ancient and medieval plagues into the modern day, with each chapter covering one plague (such as the dancing plague, leprosy, the Black Death, polio, etc.).
Interestingly, Wright not only covers the effects of each plague, but also critiques how it was handled at the time. In each case, brave people work hard to combat the terrifying diseases. Sometimes, these heroes are doctors and scientists researching and tracking the disease. Other times, they are individuals and communities rallying around the afflicted.
It’s a bittersweet book. Some chapters are hopeful and inspiring, while others serve as chilling examples of how mishandling a situation can turn it into a catastrophe. The book does a surprisingly good job of keeping up its cheery tone, while still showing sympathy and regret for those affected by the plagues. It’s informative and highly readable without being dense, and the author has some insights for modern audiences to heed.
Lee McKinney is starting a new chapter in her life. She has moved in with her Aunt Nettie and has started helping with the bookkeeping for her Aunt’s business, TenHuis Chocolade, a popular chocolate shop in Warner Pier, MI. The high profile defense lawyer, Clementine Ripley, particularly loves the shop’s Amaretto truffles. In fact, she ordered those and a number of other chocolates from TenHuis for a party. While Clementine favors the shop’s chocolates, its owner, Aunt Nettie, doesn’t care for Clementine one bit. She is not the only one in town who has a poor opinion of the defense lawyer. Unfortunately, it was an Amaretto truffle spiked with cyanide that Clementine was eating when she dropped dead. All signs point to Aunt Nettie and Lee as those responsible for Clementine’s death. Can Lee find the real killer and clear herself and her aunt of a potential murder charge?
The Chocolate Cat Caper is a mystery that will leave you guessing who the murderer is until the end. This is the first in the "Chocoholic Mystery" series, and while the murder case is nicely concluded, there are opportunities left open for future developments for Lee and her aunt. The first three "Chocoholic Mystery" stories, including The Chocolate Cat Caper, are compiled in Crime de Cocoa.
Have you ever left the kitchen sink dishes for another day? Do you have an extra room at home or a basement that's storage for stuff you rarely use but don't have the heart to discard? And do you feel guilty about it? That's nothing compared to Coming Clean.
Kim Miller is your average girl growing up in what appears to be an average family to Kim's friends and teachers, but her parents are hoarders, whose tendencies to keep every little thing escalates as Kim grows older. The Millers' hoarding gets so bad, they won't allow cleaners, repairmen, or anyone into their home. The bathroom is filled with junk and becomes nonfunctional, forcing Kim to shower away from home. The furnace breaks but isn't fixed, making for some chilly winters. Meanwhile, rats scurry through discarded belongings and a derelict kitchen, and the floor slowly disintegrates. As an adult, Kim becomes a neat-freak, obsessed with her clean and tidy apartment. Yet her parents' troubles plague Kim, as she takes on forced purges of their home and the insurmountable task of cleaning and packing required for each move her parents make.
While recounting her traumatizing childhood, readers may recoil at the horrors Kim's parents unwittingly bestowed, but Kim manages to balance her disturbing tale with compassionate pictures of her parents' kindness and the history that led to their hoarding tendencies.
