Fiction
Northern spy
Flynn Berry
FICTION Berry Flynn
Fiction
"A producer at the Belfast bureau of the BBC, Tessa is at work one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground after the Good Friday agreement, but they never really went away, and lately, bomb threats, arms drops, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the anchor requests the public's help in locating those responsible for this latest raid - a robbery at a gas station - Tessa's sister appears on the screen. Tessa watches in shock as Marian pulls a black mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa knows this is impossible. They were raised to oppose Republicanism, and the violence enacted in its name. They've attended peace vigils together. And besides, Marian is vacationing by the sea. Tessa just spoke to her yesterday. When the truth of what has happened to Marian reveals itself, Tessa will be forced to choose: between her ideals and her family, between bystanderism and action. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she fears nothing more than endangering the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son."--Provided by publisher.
Hell of a book : or the altogether factual, Wholly Bona Fide story of a big dreams, hard luck, American-Made Mad Kid
Jason Mott
FICTION Mott Jason
Fiction
Soot, a young Black boy, lives in a rural town in the recent past. The Kid, a possibly imaginary child appears to a Black author on a cross-country publicity tour. to promote his bestselling novel. As their stories build and converge, they astonish. As the nation reckons with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news, what it can mean to be Black in America? Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? -- adapted from jacket
Added by Jason
The prophets : a novel
Robert Jones
FICTION Jones Robert
Fiction
"A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence"--
Added by Jason
Zorrie : a novel
Laird Hunt
FICTION Hunt Laird
Fiction
After losing both her parents and her aunt, Zorrie is cast into the perilous realities of rural Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, surviving on odd jobs, Zorrie finds a position at a radium processing plant. When Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finds the love and community that has always eluded her in and around the small town of Hillisburg, but discovers that her trials have only begun. -- adapted from jacket
Added by Jason
Matrix
Lauren Groff
FICTION Groff Lauren
Fiction
"Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world"--
Added by Jason
Cloud cuckoo land : a novel
Anthony Doerr
FICTION Doerr Anthony
Fiction
Constantinople, 1453: Anna lives in a convent where women toil all day embroidering the robes of priests. She learns the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a better world, and reads it to her sister as the walls of Constantinople are bombarded by armies of Saracens. Lakeport, Idaho, 2020: Seymour, an activist bent on saving the earth, sits in the public library with two homemade bombs in pressure cookers. Upstairs, eighty-five-year old Zeno, a former prisoner-of-war, and an amateur translator, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon's adventures. The future: On an interstellar ark called The Argos, Konstance, alone in a vault with access to all the information in the world, knows Aethon's story through her father, who has sequestered her to protect her. All are dreamers, misfits on the cusp of adulthood in a world the grown-ups have broken. -- adapted from publisher info
Added by Jason
The cookbook collector
Allegra Goodman
FICTION Goodman, Allegra
Fiction
Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily's boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriends, not so much, as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.
Added by Beth
Sourdough
Robin Sloan
FICTION Sloan Robin
Fiction
A software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions, Lois Clary codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. When the brothers have Visa issues, they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her-- and learn to bake with it. Soon Lois is providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria, then the farmer's market, and a whole new world opens up-- including a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology.
Added by Beth
The art of baking blind : a novel
Sarah Vaughan
FICTION Vaughan, Sarah
Fiction
"There are many reasons to bake: to feed; to create; to impress; to nourish; to define ourselves; and, sometimes, it has to be said, to perfect. But often we bake to fill a hunger that would be better filled by a simple gesture from a dear one. We bake to love and be loved. In 1966, Kathleen Eaden, cookbook writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes. Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs. Eaden. There's Jenny, facing an empty nest now that her family has flown; Claire, who has sacrificed her dreams for her daughter; Mike, trying to parent his two kids after his wife's death; Vicki, who has dropped everything to be at home with her baby boy; and Karen, perfect Karen, who knows what it's like to have nothing and is determined her facade shouldn't slip. As unlikely alliances are forged and secrets rise to the surface, making the choicest pastry seems the least of the contestants' problems. For they will learn--as as Mrs. Eaden did before them--that while perfection is possible in the kitchen, it's very much harder in life"--
Added by Beth
Rosaline Palmer takes the cake
Alexis J. Hall
FICTION Hall Alexis
Fiction
"Rosaline Palmer is just barely holding her life together. Her paycheck might as well be parchment paper, her house is falling apart, and help from her parents is always served with a generous slice of disappointment and judgment. And the cherry on top? Now her daughter's school is charging all sorts of outlandish extra fees for trips that Rosaline can't afford. But where there's a whisk there's a way. . . and Rosaline has just landed a place on the nation's favorite baking show. Winning the prize money could change everything, but more than collapsing trifles stand between Rosaline and sweet, sweet victory. Charming and suave Alain Pope is just the type of person her parents planned for her to marry, and better yet, her fellow contestant is doing his best to sweep her off her feet. Yet while he says and bakes all the right things, it's friendly, down-to-earth electrician Harry Dobson who Rosaline finds as tempting as a midnight ice-cream sundae with salted caramel . . . and just as hard to resist. But as the competition -- and the ovens -- heat up, Rosaline starts to realize the most delicious recipes come about when you don't follow the recipe."--
Added by Beth
It was very difficult to stop reading this until I finished. The Troubles in Ireland is such a complicated topic, I found the narrative set within to be very interesting. Plus, there are a lot of surprises. -Mari