Ana’s Recommendation
The Women
by Kristin Hannah
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
Libby’s Recommendation
Mink River
By Brian Doyle
Like Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood” and Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio, ” Brian Doyle’s stunning fiction debut brings a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people.In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There’s a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and
280 pages, Paperback
Andoni’s Recommendation
Cancer Hates Tea:
by Maria Uspenski
Drink Tea to Tell Cancer ‘Hit the Road’
Become a tea lover with a purpose and help your body defend itself against cancer. Learn to embrace tea in all its varieties— green, white, black, pu-erh, herbal and more—as both a mental and physical experience to protect your health. Discover the history, growing information and health implications of each variety, as well as uniquely delicious methods to boost your intake with serving suggestions, food pairings and recipes that highlight the benefits of tea.
After her own battle with cancer, Maria Uspenski extensively researched tea and discovered hundreds of studies that showed how powerful a five-cup-a-day (1.2 L) steeping habit could be. Tea is the most studied anti-cancer plant, with over 5,000 medical studies published on its health benefits over the past 10 years. By breaking down how tea works with your body’s defenses against cancer in a lighthearted tone, Maria’s serious research is approachable and relatable for anyone who is battling the disease or for family and friends of those fighting cancer. Start harnessing the wellness-promoting properties of tea and see your life change with an easy-to-follow three-week plan that gets tea polyphenols streaming through your system 24/7.
Alaine’s Recommendation
Down A Dark Road
Linda Castillo
Two years ago, Joseph King was convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison. He was a “fallen” Amish man and a known drug user with a violent temper. Now King has escaped, and he’s headed for Painters Mill.
News of a murderer on the loose travels like wildfire, putting Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and her team of officers on edge. But this is personal for Kate. She grew up with Joseph King. As a thirteen year old Amish girl, she’d worshipped the ground he walked on. She never could have imagined the nightmare scenario that becomes reality when King shows up with a gun and takes his five children hostage at their Amish uncle’s farm. Armed and desperate, he has nothing left to lose.
Fearing for the safety of the children, Kate makes contact with King only to find herself trapped with a killer. Or is he? All King asks of her is to help him prove his innocence—and he releases her unharmed. Kate is skeptical, but when the facts and the evidence don’t align, she begins to wonder who she should trust. Spurned by some of her fellow cops, she embarks on her own investigation only to unearth an unspeakable secret—and someone who is willing to commit murder to keep it buried.
Lyn’s Recommendation
Wildlife of the North
by Halle Flygare
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?