@ Your Library
Whew! It is already the middle of July. Not quite sure how the days are speeding by so quickly, but I try and encourage everyone else to try as well to spend a few minutes each day just appreciating where I (you) am and notice something beautiful. Then I pick up a book and read to slow down and recognize that humans can’t be on the run all the time.
Summer often means family. Here are some books that might make you feel good about the family you have. The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith travels to stunning Alaskan wilderness aboard a cruise ship with Greta accompanying her father on the cruise booked to celebrate her parents 40th anniversary, but her mother died suddenly and Greta has fallen apart just like her dad warned her she would. Can they heal their wounds from losing a wife and mom and heal their relationship?
Jill Shalvis is a well-know author of light romances and The Family You Make is no exception. Levi is stranded on a ski life with Jane, a complete stranger. They watch the gondola in front of them hurl down the mountain and Levi calls his folks to tell them goodbye and tells them he has found a girlfriend and will die happy. But they survive and now Levi wants Jane to meet the close-knit familly, but her childhood was traumatic and she doesn’t know if she can be around a family that cherishes one another. Love, Hate & Clickbait by Liz Bowery is a political rom-com with Thom and Clay both working for the governor of California’s presidential campaign and they get under one another’s skin regularly. Then in the midst of a very heated argument a photographer snaps a photo that goes viral that makes them look like they are kissing not arguing.
Sienna loses two children over ten months in similar circumstances in Deciduous by Michael Devendorf and decides to move into the treehouse where all her memories of her children are positive, but then a majestic tree from her past begins to morph in her mind into a menacing shape with limbs draped in leaves and skeletal hands. Can she figure out what happened to her children, was she to blame, was it just an accident? What and where are the secrets hiding? Continuing with the suspenseful, try Alex Kava’s “Ryder Creed series.” Ryder Creed, a former marine, now devoted to his K-9 business in the Florida panhandle, trains abandoned dogs for scent detection. The first four books are Breaking Creed, Silent Creed, Reckless Creed and Lost Creed.
I’ll end with two historical fiction novels in England, set in World War I and then the 1970’s. A Light Beyond the Trenches by Alan Hlad is based on the true story of the first school to train guide dogs for the blind. The Moon, the Stars and Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan explores holiday camps, seaside entertainers, and eccentrics on the Brighton seafront.