Books & Beyond

 

The next Books & Beyond Discussion Group (BAB) meeting will be Tuesday, January 27 at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion is gold rushes.  Don’t get too bogged down in what that means!  If you’re looking for ideas, click here to find the BAB area on our Shelf Care page to see some of the books out on display at the 2^nd floor service desk.

Last week, BAB met for our final chat of 2025 and there was no assigned topic.  I’m always surprised and pleased at the great variety of information our members bring to the table!

A Taste of Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the KillersWho Use Them by Neil Bradbury

As any reader or listener of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring—and popular—weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict? In a fascinating blend of popular science, medical history, and true crime, Dr. Neil Bradbury explores this most morbidly captivating method of murder from a cellular level.

Hidden Killers BBC series (streaming on Tubi, the Roku Channel, and Youtube)

Suzannah Lipscomb reveals the killers that lurked in every room of the Tudor, Victorian, Edwardian, and Post-war home.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The first in a series of outlandishly clever adventures featuring the resourceful, fearless literary detective, Thursday Next. In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.

The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories

Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favorite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets Nick, a wedding guest asking for her help, she finds the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. And when Nick disappears without a trace, his cagey business partner becomes the gang’s next stop. It seems the duo have something valuable—something worth killing for.

Christmas with the Queen by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb

December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue the tradition of her late father’s Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must evolve with the times, and the queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change. 

As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, old friends—Jack Devereux and Olive Carter—are unexpectedly reunited by the occasion. Olive, a single mother and aspiring reporter at the BBC, leaps at the opportunity to cover the holiday celebration, but even a chance encounter with the queen doesn’t go as planned and Olive wonders if she will ever be taken seriously. 

Jack, a recently widowed chef, reluctantly takes up a new role in the royal kitchens at Sandringham. Lacking in purpose and direction, Jack has abandoned his dream to have his own restaurant, but his talents are soon noticed and while he might not believe in himself, others do, and a chance encounter with an old friend helps to reignite the spark of his passion and ambition. As Jack and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmases, they grow ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret that threatens to destroy everything. 

Christmas Day, December 1957. As the nation eagerly awaits the Queen’s first televised Christmas speech, there is one final gift for the Christmas season to deliver… 

The Gown by Jennifer Robson

An enthralling historical novel about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the twentieth century—Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown—and the fascinating women who made it.

The Twelve Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas by James Patterson

At Christmastime, the Sullivans are missing someone dear to them ... until unexpected guests begin to arrive at their empty brownstone in Harlem—and they keep coming. And they stay. For twelve long, hard, topsy-turvy, messy days. But that’s when the Sullivans discover that the moments in life that defy hope, expectation, or even imagination, might be the best gifts of all.

Miranda Mills Youtube channel

Subscribe for weekly reading vlogs and seasonal living inspiration in the English countryside. I especially enjoy reading golden age mysteries, classic literature, vintage books and nature writing. Join me as I share reading vlogs, literary adventures, book hauls and reviews.

Lords & Ladles (requires an Acorn TV subscription, but there are many clips on Youtube)

Lords and Ladles feature three of Ireland's top chefs - Derry Clarke, Catherine Fulvio and Paul Flynn - who are challenged to recreate elaborate menus from different centuries in some of Ireland's grandest Country Homes.

London Rules by Mick Herron

Ian Fleming. John le Carré. Len Deighton. Mick Herron. The brilliant plotting of Herron’s twice CWA Dagger Award-winning Slough House series of spy novels is matched only by his storytelling gift and an ear for viciously funny political satire.

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Crackling with the personalities, conflicts, and ambitions that transformed the media from something that followed the news to something that formed it, The Powers That Be is David Halberstam's forceful account of the rise of modern media as an instrument of political power, published here with a new introduction by the author.

Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon by Michael Adams (not available in the JCLC, request from Interlibrary Loan)

In its seven years on television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has earned critical acclaim and a massive cult following among teen viewers. One of the most distinguishing features of the program is the innovative way the show's writers play with language: fabricating new words, morphing existing ones, and throwing usage on its head. The result has been a strikingly resonant lexicon that reflects the power of both youth culture and television in the evolution of American slang. Using the show to illustrate how new slang is formed, transformed, and transmitted, Slayer Slang is one of those rare books that combines a serious explanation of a pop culture phenomena with an engrossing read for fans of the show, word geeks, and language professionals.

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

Meg Mackworth’s hand-lettering skill has made her famous as the Planner of Park Slope, designing custom journals for her New York City clientele. She has another skill too: reading signs that other people miss. Knowing the upcoming marriage of Reid Sutherland and his polished fiancée was doomed to fail is one thing, but weaving a secret word of warning into their wedding program is another. Meg may have thought no one would spot it, but she hadn’t counted on sharp-eyed, pattern-obsessed Reid. A year later, Reid has tracked Meg down to find out how she knew that his meticulously planned future was about to implode. 

Law & Order (tv show)

A BAB member reports that all 25 seasons have dropped for streaming on Hulu! Lives hang in the balance as detectives and prosecutors pursue justice in New York City. In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing the evidence and questioning the suspects until someone is taken into custody. The district attorney's office then builds a case to convict the perpetrator by proving the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Working together, these expert teams navigate all sides of the complex criminal justice system to make New York a safer place -- and keep the worst offenders off the streets.

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. Electrifying and ambitious, The Weight of Ink is about women separated by centuries—and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order to reconcile the life of the heart and mind.  

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called “a tour de force” by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultranationalist fanatics.

A Traitor to Memory by Elizabeth George

When Eugenie Davies is killed by a driver on a quiet London street, her death is clearly no accident. Someone struck her with a car and then deliberately ran over her body before driving off, leaving nothing behind but questions.

What brought Eugenie Davies to London on a rainy autumn night? Why was she carrying the name of the man who found her body? Who among the many acquaintances in her complicated and tragic life could have wanted her dead? And could her murder have some connection to a twenty-eight-year-old musical wunderkind, a virtuoso violinist who several months earlier suddenly and inexplicably lost the ability to play a single note? For Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, whose own domestic life is about to change radically, these questions are only the first in an investigation that leads him to walk a fine line between personal loyalty and professional honor.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice. 

Children of Men by P.D. James

Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race. Told with P. D. James’s trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storytelling, The Children of Men is a story of a world with no children and no future.

1923 (tv show)

This prequel spinoff from the Yellowstone series follows an earlier generation of The Duttons as they face a new set of challenges in the early 20th century, including the rise of Western expansion, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.

We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of ModernIreland by Fintan O’Toole

In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Ireland’s Dirty Laundry documentary film (I don't find this readily streaming anywhere)

Built on the testimony of those who worked in Ireland's notorious Magdalene Laundries, this documentary tells the full, shocking story of a shameful system, created by the Irish State but supported by all levels of Irish society, which enslaved over 10,000 women for decades. The film bears witness to the women's experiences in their own words, before during and after their time in the laundries, and show how, even today, attempts are being made to try to silence them. We examine not only why and how the Magdalene phenomenon arose, but also how it was allowed to continue unchallenged for so long. At every level - family, parish and state - Irish society, at best, turned a blind eye; at worst, it supported, facilitated and even profited from the operation of these institutions, while perpetuating the stigma and shame of the women imprisoned there.

The Chieftans: Live Over Ireland, Water from the Well (I don't find this readily streaming anywhere)

Journey with The Chieftains to the special places and people of the home counties that formed the band’s musical soul. Derek Bell, Kevin Conneff, Martin Fay, Sean Keane, Matt Molloy, and Paddy Moloney tell the tales of their earliest memories of Irish music. Their thoughtful and often amusing stories capture the emotion behind the scenes of every performance.

Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre (streaming on Netflix)

In 1974, while on the way home from a gig, the apolitical Irish rock group, The Miami Showband, fell into the crosshairs of a Protestant unionist paramilitary group that planted explosives on their bus when it was stopped at a fake checkpoint.

Philomena (film)

A world-weary political journalist picks up the story of a woman's search for her son, who was taken away from her decades ago after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent.

New Orleans' Irish Channel neighborhood 

Bound by Jackson Avenue and Delachaise, Magazine, and Tchoupitoulas streets, New Orleans’ Irish Channel is a quaint neighborhood named in honor of the wave of Irish immigrants who first settled there in the 1830s. Then, it was known for its shotgun homes, working-class community, and the ports and breweries where many residents worked. Today, the Irish Channel remains a mainly residential neighborhood with a thriving brewery scene and a number of local hangouts and restaurants. 

 

Item descriptions pulled from Amazon, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Youtube.