great reads

 

The next Books & Beyond meeting is on Tuesday, August 29th at 6:30pm and will likely be Zoom-only.  Click here to register to receive a Zoom link the morning of the meeting. 

The topic up for discussion is ecology and, if you need some inspiration, there are some suggestions on the Shelf Care page of our website. 

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder by Susan Wels
Fast read about a religious sex cult in upstate New York in the 1800s, the Oneidas. Fascinating nonfiction read. It explores how the members of this cult intersected with American society in the 1800s, ultimately leading to the assassination of President Garfield.

Middlegame by Seannan McGuire
Alchemy and science meet in this trippy fantasy about twins separated at birth in America and how they reunite to destroy the evil machinations of the alchemists that separated them and become masters of reality. The boy is a master of language, the girl is a master of math. The plot line is complicated and winding. Be prepared for a lot of horror elements, death and destruction!

Lake Silence by Anne Bishop
This story exists in a parallel universe where monsters (the Others - vampires, shape-shifters, and other deadlier creatures) control the world and humans are merely prey. As part of her divorce, Vicki DeVine owns a rustic lodge on some property along Lake Silence. She with her shape-shifting lodger become involved with a mystery that threatens to disturb the balance between the Others and the humans, with deadly consequences.

The Hidden Species paranormal romance series by Louisa Masters
If you like to read (or listen to) monstrous creatures delighting in carnal activities, then this series is for you. It's also got great characters and a good action adventure plot line that makes them very fast reads.
Demons Do It Better
One Bite with a Vampire
Hijinks with a Hellhound
Sorcerers Always Satisfy

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
In 1970s Long Island, New York, the Rolffs are staying in a mysterious mansion for the summer. What could go wrong?! The wife spends her days obsessing over cleaning the house. The husband begins turning into a brute. Their once, spry elderly aunt begins to become more confused. And let’s not forget to mention that, as part of their rental agreement, the family must give food to the elderly matriarch of the owners 3 times a day on the top floor of the house. The house is strange and creepy. It makes strange thumping noises. Creepy house, changes in personality, mysterious circumstances abound in this supernatural horror book. Look for the movie, too. Bette Davis plays the aunt.

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
In 1970s, the Constantines move from New York to an isolated village in Connecticut named Cornwall Coombe. The Constantines love the quaint, natural, and friendly villagers. However, strange customs and circumstances start happening around them. Think of The Wicker Man and Midsommar. There is also a mini-series starring Bette Davis.  

The Other by Thomas Tryon
Holland and Niles Perry are identical thirteen-year-old twins. They are close, close enough, almost, to read each other’s thoughts, but they couldn’t be more different. Holland is bold and mischievous, while Niles is kind and eager to please. The extended clan has gathered at its ancestral farm to mourn the death of the twins’ father in a most unfortunate accident. Mrs. Perry still hasn’t recovered from the shock of her husband’s gruesome end and stays sequestered in her room, leaving her sons to roam free. As the summer goes on, though, and Holland’s pranks become increasingly sinister, Niles finds he can no longer make excuses for his brother’s actions.

The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism by Octavio Paz, translated by Helen Lane
In this series of essays Paz explores the intimate connection between sex, eroticism, and love in literature throughout the ages. Rich in scope, The Double Flame examines everything from taboo to repression, Carnival to Lent, Sade to Freud, original sin to artificial intelligence.

The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes
In The Courage to Write, Ralph Keyes, an author who has taught writing for more than thirty years, assures us that anxiety is felt by writers at every level, especially when they dare to do their best. Keyes also offers specifics on how to root out dread of public "performance" and of the judgment of family and friends, make the best use of writers' workshops and conferences, and handle criticism of works in progress. 

Minx by Sophie Lark
Ramses Howell is a self-made man. He’s proven he can get what he wants, and from the moment Blake Abbot catches his eye, she becomes his top priority. Blake wonders what took Ramses so long — she knew who he was years before. They strike a deal to play a very specific game. Ramses created the game for Blake, but she adds rules that Ramses has no intention of following. As fantasy invades reality, the arrangement consumes them both. Blake and Ramses cross lines they swore they never would, and each begins to question what they thought they always wanted.

Poldark is a series of historical novels by Winston Graham. The series comprises 12 novels and spans the 18th and 19th centuries. Ross Poldark is a British Army officer who returns to his home in Cornwall from the Revolutionary War in America to a family that believed him dead.
Ross Poldark
Demelza
Jeremy Poldark
Warleggan
The Black Moon
The Four Swans
The Angry Tide
The Stranger from the Sea
The Miller’s Dance
The Loving Cup
The Twisted Sword
Bella Poldark

Grant by Ron Chernow
Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Meet Elizabeth Zott: “a gifted research chemist, absurdly self-assured and immune to social convention” (The Washington Post) in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show.

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James McPherson
McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war.

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham
Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America.

Each season, the Slow Burn podcast takes a deep dive into a different event:
Season 1: Watergate (8 episodes)
Season 2: Clinton–Lewinsky scandal (8 episodes)
Season 3: Biggie and Tupac (9 episodes)
Season 4: David Duke (6 episodes)
Season 5: The Road to the Iraq War (8 episodes)
Season 6: The L.A. Riots (8 episodes)
Season 7: Roe v. Wade (4 episodes)
Season 8: Clarence Thomas (4 episodes)

The One Year podcast explores the people and struggles that changed America—one year at a time. In each episode, host Josh Levin explores a story you may have forgotten, or one you’ve never heard of before. What were the moments that transformed politics, culture, science, religion, and more? And how does the nation’s past shape our present?

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to TakeOver America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.

Mrs. Davis is a science fiction comedy drama limited series spanning 8 episodes, exclusively streaming via Peacock TV. Sister Simone partners with her ex-boyfriend Wiley on a globe-spanning journey to destroy Mrs. Davis, a powerful artificial intelligence.

The Boyds of Black River by Walter D. Edmunds
There was always something going on in the rambling old mansion that housed the big Boyd family. The Boyds were country genre in the old sense, and they lived to the hilt, as gentry could at the turn of the century, on a prosperous, sprawling farm in upstate New York. It was a good life, overflowing with excitement, humor, good food and good drink, the smell of autumn leaves, the silence of deep snowdrifts, the clatter of the barnyard - all the million activities of country life at its fullest and best.

Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins
Six stunning twentysomethings are about to embark on a blissful, free-spirited journey―one filled with sun-drenched days and intoxicating nights. But as it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in, sending them on a dangerous spiral of discovery.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. 

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann
From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

Photo by Alejandro Barba on Unsplash