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It is Christmas at Weyfield Hall, the worn country estate of the Birch Family.  Andrew and Emma and their grown children, Olivia and Phoebe, are gathering for some time together over the holiday .  The twist to this time away is that they will be under quarantine.  Olivia is a physician and has just completed a medical goodwill mission in

Good historical fiction, is there anything quite as satisfying? Mark Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky tells the story of Pino Lello, a young man coming of age in Italy during World War II.  Pino’s parents live in Milan and own a purse store.  In 1943, the store is destroyed by bombs, and Pino is sent to live in the Alps

I preface this recommendation by saying I am a fool for David Sedaris’s writing.  To me, his grocery list could be a best seller.  Imagine my delight, then, when Sedaris decided to publish his diaries…and it was thick!  I almost had to take a week off from the library to indulge my curiosity.  (I do love my summer vacations, so

Do you read poetry? I do, albeit occasionally.  I think I am most attracted to poetry when I am trying to make sense of something, or trying to give language to a feeling.  I turn to Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things when the world is too much, the gentle lyrics of Nicolette Larson when driving home from dropping my

Have you read Ruth Ware?  A few of my colleagues raved about her debut novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood.  Give them a slot on the Staff Picks shelf and In a Dark, Dark Wood is always out.  How about The Woman in Cabin 10?  That psychological thriller is still usually on the HOLD shelf, and the audio version was just recommended

I dropped my daughter off at college for her second year, and visited with friends and family who live away and was reminded of how terrible I am with goodbyes.  As a child, I cried in the back of the station wagon until Massachusetts when we left our cousins after a visit;  my farewells still have waterworks!  So…it should be no

There is a running joke about the weight of my vacation book bag(s) among my friends, particularly the friends that help me carry them.  A suggestion was made for me to consider paperbacks this year.  What?  I like to read new books, hardcover and hot off the press! (Also, an easy trick to be sure I haven’t already read a

The Amber Shadows, Lucy Ribchester’s sophomore novel, is a fantastic mystery set in Bletchley Park in 1942.  Honey Dechamps is a Type X Machine worker in Hut 6, transcribing decrypted signals from the Germans.  Walking home one night, she meets Felix and his greyhound; he gives her a package with Russian postmarks and the branding of two censors.  Inside in a

Many Mainers have heard the story of the Northwoods Hermit, but is it just an urban legend?  Journalist Michael Finkel says no, and sets out to give us the truth in Stranger in the Woods:  The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. The hermit in question is Christopher Knight.  Knight grew up near Albion, Maine and later moved to

Maggie Hope is back, in World War II Paris, and things are not as light and neatly wrapped.   The Paris Spy is a new release, and the seventh book in this mystery series.  Maggie was a typist for Winston Churchill when we first met her; now she is an SOE (Special Operations Executive) spy living in Paris and keeping company with