Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

 

From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned--from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren--an enigmatic artist and single mother--who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood--and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more...

I saw this book and was intrigued by the cover and the fact that I could watch the series that was created on HULU to watch and see someone else's interpretation of it. This book got me from the beginning and I liked the storyline and how it moved.  In a perfect seeming neighborhood, there are always secrets and things that you don't always know about your neighbors. The book was paced good and kept me guessing. I am looking forward to watching the series now. 

Didn't See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart by Rachel Hollis

 

Rachel Hollis sees you. As the millions who read her Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing, attend her RISE conferences and follow her on social media know, she also wants to see you transform. When it comes to the “hard seasons” of life—the death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job—transformation seems impossible when grief and uncertainty dominate your days. Especially when, as Didn’t See that Coming reveals, no one asks to have their future completely rearranged for them.

But, as Rachel writes, it is up to you how you come through your pain—you can come through changed for the better, having learned and grown, or stuck in place where your identity becomes rooted in what hurt you. With humor, honesty and true-life stories, in Didn’t See that Coming Rachel Hollis shares how to embrace the difficult moments in life for the learning experiences they are, and that a life well-lived is one of purpose and focused on the essentials. This is a small book about big feelings, inspirational, aspirational, and an anchor that shows that darkness can co-exist with the beautiful. 

I put this book on hold before I knew what the storyline was actually about.  I had listened to her previous books and enjoyed them so much that I figured I would like this one as well.  Even though I haven't gone though divorce or a death in my family that has hit close to home, this book is still powerful and full of things that I can relate to her with.  Overall a good read for anyone to read. 

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

 

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.

Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.

Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.

As I read the description I thought this would be more of one storyline of the fire and how it started and the investigation into who started it and why, but this book covers a lot of history of the library and how it all began and continued to grow.  I found this review on goodreads.com that I thought really described the book better than I could.

"Angela M rated it really liked it 

4.5 stars
Hundreds of thousands of books were burned to nothing but ash and hundreds of thousands of books were damaged - enough to bring chills up the spine of any book lover reading this book about the fire at the Los Angeles Public Library that occurred on April 29, 1986. The research and the writing here are impeccable. The descriptions of the fire, the librarians’ reactions, and the many, many volunteers who wanted to help - it’s as if it’s being reported in real time. The book, however, covers so much more than the story of the fire, although it’s the main focus. It is in many ways a tribute to libraries and librarians and what they stand for and the importance of the library now and in the future. It is a personal testament to Orlean’s love of libraries and her early experiences going to the library as a young child with her mother. I loved her reminiscing because it made me remember my own history with the public library in the neighborhood where I grew up. I remember the hours I spent there and some of the books that I read and the fond memories of when I worked there as a library “page” in high school and through college.

This is also a fascinating history of the LA public library and the library directors, the City Librarians, over the years. It’s the story of the people who use the library. It’s the story of the volunteers who after the fire “worked for the next three days around the clock.....They formed a human chain, passing the books hand over hand from one person to the next, through the smoky building and out the door. It was as if, in this urgent moment, people, the people of Los Angeles formed a living library. They created for a short time, a system to protect and pass along shared knowledge, to save what we know for each other, which is what libraries do every day.” I was also struck by the stunning words of a librarian, Jill Crane who helped with the cleanup and wrote in a poem:

“We held charred and water soaked
chunks of books in our hands,
history, imagination, knowledge
crumbing in our fingers.
we packed what was left.”

She also gives us Harry Peak’s story, arrested but never charged with starting the fire and describes the difficulty of proving arson and proving that he was responsible. So much is contained in the book and I felt at times that it was a little scattered moving from the fire to her experiences, to the history and then to the fire and the investigation. But ultimately it was an an emotional book for me as a retired librarian, although not a public librarian, but mostly as a book lover. The scenes described of the burned and damaged books got me in my gut and the coming together of volunteers to do what they could got me in my heart and then when several years after the fire, the library reopened. This fabulous book is an ode to librarians and the public library, which represents the fabric of our society in so many ways."

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

 

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center—a women’s reproductive health services clinic—its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.

After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.

But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester disguised as a patient, who now stands in the cross hairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy. And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.

Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day.

Jodi Picoult—one of the most fearless writers of our time—tackles a complicated issue in this gripping and nuanced novel. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, conversation . . . and, hopefully, understanding.

I started reading this one and had the hardest time getting into it.  I was trying to figure out which character went along with each narrative and it was hard.  I was listening to it via audiobook and I listened for over 2.5 hours and finally called it quits. I didn't want to keep trying to get it all mapped out in my head. 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

 

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.

But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.

This book had not been on my radar until my sister-in-law mentioned that she really enjoyed it.  As soon as I started reading it I was hooked.  The storyline is so good and easy to picture that I felt like I could see the characters and places vividly in my mind. When I reached the end I was in awe of the whole story overall.  I then read shortly after finishing that there is a movie in the early stages.  I know it will be one that I will want to go see.  I would highly recommend this story. 

A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) by Sherry Thomas

 The game is afoot as Charlotte Holmes returns in the atmospheric second novel in New York Times bestseller Sherry Thomas's Victorian-set Lady Sherlock series.

Being shunned by Society gives Charlotte Holmes the time and freedom to put her extraordinary powers of deduction to good use. As “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective,” aided by the capable Mrs. Watson, she’s had great success helping with all manner of inquiries, but she’s not prepared for the new client who arrives at her Upper Baker Street office.

Lady Ingram, wife of Charlotte’s dear friend and benefactor, wants Sherlock Holmes to find her first love, who failed to show up at their annual rendezvous. Matters of loyalty and discretion aside, the case becomes even more personal for Charlotte as the missing man is none other than Myron Finch, her illegitimate half brother.

In the meanwhile, Charlotte wrestles with a surprising proposal of marriage, a mysterious stranger woos her sister Livia, and an unidentified body that surfaces where least expected. Charlotte’s investigative prowess is challenged as never before: Can she find her brother in time—or will he, too, end up as a nameless corpse somewhere in the belly of London?

I was hoping this was a better book than the first one but I still found it hard to follow in places and it seemed to drag on.  I did find that the clues when she solved the mysteries and revealed her ideas that those made sense.  But I doubt I will read any more of this series.  They seem to be real popular by those reviews I have seen on goodreads.com but these aren't for me.