The Book of Speculation - Erika Swyler

The Book of Speculation - Erika Swyler

Summary:"Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home--a house, perched on the edge of a bluff, that is slowly crumbling toward the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards, and seldom calls. On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious package from an antiquarian bookseller. The book tells the story of Amos and Evangeline, doomed lovers who lived and worked in a traveling circus more than two hundred years ago. The paper crackles with age as Simon turns the yellowed pages filled with notes, sketches, and whimsical flourishes; and his best friend and fellow librarian, Alice, looks on in increasing alarm. Why does his grandmother's name, Verona Bonn, appear in this book? Why do so many women in his family drown on July 24? Could there possibly be some kind of curse on his family--and could Enola, who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in six years, risk the same fate in just a few weeks? In order to save her--and perhaps himself--Simon must try urgently to decode his family history while moving on from the past. The Book of Speculation is Erika Swyler's gorgeous and moving debut, a wondrous novel about the power of books and family and magic"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews

Long Island librarian Simon Watson knows loss. His mother purposely drowned herself and his father died a few years later. The little sister he had to raise ran off and now contacts him only infrequently. One day Simon receives an unsolicited book in the mail, posted from a book dealer who invites Simon to contact him for more information. The mysterious volume documents some previous suicides by drowning dating back to the early nineteenth century. Amazingly, they all took place on July 24. More sleuthing turns up the startling information that these doomed women were, in fact, ancestors of his mother, and, like his mother, they were all employed as circus performers. Simon then has to figure out if this family curse will claim his sister's life as well, and the next July 24 is but weeks away. Illustrations by the author add even more atmosphere to her prose. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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I Work at a Public Library - Gina Sheridan

I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks - Sheridan, Gina

Summary: Collects strange-but-true anecdotes, heartwarming stories, and humorous interactions with patrons from a public librarian.



St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reviews
"Librarians will surely nod their heads and either sigh or laugh. As they say at the library: Check it out."

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Poppy Done to Death - Charlaine Harris

Poppy Done to Death (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries) - Harris, Charlaine

Summary: When her sister-in-law Poppy is found murdered, amateur sleuth Aurora Teagarden teams up with Poppy's boyfriend, a local police detective, to solve the case, in spite of complications caused by their own past relationship.




Library Journal Reviews
Librarian/sleuth Aurora ("Roe") Teagarden (Last Scene Alive) has problems: after discovering the dead body of her sister-in-law, she tracks down the woman's "missing" husband at his current girlfriend's house, shelters her own teenaged runaway half-brother, and juggles both a successful writer/boyfriend and several would-be love interests. But all this pressure seems to sharpen her sleuthing, for Aurora is nothing if not organized-she even finds a stray (but crucial) gas receipt in her kitchen. Well-established characters, family concerns, wry humor, and small-town busybodies solidify the plot of this delightful cozy.

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The archivist - Martha Cooley

The archivist: a novel - Martha Cooley

Summary: A battle of wills between Matt, a careful, orderly archivist for a private university, and Roberta, a determined young poet, over a collection of T. S. Eliot's letters, sealed by bequest until 2019, sparks an unusual friendship and reawakens painful memories of the past. A first novel. 30,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
The articulate yet restrained archivist who narrates this exceptional first novel confides, "Books never cease to astonish me," a sentiment that could easily be aroused by Cooley's resolute and somber tale. It takes great vision and verve to work with the heavily freighted materials she handles so adroitly: the terrible legacy of the Holocaust; questions of faith, conversion, and sanity; and the life and poetry of T. S. Eliot. Using Eliot's tragic first marriage, religious convictions, and abortive relationship with his confidante, Emily Hale, as a template, Cooley explores and extends his traumas through the prisms of her highly cerebral characters. Now in his sixties, Matthias takes quiet pleasure in his guardianship of a university archive that contains letters between Eliot and Hale. This invaluable correspondence is off-limits until 2019, but Roberta, an attractive poet, is determined to gain access to it and draws Matthias into a tense tango of negotiations that unfreezes painful memories of his poet-wife's suicide. Much of Cooley's unusual novel flows like a psychological thriller, and even its slow passages are moodily compelling. ((Reviewed March 15, 1998)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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