Staff Recommendations
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The Night of Baba Yaga
by Ōtani, Akira
Reviewed by: Yoko Hata, Adult Librarian, Central LibraryAugust 29, 2025
王谷晶の小説 (ババヤガの夜)（2020 年刊行）が、このたび英国推理作家協会主催のダガー賞を受賞しました。本作は、ロサンゼルス・タイムズの2024年度「この夏読むべきミステリー5選」にも選出され、その面白さは世界中で高く評価されています.
物語は、主人公・新道依子がひょんなことから暴力団の会長の一人娘のボディーガードを務めるところから始まります。暴力が渦巻く危険な日常のなか、依子は飄々と、時には暴力には暴力で対抗しながら生き抜いていきます。この作品の大きな魅力は、「女性はこうあるべき」という日本社会に根付いた固定観念を、痛快に笑い飛ばし、力強く打ち砕いていく点です.
主人公の依子は、いわゆる「美人」でも「スリム」でもありません。しかし、彼女はどこまでも強く、たくましく、野性味に満ちています。容赦ないバイオレンス描写の連続でありながら、圧倒的なスピード感で読者を惹きつけます。その鮮やかな文章力は、まるで映画やグラフィックノベルを見ているかのような臨場感に満ち、読後にはなぜか爽快感さえ覚えるでしょう.
作者の背景を知ることで、この作品の深みはさらに増します。本に囲まれた幼少期、鬱による引きこもり生活で膨大な映画や小説を貪り読んだ経験が、作品に色濃く反映されています。特に、ブレッド・イーストン・エリスの『アメリカン・サイコ』... Read Full Review
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Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder
by Yuzuki, Asako
Reviewed by: Yoko Hata, Adult Librarian, Central LibraryJune 17, 2025
皆さんは、柚木麻子さんの小説 (Butter) をもうお読みになりましたか?
この作品は、2009 年に日本で実際に起きた「首都圏連続婚活殺人事件」をモチーフにしたフィクションです。この物語は、単なる犯罪ミステリーではありません。物語の中心となるのは、複数の男性を毒殺した容疑で収監されている女性・梶井真奈子(カジマナ)と、彼女に取材を重ねる週刊誌記者・町田里佳です. 事件の真相を追うだけだったはずの里佳は、カジマナとの対話を通じて、自分の周りの人たちを巻き込みながら、自分自身の内面と向き合わざるを得なくなっていきます.
物語は、「女性は美しいほうがいい」「女性は若いほうがいい」「女性は痩せていたほうがいい」「女性は家庭的なほうがいい」といった、日本に根強く残る社会の固定観念や偏見を、読む者に鋭く問いかけてきます。それと同時に、数々の料理が、物語の重要なポイントとして登場する点も、大きな魅力です. 作品内に登場する数々のレシピや食事の場面は、読者の五感に訴えかけてきます。ただ読むだけでなく、その料理を味わわずにはいられないような描写に満ちているのです.
実際、私自身も物語の中に登場する「バター醤油ご飯」が気になってしまい、気が付けば台所に立っていました. 本を読みながら、その中に出てくる料理を作り味わうという体験は、... Read Full Review
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Another Fine Mess
by Ryan, Lindy
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJune 13, 2025
The Evans Funeral Parlor has existed for almost as long as the Southeastern Texas town in which it's located. It is a generational business, overseen and passed down through the Evans women. There's Ducy, the family's current matriarch, who is the daughter of Pie, who mysteriously disappeared eighteen years ago. Ducy's daughter is Lenore. Lenore's daughter is Grace, who is the mother of the youngest Evans woman, seventeen-year-old Luna. The Evens Funeral Parlor offers all of the services you would expect: preparing the dead for interment, viewings, burials, and cremation. They can help... Read Full Review
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When the Going Was Good
by Carter, Graydon
Reviewed by: Diedre Johnson, Office Services Assistant, Library DepartmentJune 5, 2025
Call Number: 072.092 C323
If you've ever wondered, in the slightest, what it was like to work at a magazine during the prosperous 1990s and the early aughts, former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's When the Going Was Good may be the book for you. It is an easy read of approximately 400 pages, documenting a time when reporters and writers were having a moment. If one were lucky enough to contribute to or staff-write for one of the national glossy magazines, it meant high salaries, expansive expense accounts, and engaging work trips for a publication partially bankrolled by loads of six-figure... Read Full Review
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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
by Schwab, Victoria
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryMay 14, 2025
In 2020, V.E. Schwab introduced readers to Addie LaRue, a young woman who makes a Faustian bargain to avoid an unwanted marriage in early 18th-century France. In The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Schwab follows Addie through the centuries as Addie, through her own cunning and strength of will, molds the bargain into mostly what she wanted and learns to live with the terms of the agreement into which she has entered.
Now, Schwab is back with the story of three women, Maria, Lottie, and Alice. While they are separated by centuries and dispositions, there is a shared... Read Full Review
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Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of my People
by Perry, Imani
Reviewed by: Diedre Johnson, Office Services Assistant, Library DepartmentApril 23, 2025
Call Number: 301.45096 P463-1
Black and blue, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Little Girl Blue, The Bluest Eye, A Patch of Blue—these are just a sampling of the expressions, books, song titles, and films that made up the soundtrack of Black lives in America. In Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, author Imani Perry explains how the color blue not only gave comfort and motivation to enslaved people but also continues to mean so much to so many.
Early in the book, Perry describes the term "blue-black," a description of a skin tone that is dipped in a... Read Full Review
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Good Dirt
by Wilkerson, Charmaine
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryFebruary 21, 2025
When Ebony "Ebby" Freeman was ten years old, she was the sole witness of a botched home invasion robbery that resulted in the shooting death of her fifteen-year-old brother, Baz, and the destruction of a priceless family heirloom.
The fact that Ebby is the daughter of a prominent Black family living in an exclusive development in New England only added to the sensational nature of the crime and thrust Ebby into a traditional and social media firestorm she never wanted and has worked tirelessly to avoid. Until she can’t. When her engagement to the only child of another high-profile... Read Full Review
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But Not Too Bold
by Pueyo, H.
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryFebruary 5, 2025
Dália’s life changed the morning the maid found the typewritten note that said:
"HIRE A NEW KEEPER OF THE KEYS; URGENT; BEFORE DAWN"
Everyone in Capricious House knew what the note meant and who had written it. Its author was the Lady of Capricious House, Lady Anatema, a gargantuan spider/human hybrid with a taste for laudanum who is searching for a bride. The meaning of the note was clear: the old keeper of the keys was dead, and Dália, her apprentice, would be taking her place.
For as long as she can remember, Dália has been Ms. Matilde’s, the Keeper of the Keys,... Read Full Review
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The Murder of Mr. Ma
by Nee, John Shen Yen, Rozan, SJ
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryNovember 12, 2024
Call Number: M
In 1924 London, Lao She, a shy young academic, is summoned to the home of mathematician Bertrand Russell. When he arrives, Russell explains that a friend and colleague, Judge Dee Ren Jie, has been mistakenly arrested with a group of Chinese agitators. Russell is afraid that if Dee’s identity is discovered by Metropolitan Police inspector William Bard, whom Dee encountered during their shared service during WWI, the end result could be hazardous for Dee, so Russell enlists Lao in a plan to extract Dee from jail. While the plan isn’t executed as flawlessly as Russell hoped, Dee is freed. Now... Read Full Review
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From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir
by Presley, Lisa Marie
Reviewed by: Diedre Johnson, Office Services Assistant, Library DepartmentNovember 11, 2024
Call Number: 789.14 P9344
Reading From Here to the Great Unknown, the authorized memoir taken from Lisa Marie Presley's voice recordings with organization and narrative from her daughter, the actress Riley Keough, is an intimate look at rock and roll icon Elvis Presley and, for this writer, a little like revisiting the South.
Although Lisa Marie (who died in January 2023) had long lived in Los Angeles, Hawaii, and even the UK since the long-ago days with her dad at... Read Full Review
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The Lost Story
by Shaffer, Meg
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryNovember 5, 2024
Fifteen years ago, Jeremy and Ralph disappeared while on an end of the school year field trip to Red Crow State Forest in West Virginia. One moment, they were there, and then they were gone. The forest was repeatedly searched, but no signs of the boys were ever found. And then, six months later, they were discovered walking out of the forest by a pair of hikers. Ralph had been badly hurt, and Jeremy was carrying him. Medical treatment was summoned, and both boys were hospitalized and examined. Jeremy was in perfect health. Ralph had a series of long-healed scars on his back. Both boys... Read Full Review
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Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out
by Love, Ryan
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryOctober 29, 2024
Arthur Edwards has lived his entire life in the small town of Northbridge in northern England. He grew up there. And he met and married his wife, Madeleine, in Northbridge. Northbridge is where Madeleine and he raised their two children, Elizabeth and Patrick. As with most small towns, regardless of where they are located, everyone seems to know everyone else. An individual who wishes to maintain a sense of privacy about their lives must be vigilant to keep that which they don't want to become common knowledge from becoming just that.
Arthur has a secret. He's worked diligently to... Read Full Review