Staff Recommendations
Robert Anderson
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The anatomy of desire : a novel
by Dorn, L. R.
August 9, 2021
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At a secluded mountain lake, a young couple rent a canoe. A few hours later, the overturned canoe is discovered, and the body of a woman is found in the lake, drowned and showing evidence of head injuries. Her companion is soon arrested and charged with first-degree murder. If this sounds familiar, you have probably either read Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel An American Tragedy or seen the famous 1951 film adaptation A Place in the Sun, with Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, and Elizabeth Taylor. Dreiser based his story on a real-life case that occurred in New York’s... Read Full Review
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Never turn back : a novel
by Swann, Christopher, 1970-
December 7, 2020
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Author and teacher Christopher Swann once heard from his parents about an unnerving incident that occurred late in the evening at their home. A young woman came to the door, on the run from a bad situation she’d found herself in, and begged them to let her in. Fortunately for all concerned, her pursuers did not track her down and eventually went away, but the story made Swann think about how he would have reacted if he’d been there and events had taken a more violent turn. He has put his speculations to good use in this novel--his second thriller.Ethan Faulkner, the story’s protagonist, is a... Read Full Review
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Scandinavian noir : in pursuit of a mystery
by Lesser, Wendy
November 24, 2020
Call Number: 839.53 L638
In the course of the past thirty years, Scandinavian crime fiction has become an increasingly popular genre among English-speaking readers and television viewers, to the extent that a guidebook called Nordic Noir was published in 2013.Wendy Lesser, editor of the journal Threepenny Review, author of numerous books about literature and art, and confirmed Nordic noir fan, has approached the topic from a different angle in her latest book. In the... Read Full Review
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Five days gone : the mystery of my mother's disappearance as a child
by Cumming, Laura
May 18, 2020
Call Number: 362.70942 C971
It was a crisp autumn day in 1929 when Veda Elston took three-year-old Betty to the beach to play with her new pail and shovel in the seaside Lincolnshire village of Chapel St. Leonards on England’s east coast, just a short walk from their home. After turning her attention from the little girl for a few seconds, Veda looked up from her knitting to find that Betty had disappeared from view. Knowing that there hadn’t been time for her to wade into the water, Veda began a search of the area, soon enlisting neighbors and summoning her husband, George, back from his work as a traveling salesman.... Read Full Review
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The beneficiary : fortune, misfortune, and the story of my father
by Scott, Janny
April 28, 2020
Call Number: 709.2 S428Sc
We hear a lot these days about “the 1%” -- those Americans who are wealthier than 99% of the nation’s population. Janny Scott, a New York Times reporter, who has also written a biography of Barack Obama’s mother, knows about this group from the inside, because she grew up in a family that was definitely part of the 1%--the Montgomery/Scott clan of Villanova, Pennsylvania, in the posh Philadelphia suburbs known as the Main Line. In 1909, Janny’s great-grandfather, Col. R. L. Montgomery, an investment banker, purchased about 800 acres of land along the Main Line and built a 50-... Read Full Review