Soon to be a motion picture, The Light Between Oceans is an Australian novel with themes of love, loss, and isolation. Set in the years following World War I on a fictional lighthouse island miles from shore, PTSD-suffering Tom and his young wife Isabel are being torn apart by multiple miscarriages. When a baby and a dead man in a boat wash ashore, they decide to keep the child as their own, not knowing the consequences that decision will bring in the future. This might
CW Cooke is a comic book writer living in the Kansas City area who has been working in comics since 2007. He has been published by Action Lab, Big Dog Ink, Viper, Bluewater, Arcana, and Devil’s Due Entertainment with his creator-owned series Solitary.
I was hesitant to start this book. I rarely seek out books about World War II because they bring out a lot of emotions that I'm not always ready to experience. I also find that books with a lot of hype tend to fall below my expectations. I'm really glad I looked past my issues and picked up a copy of The Nightingale. I could not put this book down. The writing was incredibly rich and engaging.
Slow and steady wins the race, right? Then what’s the deal with all the timed tests our kids have to suffer though in school? Last to Finish is a great book to help kids who experience anxiety over timed math tests understand that they are not alone, and, in fact, they just might be kinda special. As the mom of a kid who freaks out when the teacher whips out the timer, I recommend this book for kids and caregivers to read together to foster discussion about math anxiety.
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett is a lyrical and sprawling book about how a single action rebounds and spreads out over time. Here, an impulsive romantic action between two married (to other) people leads to tons of unexpected consequences, the shattering and then blending of two different families, and an unflinching look at how that action unfolds and ricochets over time.
Hildy Good has two tricks to find out anything about anyone. First, as the top real estate agent in her area, she's able to figure out more than you'd think by looking at the condition of someone's house, including the state of their health, or the state of their marriage.
Alan Proctor is a poetry editor for Kansas City Voices and a former humor columnist, tree surgeon, fundraiser, and college administrator. He serves on the board of The Writers Placebased in Kansas City.
Draco Incendia Trychophyton. That’s the official name for the spore that causes fiery veins of Dragonscale to show up on the patient’s skin. Eventually, the infected people will spontaneously combust, burning down hospitals, laboratories, and killing entire families. What’s scarier than this plague, though, is the cult-like group of infected survivors holed up at Camp Wyndham. Enter the Fireman, who can control the Dragonscale and keep it from killing him, and Harper, a pregnant former nurse trying to survive until her delivery date. While this apocalyptic novel is
Caitlin Doughty’s memoir of her journey to becoming a licensed mortician is equal parts morbid, hilarious, inspiring and ruthlessly genuine. It’s also a memoir of her fight against the fear of death, a fight that almost destroys her. Much like the orange rot that sometimes trails our faces during death, we may never be ready to see it. But Caitlin stresses throughout Smoke Gets in Your Eyes that witnessing death is how we ready ourselves for it, and even embrace its terrible beauty.
As a children’s librarian, it’s uncommon that I recommend a book about a teenage runaway to parents looking for a book about relationship-building. But author Jennifer Mathieu has written an uncommon book. I just can’t recommend it highly enough.
