Amy Kay
Hooked on Books
Fellow bibliophiles will want to keep an eye out for these exciting September book releases. Readers can reserve now by visiting www.countylibrary.ca and placing a hold.
The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang is a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the lives of four wronged women, spanning from Gilded Age New York to the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palace of Versailles. They are: a resourceful Chinatown embroideress searching for her lost love, a silver-voiced soprano who performs alongside Enrico Caruso, a mysteriously disappeared artist, and an independent female botanist obsessed with collecting a rare flower that only blooms at night. One man holds the key to their questions: Henry Thornton, the charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the Phoenix Crown. The women’s lives are thrown into chaos when the San Francisco earthquake rips the city apart and Thornton disappears leaving a mystery in his wake that reaches further than anyone could have imagined.
The Armor of Light by Ken Follett is the long-awaited sequel to A Column of Fire. In Kingsbridge, England, progress clashes with tradition, class struggles push into every part of society, and war in Europe engulfs the entire continent and beyond. The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere. A mother’s husband is killed in a work accident due to negligence; a young woman fights to fund her school for impoverished children; a well-intentioned young man unexpectedly inherits a failing business; one man ruthlessly protects his wealth no matter the cost, all the while war cries are heard from France, as Napoleon sets forth a violent master plan to become emperor of the world. As institutions are challenged and toppled in unprecedented fashion, ripples of change ricochet through our characters’ lives as they are left to reckon with the future and a world they must rebuild from the ashes of war.
Evil Eye by Etaf Rum tells the story of Yara, raised in a conservative and emotionally volatile Palestinian family in Brooklyn. Yara marries a charming entrepreneur and escapes to the suburbs. After responding to a colleague’s racist provocation, Yara is put on probation and must attend mandatory counseling to keep her position. Her mother blames a family curse for the trouble she’s facing, and while Yara doesn’t really believe in superstitions, still finds herself growing increasingly uneasy with her mother’s warnings. Yara finds her carefully constructed world beginning to implode. Yara must reckon with the reality that the difficulties of the childhood she thought she left behind have very real and damaging implications not just for her own future but that of her daughters.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith is her first historical novel based on events that happened in Kilburn, 1873. The ‘Tichborne Trial’ has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs. Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be or an imposter. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also skeptical. She suspects England of being a land of façades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost, that the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize.
Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood is a funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink who finally pushes back. Grace Adams gave birth, blinked and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled. The unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away. Grace is about to remind her husband, her daughter and, most importantly, herself, that she’s still as amazing as she ever was.