Welcome to the latest newsletter from that marvelous spot in downtown Sumner where you can find sunshine on the shelves and quirky characters eager to entertain you. Oh, and books. We have books as well.
First on our list this week is The Devil's Ransom, Brad Taylor's latest Pike Logan novel. It's a story about cover ops and ransomware and geo-political maneuvering. Brad Taylor has been writing this series for awhile, and he hasn't run out of storylines about folks who want to roll back the clock to simpler times. Times like, you know, the Cold War or the Middle Ages or a variety of other periods when certain people had all the power and the rest of us cowered in the woods. So, as you can imagine, people talk about computer stuff, spy sh*t happens, and things blow up.
Frankly, we're just fondly remembering those days, but a year ago, when new hardbacks didn't cost . . . well, more than a dozen cups of fancy coffee.
Okay, a half dozen. Whatever.
Meanwhile, Dean Koontz is back this week with The House at the End of the World, which is about a recluse who lives on Jacob's Ladder Island, where she paints and talks to the foxes. Enter two guys from nearby Ringrock—which isn't a resort island, by the way—who want something from Jacob's Ladder (Koontz's use of symbolic inference is never buried too deep). Naturally, they are jerks about what they want, and naturally our recluse happens to be a badass. Things get worse, as they do in a Koontz novel.
And speaking of idyllic island life upset by the arrival of nefarious government agencies, here is Paul Harding's This Other Eden. Inspired by the history of Malaga Island, off the coast of Maine, This Other Eden tells the tale of a poor community living without a fuss on a small island, the members of which are forcibly evacuated and institutionalized by the state, merely for being (a) poor, (b) uneducated, and (c) in the way of plans to transform the island into a resort.
Harding hasn't written a novel in a while, but his previous book, Tinkers, won the Pulitzer Prize. Here's hoping he can craft some stellar sentences around a fairly bleak sounding plot.
Look. Here's something to distract you from the unending misery that is our ability to be mean to each other. Dan Levitt's What's Gotten Into You is the story of what's inside your body. Right now! On its own! Not just lingering atoms from the Big Bang, but also that meal from the other day which is still giving you indigestion. Did you know there's enough chlorine currently in your body to disinfect a medium pond of mosquitos? Or that you could be composted down into a fifty-pound bag of charcoal? Crazy talk, we know.
And speaking of thinky topics, here is Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, David Graeber's final book. Graeber recently co-wrote the stupendous The Dawn of Everything and Pirate Enlightenment is about 1/3 of the length. But no less interesting. Graeber had an opportunity to do some ethnographic work among the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled in Madagascar in the early portion of the 18th century. These folks, Graeber argues, were a protodemocratic society, and, in fact, many of their ideals came to shape the European Enlightenment.
How about that? Liberty, equality, and egalitarianism are pirate traditions. Well, well, well.
And here is Unraveling, Peggy Orenstein's journey of self-discovery during COVID where she set out to knit a sweater. From scratch. Like raise the sheep, shear the sheep, spin the yarn, dye the yarn, knit the f*cking thing from scratch. Because, you know, therapy or something.
Anyway, Orenstein happens to be a lively memoirist, which turns Unraveling into more than a dreary litany of sheep shearing, sh*t shoveling, and yarn spinning.
[Editor's Note: So much swearing this week. We apologize for our writer's inability to find better alliterative rhymes, but some weeks, this is what we get.]
Oh—and we're not ruining anything here because Orenstein admits this in the book's subtitle—but the sweater is terrible. It's probably a metaphor anyway.
Look, it's probably something in the air. Even William W. Johnstone (still really dead) is feeling it in his bones (and not just because that's all that's left of him). This week he offers The Fires of Hell and Fort Misery. Both sound like fantastic vacation getaways, don't they?
Sorry Bill, but what sounds much more enticing is Joanne Fluke's Caramel Pecan Roll Murder. Well, the first part, not the second part. Anyway, the latest cozy mystery featuring Hannah Swensen, finds Hannah getting hooked at a flashy fishing competition when the event's most notorious spokesperson is found dead in his boat. Can she solve the crime and get all her delicious treats baked on time?
And speaking of tasty treats, here is Oliva Matthews's Against the Currant, a Spice Island Bakery Mystery. It's got a West Indian bakery, an earnest baker who has everything she's ever wanted, and a disgruntled rival who seems likely end up in some sort of romantic entanglement—except he turns up dead before any smooching can happen. Well, that's awkward. We guess our intrepid protagonist had better solve this mystery before it gets pinned on her. That kitchen timer is ticking!
And finally, here is Hanna Pylväinen's The End of Drum-Time, one of those literary novels that wanders off into the wilderness and returns with some evocative insight into the human experience. It's also the story about a boy, a girl, and a herd of reindeer. It's the nineteenth century, and young Willa follows the boy and her herd as they make their annual migration north to the sea. Steeped in age-old traditions and guided by passions that transcend place and time, The End of Drum-Time is one of those quintessential love stories. Plan accordingly.
