“That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read
Beach Read is a book about writers struggling to come up with their next great novel. January Andrews is a romance writer who no longer believes in love. The problem is her next bestselling romance is due to her agent in just a few months, but she has no inspiration. January’s broke, her emotions are ragged, and she has massive writer’s block. Augustus Everett is a highly acclaimed author of literary fiction. He looks down on fluffy romance and would much rather kill of his entire cast of characters than ever give them a happily ever after. He, too, is struggling with writer’s block and has a book due very soon. January and Augustus couldn’t be more opposite.
As it turns out, Augustus and January are living in neighboring beach houses. Their initial meeting may have been a bit rocky, but with writing tensions high and January in an emotion spiral, it’s to be expected. Another twist: the two actually know each other from year prior. Stuck next to each other while trying to write seems like a curse. They have so much work to do, but nothing is working.
One night the two come up with a bet that is sure to break them out of their writer’s block. January will spend her summer writing the Next Great American Novel, while Augustus will write something happy. Each will have the opportunity to take the other on research field trips to get them accustomed to the other’s writing process. January will take Augustus out on trips that could be found in any rom-com. Augustus will take January along as he interviews the surviving members of a death cult. The two are destined to finish a book and hopefully not fall in love. The longer the summer goes on, January realizes that what she thought was true about her life was not. She starts to question every assumption she has made, including her thoughts about Augustus.
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Want the hottest new release from your favorite author? Want to stay current with a celebrity book club? Love nonfiction? You should join the Best Sellers Club. Choose any author, celebrity pick, and/or nonfiction pick and the Davenport Public Library will put the latest title on hold for you automatically. Select as many as you want! If you still have questions, please check out our list of FAQs.
New month means new highlighted authors from the Best Sellers Club! August’s authors are Karen Kingsbury for fiction and Janet Dailey for romance.
Our August fiction author is Karen Kingsbury. She is a New York Times bestselling novelist with more than 25 million copies of her books in print. Many of her novels are in development as major motion pictures. The Baxter family book series has been developed into a television series. In addition to being an author, she is an adjunct professor of writing at Liberty University. She currently lives in Tennessee with her husband, where they are close to their children and grandchildren. Kingsbury writes inspirational fiction.
Kingsbury’s newest book is The Baxters: A Prequel, published in April 2022. This is the prequel to the Baxter Family series.
Curious what this book is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher:
This warmhearted and moving prequel to the “heart-tugging and emotional” (RT Book Reviews) #1 New York Times bestselling Baxter Family Series follows the family members as they face rising tensions during a wedding and a colossal storm.
A terrible storm builds in the early morning sky over Bloomington, Indiana, as Elizabeth Baxter prepares to celebrate her daughter Kari’s wedding to Tim Jacobs. It’s supposed to be the happiest of days, but Elizabeth can’t shake a growing sense of dread. Is the storm a sign? Something bad is about to happen. Elizabeth knows it.
Indeed, there are dark currents of conflict and doubt coursing through the Baxter family. In the midst of them, Kari Baxter is starting to panic. Is marrying Tim a mistake? And what about her family? Her brother Luke is angry and resentful of their sister Ashley, who has recently returned from Paris, a single mom with a son she too often leaves with their parents. At the same time, Ashley and their sister Brooke have lost the faith that is the family’s glue. Against all this, Kari sees Ashley rejecting her longtime love, Landon Blake, who clearly cares for her, no matter what happened in Paris.
When the storm reaches a terrifying crescendo, a shocking moment of danger brings important truths to light. At the end of the long day, can the Baxters remain a family, tested but stronger?
From an author who “writes with seemingly effortless poetic elegance” (Booklist), The Baxters is an unforgettable testament to the power of love, family, and faith.
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Our August romance author is Janet Dailey. Dailey was born in Storm Lake, Iowa and knew that she wanted to be a writer from a very young age. Dailey worked with her husband in construction and land development before they decided to travel the United States. During this traveling, Dailey was inspired to write her Americana series of romances. In this series, Dailey set a novel in every state in the United States. She was also the first American author to write for Harlequin, starting her tenure with them in 1974. She has written 90 plus novels with 21 of them appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. As of today, there are over 324 million print copies of her novels all over the world in 98 countries and in 19 different languages. Janet Dailey died in December 2013 at the age of 69.
Dailey’s newest book is Quicksand, set to be published in August 2022. This is the third book in the Champions series.
Curious what this book is about? Below is a description provided by the publisher.
New York Times bestselling author Janet Dailey’s latest Champions novel tells the rugged, romantic story of an Arizona family ranch in trouble, as the Champion sisters fight to keep their legacy bull-rearing operation strong, going head-to-head —and heart to heart—with some of the toughest men on the rodeo circuit.
Tess Champion knows better than to trust Brock Tolman, the rancher who once swindled her late father in a land deal. But with the Alamo Canyon Ranch in foreclosure, Tess is forced to accept Brock’s offer of a partnership. Brock claims he only wants to breed the Champion bloodline into his own herd. In exchange, he offers Tess one of his own young bulls. Soon enough, Quicksand is the rising star of the rodeo circuit, which only proves Tess is better at picking bulls than she is men. Because she’s way too tempted to surrender to her attraction to Brock, despite her certainty he’s only out to steal her family ranch . . .
It’s not until the tycoon’s private plane crashes in the wilderness, stranding him with Tess, that the truth of their relationship will come out. The Champion family’s future is on the line, but it’s Tess’s heart that will take the hit if she’s fallen for the wrong man . . .
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Every night Tova works at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, cleaning floors and picking up trash. She doesn’t really need the income, but she likes to keep busy. Her son Erik died 30 years ago under mysterious circumstances when he was just 18 and her husband Will died a few years ago from cancer. It is here, at the Aquarium, that she finds quiet and solace and some purpose, a balm to her loneliness in Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
Marcellus is a Giant Pacific octopus that has spent most of his life in the Sowell Bay Aquarium. He is very smart, very observant and very clever. Now close to end of his life (octopus live for only 4 or 5 years), Marcellus amuses himself by escaping his tank to make brief visits to other areas of the complex (and help himself to tasty critters in the other tanks)
One night Tova is startled to find the octopus in the staff room, tangled up in electrical cords. Carefully she frees him from the wires and helps him return to his tank. The escape remains their little secret and a friendship is born. Of course, Marcellus can’t talk to her, but he responds to her presence and emerges from his usual hiding place when she stops to talk to him. He knows that she is sad and lonely and he wishes he could help her.
One day Cameron walks into their lives. Adrift and a bit lost, an aimless young man trying to get his life on track. His father died before he was born and his mother abandoned him when he was nine, so his only family is an elderly aunt. He takes a job at the aquarium and Tova eventually takes him under her wing. Marcellus realizes immediately that there is a connection between these two. He just somehow needs to let them know too.
This is an utterly charming book. It is also a heartfelt examination of grief, connection, the importance of family and an acceptance of the march of time and preparing for your own end. This is sobering, of course, but it is the way of all living creatures, and the practical and loving ways the characters take care of themselves and of those that will live on is hopeful and uplifting. Marcellus’ thoughts (which appear in separate chapters) are shrewd and his opinions about the humans are funny and insightful. You will learn a lot about octopus’ and you will fall in love with Marcellus.
Did you love The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery? If yes, then you should definitely read The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey.
Bailey’s life was forever changed after a vacation where she caught an unknown illness, which quickly snowballed into a bevy of mysterious, chronic, and debilitating conditions. While grieving this change, she was gifted a companion: a wild snail found in the woods near her house. Observing and caring for this snail helped Bailey cope and launched her on a journey to learn more about this underappreciated animal.
This is a book about slowing down, with a thoughtful, lyrical pace to match. The fascination with our tiny neighbors is contagious, with interesting facts throughout helping to balance the author’s poignant emotional journey of being betrayed by her body. Honest, understated, and with a deep appreciation for nature and wildness, this bittersweet book will help you rest and see the world around you more clearly.
It’s also available in large print, so don’t miss out on a great piece of nature writing.
Samira Ahmed is an author who knows how to rip at your heart strings. So far, I have read two of her young adult fiction titles and they have decimated me, but in a way that had me thinking about the state of the world. Three years ago, I read Internment and had such a devastating book hangover after I finished that I knew I needed to read whatever she published next (Internment is set in a futuristic United States when Muslim-Americans are forced into internment camps. It tells the story of Layla Amin, a seventeen-year-old who leads a revolution against those complicit in silence). Samira’s latest soul-wrenching title is Hollow Fires. I’m still reeling from this book, yet I believe it’s a necessary read especially in today’s climate.
Hollow Fires is a powerful novel that tells the story of the evil that lives around us every day and how alternative facts created by the privileged bend the truth of a narrative to their will and desire. It’s a story of silent complicity, as well as outright and hidden racism. It’s about the will of a young journalist desperate to uncover the truth of what actually happened to a missing boy. If you enjoyed Sadie by Courtney Summers or Dear Martin by Nic Stone, I highly recommend you read this book.
Safiya Mirza wants to become a journalist. She is currently the editor of her private school’s newspaper, reporting on the facts of what is happening at her school, despite the administration wishing to push their own biases onto the paper. Safiya is a scholarship student, growing up in vastly different ways compared to her privileged classmates. Her desire to report only the facts and leave out any personal feelings changes the moment she finds the body of a murdered boy.
Jawad Ali was only fourteen years old. His public school had a makerspace where he was allowed to take recycled materials and repurpose them for whatever he wanted. Having had his current project approved by his teacher, Jawad built a cosplay jetpack to add to his Halloween costume. He brought the finished project to school to show his teacher and friends. One of his teachers mistook his jetpack for a bomb and alerted the police, which led to Jawad being arrested, labeled a terrorist, and eventually kidnapped and murdered. After his arrest, Jawad was cleared by the police, but his school still suspended him. His peers labeled him ‘Bomb Boy’ and his life as he knew it was changed forever.
Safiya is devastated after discovering Jawad’s body. His presence, voice, and smell are haunting her throughout the investigation, leading her to seek out the entire truth about Jawad’s murder and those who killed him because of their hate-fueled beliefs. Jawad was a person whose life was worth remembering exactly how he lived it and not how the media have spun it. Racist acts have been sprouting up all over Safiya’s school, as well as at her mosque and her parents’ store. Concerned they could be related to Jawad’s disappearance and with a lack of confidence in the local police department, Safiya begins an investigation of her own with the help of her friends and Jawad’s voice in her ear.
This book is also available in the following format:
I live for the drama of a teen psychological thriller, and Seven Dirty Secrets by Natalie D. Richards is no exception.
One year ago, Cleo’s boyfriend Declan drowned during a river rafting trip with their friends. Even though she has a new boyfriend now and is waiting for a scholarship to Michigan State to become a forensic scientist, she’s never really been able to leave Declan in the past. This makes it all the more chilling when on her eighteenth birthday, she starts to receive a cryptic and vaguely threatening clues leading her on a scavenger hunt, one that’s increasingly all about her rocky relationship with Declan. All her friends deny their involvement, even her brother Connor, so it’s up to Cleo and her best friend Hope to chase down the clues, racing the clock to keep their secrets from getting out, and hopefully to find out just who’s behind this – friend, foe, or Declan himself.
This is a vividly drawn and fast-paced story, full of twists, flashbacks, and revelations of all kinds. It engages with issues of race, domestic violence, blame, poverty, and trust, but is also full of loving, supportive friendships and family relationships.
“I still have a lot to figure out, but the one thing I know is, wherever you are, that’s where I belong. I’ll never belong anywhere like I belong with you.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation
The above quote sums up People We Meet on Vacation pretty perfectly. Alex and Poppy do not seem like they would fit together. Poppy is a traveling wild child who gets anxious if she is in one place for too long. Alex would much rather stay at home in his khakis reading a book. The two met by chance at college, but each wrote the other off as a nobody. Thrown together later in a car share home one summer, the two form a best friend bond that has only grown over time.
While Alex and Poppy may live apart for most of the year – she in New York and he back home in Ohio, they revel in their summer trips. For over a decade, the two have taken one week of vacation together every summer to various destinations all over the globe. They have had disastrous vacations all the way to magnificent ones. Two years ago, something happened on their summer vacation that has driven a wedge between the two. They haven’t spoken to each other since.
Poppy has been having a rough time dealing with Alex being out of her life. She feels like she’s stuck in a rut. When her friend asks her when she last felt happy, Poppy realizes that it was when she was with Alex. She wants that back! Poppy has decided that she has to get Alex to take a vacation with her so that she can make their relationship right again. Alex agrees, so she has one week to fix everything that’s wrong between them. That task proves to be way harder than she imagined, given the massive secret lurking between the two.
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Georgia has always assumed she’d find love. No, she hasn’t ever dated anyone, or kissed anyone, or had a crush on anyone, but that’s normal, right? It’ll happen eventually… right? It isn’t until she graduates from school and is about to go to university that she realizes how different she is from everyone else. Feeling panicked, behind, and alone, she decides to reinvent herself and become the kind of girl who’s a social butterfly, that falls in love and enjoys kissing. She enlists her roommate Rooney and her friends Jason and Pip in her quest, but it never starts to feel easier, to feel right. It’ll take time, soul-searching, and the help of Sunil, president of the Pride Society, to figure out what she wants and where she belongs.
Loveless by Alice Oseman is a great book for a lot of reasons, including its representation of people who have always been treated like they’re broken: introverts, asexuals, and aromantic people. Georgia is flawed and real as she struggles and angsts her way into self-acceptance and self-love, leaving some chaos and hurt in her wake. Oseman doesn’t shy away from showing Georgia’s culpability for that hurt, or the complicated process of making amends, not to mention the natural grieving process that comes with being different. In this and many ways (though I can’t vouch for the depiction of British university life) it’s a refreshingly realistic book. Despite the title, love is the thread that runs through the book – through Georgia’s friendships, Rooney’s relationship to Shakespeare, Pip’s cultural heritage, and Sunil’s feelings for the Pride Society.
For a fresh and educational coming-of-age with strong friendships, diverse characters, realistic portrayals of asexuality and aromanticism, and quick, addictive chapters, this is the best book you’ll read this year.
‘That was the thing about growing up with magic. Until you left it behind for good, you had no idea how incredible it felt just to be around it.’ – Lana Harper, Payback’s a Witch
Over the last year, I have noticed an increase in paranormal witchy romances, so naturally I decided to read some! My latest adventure into this genre was the first in the Witches of Thistle Grove series by Lana Harper titled Payback’s a Witch. I found this title to be uniquely engaging and full of world-building, yet not overwhelming with the amount of information given.
Emmy Harlow is back in Thistle Grove. After leaving this magical town right after high school, she never though she’d be back. Harlow may be a witch, but she’s not a very powerful one. The time she has spent away from Thistle Grove, plus the physical distance separating her from the town, has depleted her magic. Her exile from her family has been self-imposed due to a complicated relationship with her family, her family history, and relationships with her peers. Emmy has always wanted to forge her own destiny that had nothing to do with being a Harlow witch in Thistle Grove. Add in a nasty breakup with Gareth Blackmoor when she was in high school and Emmy was drawn to leave quicker than she had planned. After all, Gareth is the heir to the most powerful magical family in town. He oh so casually shattered her dreams and broke her heart without a second thought. She had to leave.
Flash forward: Emmy is back in Thistle Grove to perform her family’s role as arbiter in a spellcasting tournament held every fifty years. A massive guilt trip from her family and the lure of tradition was enough to bring her back. Emmy’s plan is to do her duty as arbiter, spend time with her best friend Linden Thorn, and then immediately leave to head back to her life in Chicago. The universe has other plans.
On her first night back in town, Emmy runs into Talia Avramov at a local bar. Talia is another heir to a different magical family who practices darker magic. She is also fresh off a bad breakup of sorts with Gareth Blackmoor. It turns out that Gareth was also dating Emmy’s best friend Linden, at the same time he was messing around with Talia – with both women not realizing the either was in a relationship with him! Scandal! Linden and Talia want revenge on Gareth and believe that with Emmy they can finally get back at him for what he has done to all three. Emmy has to decide if she wants in and if so, what the plan should be. Add in friend drama and romantic drama between the three and Emmy’s short trip home becomes even more complicated than she originally hoped.
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If you love Agatha Christie’s classic play The Mousetrap, or you’re longing for a good high school theater production, you should read Two Truths and a Lie by April Henry. It’s packed with classic characters from stage play whodunits, updated for more realistic diversity of course, and it’s an homage to theater and murder mysteries.
Nell and her theater friends are on their way to a conference and competition, and their spirits are high – until a blizzard chases them off the road and into a weird motel in the middle of nowhere. It’s full of strange knick-knacks, it’s oddly laid out, and it’s nearly deserted, except for a few truckers, a handyman, and the owner. Luckily another group of high schoolers turns up similarly stranded, and the evening turns to games and flirtation. But during a group session of Two Truths and a Lie, a terrifying anonymous message is found: “I like to watch people die. I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve killed.” When students start to go missing it’s a terrifying scramble to find them and figure out the truth, even as the storm gets worse outside…
Tropes and references to horror movies and stage plays (Agatha Christie in particular) abound; these are theater kids, after all, and so the book can read as staged in places. Also familiar is the love triangle/mysterious love interest, but the other characters are diverse in race, religion, and sexuality in an authentic way. The plot is also suspenseful enough to keep you hooked and full of twists and surprises.
Don’t miss this snowed-in teen thriller for chills of all kinds! This title is also available on Overdrive.
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“That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.”
