Library Corner August 23rd
Beekeeper Holly McNee Jensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivans Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly calls her mother The Queen Bee because she's a demanding hulk of a woman. Her mother, a devoted hypochondriac, might be unaware that she's quite ill but that doesn't stop her from tormenting Holly. To escape the drama, Holly's sister Leslie married and moved away, wanting little to do with island life. Holly's escape is to submerge herself in the lives of the two young boys next door and their widowed father, Archie. Her world is upended when the more flamboyant Leslie returns and both sisters, polar opposites, fixate on what's happening in their neighbor's home. Is Archie really in love with that awful ice queen of a woman? If Archie marries her, what will become of his little boys? Restless Leslie is desperate for validation after her imploded marriage, squandering her favors on any and all takers. Their mother ups her game in an uproarious and theatrical downward spiral. Scandalized Holly is talking to her honey bees a mile a minute, as though they'll give her a solution to all the chaos. Maybe they will. Queen Bee, by Dorothea Benton Frank, is a classic Lowcountry Tale - warm, wise and hilarious, it roars with humanity and a dropperful of whodunit added for good measure by an unseen hand
Friendships forged in the heat of combat can be stronger than anything.So when SAS trooper Matt Standing is told that the former Navy SEAL who saved his life is in trouble, he doesn't hesitate to go to his aid - even if that means flying half way around the world to Los Angeles. Navy SEAL-turned-bodyguard Bobby-Ray Barnes has been accused of killing the man he was supposed to be protecting. Three other bodyguards were also killed and now Bobby-Ray is on the run. The dead client was a Russian oligarch with connections to the Kremlin. But who wanted him dead? And if Bobby-Ray wasn't the killer, who carried out the assassination and why is Bobby-Ray being framed? Standing is the only man who can answer those questions - providing he can stay alive long enough. For that he'll need the help of an old SAS friend, Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, and a ruthless network of secret service operatives. Stephen Leather has the rare knack of writing in such a way that you almost feel as if you are watching a film…This is the case in his new novel Last Man Standing.
Wendell Newman, a young ranch hand in Montana, has recently lost his mother, leaving him an orphan. His bank account holds less than a hundred dollars, and he owes back taxes on what remains of the land his parents owned, as well as money for the surgeries that failed to save his mother's life. An unexpected deliverance arrives in the form of seven-year-old Rowdy Burns, the mute and traumatized son of Wendell's incarcerated cousin. When Rowdy is put under his care, what begins as an ordeal for Wendell turns into a powerful bond, as he comes to love the boy more than he ever thought possible. That bond will be stretched to the breaking point during the first legal wolf hunt in Montana in more than thirty years, when a murder ignites a desperate chase. Caught on the wrong side of a disaffected fringe group, Wendell is determined both to protect Rowdy and to avoid the same violent fate that claimed his own father. A gripping story set in a fractured and misunderstood community, Fall Back Down When I Die, by Joe Wilkins, is a haunting and unforgettable tale of sacrificial love.
As a young intern at an art gallery in Paris, Isabelle McAvoy meets Putnam Armstrong, wealthy, gentle, older, and secluded from the world. Isabelle's relationship with Putnam, and her time at his chateau on the Normandy coast, are the stuff of dreams. But it turns real when she becomes pregnant, for she knows that marriage is out of the question. When Isabelle returns to New York, she enters a new relationship that she hopes will be more stable and traditional. But she soon realizes she has made a terrible mistake and again finds herself a single mother. With two young daughters and no husband, Isabelle finally and unexpectedly finds happiness and a love that gives her a third child, a baby as happy as her beloved father. And yet, once again, life brings dramatic changes. The three girls grow up to be very different women, and Isabelle's relationship with each of them is unique. While raising her girls alone, Isabelle also begins building a career as a successful art consultant. Then, one final turn of fate brings a past secret to light, bonds mother and daughters closer, and turns a challenge into a blessing .In Danielle Steel’s remarkable new novel called Blessing In Disguise, one of her most memorable characters comes to terms with unfinished business and long-buried truths as the mother of three very different daughters with three singular fathers.
New Non Fiction
Barracoon, by Zora Neale Hurston is the story of the last “Black Cargo”. Illegally brought to the United States, Cudjo was enslaved fifty years after the slave trade was outlawed. In 1927, Zora traveled to Plateau, Alabama, to visit eighty-year-old Cudjo Lewis, a survivor of the Clotilda, the last slaver known to have made the transatlantic journey. At the time, Cudjo was the only person alive who could recount this integral part of the nation’s history.