SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
New Book Highlights
ANIMAL STORIES
| Wells, Rachel | Alfie in the snow |
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BIOGRAPHY
| Beck, Deborah | Rayner Hoff |
| Dallek, Robert | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Jukes, Helen | A honeybee heart has five openings |
| Kieza, Grantlee | Banjo |
| Kitney, Damon | The price of fortune |
| Morton, Rick | One hundred years of dirt |
| Obama, Michelle | Becoming |
| O’Brien, Kerry | Kerry O’Brien |
| Triggs, Gillian | Speaking up |
Becoming / Michelle Obama
The former first lady looks back on an unlikely rise to the top while navigating issues of race and gender in this warm hearted memoir. Obama’s narrative is the story of an African-American striver, born to a working-class family in Chicago, who got Princeton and Harvard degrees and prominent jobs in law and public relations, attended at every step by the nagging question, “Am I good enough?” (“Yes I am,” she answers). It’s also about her struggle to keep husband Barack’s high-powered political career from subsuming her identity and the placid family life she preferred to the electoral frenzy—she disavows any desire for public office herself—while she weathered misgivings over work-life balance and marital strains that required couples’ counselling. Becoming the first lady ratchets up the pressure as Obama endures the Secret Service security bubble, has every public utterance and outfit attacked by opponents, gets pilloried as a closet radical, and soldiers on with healthy-food initiatives. Obama surveys most of this with calm good humour while painting an admiring, sometimes romantic portrait of Barack and evoking pathos over her parents’ sacrifices for their children. There are no dramatic revelations and not much overt politics here, but fans of the Obamas will find an interesting, inspiring saga of quiet social revolutions. (Publishers Weekly, 13 November 2018)
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CLASSICS
| Jackson, Shirley | The haunting of Hill House |
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GENERAL FICTION
| Archer, Jeffrey | Heads you win |
| Barrett, Shirley | The bus on Thursday |
| Belfoure, Charles | The fallen architect |
| Berlin, Lucia | Evening in paradise |
| Bradford, Barbara Taylor | Master of his fate |
| Braithwaite, Oyinkan | My sister, the serial killer |
| Burns, Anna | Milkman |
| Cameron, Marc | Tom Clancy Oath of Office |
| Carroll, Ber | The missing pieces of Sophie McCarthy |
| Clarke, Lucy | You let me in |
| Dalton, Trent | Boy swallows universe |
| deWitt, Patrick | The sisters brothers |
| Drewe, Robert | The true colour of the sea |
| Ellison, J. T. | Tear me apart |
| Evans, Richard Paul | The Noel stranger |
| Faldbakken, Matias | The waiter |
| Forna, Aminatta | Happiness |
| Greenberg-Jephcott, Kelleigh | Swan song |
| Grimwood, Jack | Nightfall Berlin |
| Hornak, Francesca | Seven days of us |
| Hummel, Maria | Still lives |
| Hwang, Sok-yong | At dusk |
| Jennings, Luke | Codename Villanelle |
| Jong, Erica | Fear of dying |
| Kawamura, Genki | If cats disappeared from the world |
| King, Stephen | Elevation |
| Macomber, Debbie | Alaskan holiday |
| McCoy, Michael | What the light reveals |
| McIntosh, Fiona | The pearl thief |
| McPherson, Catriona | Go to my grave |
| Miscellaneous | A vintage Christmas |
| Modiano, Patrick | Sleep of memory |
| Motoya, Yukiko | The lonesome bodybuilder |
| Patric, A. S. | The butcherbird stories |
| Purcell, J. | The girl on the page |
| Reid, Iain | Foe |
| Riley, Lucinda | The moon sister |
| Rimington, Stella | The Moscow sleepers |
| Ruiz Zafron, Carlos | The labyrinth of the spirits |
| Smith, Ali | Autumn |
| Spigelman, Alice | The Budapest job |
| Thorpe, Penny | The Quality Street girls |
| Trigiani, Adriana | Tony’s wife |
Evening in paradise / Lucia Berlin
This wonderful posthumous collection from Berlin ranges from short, one-page stories about the poor and working class to longer romantic tales about the disaffected daughters of aristocrats in South America. The collection is significant partly because it reveals the centrality of homesickness and geography to Berlin’s work. The elegant title story is set in a hotel in Mexico where the cast and crew of The Night of the Iguana are staying. The American movie stars living in “paradise” at the resort are worn out and distracted compared to the vibrant Mexicans who run the hotel. Lead Street, Albuquerque follows two young couples whose lives are interrupted when a friend moves into their building and marries a 17-year-old girl. The friend, who becomes a wildly successful artist, leaves his young wife in the care of the other women, who help her care for her baby. One of the longest stories in the collection is Andado: A Gothic Romance, which follows Laura, a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Chile, as she visits the estate of wealthy widower Don Andres. The sexual tension between the older man and the younger girl escalates and eventually confuses the girl’s innocent notions of romance. Berlin’s writing achieves a dreamy, delightful effect as it provides a look back through time. This collection should further bolster Berlin’s reputation as one of the strongest short story writers of the 20th century. (Publishers Weekly, 9 October 2018)
My Sister, the Serial Killer / Oyinkan Braithwaite
Braithwaite’s blazing debut is as sharp as the knife that twists in the chest of Femi, the now-dead boyfriend of Ayoola, whose boyfriends, curiously, seem to keep winding up dead in her presence. Femi makes dead boyfriend number three—each were killed in self-defense, according to Ayoola—and, per usual, Ayoola’s older sister, Korede, is called upon to help dispose of the body. The only confidante Korede has is a coma patient at the Lagos hospital where she works, which is the only place she can go to escape Ayoola. It is also where she can see the man she loves, a handsome and thoughtful doctor named Tade. Of course, this means that when the capricious Ayoola decides to start visiting her sister at work, she takes notice of him, and him of her. This is the last straw for Korede, who realizes she is both the only person who understands how dangerous her sister is and the only person who can intervene before her beloved Tade gets hurt, or worse. Interwoven with Korede, Ayoola, and Tade’s love triangle is the story of Korede and Ayoola’s upbringing, which is shadowed by the memory of their father, a cruel man who met a tragic and accidental death—or did he? As Korede notes when she considers her own culpability in her sister’s temperament: “His blood is my blood and my blood is hers.” The reveal at the end isn’t so much a “gotcha” moment as the dawning of an inevitable, creeping feeling that Braithwaite expertly crafts over the course of the novel. This is both bitingly funny and brilliantly executed, with not a single word out of place. (Publishers Weekly, 10 October 2018)
If cats disappeared from the world / Genki Kawamura
The narrator of this book has a grade four brain tumour, we are told, and only has days to live. That is, until the devil appears, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, and offers him a trade-off: he will be given an extra day of life if he chooses one thing to eliminate from the world. He accepts the bargain, sacrificing phones, films, clocks – but he draws the line at his beloved cat, Cabbage. A warm, quirky novel that has sold more than a million copies in Japan, it reflects on life, love, family estrangement and what remains when we are gone with levity and a surprising emotional charge. Kawamura’s message is clear without being didactic: look around you, embrace those you love and enjoy life while you can. (The Guardian, 23 September 2018)
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HISTORICAL FICTION
| Blake, Richard | The terror of Constantinople |
| Carey, Edward | Little |
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MYSTERY
| Abbott, Rachel | And so it begins |
| Beaton, M. C. | Agatha Raisin and the dead ringer |
| Benison, C. C. | Eleven pipers piping |
| Bernhard, Emilia | Death in Paris |
| Brody, Frances | A snapshot of murder |
| Brown, Rita Mae | Homeward hound |
| Bruen, Ken | In the Galway silence |
| Carofiglio, Gianrico | The cold summer |
| Carter, Alan | Heaven sent |
| Clark, Mary Higgins | You don’t own me |
| Edwards, Martin | Gallows Court |
| Elliot, Lauren | Murder by the book |
| Evanovich, Janet | Look alive 25 |
| Fielden, T. P. | Resort to murder |
| Gerhardsen, Carin | The last lullaby |
| Griffin, Mark | When darkness calls |
| Hannah, Mari | The insider |
| Haynes, Elizabeth | The murder of Harriet Monckton |
| Higashino, Keigo | Newcomer |
| Horowitz, Anthony | The sentence is death |
| Jardine, Quintin | Cold case |
| Jeffreys, Robert | Man at the window |
| Katchur, Karen | River bodies |
| Kelly, Jim | At death’s window |
| Kutscher, Volker | Babylon Berlin |
| Lapidus, Jens | Top dog |
| Lethem, Jonathan | The feral detective |
| Marsons, Angela | Fatal promise |
| Miscellaneous | Continental crimes |
| Nesser, Hakan | The root of evil |
| Nordbo, Mads Peder | The girl without skin |
| Patterson, James | Juror no. 3 |
| Patterson, James | Target Alex Cross |
| Penny, Louise | Kingdom of the blind |
| Simenon, Georges | A Maigret Christmas |
| Steadman, Bernie | Death on Dartmoor |
| Stewart, Amy | Miss Kopp just won’t quit |
| Tursten, Helene | An elderly lady is up to no good |
| Weaver, Ashley | Murder at the Brightwell |
| Wendelboe, C. M. | Hunting the five point killer |
An elderly lady is up to no good / Helene Tursten
The five stories in this exceptional collection from Tursten feature Maud, a seemingly mild-mannered 88-year-old Gothenburg resident who’s perfectly willing to use wiles and sometimes deadly force to defend her independent lifestyle. In the delightful “An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems,” a pushy neighbor has designs on Maud’s apartment, and that can’t be tolerated. When a gold digger hooks an old beau of Maud’s in “An Old Lady on Her Travels,” Maud decides to intervene, showing that she’s also ready to right wrongs that threaten others. Perhaps the best entry is “An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmas Time,” in which Maud cleverly puts a young clerk in his place and rids herself of an abusive neighbor. In the last two tales, she deals ruthlessly with a greedy antique dealer. Readers will be amused by how sharp-as-a-tack Maud plays the forgetful, fuzzy-brained old lady to achieve her ends. With any luck, she’ll be back for an encore. (Publishers Weekly, 17 September 2018)
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NON FICTION
| Eisen, Norman L. | Last palace | 943.71 EISE |
| Frankopan, Peter | The new Silk Roads | 909 FRAN |
| Frey, Michele | On a Saturday night | 725 FREY |
| Gutman, Matt | The boys in the cave | 363.3481 GUTM |
| Hastings, Max | Vietnam | 959.704 HAST |
| Laskas, Jeanne Marie | To Obama | 973.932 LASK |
| Mearns, David L. | The shipwreck hunter | 910.452 MEAR |
| Miscellaneous | Celebration & survival | 374 MECH |
| Palin, Michael | Erebus | 910.916 PALI |
| Palmkvist, Joakim | The dark heart | 364.152 PALM |
| Pung, Alice | Close to home | 824.4 PUNG |
| Sebag Montefiore, Simon | Written in history | 808.86 SEBA |
| Toibin, Colm | Mad, bad, dangerous to know | 820.9 TOIB |
| Tsjeng, Zing | Forgotten women | 809.89 TSJE |
| Wohlleben, Peter | The secret network of nature | 508 WOHL |
| Wright, Clare Alice | You daughters of freedom | 324.62 WRIG |
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POETRY
| Malouf, David | An open book |
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ROMANCE
| Berne, Lisa | The bride takes a groom |
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Cogman, Genevieve | The mortal word |
| Dimitri, Francesco | The book of hidden things |
| Goodkind, Terry | Death’s mistress |
| Hawke, Sam | City of lies |
| Hobb, Robin | Ship of destiny |
| Mackintosh, Sophie | The water cure |
| Tremblay, Paul | The cabin at the end of the world |
The book of hidden things / Francesco Dimitri
Mauro, Tony, Fabio, and Art have been friends since their school days in a southern Italian village. When Art, their ringleader, suggests that they return each year on the same date to meet up, they agree, and for 17 years they keep their promise. But when Art is a no-show, memories quickly surface of a bizarre incident from their teen years when he wandered into an olive grove and vanished for seven days. Though Art returned, he was somehow altered, and the town was torn apart by rumors. Dimitri—a well-known fantasy author in Italy who is making his English-language debut here—alternates the story from the perspectives of lawyer and family man Mauro; Tony, a surgeon whose homosexuality makes him an outsider in the strict Catholic village; and caddish fashion photographer Fabio. The reader gets a bird’s eye view of the secrets the men keep from each other, both about their complicated presents and their different understandings of Art’s first disappearance years ago. Is the Mafia involved? The local priest? The mentally ill woman Art was seeing? What of the rumor that Art healed a terminally ill girl before his latest vanishing? And how is his absence tied in to an odd manuscript he was writing called The Book of Hidden Things? In lesser hands, this blend of detective story, organized crime thriller, and supernatural investigation would feel like a grab bag of plot devices, but Dimitri has created a thrilling spectacle that also manages to point poignantly at the way the landscapes we grow up in shape us in ways even beyond our understanding. (Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018)
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TRAVEL
| Brierley, John | A pilgrim’s guide to the Camino Portugues | 914.69 BRIE |
| Shepherd, Rose | Sherlock Holmes’s London | 914.21 SHEP |
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
| General | Blackstock, Terri | Catching Christmas |
| General | Denzil, Sarah | The broken ones |
| General | Jewell, Lisa | I found you |
| Mystery | Adams, Ellery | A fatal appraisal |
| Mystery | Delany, Vicki | The cat of the Baskervilles |
| Mystery | Ellis, Joy | Buried on the Fens |
| Mystery | Finch, Charles | The woman in the water |
| Mystery | Graves, Sarah | Death by chocolate cheesecake |
| Mystery | Kingsbury, Kate | Doom with a view |
| Mystery | McKevett, G. A. | Murder in her stocking |
| Mystery | Muldoon, Meg | Murder in Christmas River |
| Science fiction | Morgan, Richard | Woken furies |
Fields where they lay / Timothy Hallinan
An unexpectedly rich Christmas gift: the chance to spend the holidays in a fading suburban Los Angeles shopping mall with Junior Bender, the burglar who moonlights as a “detective for crooks.” Junior doesn’t usually do Christmas. He’s not really into Jesus, peace on Earth, or glad tidings. But a serious spike in pre-holiday shoplifting at the San Fernando Valley’s Edgerton Mall has led Tip Poindexter, of the Edgerton Partnership, to ask Trey Annunziato, the beleaguered but still powerful head of a Valley crime family, to recommend someone to investigate, and she’s recommended Junior, who she thinks owes her a favor. Mobbed-up Tip, whom Junior dubs “Vlad the Impeller,” is the client from hell, alternately demanding instant reports and threatening Junior’s 13-year-old daughter, Rina, if he doesn’t get them. And the case itself seems baffling, since all the owners of independent storefronts like Kim’s Kollectables, iShop, Paper Dolls, KissyFace, Sam’s Saddlery, and Time Remembered–virtually all the businesses the exodus of big-box chains has left the Edgerton Mall–have reported that losses have tripled, and the security tapes security chief Wally Durskee shows Junior don’t reveal any distinctive person or persons doing the lifting. As the clock ticks down to the Christmas Eve deadline Tip has imposed on Junior, he bonds with several of the store owners and forms an even closer and more dangerous attachment to Francie DuBois, the friend of his friend Louie the Lost, who saves his life during one of several episodes in which someone shoots at him. A plum pudding stuffed with cynical disillusionment, organized and disorganized crime, two Santas, a seasonal miracle, and an ending that earns every bit of its uplift. (Kirkus Reviews, 2018)
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AUDIOBOOKS
| Biography | Westover, Tara | Educated |
| General | Alexandra, Belinda | The invitation |
| General | Berlin, Lucia | Evening in paradise |
| General | Brown, Becky | Round about the Christmas tree |
| General | Rooney, Sally | Normal people |
| General | Smiley, Jane | Duplicate keys |
| Mystery | Hallinan, Timothy | Fields where they lay |
| Mystery | Nesser, Hakan | The root of evil |
| Mystery | Swanson, Denise | Die me a river |
| Non fiction | Greig, Elias | I can’t remember the title but the cover is blue |
| Romance | Dare, Tessa | How the Duke stole Christmas |
| Science fiction | Harding, Traci | This present past |
Catching Christmas / Terri Blackstock
Blackstock delivers a tender and funny yuletide tale of faith, hope, and love. Taxi driver Finn Parrish is outraged that sweet and spunky Miss Callie needs a cab ride to the doctor. Who would leave an elderly woman, obviously ill and confused, alone to manage a doctor’s appointment the week before Christmas? Unwillingly drawn into Callie’s life as she continues to ask for his cab services, Finn comes to appreciate her determination and spirit even as he’s reminded of his failures with his own mother. Finn, meanwhile, is just trying to make rent and can’t decide whether he wants to go back to being a chef. Callie hires her “sweet boy” to taxi her around town so she can find a Christmas date for her granddaughter Sydney, an overworked first-year attorney. Stuck with an impossible case, Sydney feels guilty about not spending more time with her lonely grandmother. As Christmas approaches and Callie’s health wavers again, Sydney and Finn discover that some things matter more than rent or a job. Quirky characters and a wholesome plot will please inspirational readers looking for a heartwarming Christmas story. (Publishers Weekly, 8 October 2018)
Death by chocolate cheesecake / Susan Grave
Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree, the star of Graves’s Home Repair Is Homicide series (A Bat in the Belfrey, etc.), is back in this charming series launch. Jake and her friend Ellie White have opened a chocolate-themed bake shop, Chocolate Moose, in Eastport, Maine. Business is off to a promising start when the Eastport Coast Guard Station orders a dozen chocolate cherry cheesecakes for a fundraiser. But three days before the cheesecakes are due to be delivered, Jake finds the body of health inspector Matt Muldoon in the kitchen, his head plunged into a pot of chocolate. Matt was on a crusade to shut down Chocolate Moose, and the pastry needle that killed him is covered with Ellie’s fingerprints. Since she has no alibi and her dislike for the man is well known, the friends must uncover the real killer before Ellie is arrested. Red herrings abound, and while some plot developments strain credulity, the characters are appealing, and down east Maine is a delightful place to visit. Graves fans will enjoy catching up with old friends. (Publishers Weekly, 13 November 2017)
I found you / Lisa Jewell
This compelling audiobook grabs listeners from the opening chapter. The suspenseful story looks at the ways our lives collide and the unexpected connections we make when we least expect them. Narrator Helen Duff deftly transitions between the diverse characters, giving each his or her own identity and distinct voice: Alice, a single mom who often acts before she thinks; Lily, a young bride whose husband goes missing after just three weeks; and another man who can’t recall who he is or anything about where he comes from. Told in alternating chapters and spanning two decades, the story is a compulsive listen as the truths of the past and hope for the future collide. (Audiofile, 2017)
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New Books — December 2018
The new books for December 2018 are now available to borrow, with new ebooks and audiobooks.
We hope you enjoy them!
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