Check It Out

This is Barb Gross with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to “Check it Out.” 

Today, I’m recommending The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, an author you may remember for Station Eleven, the post apocalyptic novel that soared to the top of critics’ lists when it came out in 2014. In her new work, Mandel goes off in an entirely new direction, but with the same haunting intensity and intricate, interlocking characters and plot lines. 

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending Little by Edward Carey. 

Though the title is short and sweet, this novel is anything but. Gregory Maguire, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked describes Little as, “An amazing achievement…a compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself.” 

This is Jenn Delperdang with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

Today, I’m recommending a book that has had a lot of ‘buzz’ this year—and has been on several of 2020’s “Best-of” Lists--including the NPR Book Concierge.  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E Schwab is a sweeping fantasy and an intoxicating story of love and remembrance. 

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

What do the writings of Charles Dickens, an assassination attempt of Queen Victoria, and Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species all have in common? Well, besides all occurring in the mid 19th century in London, these elements are all the driving forces behind Tim Mason’s newest historical murder thriller, The Darwin Affair.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

Today I would like to recommend a fantasy that has been highly lauded and awarded over the past year. Author Naomi Novik is making quite a splash in the literary world with her fairy tale retellings, and in Spinning Silver, she has managed to create a magical, somewhat spooky, and very atmospheric loose retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.

This is Jessi Wakefield from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today, I am recommending My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. If you can appreciate a heavy dose of the 80s, mixed with everlasting friendship, and pinch of creepiness, this may be the perfect book for you. Although it’s considered “horror”, it’s so much more. The nostalgic vibe reeled me in, the unique plot kept me going, and the unexpected endearing conclusion had me wishing it wasn’t over.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. It’s been four long years since Emma Straub published the wildly successful Modern Lovers and I was so ready for her to write another book. Enter All Adults Here. Already a Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today, I am recommending Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris. Can you picture that perfect couple? You know, the ones that have a flawless marriage and everything in their life seems to be enviable, from their house, yard, the clothes they wear, and even their parties? In Paris’ 2016 debut thriller, she introduces us to newlyweds Jack and Grace, who are exactly such a couple, or so it seems. 

This is Jenn Delperdang with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

   I recently read an article in Library Journal magazine that the horror genre is trending.  The reasons were simple enough—readers often crave stories about situations and monsters worse than the world outside their doors--that comfort can be found in fiction that explores and even validates our deepest fears. Today, I’m recommending The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman—an eerie and disturbing ghost story that’s not quite like anything I’ve read before.  

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending my newest favorite romance novel, No Judgments by Meg Cabot. 

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending A Bad Day for Sunshine by bestselling author Darynda Jones. Best known for her Charley Davidson series (which I’ve recommended previously on Check It Out), Jones is back with an all-new series, starring a snarky and sassy new heroine, Sheriff Sunshine Vicram. Turning her talents to the police procedural genre, Darynda Jones has written a wickedly funny first installment to the series.  

This is Jenn Delperdang with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.

I love it when a book surprises me—when the story is not at all what I expected, but the writing and storytelling is so good that it draws me in.  Today I am recommending The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood--a novel that caught me completely by surprise—and I couldn’t put it down.  

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I am recommending We Are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen.

This is Barb Gross with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to “Check it Out.” As a new year’s resolution – which now seems like a lifetime ago – a friend and I began a quest to read two books each month written by African American authors. By reading more diversely, we hope to increase our empathy for the experiences of black people in America. Little did we know how important this reading would be now. 

This is Jennifer Havlik with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today I’m recommending Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink. This gripping and well-researched account of Memorial Hospital in New Orleans in the days immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina is told from Fink’s Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalism.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m back to recommend another contemporary romance, The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai. This sizzling new novel tackles all the hilarity, pitfalls, successes, and vulnerability required in modern dating. 

Rhiannon Hunter may have revolutionized romance in the digital world with the creation of her dating app Crush, but in real life she only swipes right on her career—and the occasional hookup. The cynical CEO controls her love life with a few key rules:

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today I would like to recommend the newest novel by National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman. 

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

There are many psychological thrillers out there to wade through, so when one comes around that shines a little brighter than the rest, you take note. This is how I felt when I finished reading The Wives by Tarryn Fisher. Honestly, when I closed the book after the last page, the first thing out of my mouth was “geeeez!”

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.

Dead Papa Toothwort is an ancient tree demon made entirely of ivy and cares little for humanity. He is not just part of nature, he is nature, personified. He has seen monks executed on this land, seen witches drowned, seen industrial slaughter of animals, and has seen men beat each other senseless. He cares not. So, when the words of a single boy can rouse him from his stupefied slumber, you know there is something special about this child. 

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

The mystery that surrounds Anastasia Romanov is something that has captured the western world for a century now. Was she the sole survivor of the Bolshevik uprising in Russia, or did she perish with the rest of her royal family? This is what author Ariel Lawhon tackles in her very compelling 2018 novel, I Was Anastasia.

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Throughout American history there have been quite a few legendary figures, but very few could live up the phrase, “The Man, The Myth, The Legend” as well as one James Butler Hickok, better known as “Wild Bill”.  

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending The Farmer’s Son: Calving Season on a Family Farm by John Connell. A #1 Irish bestseller, this poignant memoir is perfect for fans of James Herriot, Ted Genoways, or really any reader interested in farming and rural life.

Farming has been in John Connell’s family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father’s footsteps. Until, one winter, after more than a decade away, he finds himself back on the farm. 

  This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. 

Today, I’m recommending The Water Keeper, the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin. Continuing on his success from Send Down the Rain and The Mountain Between Us, The Water Keeper is Martin’s first story in a new series.

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you are listening to Check It Out.

Today I would like to recommend the works of modern thriller author, Riley Sager.

This Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

I want to be up front about this title. This recommendation is on a romance novel. A romance novel that is very steamy at times. So, it’s not for everybody, but it’s not the steam that makes me want to recommend it, it’s the lovely characters and their individual journeys. 

Today I would like to share the little romantic gem, Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert.