Check It Out

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

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

This is Kristina Yezdimer from the Sioux City Public Library and You’re Listening to Check It Out. 

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

   Today I am recommending two books that weave together the events of one of the most traumatic days in U.S. History—The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff and Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff.  

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

Today I’m recommending All the Children are Home by Patry Francis. This recently released work of historical fiction is a heart-wrenching coming of age saga told from multiple perspectives and spans the 1950s and 1960s. 

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

 Today, I am recommending, The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner, a dual timeline tale packed with history, fantasy, deceit, poison, and murder.

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

Today, I’m recommending Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala. I absolutely devoured this debut entry in her food-focused cozy mystery series.  

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

“In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.” With this opening line, Anna North’s newest novel Outlawed pulled me in and held me there for the rest of the ride.   

North writes of an alternate history in which a Great Flu wiped out 9/10ths of the U.S. population, the country fell apart, and a woman who could not bear children to rebuild the population was considered a witch, something that was a hangable offense. 

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

   Today, I am recommending Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid—a book that checks all the boxes for a fun vacation read. Malibu Rising is a page-turning story about the Riva family—the triumphs and struggles of siblings Nina, Jay, Hud and Kit, the bad decisions of their rock star father Mick Riva, and his tragic love affair with their mother, June. 

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

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 unique and quirky All Iowa Reads Finalist, The Heap by Sean Adams. 

This is Jenn Delperdang, 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. 

The bestselling author of Be Frank with Me—a book I absolutely adored—returns with her eagerly anticipated second novel. It’s a charming story of endings, new beginnings, and the complexities and complications of friendship and love, all set in late 1930s Reno. Today, I’m recommending Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson.    

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

Today I would like to highly recommend the 2021 book of essays Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619 – 2019. The essays have been curated and edited by author and historian Ibram X. Kendi known for books such as How to be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning as well as historian Keisha N. Blain. 

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

Today, I’m recommending A Burning by Megha Majumdar. This electrifying debut novel was nominated for a National Book Award and has been included on several “best of 2020 lists."

This is Kelsey Patterson with 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. 

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 bleak and unforgettable 2020 Booker Prize nominated How Much of These Hills is Gold, the debut novel by author C Pam Zhang. 

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

Today, I’m recommending Winter Counts, a remarkable debut novel by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a member of the Lakota Nation of South Dakota. At first glance it’s an action-packed, gritty thriller, but Weiden also explores many social issues faced by Native Americans.

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

Today, I’m recommending Sarah Pearse’s debut novel, The Sanatorium. An instant New York Times bestseller, this book was also a recent Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium for tuberculosis patients has since been renovated into a 5-star minimalist hotel. 

This is Jennifer Havlik with 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. 

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to 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 Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehesi Coates. You may have read this author’s powerful nonfiction, including Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power, but now Coates has focused his talent on fiction, and with a brilliance not often seen in a first novel.

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

Today, I’m recommending one of my new favorite authors, Rebecca Serle. An author and television writer who splits her time between New York and Los Angeles, Rebecca Serle codeveloped the hit TV adaptation of her YA series Famous in Love and is the author of six novels, including my two recommendations, The Dinner List and In Five Years.

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

Today, I’m recommending one of my new favorite authors, Rebecca Serle. An author and television writer who splits her time between New York and Los Angeles, Rebecca Serle codeveloped the hit TV adaptation of her YA series Famous in Love and is the author of six novels, including my two recommendations, The Dinner List and In Five Years.

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

With his newest novel, The Removed, National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson has created a moving tale of an Oklahoma Cherokee family fractured from the tragic and unjust death of their son and brother, Ray-Ray who was shot and killed by a police officer years earlier. 

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

Today, I’m recommending Scaled, Book One of the Deep Skin young adult trilogy by J.T. Ashmore, which is a pen name for two brilliant local writers you may recognize. Tricia Currans-Sheehan and Jeanne Emmons, both well-known for their years at Briar Cliff University, teamed up to write Scaled and the other two books in this science fiction series. 

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

Today, I’m highlighting one of my new go-to nonfiction duos Dan Abrams and David Fisher. Dan Abrams is probably best known as the Chief Legal Affairs Anchor for ABC News and over the last thirty years, David Fisher has authored or co-authored over 80 books with a quarter of them having been New York Times Bestsellers. Together they make for one dynamic writing duo.

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 high fantasy series, which has gained in popularity and produced many more readers in the past several months. When a prominent streaming service makes a big budget, series based off of a series of books and then spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing, you had better bet that it will create interest in the original source material.  This is what has happened with Andrzej Sapkowoski’s The Witcher Saga.