'Mexico'

3/11/2024

Looking to get your hands dirty? Join us Tuesday, March 19 @ 5:30pm for our Potting Party! Help rejuvenate and re-pot the library's plants! Feel free to bring in your own overgrown houseplants and empty pots.

Fear Is Just a Word

A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeanceby Azam Ahmed

Call Number: 364.1523 AHMED

This unputdownable book weaves together two stories: the story of a courageous mother, and the story of the rise of drug cartels and of violence in Mexico. It's an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town, and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces leave people to seek justice on their own.

The Fox Wife

by Yangsze Choo

Call Number: CHOO

In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach?until, perhaps, now.

Gaa-izhi-miinigoowizid a’aw Anishinaabe (What We Were Given as Anishinaabe)

by Lee Obizaan Staples as told to Chato Ombishkebines Gonzalez

Call Number: 299.783 STAPLES

The Ojibwe have many ways of marking important moments in an Ojibwe child’s life. Customs surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. Handling of a baby’s belly button. A child’s first moccasins. What happens when a child first touches the ground. Naming ceremonies. What to do the first time a baby is brought into a ceremonial dance. With warm and friendly stories and instructions, Lee Obizan Staples recounts these and many other ceremonies and traditions of an Ojibwe childhood. Text in Ojibwe and English.

Yours from the Tower

by Sally Nicholls

Call Number: Young Adult NICHOLLS

Tirzah, Sophia, and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. The year is 1896, and Polly is teaching in an orphanage, Sophia is scouting for a rich husband at the London Season, and Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her grandmother. In a series of letters buzzing with atmosphere and drama, the friends air their dreams, hopes, frustrations, and romances. Can this trio of very different young women—one industrious, one artful, and one in exile—find happiness and love near the dawn of the Edwardian era?

If you need help accessing any of these titles or using front door pickup, email or call us and we will be happy to assist you!

I may not be a foodie, but I’m definitely an eater. In honor of our Winter Cooking Challenge (and because I happen to particularly enjoy a book that features descriptions of mouthwatering food), here are some titles from our collection that will make your stomach rumble.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Tita has a gift for food. Her cooking is divine, so finely prepared that a single bite moves the eater to great emotion. Though Tita has fallen in love, tradition dictates that the youngest daughter, Tita, remain at home to take care of her mother. To add insult to injury, Tita’s mother arranges for Tita’s older sister to marry the man Tita loves AND asks Tita to make the wedding cake. The bitter tears Tita weeps as she whips the cake batter give the wedding guests a remarkable reaction, proving that there’s more to Tita’s gift than meets the eye. Each chapter is prefaced by one of Tita’s hand created recipes.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

While Crazy Rich Asians focuses more on the topsy turvy relationship of Rachel Chu and secret billionaire Nicholas Young than cooking, it has some mouth-watering descriptions of food: “As Rachel tasked the char kuay teow, her eyes widened in delight at the rice noodles flash-fried with seafood, egg, and bean sprouts in a dark soy sauce….Then it was time for the satay. Rachel bit into the succulent grilled chicken, savoring its smoky sweetness carefully.” YUM.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

Kitchens of the Great Midwest is bursting with food. The opening scene details the preparation of lutefisk, and then moves on to braised pork shoulder, chocolate habaneros, heirloom tomatoes and more. There are recipes peppered throughout the book too – Kraft caramel bars and chile oil being two examples. As this is set mainly in Minnesota, reading it is a nostalgic trip for your tastebuds. The book follows Eva Thorvald, daughter of a Midwestern chef, blessed with a once-in-a-generation palate, as she becomes the mysterious chef behind the most sought-after dinner reservation in the country.

Rutabaga, the Adventure Chef by Eric Colossal

While Rutabaga is firmly in the genre of fantasy, it doesn’t make its recipes any less appealing. Rutabaga, having grown bored of the standard food offerings available in his home town, travels the land searching for strange and magical ingredients to add to his cookbook. Rutabaga’s mouth-watering creations include a Perfect Pep Potion, Stuffed Koraknis Spinwheels with Sliced Pyka’s Palm, and a recipe especially created for those of us who don’t have access to magical ingredients: Chocolate-Dipped Dragon Claws. (The claws are bananas, guys).