Told through the perspective of its charming and irresistible narrator, The History of a Difficult Child is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice. There are two in-person sessions each month and a virtual option for those who can't make the in-person meetings!
Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the decade of Maoist fanaticism between 1966 and 1976.
Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with a powerful novel that moves from a coastal Greek city during the Holocaust, to America, where the intertwined lives of three survivors are forever changed by the perils of deception and the grace of redemption.
The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.
On the night of February 22, 1978, a devastating freight train derailment drastically altered Waverly, Tennessee, and its place in history. This was one of the worst train explosions of the twentieth century, killing 16 people, injuring hundreds more, and causing millions of dollars in damage.
Summary: Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall’s appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era’s defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?
October's title is Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Book Summary: Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members.
September's title is Siren Queen by Nghi Vo. Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn’t care.
Join the Sioux City Public Library's Open Book Club as we discuss Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. BOOK SYNOPSIS Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a
Established in 2003, the purpose of All Iowa Reads is to foster a sense of unity through reading. Iowans are encouraged to come together in their communities to read and talk about a single book title in the same calendar year. Join the Sioux City Public Library for a discussion on this year's book, How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. When: Monday, May 22 at 5 pm Where: Aalfs Downtown Library (529 Pierce St.) BOOK SYNOPSIS From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and
