― Mark Twain
And we've got it!
Here are our books:
Road to Character - David Brooks
Red Rising - Pierce Brown
Joe Steeler - Harry Turtledove
The Just City - Jo Walton
Golden Son - Pierce Brown
The Annihilation Score - Charles Stross
Apex - Ramez Naam
Luna: New Moon - Ian McDonaldA Carlin Home Companion - Kelly Carlin
The Arrangement - Ashley Warlick
M.F.K. Fisher
The Man on the Washing Machine - Susan Cox
Death by Water - Kenzaburo Oe
The Hours Count - Jillian Cantor
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson
The Royal We - Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Black Widow - Randy Wayne White
The Muralist - B.A. Shapiro
The Nightmare - Lars Kepler
The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown
The Language of God - Francis Collins
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
The Sandcastle Girls - Chris Bohjalian
The Swans of Fifth Avenue - Melanie Benjamin
Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler
The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
I Am My Own Wife - Doug Wright
Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden - Terry Grosz
The Bangor Maine Police Department on Facebook
The Burn Palace - Stephen Dobyns
GETTING FREE DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT
CONTENT
MOVIES — Hoopla Digital, Overdrive, Crackle, Open Culture.
TV SHOWS — Hoopla Digital, Google for show websites.
MUSIC — Hoopla Digital, Freegal, Spotify, Pandora.
EBOOKS — Hoopla Digital, Overdrive, Project Gutenberg.
AUDIOBOOKS — Hoopla Digital, Overdrive, Librivox.
COMICS — Hoopla Digital.
NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES — Overdrive (for magazines), Sanduskyregister.com, cleveland.com (app available), Washingtonpost.com (free with Register subscription, app available), USA Today.
PROVIDERS (Google for website)
Hoopla Digital — The most important library digital service. Movies, TV shows, comic books, lots of music, ebooks, audiobooks. Easy to use app. Hoopladigital.com, register with your library card (all local libraries).
Freegal — Has the music that isn't licensed to Hoopla. Available from Cuyahoga County Public Library and others.
Overdrive — Ebooks, audiobooks and magazines. Available at all local libraries.
Spotify — Music source, free with ads. Now has the Beatles.
Crackle — Free TV shows and movies, aimed at male audience.
Open Culture — Old movies in the public domain, college lectures, free art books.
Pandora — Internet radio, free with ads.
Project Gutenberg — Free public domain ebooks (Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens etc.)
LibriVox — Free public domain audiobooks.
NOTE: All of these services have apps for your smartphone or tablet. Services from libraries are in boldface.
From Mary Lou in MD:
Austen, Mansfield Park (1814; Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen reprint nd). About 30 years before this story begins, one of the three Ward sisters made a fortuitous match with Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park. Another married the Reverend Mr. Norris and Sir Thomas gave him the local living. Miss Frances married Lieutenant Price of the royal Marines, who had no fortune and no social standing. Her sisters rejected her as a result. Twelve years and nine children later, Mrs. Price receives the assistance of her more prosperous sisters in the form of an offer to take in the eldest daughter and raise her at Mansfield Park. Thus Fanny Price begins her Cinderella role at Mansfield Park. She is most exasperatingly humble with all the insults she suffers from her aunts and uncle and the mistreatment she receives from her four cousins. Lady Bertram is weak and lazy and Mrs. Norris is mean-spirited and nasty and both of them are focused on their status within Mansfield society. Austen’s satire is at its best in describing the sisters and other local notables. Only Sir Thomas and his younger son Edmund note and appreciate Fanny’s talents. What is to become of our poor heroine?
Nevada Barr, The Rope (2011). This is the story of Anna Pigeon’s first assignment as a National Park Service employee. She is 35 years old and starting a new identity after her New York City life collapses. She is a summer seasonal worker, and much older than the other seasonal and permanent NPS employees at Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. Anna is naturally standoffish and reluctant to involve herself in the various hostile and dysfunctional relationships of her co-workers. On her first day off, she goes hiking in the park and does not return. Her coworkers think she has moved on without notice because her things are gone from her room. Actually, she is in a life-threatening situations. Although she has lost her memory, she gradually comes to believe that someone is trying to kill her. She manages to save herself, return to camp, and begin to investigate. No one can be trusted. This is just the first in a series of almost-murders that she manages to survive before she and we finally identify the bad guy. Of course she has to survive because it’s the beginning of a career we have been following for years. It gets a bit tedious.
Nevada Barr, Winter Study (2008). A U.S. Forest Service bush pilot flies veteran NPS Ranger Anna Pigeon to Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior. (She was nearly killed here once before – see A Superior Death.) She is participating in the famous Winter Wolf Study, begun over 50 years ago. Wolves established themselves on Isle Royale one winter by traveling over Lake Superior on an ice bridge from Ontario. Isle Royale National Park is open to visitors only in the summer months. From October to May, wildlife biologists come to study the wolves. This year’s study group includes an unwelcome representative from Homeland Security, looking to close down the study, open the island to visitors year-round, and establish border security on the island. Other unnatural creatures include the mythical windigo, a dying bull moose with deformed antlers, and an elusive wolf or wolf-dog that leaves giant paw prints. All of Anna’s co-workers seem to have something to hide and tensions are running high. As usual, it falls to Anna to quietly take the mature, rational role. The setting is chillingly magnificent and the suspense is intense.
