MADreads Reviews

Sera Fleece is recently divorced, out of a job and at extreme loose ends. Her only emotional outlet is a true crime podcast hosted by Rachel Bard. Rachel's stories of unsolved crimes of the missing keep Sera company as she struggles with depression and loneliness. When Rachel suddenly stops posting new episodes and there are no new updates on her social media, Sera is thrown for a loop. The only thing she can think to do is find out what has happened to Rachel, who may have disappeared just like the subjects of the podcast.

Author Candace Fleming and illustrator Eric Rohmann have wowed the children’s book world with a very engaging and detailed book about bees. Did you know bees are quite hairy?! The oil paintings of bees in this book are so close-up you’ll feel like you’re just as tiny, getting exclusive access of a nest from a bee's point-of-view.

For a thousand year old castle, it’s certainly not the first time a violent death has happened within its walls. But it’s still shocking when Windsor Castle staff discover the body of a young Russian pianist in the wardrobe of a guest room deep within what is one of the most secure citadels in the world—and more so when that death is revealed as a murder. Her Majesty the Queen is of course horrified to hear the news—she had danced with the man only the previous night—but when police and MI-6 suspects that Russia is behind the crime with a possible mole, she knows what she has to do.

I was looking up the 2021 date for the Holocaust Remembrance Day (April 8) and discovered another day of remembrance. " Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), established in 2000, is marked each year on 27th January – the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau." The theme this year is ‘Be the Light in the Darkness’, a pretty good reminder in this time of pandemic.

The American Library Association (ALA) announced the top books, audio books, and media for children and young adults, including the Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Newbery and Printz awards at its virtual Midwinter Conference today. 

A list of 2021 award winners follows:

Sometimes I'm looking for a book that works as a total escape for me and that's just what I got with Stephen Hunter's WWII thriller.

Basil's War introduces British special agent Basil St. Florian who spends his off time drinking and sleeping with film stars and his work time being sent into Nazi-occupied France on secret missions during WWII. If all that sounds a bit flashy? It is. Basil's newest assignment is to enter occupied France and gain access to a manuscript kept in the archives in a Paris that swarms with the German military.

It’s that time of year again, when the American Library Association’s Caldecott Committee bestows a Medal and Honor prizes on the years’ most distinguished picture books.

Here are some strong contenders that are worth checking out before the announcements on January 25th.

Alice Randall isn’t an author that typically is at the top of many readers’ lists, having written several solid quietly received novels in the past and a few nonfiction works. But her latest, Black Bottom Saints, proves that Randall deserves more attention and a place on to-read lists.

Literary Hub is a great site with much, much great book content. But my favorite thing about it, I'll admit, is its offshoot site CrimeReads.

Madison Public Library has added more than 50 new cookbook titles to the collection thanks to a recent $1,000 grant from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for East Asian Studies’ (CEAS) East Asia in Wisconsin Library Program. 

Strong heroines are practically a necessity in historical romance, but Diana Quincy introduces an especially memorable lady at the center of her new romance Her Night With the Duke, launching her Clandestine Affairs series. Lady Delilah Chambers knows the habits of England’s ton through and through: as the daughter of a marquis and the widow of an earl, Leela circulates among the highest of the high.

The American Indian Library Association has created a reading challenge called Read Native 2021. You can find a printable reading tracker for adults and for kids along with suggested reading lists, which will be updated throughout the year by returning to the AILA site. 

To get started here are two Own Voices titles published in 2020.

Resolution lists often include starting a new exercise regime, eating more veggies, and home decluttering. Why not read more poetry? I believe this goal is achievable for all ages.  

Find inspiration in 2021 by reading the seven-time NAACP Image Award-winning poet's latest collection of poems that span topics from the presidency to racism to making Frontier soup. Nikki Giovanni is honest, candid and utterly fascinating. 

The idea of attending a Broadway show in person still seems so distant right now. Luckily, the library collects plays, musical scores and original cast recordings to help you get in the spirit.

Hurricane Season, a novel about the unexplained murder of a "witch” in a bottomed-out Mexican village, as told by several unreliable narrators, does not have paragraphs. If this is a deal breaker, move it along. Author Fernanda Melchor did not come to coddle, she came to slay.

Majella O'Neill lives in the small town Aghybogey in Northern Ireland that has been torn apart by The Troubles that have only recently "ended". To say that the Troubles have ended is a bit of a misnomer. Certainly the violent attacks between Catholics and Protestants have stopped for the most part, but the lingering divide between the factions continues. As the townsfolk go about their lives in this recovery period Majella observes it all from her job in a chip shop (the Catholic one, naturally).

Suraya has always found it hard to make friends and being a new student doesn't help. She does have one good friend, although it comes in the form of a grasshopper. It’s a pelesit, a spirit familiar that serves Survaya, inherited from her estranged grandmother. The book begins with the reader being empathetic of lonely Suraya and welcoming of her pelesit. You’ll be rooting for them thinking, “I’m glad he’s there to protect her from those bullies!” But soon things take a wicked turn, reminiscent of a popular horror movie when awful things start happening to Suraya herself.

The hero and heroine of Courtney Milan's The Duke Who Didn't have known each other since they were children. And not only have they known each other for years, they have loved as well. But their very different personalities and coping mechanisms have meant that they haven't yet figured that last fact out and have been operating at cross purposes for a few years. Until now.

The Brooklyn community of Gifford Place has seen its rough patches to be sure, but Sydney has always relished how her neighbors have banded together to help each other and hold the more insidious threats out of the historically Black neighborhood. But since Sydney has moved back to the venerable brownstone she’s always shared with her mother after a bruising divorce and mental breakdown, something has been off.

When I read that Loretta Chase's (a favorite historical romance author) newest novel would be a take-off of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, I wasn't super-enthused. Taming is not a favorite of mine and thus I came into this novel with only middling expectations. Those expectations were exceeded in pretty much every way. This is Chase's best outing in a number of years.