This column was submitted by Evangeline Cessna, Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library Local History Librarian. This week’s column includes some of the library’s newest eBook fiction titles available on the RBdigital platform. To browse titles please visit https://warrenms.rbdigital.com/. Remember, if you don’t have a library card, you can still access the AudioBookCloud and RomanceBookCloud from the catalog page at https://wcvpl.biblionix.com. Due to the concerns of the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the library is closed through May 3. Remember, you can find additional titles at wcvpl.blogspot.com.

 

Philippa Gregory delivers another historical fiction title with Tidelands. In this departure from the royal courts, Gregory introduces us to Alinor, an ordinary woman living in perilous times. England is in the grip of a bloody civil war and neighbors are spying on neighbors to see who is loyal to the new parliament and who is not. Alinor’s extraordinary beauty and her independence of thought have already had some raising eyebrows—especially in this time of witch-mania. While waiting in the graveyard one evening hoping to see the ghost of her dead husband to confirm that he is indeed dead, Alinor happens upon a young man, James, who needs help. She guides him through the maze of marsh in the Tidelands and unwittingly allows the spy and enemy into her life.

Robyn Carr gives us book four of the Sullivan’s Crossing series with The Best of Us. Dr. Leigh Culver left the hectic life as a Chicago physician behind and now practices in the sleepy town of Timberlake, Colorado. She loves it but misses her aunt Helen who raised her. Helen is a retired teacher who has become a successful mystery writer and has vowed to travel the world and never again experience winter. When Helen visits her niece in Colorado, she is awed by the beauty she finds there and realizes that Leigh still needs her, especially regarding the sorting of her love life. Leigh takes Helen out to Sullivan’s Crossing and Helen finds herself falling in love with the place and with a certain special someone.

The Beekeeper’s Ball is book two of the Bella Vista Chronicles by Susan Wiggs. Isabel Johansen grew up in the quaint Sonoma town of Archangel. Now, she is a celebrated chef who is determined to open a destination cooking school in her childhood home. Bella Vista’s rambling mission-style hacienda, with its working apple orchards, bountiful gardens and beehives, is the idyllic venue for Isabel’s project. It is also the perfect place for her to forget the past. Cormac O’Neill is an imperious war-torn journalist who is used to coaxing the past from other people, but he never gives up his own secrets. Cormac comes to town to dig up old history, but Isabel’s sensual kitchen skills may just coax a few of his own secrets out into the open.

Author Clyde Edgerton is known for his humorous modern-day tall tales and he doesn’t disappoint with Killer Diller. Listre, North Carolina is bustling with the help of the Sears twins, Ned and Ted. They run the local Baptist college and have just opened Nutrition House for overweight Christians. They also run Project Promise which is busy matching the educationally disadvantaged with local recalcitrant teens who want to share their talents. Into all this comes Wesley Benfield who is perfect for Project Promise. Wesley has a special place in his heart for Baptist songwriting, preaching, and a certain zaftig iron-pumping girl over at the Nutrition House. Lord only knows where Wesley will go from here.

Hillary Jordan’s novel When She Woke sees the main character Hannah trying to navigate the America of a not-too-distant future. The line between church and state has been eradicated and convicted felons are no longer imprisoned and rehabilitated, but chromed. To be chromed, the individual has their skin tone genetically modified to match the class of crime they have been convicted of and then they are released back into society to survive the best they can. Hannah is a red. Her crime is murder. Hannah’s journey to find safety leads her on a larger journey to find a place in the wider world and ultimately to find herself.

Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 (the 60th anniversary edition) still stands as the classic dystopian novel. Guy Montag is a fireman in an age when television rules and literature is subversive. It is Montag and his fellow firemen’s job to burn illegal commodities like printed books as well as the houses in which they are found. He never questions the sorrow and ruin that his job entails, and he returns each evening to his bland life with his wife, Mildred, whose life is consumed by her television “family.” An eccentric young neighbor named Clarisse introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and people shared their lives and ideas freely without the mindless drone of the television. Montag begins to question everything he has ever known and puts his and Clarisse’s lives in danger in the process.