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Book descriptions in this article are adapted from publishers' summaries and library catalog records.
Here is what Book & Banter Book Group has been reading at the Peter White Public Library. To learn more about library book groups visit PWPL.info.
"Atmosphere" Taylor Jenkins Reid (FIC REID) is the story of Jane Goodwin, a star nerd. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates but one crew member stands out. Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane. As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
"Broken Country" by Clare Leslie Hall (FIC HALL). Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth's brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn't realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel's life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.
"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro (FIC ISHIGUR). From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. Chosen to by 14-year-old Josie to be her companion, Klara leaves the store and begins to learn about human behavior outside of the store. In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
"Vera, or Faith" by Gary Shteyngart (FIC SHTEYNG). The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. The story is told through the eyes of an observant, sensitive, and precocious 10-year-old Vera. Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love’s survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Corey Wiseman is a Reference Assistant at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.