- November 15, 2023
Yellowface traces the story of a woman who steals her dead friend’s novel and has it published to great success. But the original writer is Asian and our antiheroine is not. So even without knowing she is posing as the author, people begin to question her appropriation of identity. We see her living in dread ...
Read more… - November 9, 2023
We’re closed for Veteran’s Day, so we’re stocking up on books! Here’s what PFL staff is reading this weekend:
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert
Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Pet by Catherine Chidgey
Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper
Vita Nostra ...
Read more… - November 2, 2023
White’s newest book seems at first to be a frightening and heartbreaking deep-dive into those odd, early-morning, public access children’s shows some of us used to stumble upon as kids (anyone else watch Mr. Dressup on CBC at 5 am?). A reunion of the cast of a mysterious children’s show leads to increasingly disturbing realizations ...
Read more… - October 25, 2023
Lay Them to Rest by Laurah Norton
At the heart of the story is a severed head. Found by two girls in a lakeside Illinois park in 1993, the head would languish in anonymity for almost thirty years, the woman to whom it had rightly belonged banished to the realm of generic Jane Does. Popular podcaster Laurah ...
Read more… - October 19, 2023
This tribute to The Thing and Aliens gives us the xenomorphic gore/loathing of tech billionaires mash-up we didn’t know we needed. When Riley accepts an opportunity to collect ice samples in Antarctica, she forces herself out of her comfort zone and joins several other teens who have also arrived at an isolated station. The teens ...
Read more… - October 12, 2023
Middle schooler Maggie can’t wait to go to summer camp with her best friend and is devastated when her parents let her know, last minute, that they’re sending her to a fat camp instead. Camp Sylvania turns out not to be so bad, especially since Maggie immediately makes some great new friends, but what’s up ...
Read more… - October 5, 2023
Abandoning his theme of animals making questionable decisions about hats, Klassen’s newest book is an adaptation of a Tyrolean folktale. The Skull is first and foremost a folktale, but it has some definite Halloween crossover potential due to the disembodied skull and his fear of a headless skeleton who tries to steal him every night. ...
Read more… - September 27, 2023
How to Fall in Love with Tofu by Emma de Thouars
As an occasional vegan propagandist, one of the rebuttals I hear most often, besides strident assertions of the impossibility of a life without cheese, is, “But I hate tofu!” Although it is a myth that vegans subsist exclusively on blocks of tofu, it is a versatile ...
Read more… - September 21, 2023
A funny take off of Thelma and Louise, only this time it is an 84 year old woman and her 21 year old caregiver. They drive a dark green Jaguar across country to run away from finally being arrested for a crime the older woman committed 50 years ago.
-Mary Ellen, Interlibrary Loan
This title was featured ...
Read more… - September 14, 2023
Set in 1990, this short novel about the fictional community of Dalton, Maine, serves as a thoughtful and affectionate portrait of small-town life, filled with characters who have known each other for decades and whose lives have come to overlap in countless ways. Any reader who has lived in rural America will recognize the author’s ...
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