Every month, staff from the Airdrie Public Library send the Airdrie City View a selection of titles the library has among its collections, along with brief synopses of each read. Here is the 'Book Page' for October, offering a handful of late-fall reading options for adults this year, including both fiction and non-fiction titles.
Adult Fiction
Not a Happy Family
Shari Lapena
Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don't come much richer than Fred and Sheila Mercer.
But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mercers are brutally murdered the night after Easter dinner with their three adult kids. Each child stands to inherit millions. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening?
The Paper Palace
Miranda Cowley Heller
It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a 50-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace" – the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life.
But this morning is different, because last night, Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next 24 hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas.
Adult Non-Fiction
The Heartbeat of Trees
Peter Wohlleben
Many of us fear we've lost our connection to nature, but whether we observe it or not, our blood pressure stabilizes near trees, the colour green calms us, and the forest sharpens our senses.
In this book, Peter Wohlleben shares how to see, feel, smell, hear, and even taste your journey into the woods. Above all, he reveals a wondrous cosmos where humans are a part of nature, and where conservation is not just about saving trees, but about saving ourselves, too.
The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert
Shugri Said Sahl
When Shugri Said Salh was six years old, she was sent to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. Shugri grew to love the freedom of roaming with her goats and the feeling of community in learning the courtship rituals, cooking songs, and poems of her people.
Ultimately, the family was forced to flee as refugees in the face of a civil war, settling in the United States. There, Shugri would again find herself a nomad in a strange land, learning to navigate everything from escalators to homeless shelters to, eventually, marriage, parenthood, and nursing school.
