Book Review: Winter's End by Paige Shelton + reminder of this month's Just Desserts meeting tonight

Winter’s End
by Paige Shelton (Shelton)

It’s spring in Benedict, Alaska. Time for mud and the annual Death walk, where citizens come to town to mark down that they made it through the winter. When an older gentleman named Al doesn’t show up. Beth and Orin hike up to check on him. When they find him he’s ill and hadn’t eaten in a while. Beth fixes him food and begins to care for him while Orin goes for help.

 

Though help arrives Orin doesn’t return, soon after that Beth realized her new friend Kaye was checked off the “census,” but hasn’t been seen for a while. When someone finds her dead Beth starts to ask questions. The Millers (Kaye’s husband’s family and the Oliphants are the modern Alaskan Hatfield and McCoys, it comes to light that Kaye has been hanging around with the Oliphants and may have been having an affair with Cyrus the younger son. Beth is also still looking for her father who’s been missing for many years. Could the killer have been Kaye’s husband? Her lover? Or did she stumble on Beth’s own father?

 

I like the characters in this series and this is a great addition. Beth is becoming more comfortable with her new role in life and we’re learning more about the townsfolk. I was attracted to the series because it’s set in Alaska and this book does not disappoint in the mystery or the description of life in Alaska.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Breakup by Dana Stabenow, or Bitter Rain by Shannon Baker.)

 

( official Paige Shelton web site )

 

Recommended by Marcy G.
South and Gere Branch Libraries

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

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If you're a mystery fan, you're invited to join us for this month's Just Desserts meeting tonight, April 27th, at 6:30 p.m. in the 4th floor auditorium of the Bennett Martin Public Library downtown at 14th & "N" St. -- this mystery-themed discussion group meets on the last Thursday of each month, January through October. This month's book assigned topic of discussion is also the title selected for annual statewide One Book One Nebraska reading program, Mignon G. Eberhart's 1930 novel, The Mystery of Hunting's End.

 

Even if you haven't read anything for this specific discussion, you can still participate, and learn about great new mysteries to try! For more information, check out the Just Desserts schedule at https://lincolnlibraries.org/bookguide/book-groups/#justdesserts

New BooksTalk Booklist: The Nebraska Book Awards (2017) and One Book One Nebraska Finalists (2018)

On October 20th, 2017, at the Bethany BooksTalk Group, Erin W., curator of the Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors, presented a booktalk focused on authors from our Cornhusker state.

Her talk featured two different elements -- the five finalists for the One Book - One Nebraska for 2018, and the 2017 winners in multiple categories of the Nebraska Book Awards (for books published in 2016).

You can see a cumulative list of all the winners of the Nebraska Book Awards on our Award Winners page on the BookGuide web site.

You can see the list from Erin's booktalk at the following link:

The Nebraska Book Awards (2017) and One Book One Nebraska Finalists (2018)

2011 One Book One Nebraska title announced

2011 ONE BOOK ONE NEBRASKA: Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

One Book One Nebraska 2011 invites citizens across the state to read Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (University of Nebraska Press, 2002) by Ted Kooser, of Garland, Nebraska. Kooser is one of America’s most highly regarded poets and served as the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 - 2006. He is the author of numerous full-length collections of poetry, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004).

Kooser’s first book of prose, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), won the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction in 2003 and Third Place in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award in Nonfiction for 2002. The book was chosen as the Best Book Written by a Midwestern Writer for 2002 by Friends of American Writers. It also won the Gold Award for Autobiography in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. In Local Wonders, Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska—an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention. Memories of his grandmother’s cooking are juxtaposed with reflections about the old-fashioned outhouse on his property.

After receiving nominations from across the state, the Nebraska Center for the Book board announced Local Wonders as Nebraska’s statewide reading choice at Saturday’s Celebration of Nebraska Books in Lincoln.

One Book One Nebraska 2011 is sponsored by a coalition of organizations including the Nebraska Center for the Book, Nebraska Humanities Council, Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska Library Commission, and University of Nebraska Press.

Libraries across Nebraska will join the Nebraska Center for the Book and other literary and cultural organizations in planning book discussions, activities, and events that will encourage Nebraskans to read and discuss this book.

As they are developed, support materials to assist with local reading/discussion activities will be available at http://centerforthebook.nebraska.gov/programs/onebook.html. Updates and activity listings will be made on the One Book One Nebraska Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=281641340948

A Lantern in Her Hand

A Lantern in Her Hand
by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Bess Streeter Aldrich's best known work is loosely based on the life of her own mother, but incorporates material from other sources as well. The overall optimistic tone of the book contrasts with the fact that many of the events described are rather dark. The main character, Abbie Deal, faces both external hardships and internal struggles as the book follows her from childhood through old age. Much of the book reads not so much like a novel as a précis of a novel. Whole years are summarized in a page or two, reflecting in a way Abbie's sense of time slipping away throughout her life. But Aldrich's strongest writing comes when she looks at an event in more detail; it is in these scenes, such as Abbie giving birth during the infamous blizzard of 1888, that the characters become more fully developed. Abbie's dreams of achieving great things are doomed to be unrealized in her own life, but ultimately find fulfillment in the accomplishments of her children for whom she sacrificed those dreams. The book thus becomes a celebration of the ordinary lives of the countless settlers who struggled to make a home in what was to them a new land. Readers who enjoyed Laura Ingalls Wilder's books when they were younger will probably find much to like in this book; both authors used many of the same or similar historical incidents in telling their stories, such as the "long winter" of 1880-81, and the plagues of crop-devouring grasshoppers in the 1870's. [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the works of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder.] -- recommended by Peter J. - Virtual Services Department

[Click the title links above to see all available formats of this work.]

[ official Bess Streeter Aldrich Foundation web site ]

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.

One Book One Nebraska - 2010 - Wright Morris

Following the ongoing success of the first several years of One Book One Nebraska, featuring Willa Cather's My Antonia, Omaha mystery novelist Alex Kava's One False Move, Mari Sandoz' classic history text Crazy Horse, Nebraska State Poet William Kloefkorn's autobiography Restoring the Burnt Child, and Bess Streeter Aldrich's A Lantern in Her Hand, the Nebraska Library Commission, the Nebraska Center for the Book, the Nebraska Library Association, the Nebraska Regional Library Systems and other organizations are sponsoring yet another year of One Book One Nebraska in 2010!

The 2010 selected title is Wright Morris' novel, The Home Place. You can find more information about the 2005-2010 events at the official One Book One Nebraska Web site.

Book Clubs -- A Lantern in Her Hand now available in sets

Is your book group planning to read this year's One Book One Nebraska selection -- Bess Streeter Aldrich's A Lantern in Her Hand?

If so, you'll be pleased to know that the Lincoln City Libraries has added two sets of A Lantern in Her Hand to our Book Club in a Bag collection. You can find out more about Book Club in a Bag by clicking this link.

You can find out all about the state-wide One Book One Nebraska program (click that link) -- which is different than the Lincoln City Libraries-sponsored One Book -- One Lincoln.