On a February day in West Texas in 1976, 14 year old Gloria Ramirez is brutally raped and left for dead in an oil patch. Dazed and shoeless, she bravely makes her way to the nearest ranch house, where Mary Rose Whitehead and her young daughter Aimee come to Gloria's aid. When oil rigger Dale…
Many book clubs have decided to host meetings online in this time of social distancing. Here at CMPLD, our staff has had the opportunity to lead several online book discussions via Zoom and it has worked very well! We highly recommend trying it, if you haven't already. It's a great way to keep those interpersonal…
Hopefully during this homebound time, you’re finding good books to keep you company. For me, nothing distracts like a good mystery. Today I’d like to call out some of my favorite lesser-known mysteries that you might not be familiar with. We all need a few go-to authors when the latest hot titles are all checked…
What would you do if your best friend falls in love with the man you're destined to be with? That's the premise of this wonderful love story. Dannie Kohan is a compulsively organized New York lawyer with specific plans for her future: the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and the perfect fiancé – David, an…
What do you do when your whole family is suddenly gone? How do you keep going, and how do you find any meaning in life? Even worse, how do you figure this out when you're only 12 years old? This is the premise of Dear Edward, the best-selling book by Ann Napolitano. Young Eddie is…
At the start of this book, Matt Rose is in a Humvee in eastern Baghdad, not sure who he is or what he's doing there. Five months later, Rose is back in Missoula, Montana, his hometown, discharged from the military with a traumatic brain injury and still trying to piece together memories of his past…
Was one of your New Year's resolutions this year about stuff? Buying less, decluttering, reorganizing? Do you wonder what happens to everything we donate or recycle? If you do, pick up this book. Secondhand takes us on a trip throughout the world to show where all that stuff goes. Believe it or not, that old…
I would never have picked up this book had a friend not recommended it to me. I thought it might be self-congratulatory or preachy. But Melissa Gates is neither of those things. Quite the opposite: she is humble and refreshingly honest about how hard it can be to make change in the world. This book…
This book is the first in Ann Cleeves's new Three Rivers series. Mystery fans know Cleeves from the Vera Stanhope and Shetland books and TV series, and it was exciting to discover her brand-new character, Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. He's an unassuming, introverted sort who's pulled into a murder case on the day of his…
Since it's Halloween this week but I'm too chicken to read horror books, I figured I would cheat and review a not-so-scary book that has "ghosts" in the title! Tuesday Mooney is a "prospect researcher" for a large hospital in Boston -- that's fundraising-speak for someone who pulls together information on wealthy potential donors. At…
