Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Historical, Mystery, Nonfiction, Romance, Thrillers

While You Wait June 2023: The Covenant of Water and Small-Town Wisconsin

Posted on June 9, 2023June 8, 2023 by Anneliese

It’s no surprise to find a novel that’s been chosen for Oprah’s Book Club at the top of our most-requested books, and that’s the case with The Covenant of Water. I was pretty surprised at our top nonfiction book, however – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a travel book so high up on the list before! It does make sense, however, given the time of year – this might be the perfect season to get out for some Wisconsin road trip fun.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

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Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, History, Nonfiction, Romance

While You Wait May 2023: The Five-Star Weekend and The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Posted on May 19, 2023May 8, 2023 by Anneliese

Elin Hilderbrand has a new novel out, and that’s topping our fiction holds right now – not too surprising as she’s a very popular author! And on the non-fiction side, we have the dramatic story of an 18th-century shipwreck and the chaos that ensued after one group of survivors washed ashore… only to be followed six months later by a second group accusing them of murder!

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life—her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline—grow deeper.

So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife—she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.

The husband of Hollis’s childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis’s first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis’s best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann’s career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client’s mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis’s friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there’s Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it happens, has many secrets.

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Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Nonfiction

While You Wait April 2023: Pineapple Street and Poverty, By America

Posted on April 21, 2023April 20, 2023 by Anneliese

I was not familiar with the author of this month’s top fiction book, Jenny Jackson, and taking a look, it looks like this is her debut novel! It’s pretty impressive to end up at the top of the most-requested list with your first book. And in non-fiction, we have a followup book to the popular Evicted by Matthew Desmond.

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

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Adult, Fiction, Mystery, Nonfiction

While You Wait March 2023: I Have Some Questions For You and The Mountain Is You

Posted on March 17, 2023March 16, 2023 by Anneliese

Our popular non-fiction book this month is actually from 2020, proving the enduring appeal of self-help books. And in fiction, we have an author who hasn’t appeared in this series before, Rebecca Makkai – one of her previous novels, The Great Believers, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019, however! Take a look at these books below as well as a few to tide you over during the wait in the queue.

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent ﬂaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

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Adult, Biography & Memoir, Contemporary, Fiction, History, Nonfiction, Romance

While You Wait XII: Someone Else’s Shoes and The Nazi Conspiracy

Posted on February 17, 2023February 13, 2023 by Anneliese

It’s amazing – this month we have neither a thriller nor a memoir! Instead, our very popular new fiction book is Jojo Moyes’ new novel Someone Else’s Shoes, which seems poised to be a popular book club pick in the future as well. And for non-fiction, The Nazi Conspiracy is topping our charts, filled with spies, assassins, and political intrigue. Get on the waitlists now, and check out our read-alikes while you wait!

Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes

Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes?

Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope–she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in.

That’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag–she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself.

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Adult, Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Mystery, Nonfiction, Thrillers

While You Wait XI: The House in the Pines and The Light We Carry

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Anneliese

In December, the popular upcoming fiction book was a thriller, and the non-fiction book was a celebrity memoir. And in January… it looks like people are hankering for more of the same! Get on those waitlists now, and check out our readalikes in the meantime!

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer.

Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer—the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.

At her mother’s house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father’s book that didn’t stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank’s cabin. . . .

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Adult, Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Mystery, Nonfiction, Thrillers

While You Wait X: Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six and Spare

Posted on December 16, 2022December 15, 2022 by Anneliese

The books that everyone in Sheboygan is waiting for in December are a new thriller (always a popular genre to curl up with in winter) and, perhaps unsurprisingly, another celebrity memoir – this time from Prince Harry, coinciding with the new Netflix documentary. Both of these books have long waitlists, so get on them now – and, while you wait, check out some of our suggested read-alikes!

Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six by Lisa Unger

What could be more restful than a weekend getaway with family and friends? An isolated luxury cabin in the woods, spectacular views, a hot tub and a personal chef. Hannah’s generous brother found the listing online. The reviews are stellar. It’ll be three couples on this trip with good food, good company and lots of R & R.

But the dreamy weekend is about to turn into a nightmare.

A deadly storm is brewing. The rental host seems just a little too present. The personal chef reveals that their beautiful house has a spine-tingling history. And the friends have their own complicated past, with secrets that run blood deep.

How well does Hannah know her brother, her own husband? Can she trust her best friend? Meanwhile, someone is determined to ruin the weekend, looking to exact a payback for deeds long buried. Who is the stranger among them?

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Nonfiction

The Library Has Baking Pans!

Posted on November 11, 2022November 10, 2022 by Anneliese

Did you know that the library is prepared for your holiday baking needs with more than just cookbooks – that we now have baking pans and tools available for checkout? I have to admit that I’ve made use of this collection a few times already (and my coworkers seem happy with the results!). If you just need a dino pan for your kid’s birthday but don’t need to make a dino cake every week, don’t shell out for your own cake pan, just borrow one. Aren’t planning on making yule log cakes all year round? We’ve got a yule log pan for that! Below, I’ll highlight a couple of the pans we have, the recipes I made in them, and my absolute favorite baking book. If you want to see all the pans we have, they’re in the catalog here!

The All-Purpose Baker’s Companion by King Arthur Baking

King Arthur Baking (previously King Arthur Flour) is my absolute number-one go-to for baking recipes. They have tons of recipes on their website as well, but this way, I won’t use up all the paper in the printer with all the wonderful recipes I find. It also has general baking information like ingredient substitutions (including making things gluten-free) and various tips and tricks for when something just isn’t working. I mean, it’s over 500 pages! You can’t go wrong.

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Adult, Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Mystery, Nonfiction, Thrillers

While You Wait IX: Mad Honey and Live Wire

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Anneliese

We’re back to the regular format of one fiction book and one non-fiction book this month! This time, we have a new entry in a popular series: Colleen Hoover’s new book is due to come out next month. The non-fiction book is another memoir – it seems like people can’t get enough of reading about people overcoming their past difficulties, especially if it comes with some Hollywood/celebrity drama!

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father’s beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can trust him completely…

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

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Adult, Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Nonfiction, Romance

While You Wait VIII: It Starts With Us and I’m Glad My Mom Died

Posted on September 9, 2022September 6, 2022 by Anneliese

It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover

Lily and her ex-husband, Ryle, have just settled into a civil coparenting rhythm when she suddenly bumps into her first love, Atlas, again. After nearly two years separated, she is elated that for once, time is on their side, and she immediately says yes when Atlas asks her on a date.

But her excitement is quickly hampered by the knowledge that, though they are no longer married, Ryle is still very much a part of her life—and Atlas Corrigan is the one man he will hate being in his ex-wife and daughter’s life.

Switching between the perspectives of Lily and Atlas, It Starts with Us picks up right where the epilogue for the “gripping, pulse-pounding” (Sarah Pekkanen, author of Perfect Neighbors) bestselling phenomenon It Ends with Us left off. Revealing more about Atlas’s past and following Lily as she embraces a second chance at true love while navigating a jealous ex-husband, it proves that “no one delivers an emotional read like Colleen Hoover” (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author).

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