At noon tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18, in the Cumberland Room, the Plateau Women’s Chorus and guest artist Renee Tatum will present Swift to Love in remembrance of Gerri Anne Mason.
First Presbyterian Church of Crossville will present the Fine Arts School of Music Concert at noon Wednesday, March 24, featuring a collection of folk, bluegrass and sacred music. This is an event not to be missed.
Art Circle Public Library is at 3 East St., Crossville. Go to artcirclelibrary.info or call 931-484-6790 for more.
Great New Books
The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall. This enticing saga of wartime love and loss centers on a pair of twins from Cambridge, England. When Theo Armstrong joins the Royal Air Force, his sister, Tessa, begins training as a spy for the Special Operations Executive, telling her family she’s becoming a nurse.
After Tessa makes a parachute drop into German-occupied France, she winds up joining the Resistance. Meanwhile, Theo flies into battle at Normandy with fellow pilot Richard Barnes, with whom he hopes to embark on a love affair if both survive the mission. A fiery dogfight ensues, leaving Richard’s fate uncertain in the aftermath, and Theo returns home, where the British government tells him and his parents that Tessa was a spy and that she’s gone missing.
Later, Theo joins the government’s security directorate to find Tessa and other missing agents while keeping silent about his sexuality, which is criminalized in Britain. Fast-forward to 2003, when Theo works with Ph.D. student Ediem who is researching female agents in the SOE, and together they search for the truth about what happened to Tessa. Hall evokes the strong bond between siblings, showing how Tessa is not to be outdone by the heroic Theo, and the thrilling narrative highlights the perilous work of female SOE agents. Fans of WWII fiction won’t want to put it down.
Everyone in This Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson. At the start, Ernest Cunningham and fiancée Juliette are traveling to a bank in a small town, the once-and-done center of an Australian gold rush. Their goal is to get a bank loan to start a detective business, based on Cunningham’s three previous case solves, but they end up embroiled in a complex heist-turned-hostage situation.
As with the previous three novels, much of the book’s success rests on the Golden Age Mystery-style parlor scene, where the detective spills secrets until the guilty confess out of desperation. It’ll be down to readers if they can suspend their disbelief long enough to reach the confession, as the elaborate dominoes Stevenson has ensembled propel the plot forward, including but not limited to: a locked-room murder, spontaneous combustion, and a parrot squawking out clues.
Bloodlust by Sandra Brown. Detective Mitch Haskell has been battling grief and rage for the past two years after his wife died, leaving behind Mitch and their infant son. The official report says she died by suicide. But Mitch knows it was murder, and he knows who was responsible for her death: a drug kingpin named Roland Malone.
Fed up with Mitch’s antics and wanting him to get better, his boss orders him to see a therapist. Mitch chooses Dylan Reede and is surprised to see that the doctor isn’t some Sigmund Freud lookalike but a beautiful woman. Sparks fly. The complications arise when Mitch learns that another one of Dylan’s patients is Roland.
This book has nasty villains, great lead characters in Mitch and Dylan, and genuine surprises that keep the story from getting predictable.
Library Laugh I
Why were the deer, the chipmunk, and the squirrel laughing so hard? Because the owl was a hoot!
Stingy Schobel Says
Do you have wireless internet streaming all over the house 24 hours a day, seven days a week?
Make the pledge to turn off your wireless router each and every night to cut down on electricity use and to help preserve the life of your router.
Need one more reason? Many health experts believe wireless signals can also emit potentially harmful electronic magnetic fields.
Connecting your router to an electrical strip can make it easy to turn on and off.
Library Laugh II
What is the sheep’s favorite kind of food? Bah-bah-cue.
Libraries=Information
One of the perks of traveling to and staying at seaside destinations is the wide variety of fresh, tasty seafood that is available at local restaurants.
When you eat at these establishments, ask about locally caught seafood before ordering. While many restaurants have a wide variety to meet customer choices, it’s the local stuff that’s traveled the least; it’s the freshest, and it has the smallest carbon footprint.
St. Patrick’s Day Bonus
What do you call a monkey who won’t behave? A bad-boon.