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It’s time for another book bouquet! It’s summertime in Minnesota, so going to the lake (any lake, all lakes) is important! So this week we look at books set in lakes, by lakes, or around lakes.
Each week we look at a collection of a few books on a topic. You can explore the books on your own, or use them as a foundation for building a display in your library! You can use this flyer to get started, or another one you build for your library. (Click here: Lake Books flyer)
“Flippity flop and splash your way through this colorful trip to the lake. Jump in with your senses and play with rhymes as you experience the waves, the boats, and the many animals. This cheery book follows three children as they enjoy the simple pleasures and rare glimpses that nature offers us around the lake.”
“Human laws do not apply in the territory controlled by the Others–vampires, shape-shifters, and even deadlier paranormal beings. And this is a fact that humans should never, ever forget….
After her divorce, Vicki DeVine took over a rustic resort near Lake Silence, in a human town that is not human controlled. Towns such as Vicki’s don’t have any distance from the Others, the dominant predators who rule most of the land and all of the water throughout the world. And when a place has no boundaries, you never really know what is out there watching you.
Vicki was hoping to find a new career and a new life. But when her lodger, Aggie Crowe–one of the shape-shifting Others–discovers a murdered man, Vicki finds trouble instead. The detectives want to pin the death on her, despite the evidence that nothing human could have killed the victim. As Vicki and her friends search for answers, ancient forces are roused by the disturbance in their domain. They have rules that must not be broken–and all the destructive powers of nature at their command.”
“Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. Embittered by his “former” status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, there’s not much that can shock him. But when the town’s judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption, and scandal.
As a lakeside blizzard buries Aurora, Cork must dig out the truth among town officials who seem dead-set on stopping his investigation in its tracks. But even Cork freezes up when faced with the harshest enemy of all: a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.”
“In 2009, Loreen Niewenhuis walked completely around Lake Michigan. This book chronicles that journey, a 1,000-mile walk around the world’s fifth-largest lake. The book explores both the geology of the lake and the measure of a person–a woman, married, mother of two sons (who joined her for portions of the walk). But most of the walk was done solo, an adventure in discovery of self and place.
Niewenhuis conveys a sense of the magnitude of the lake she loves, a place so elemental to the four Midwestern states that form its shores.
From a ground-level perspective, the book explores the natural and human history of Lake Michigan . . . and raises important questions about preserving our wild places and protecting fragile ecosystems on which we all depend.”
“Chronicling the author’s 10,000-mile “Great Lakes Circle Tour,” this travel memoir seeks to answer a burning question: Is there a Great Lakes culture, and if so, what is it? Largely associated with the Midwest, the Great Lakes region actually has a culture that transcends the border between the United States and Canada. United by a love of encased meats, hockey, beer, snowmobiling, deer hunting, and classic-rock power ballads, the folks in Detroit have more in common with citizens in Windsor, Ontario, than those in Wichita, Kansas—while Toronto residents have more in common with Chicagoans than Montreal’s population. Much more than a typical armchair travel book, this humorous cultural exploration is filled with quirky people and unusual places that prove the obscure is far more interesting than the well known.”
“In The Lady in the Lake, hardboiled crime fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives—one a rich man’s and one a poor man’s—who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe’s investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe’s not sure he cares about either one, but he’s not paid to care.”
” After an unscrupulous reporter falsely accuses Boston lounge singer Lily Blake of having an affair with a newly appointed Cardinal, she’s hounded by the press, fired from her job, and robbed of all public freedom. The humiliation and violation of privacy leaves her no choice but to retreat to her rural hometown of Lake Henry, New Hampshire. In search of refuge, Lily forms an uneasy alliance with John Kipling, a former Boston reporter with trust issues of his own. Now editing Lake Henry’s local newspaper, John cannot ignore Lily’s appeal or her plight — even at the risk of taking on his former colleagues. Surprising and deeply satisfying, Lake News offers an intimate look at the complex relationship between an enigmatic man and a vulnerable woman, both struggling to find a new sense of community in a place they once called home.”
“On a lake deep in the Minnesota woods, Kathy Wade comforts her husband John, a rising political star, after a devastating electoral defeat in which he’s been pursued by rumors of the atrocities he committed in Vietnam. But it is clear that something is horribly wrong between them – too much has been hidden. Then Kathy vanishes, along with their boat.”
“The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they move from their little house on the banks of Plum Creek to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Here Pa works on the new railroad until he finds a homestead claim that is perfect for their new little house. Laura takes her first train ride as she, her sisters, and their mother come out to live with Pa on the shores of Silver Lake. After a lonely winter in the surveyors’ house, Pa puts up the first building in what will soon be a brand-new town on the beautiful shores of Silver Lake. The Ingallses’ covered-wagon travels are finally over.”
“The Great Lakes―Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior―hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.
For thousands of years the pristine Great Lakes were separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the roaring Niagara Falls and from the Mississippi River basin by a “sub-continental divide.” Beginning in the late 1800s, these barriers were circumvented to attract oceangoing freighters from the Atlantic and to allow Chicago’s sewage to float out to the Mississippi. These were engineering marvels in their time―and the changes in Chicago arrested a deadly cycle of waterborne illnesses―but they have had horrendous unforeseen consequences. Egan provides a chilling account of how sea lamprey, zebra and quagga mussels and other invaders have made their way into the lakes, decimating native species and largely destroying the age-old ecosystem. And because the lakes are no longer isolated, the invaders now threaten water intake pipes, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure across the country.
Egan also explores why outbreaks of toxic algae stemming from the overapplication of farm fertilizer have left massive biological “dead zones” that threaten the supply of fresh water. He examines fluctuations in the levels of the lakes caused by manmade climate change and overzealous dredging of shipping channels. And he reports on the chronic threats to siphon off Great Lakes water to slake drier regions of America or to be sold abroad.
In an age when dire problems like the Flint water crisis or the California drought bring ever more attention to the indispensability of safe, clean, easily available water, The Death and the Life of the Great Lakes is a powerful paean to what is arguably our most precious resource, an urgent examination of what threatens it and a convincing call to arms about the relatively simple things we need to do to protect it.”