We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, a multitype system serving all types of libraries. We are here to help you find new books, for yourself or for your library.
This season we are moving through the state of Minnesota, looking at an interesting fact about each county and giving you a book prompt from that fact. We will share six book suggestions to meet that prompt, to get you started on reading new books. You can also take that prompt and find any other book to meet the challenge!
This week we admire Faribault County. Two 1903 buildings are representative of the substantial railroad activity in Wells: a train station and a freestanding lunchroom that served crew and passengers. We suggest you celebrate these facts by reading a book about trains or train travel.
We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all – including a nice book – Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!
Train Dreams: A Novella, by Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions.
Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the 20th century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—the new novella by the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.
Peace Train, by Cat Stevens and Peter H. Reynolds
The iconic song is now an incredible picture book! Celebrate fifty years of Cat Stevens’ timeless anthem with this joyfully illustrated picture book filled with hope, love, and the celebration of all cultures and identities.
Fifty years ago Peace Train changed the world and defined a generation with its universal message of peace, hope and love between all people and cultures, and the heartfelt and heart-warming lyrics of this anthem have never been more relevant.
Illustrated by the bestselling author and illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, Cat Stevens’ iconic ode to harmony is now for the first time a joyously illustrated picture book perfect for spreading the love and sharing its timeless message with a whole new generation.
Hop on the Peace Train and join its growing group of passengers who are all ready to travel together to a better world of peace, kindness and human understanding.
4:50 From Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery, by Agatha Christie [she wrote a lot of books set on trains, not just the famous Murder on the Orient Express!]
For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman’s throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs. McGillicuddy’s friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case — for there is no corpse, and no one is missing.
Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.
Murder on the Ballarat Train: A Phryne Fisher Mystery, by Kerry Greenwood
In Phryne’s third adventure, Phryne is off to Ballarat for a week of fabulousness, but the sedate journey by train turns out to be far from the restful trip she was planning. What was planned as a restful country sojourn turns into the stuff of nightmares: a young girl who can’t remember anything, rumours of vile white slavery, and the body of an old woman missing her emerald rings. And Phryne is at the centre, working through the clues to arrive at the incredible truth before another murder is committed. Fortunately, Phryne can still find a little time for a discreet dalliance and the delicious diversion of that rowing team of young men.
Night Train to Memphis (Vicky Bliss #5), by Elizabeth Peters
An assistant curator of Munich’s National Museum, Vicky Bliss is no expert on Egypt, but she does have a Ph.D. in solving crimes. So when an intelligence agency offers her a luxury Nile cruise if she’ll help solve a murder and stop a heist of Egyptian antiquities, all 5’11” of her takes the plunge.
Vicky suspects the authorities really want her to lead them to her missing lover, the art thief and master of disguises she knows only as “Sir John Smythe”. And right in the shadow of the Sphinx she spots him…with his new flame. Vicky is so furious at this romantic stab-in-the-back, not to mention the sudden arrival of her meddling boss, Herr Dr. Schmidt, that she may overlook a danger as old as the pharaohs and as unchanging, a criminal who hides behind a mask of charm while moving in for the kill.
Gone Tomorrow: Jack Reacher, Book 13, by Lee Child
New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t. And if you think Reacher isn’t going to get involved . . . then you don’t know Jack.
Susan Mark, the fifth passenger, had a big secret, and her plain little life was being watched in Washington, and California, and Afghanistan—by dozens of people with one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or just enough to get him killed. A race has begun through the streets of Manhattan, a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. For Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, the finish line comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye.
CONCLUSION:
Thanks for joining us! We’ll be back next week with a look at the next county and the next book prompt!