Welcome to Browsing Books!
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 continue to travel around Minnesota but this time we’re learning about all the fascinating historical sites our state has to offer and giving you a book prompt inspired by each site.
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 encourage you to explore the Lower Sioux Agency. “As the Civil War raged on in the South, tensions between the Dakota and the newly formed Minnesota government erupted at this site in 1862.” To honor this history, we suggest that you read a book set in Minnesota.
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!
Immoral (Jonathan Stride #1), by Brian Freeman
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota—gone without a trace, like a bitter gust off Lake Superior. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen. And now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire. Secrets that are chillingly…immoral.
A Wolf After My Own Heart (BeWere My Heart Book 2), by MaryJanice Davidson
Oz Adway is a rare breed: an accountant who wants to get dirty. He’s a werewolf working for the Interspecies Placement Agency so it’s not long before he gets the opportunity to break out of his boring, safe office job. He volunteers to find runaway bear cub Sally Smalls, recently orphaned by a plane crash. Piece of cake, right? Unfortunately, Sally’s taken refuge with “ordinary” human Lila Kai. Lila has no idea what’s going on, but she’ll destroy anyone who tries to take the cub. Oz is not about to let a human jeopardize his daring career move, no matter how attractive he finds her.
Lila knows something’s different about the sexy weirdo who keeps popping up in the wrong place at the right time. She’s determined to figure out what, regardless of the escalating threats to her safety and Oz’s distracting hotness. She didn’t move into a cursed house and take in a werebear just to run when things get complicated. Together, Oz and Lila will prevail! But only if they can keep their hands off each other…
Put away your pocket protectors: This hilarious story includes a nerdy shifter accountant with a bad-boy side, a fiercely protective human heroine, and a baby bear cub who will make every reader sigh in cuteness.
This Town Sleeps, by Dennis E. Staples
On an Ojibwe reservation called Languille Lake, within the small town of Geshig at the hub of the rez, two men enter into a secret romance. Marion Lafournier, a midtwenties gay Ojibwe man, begins a relationship with his former classmate Shannon, a heavily closeted white man. While Marion is far more open about his sexuality, neither is immune to the realities of the lives of gay men in small towns and closed societies.
Then one night, while roaming the dark streets of Geshig, Marion unknowingly brings to life the spirit of a dog from beneath the elementary school playground. The mysterious revenant leads him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, an Ojibwe basketball star who was murdered at the age of seventeen and whose presence still lingers in the memories of the townsfolk. While investigating the fallen hero’s death, Marion discovers family connections and an old Ojibwe legend that may be the secret to unraveling the mystery he has found himself in.
Set on a reservation in far northern Minnesota, This Town Sleeps explores the many ways history, culture, landscape, and lineage shape our lives, our understanding of the world we inhabit, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of it all.
Wild Thing (Peter Brown #2), by Josh Bazell
It’s hard to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed. So hard that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, a job accompanying a sexy but self-destructive paleontologist on the world’s worst field assignment, Brown has no real choice but to say yes. Even if it means that an army of murderers, mobsters, and international drug dealers — not to mention the occasional lake monster — are about to have a serious Pietro Brnwa problem.
Shoot the Breeze (Detective Kate Rosetti Mystery Book 1), by Gina LaManna
Welcome to St. Paul, Minnesota—home to strong coffee, deadly winters, and Detective Kate Rosetti—a rising star in the local homicide department. When a young woman turns up dead along the Mississippi River in her latest assignment, Detective Rosetti quickly realizes it’s the work of a notorious cross-country serial killer.
To complicate matters, Kate’s troublemaking sister turns up out of the blue in need of a place to live. An strikingly handsome FBI agent appears at the crime scene, convinced this case belongs to him. And a certain British billionaire is a little too interested in the murder… and in Kate.
As she begins to close in on the killer, the investigation takes a turn for the personal. It’s one riddle after the next, and if Kate can’t sort out the murderer’s identity before his next kill, she’ll be up next on the autopsy table.
Gone to Dust: A Detective Nils Shapiro Novel (Nils Shapiro, 1), by Matt Goldman
A brutal crime. The ultimate cover-up. How do you solve a murder with no useable evidence?
Private detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighboring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible.
Suburban divorcee Maggie Somerville was found murdered in her bedroom, her body covered with the dust from hundreds of emptied vacuum cleaner bags, all potential DNA evidence obscured by the calculating killer.
Digging into Maggie’s cell phone records, Nils finds that the most frequently called number belongs to a mysterious young woman whose true identity could shatter the Somerville family–but could she be guilty of murder?
After the FBI demands that Nils drop the case, Nils and Ellegaard are forced to take their investigation underground, where the case grows as murky as the contents of the vacuum cleaner bags. Is this a strange case of domestic violence or something with far reaching, sinister implications?
CONCLUSION:
Thanks for joining us! We’ll be back next week with a look at the next historical site and the next book prompt for you then!