The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson

Just prior to Halloween I was looking for something spooky, something scary to help ring in the season. Arriving in our new collection was the book The Saturday Night Ghost Club (SNGC) by Craig Davidson. The book has ghosts and fires on the cover and certainly looked to be able to meet my expectations. It also had a good word of mouth, so I checked it out.
What I got was proof of the old maxim "you can't judge a book by its cover" as SNGC was not a horror story full of ghouls and goblins, but a book dealing with a coming of age story and a story of things that haunt people from their pasts.
The main character of the the book is 12-year-old Jake Baker, a resident of a decaying Niagara Falls of the 1980s. Jake looks back from his present day position as a brain surgeon and reminisces about his awkward pre-teen years, the friends he made, and the issues he had to learn about his own family's past.
Davidson does great job of describing both people and places. You get to know the characters and learn what makes them tick. He also does a masterful job of describing the surroundings, the decay and and the situations that took them to that point.
SNGC makes you think - think about summer's past, friends you had, and possibly about what you might have missed when it comes to the people you knew back when, and, what you did not know about them. The Saturday Night Ghost Club points out that there are ghosts that haunt people for many reasons, but they aren't necessarily the type that jump out and say "boo"!

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando

This young adult thriller begins when five teens find themselves suddenly abandoned on a playground with no recollection of where they’ve been or what happened to them.  They are about to learn that eleven years ago, on the first day of kindergarten, six of them were taken.  Now they are forced to struggle with their memory loss as they try to fit back into unfamiliar families.  Everyone wants answers… especially the sister of the one who didn’t return.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

In Depression era Minnesota, 12 yr old Odie O'Bannon runs away from the Lincoln Indian Training School, along with his brother Albert, their friend Mose, and newly orphaned Emmy.  They set out in a canoe down the Gilead river, heading for the Mississippi and St. Louis, hoping to find a place to call home.

Along the way, they meet many memorable people -- the "pig-scarer" farmer, a traveling revival show, residents of a Hooverville, and others.  All this time, they are being chased by the superintendent of the Lincoln School.  Odie eventually makes it so St. Louis, only to find out that his "Home" there wasn't what he hoped for.  But all of the Vagabonds do find home in time.

This is a beautifully written book with a wonderful story.  I highly, highly recommend it!

The Public DVD review

A sensitive and enlightening look at the problem of the homeless in regards to public libraries. This movie tells the story of a librarian and his work at the Cincinnati Public Library. In a particularly long cold snap the homeless are lined up at the door waiting to get in at the moment of opening. They use the bathrooms to wash and groom themselves. They stay the day.They are required to leave at closing because the library is not a shelter equipped for overnight stays. Still, the main character feels the need to help these unfortunate ones, especially because of his own background and his desire to serve the public. One cold night he helps them to stay n the library with an act of civil disobedience. A touching story of someone just trying to help. "I can see clearly now, the rain has gone."

The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Jacqueline Winspear's previous Maisie Dobbs mystery, To Die But Once, until I read her latest work, The American Agent. Set in England during The Blitz of 1940, The American Agent follows Dobbs, a self-taught private detective. She works to solve the murder of an American war correspondent who met her demise just shortly after meeting Maisie, who was on ambulance duty during a bombing raid on London.
Winspear does a thorough job of working Maisie through all of the potential suspects and leading the reader through a variety of possibilities when it comes to the identity of the murderer; but it is with her historical fiction work where Winspear shines.
Maisie has several friends involved in various aspects of the war effort, as well as in Scotland Yard. She interacts with them in a variety of locations that highlight what it was like in the days of wartime Britain. You encounter displaced people, bombing raids, and propaganda efforts that were all a part of 1940 life. In fact, Maisie is trying to adopt a young girl whose mother passed away after she gave up her daughter and sent her to safety outside of London proper. There are many twists that revolve around the war and the people involved, and that's what I particularly like about Winspear's books.
The other thing I like about the Maisie Dobbs series is I think you can start with any volume and get caught up. The American Agent is book 15, and I actually started the series with number 14. I have since gone back and read 11-13, all of which I have found to be good reads.

Someone We Know by Shari Lapena

Lapena’s latest thriller opens with a gruesome murder. The quiet upstate New York suburb is shaken when their new resident Amanda Pierce goes missing… Did her husband Robert do it? It could also be any of the neighbors she was having affairs with. Paul and Olivia’s teenage son Raleigh has been breaking into houses to hack into the owners’ computers. Does he know secrets he is not telling? How about Olivia’s best friend Glenda and her husband Keith or their son Adam and other suspects? Lapena gives a few false leads leaving us guessing. The surprise twist towards the end was unexpected. It is a fast read “whodunit.”

Heading for Home: My Journey from Little League to Hollywood! by Kent Stock with Ken Fuson

Need a quick, good story to read?  Look no further than Heading for Home: My Journey from Little League to Hollywood! This was just a good story.  Stock speaks of his growing up, his parents and grandparents growing up and how it all shaped their lives.  You can appreciate the hard work of Kent, his parents and others in the story. 

I grew up in a small community like Norway where the school was everything.  The town was a ghost town on Friday nights during football and basketball seasons and in later years when my school was an up and coming baseball powerhouse, the towns caught baseball fever and held on!  In 1997 when the girl’s basketball team played in the first round of the State tourney, the volunteer ambulance crew had to draw names out of hat as to who would stay back in town of there was an emergency.  this isn't something you find in larger communities.  Like Norway when the high school was moved to the other town after consolidation of three small districts, the whole town felt it and still does today.  

Take a night or two to read this uplifting book about Iowa Nice.