Lima Public Library book reviews

Sophie Pattison loves books. And as well as a dream job at a local book festival, she has a husband she adores; a lifelong best friend, Emma; and a brother she’s always been close to. Which makes you wonder why since Christmas Sophie has been living alone, estranged from Emma, avoiding her brother, and about to be fired. Now it feels like the only thing she has left is reading.

The Details

When Sophie rediscovers an author she first read in her twenties, the words on the page reach her in a new way. Sophie devours every one of the author’s novels and begins to dream of meeting her but knows they never will. But what if they did? What if, by then, the author feels like a friend? What if, for Sophie, it feels almost like love?

Whale Harbor by Mary Beth Keane

1960s, Ireland. In the wake of tragedy, a father makes choices for his eleven grieving sons. The older brothers will emigrate to England for work, while the younger ones will stay behind. The second eldest, Macdara, is offered a job on a Montana cattle ranch and sets off. His spirited younger brother Rian begs to come along, and Mac promises to bring Rian to America as soon as he’s old enough.

But then one day Mac gets a call that Rian has gone missing. His disappearance will haunt Mac and his family over decades. Spanning lifetimes and continents and written with Keane’s signature wit, eloquence, and attention to the emotional resonance of family, brotherhood, and the choices that echo across generations American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee Once middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children―Bo, DH, and Mido―find their lives upended, first by a betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

They leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in California, where new vistas of opportunity arrive for the children as their parents adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.

Die Famous by Michael Koryta

On the day Savannah Cody spots her first gray hair, she decides it’s time to murder the father of her only child. Edward “Nickel” Terhune is the getaway driver for the Brady Gang, one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. Dragging her son and her father along for the quest, Savannah embarks to find the man she once loved and the nation now fears.

But her son―and soon, the FBI―notice that the closer the family gets to Nickel, the less clear Savannah’s motivations seem to be. As the Brady Gang races to escape the law―or get rich trying―Nickel realizes he might not be able to outrun his mistakes. He dreams of a route that will lead him to peace, but no map shows one like that. Will Savannah find him before the police do? And if so, who will return home alive?

Lift: The Three Hidden Forces that Launch Remarkable Lives by Jeff Cunningham Jeff Cunningham is a former publisher of Forbes and ran Elon Musk’s company, Zip2. He spent twenty years interviewing some of the world’s highest achievers and the improbable partnership of F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. In each of those conversations, the same three patterns appeared: the law of the first, the power of tight circles, the rules of the room.

Drawing on personal access and unforgettable stories, Lift shows how neighborhoods, teams, families, and communities create success that talent alone can never match. Part biography, part social science, it answers the questions most success books skip: Why do some gifted people stall? Why do others rise from nowhere? And what, specifically, can you do about it?

The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science by Kit Chapman Blending vivid storytelling, forgotten history, and fascinating science, the book explores the meaning and impact of chemical knowledge—its power to heal, to harm, and to transform societies. It explores how alchemists inspired modern medicine, how the search for immortality led to both lethal elixirs and life‑saving antimalarials, how pigments and alloys reshaped economies and empires, and how the old dream of transmuting metals was finally realized in nuclear physics.

The Age of Alchemy invites readers to see chemistry not as a dry catalogue of formulas, but as a four‑thousand‑year human drama of curiosity, ambition, ingenuity, and resilience—a global story of how we learned to understand and manipulate the material world.

Tyrant Lizard Queen: The Love, Life, and Terror of Earth’s Greatest Carnivore by Riley Black Tyrannosaurus rex is a prehistoric celebrity. The largest individuals of this dinosaurian species were intimidating predators capable of crushing bone and consuming more than a hundred pounds of flesh in a bite. T. rex courted each other, nested, watched over their offspring, slept, drank, and explored ancient floodplains inhabited by a fantastic cast of impressive dinosaurs like the huge, long-neck Alamosaurus and burly, three-horned Torosaurus.

For the first time, the life story of this impressive, sensitive predator is told as if you were there to watch it unfold. In her latest prehistoric nature walk, Black follows the life of plucky T. rex Snaggletooth from the time she hatches through her tumultuous adulthood.

The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century by Andrew Pettegree Whether it’s a local indie bookshop, an online megaretailer, or a chain bookstore, the place we buy books is an essential part of our reading lives. Bookstores connect books to potential buyers and convert idle browsers into committed readers. The Bookshop tells a sweeping history of the bookstore.

It celebrates the ingenuity of booksellers to the innovators who created the global distribution networks that define books and bookselling today. Even though few bookshops lasted more than a few years during the best of times, booksellers relentlessly sought new ways to get books to readers. Innovators like the squabbling dealers who invented the secondhand bookstore, or Victorian capitalists like W. H. Smith made bookselling what it is today.

Forever Fairies: Coco Twinkles by Maddy Mara

Coco Twinkles cooks a magic new recipe with her fairy friends, but will her ingredients please or poison the trolls?

LIBRARY OPEN

Lima Public Library is open to the public six days a week, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. The Cairo, Elida and Spencerville branch libraries are open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The Lafayette branch is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.