All Books Considered

Bumblebee Season by Eileen Garvin Blurb from Goodreads : Beekeeper Jake Stevenson should be celebrating. His fledgling honey farm has been inundated with orders. Instead, Jake is worried. He can’t seem to hire anyone—with local teens more interested in jobs at Hood River’s hip waterfront—and there’s no way he can handle the approaching harvest all by himself, no matter how adept he’s become at maneuvering among the beehives in his wheelchair. Meanwhile Flaco López, a young migrant from Mexico, is lost on Mount Hood when he stumbles upon Jake’s beehives in a high alpine meadow. As Flaco takes refuge on Jake’s farm, they begin to form a tentative friendship. And the two soon cross paths with Abigail Plue, a scientist more interested in insects than people, who’s on Mount Hood studying a threatened native bumblebee. Then a local rabble rouser begins to rally support to build a commercial hunting camp that would destroy M...

Harmless by Miranda Shulman Blurb from Goodreads : A twisty novel of sisterhood, friendship, and obsession that Can we ever really outrun what haunts us most? Two years ago, Bea’s life was upended when her beloved twin sister died. Audrey was captivating, an extrovert, their mother’s golden child. Bea was “different,” too intense, and chronically lonely. Now, in her late twenties, Bea is back home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, her spirits finally buoyed by her plan to start a dog kennel. Inspired by the childhood dream she once shared with Audrey and old, now-estranged friends Tatum and Layla, she’s sure this will be the perfect ode to her sister’s memory. But as they reintegrate into one another’s lives, Audrey’s absence is keenly felt by all. Soon, simmering tensions and attractions emerge, and a sinister darkness breaks through to the surface. What d...

Spies and Other Gods by James Wolff Blurb from Goodreads : The Head of British Intelligence is having a bad day. Only six months off retirement and Sir William Rentoul is wondering if he'll make it that far, what with the sudden descent of a brain fog dense enough to turn every day into a series of small humiliations. To make matters worse, Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee - the body that oversees Sir William - has received an anonymous complaint from one of his officers. Sir William dimly recalls accepting that there should be a channel for whistleblowers, but he never expected that they would pick his most sensitive case, one involving an Iranian assassin and a trail of dead bodies, or that the person who turned up to poke their nose into his files should be a lowly parliamentary researcher named Aphra McQueen, who display...

Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History by Caroline Tracey, Narrated by Cassandra Campbell Blurb from Goodreads : More than a hundred salt lakes dot Earth's surface, most of them hidden away in remote desert valleys. But today nearly all of them are at risk of drying up. Their death is a harbinger of rising sea levels, life-threatening dust storms, and environmental collapse. Writer and geographer Caroline Tracey didn't know this when she began crossing paths with salt lakes during her early twenties. From the Great Salt Lake to the Aral Sea, across the American West and around the world, the unusual beauty of these shimmering, uncanny bodies of water captured her imagination. In Salt Lakes, Tracey travels across four continents to seek out and describe these extraordinary vanishing lakes and the people dedicated to saving them. Running parallel to Tracey's environmental journey is an intimate, human her story of fi...

The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch Blurb from Goodreads : The lives of four sleepless strangers intersect late at night as they attempt to solve not just their own anxieties but also the mysterious disappearance of one of their own, from New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch. In the city that never sleeps, it’s not always easy to share what’s on your mind with the people who know you best. Huddled in an all-night diner over coffee and pancakes, a lonely middle-aged mom, an injured baseball pro, an elusive retiree, and a young waitress examine the thoughts that plague them in the middle of the night. Empty-nester Sybil does what she does rolls up her sleeves and spearheads the efforts to turn this group of strangers into friends. Aimless after an injury threatens to ruin his career, Zeke finds genuine connection among the unlikely gro...

Go Gentle by Maria Semple Blurb from Goodreads : Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a "coven"—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger. Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past—which she has worked so hard...