September 2024

Laura’s Picks:

Slow dance by Rainbow Rowell (2024)

Nobody writes relationships better than Rainbow Rowell. This slow burn romance picks up fourteen years after two best friends graduated from high school in small-town Nebraska. Their lives now are nothing like they had imagined. Cary joined the Navy; Shiloh is a divorced single mom. They used to be inseparable best friends; what are they now? 

Murder at the white palace by Allison Montclair (2024)

The matchmakers of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau are back! This time, while scouting a venue for New Year’s Eve ball, Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge instead discover a body. The stab wounds clearly indicate the man was murdered—and it is only natural for suspicion to fall on the hall’s owner, Archie, a gangster who also happens to be Sparks’ beau. Witty banter and a thrilling mystery makes this novel a catch!

John’s Picks:

Surprise by Paul Simon (2006)

The eleventh studio album by Simon and his last one with Warner Bros. Records.  Simon took an unusual approach to this album by collaborating with Brian Eno, an innovator of electronic and ambient music; a style rather dissimilar to Simon’s long-established brand of folk-rock.  The result was a unique fusion of sound rarely heard in older popular music.  One single, “Father and Daughter,” written for The Wild Thornberrys Movie four years prior, was also included on this album.

The Bricklayer (2024) 

An action thriller film based on the novel of the same name by Paul Lindsay.  Directed by Renny Harlin and starring Aaron Eckhart in the lead role, the film follows former CIA field agent Steve Vail, played by Eckhart, as he is pulled in to stop a rogue agent and former friend who is on a quest for vengeance.  Also starring Nina Dobrev and Tim Blake Nelson, the film is your typical globetrotting tale of espionage.

The Fall Guy (2024) 

Directed by David Leitch and written by Drew Pearce, this action comedy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is a loose modernization of the classic 1980’s television series.   Gosling plays a stuntman who finds himself in the center of a conspiracy involving his ex-girlfriend’s film and its missing lead star.  A lighthearted story, the film is a love letter to stuntmen and the difficult and dangerous work they do. 

Lauren’s Picks:

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (2024)

This alternate history noir novel imagines that Cahokia, a Native American city on the Mississippi River, didn’t die out in the 1300s and is still thriving in 1922. People of different races coexist peacefully, but a grisly murder scene found on a rooftop sets off events to decide the city’s fate. Detective Joe Barrow and his partner have been tasked with investigating the murder, but what first seems a simple case quickly becomes complex. Joe will have to decide what he believes in and who he can trust when all is not as it appears.