“A door in the dark” Reintgen, Scott. New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, [2023].

Content Warnings:  Major Character Death, Murder, Torture, Fantasy Drug Use, Grief, Death of a Parent, Body Horror, and Gore

Ren’s father was murdered.  Now she competes against the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful families who killed him at Balmerick, the prestigious magic school that hovers above her city.  She has spent four years working four times harder with four times fewer resources to be at the top of her class.  Still, all this will be for nothing if she does not catch at least one powerful family’s eye.  And Ren is running out of time.

Then, there is an accident.  Ren, three of her fellow scholarship students, and two scions of the city’s elite are caught in a portal gone wrong while heading home from Balmerick.  This leaves them stranded in the Dires, days away from the city and surrounded by untold dangers.  They need all of their combined skills and magic to survive.

One of the students, however, is already dead.  Another member of their group killed him during the original turmoil, but no one knows who.  Each of them has their own secrets, Ren included.  Who will they decide to trust as the road ahead of them gets darker and darker, especially as the group realizes they are being hunted down by something more sinister than they ever imagined?

A Door In The Dark was introduced to me as an addictive young adult fantasy novel for fans of The Hunger Games, I found it to be a horror story that happened to contain magic.  While it starts at a school for magic, this is not a novel for those expecting to attend countless classes and learn the art of spell-slinging.  A Door In The Dark is a story of survival, desperate choices, and how far people will go for revenge.

Ren was a bright spot in this plot for me.  A Door In The Dark is told from her point of view as we understand every hurt she endures, every burst of anger she pushes aside to work with the group, and every bit of guilt she feels over split-second decisions that make the difference between life and death for her and her companions.  She is a morally gray underdog, a bookworm constantly calculating possible outcomes, and a grieving child seething with anger over the injustices in her world.

My biggest concern is that the promised sequel to A Door In The Dark will never be able to live up to this first book.  Why?  It seems to lean more heavily into a romance which was the weakest part of this entry.  We understand why this romance feels stilted from Ren’s point of view, but I am afraid this will fall flat unless the series can show that her love interest is just as complex and multi-faceted.  Fans will have to wait and see how the characters grow.

A Door In The Dark is a new horror fantasy from dystopian author Scott Reintgen.  I recommend it for fans of The Hunger Games, Shadow and Bone, or those looking for a dark take on class differences and what it means to survive in a world that is against you.

Rebecca Mincher is the Children’s Librarian Assistant for Graham Public Library. She can be reached at rzimmerman@alamancelibraries.org.

“Silver Alert,” Lee Smith. Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2023.

Content Warning: dementia, cancer, child trafficking and death.

I love Lee Smith’s writing – it is very Southern, in that on the surface, it seems happy and lighthearted, but beneath the surface lies deep waters. Being a Southerner, her writing invokes the smell of salty breezes, the feel of humid air surrounding you, and the warmth of the sun beating down as you drive through the Keys in a convertible.

Herb Atlas is old and crotchety sometimes, but he’s mourning his third wife, who has early-onset dementia, and he’s been sick for a while, and he is tired of his kids telling him he can no longer care for his wife when they’re doing just fine, thank you very much. He just hired a young woman to give his wife Susan a manicure and pedicure, and surprisingly, she knows just what to do to keep Susan calm and happy. His family wants to send him and Susan to a retirement community with a memory care center, but Herb wants to stay at home for as long as possible. His new friend, the manicurist, might just make that possible for a little while longer.

His family is complicated, with three wives and stepchildren and their spouses. He doesn’t differentiate between those kids that are biologically his and those he got through marriage; he loves them all (but perhaps not always their spouses). He’s closest in some ways to Ricky, who belongs to his second wife, Gloria, and it’s Ricky he trusts to drive him to the doctor when he notices blood in his urine.

The manicurist, Dee Dee, is using a fake name (Renee Martin) because she is on the run. She hasn’t had an easy life; she got involved with some bad people, and committed a crime. She recently left a treatment center with her best friend Tamika, and now they’re living in a pink trailer in Key West, Florida. Dee Dee has a heart of gold, and is a little naive. She’s dating Willie, who is on a break from graduate school and lives in the Tree House. Dee Dee has started to believe in herself and wants to leave her past behind, but it’s hard to do when your roommate is falling back into the life you’re trying to leave. Tamika has fallen back into bad habits, and is dating a not-so-great man, but Dee and Tamika still dream of going to Disney World one day and meeting the princesses.

The narration of the book changes between Dee Dee and Herb, who both have really unique voices. This is a short book, but it carries great emotional weight. You can’t help but love Herb and Dee Dee, but I also commiserate with Herb’s family, who really just want the best for him. This is a book that might require a few Kleenexes, but will leave you feeling hopeful (and ready for a convertible ride in the Keys!).

Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at madams@alamancelibraries.org.

“Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries,” by Heather Fawcett. Copyright 2023, Del Rey (317 pages, $28.00).

Content Warning: Blood, Kidnapping.

One of my new favorite genres when it comes to what I read is “cozy-fantasy”, a category that is not very large, but is certainly growing with new titles every day. It’s a nice way to reset my reading pallet in a low-stakes kind of way. Similar to how cozy mysteries aren’t as high stakes as mysteries/thrillers, the same can be said for cozy-mysteries versus high fantasy novels.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries is a wonderful light romance, magical inspiring atmosphere, low-stakes adventure that dives into the realm of the Fae by way of Emily’s diary and scholarly notes. We don’t have chapters, but dates, as we follow Emily Wilde (a professor from Cambridge who studies the different legends and lore surrounding magical beings) as she explores the village of Hrafnsvik and the stories of the Hidden Folk. Emily loves her work and what she does but does not seem to have a handle on people and how to interact with them; have to befriend a Brownie – no problem, have to figure out how you offended a whole town without knowing that you did and then fixing it – practically impossible for Emily until her work colleague/rival, Wendell, swans right in to “help her” with her research.

As Emily’s research progresses, and Wendell stays by her side as an annoyance, she begins to question what Wendell’s true motives are for being in Hrafnsvik. She begins to questions Wendell’s true intentions for being a scholar alongside her in this field of Faeries. She even begins to question herself at one point and her need for her scholarly pursuit.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries was a lovely read, like a day completely open from work and chores and a nice cup of tea on a cloudy day. Comforting, familiar, but full of possibilities.

Kayleigh Dyer is a Library Technical Processing Assistant at May Memorial Library. Contact her at kdyer@alamancelibraries.org.

Children of the state : survival and hope in the juvenile justice system. Hobbs, Jeff; New York : Scribner, [2023].

Jeff Hobbs uses the stories of several children and adults involved with the juvenile justice system to illustrate the challenges the system faces, and the small, but significant, improvements that are being made.

Hobbs says that children everywhere make mistakes and do dumb things. But as police officers and prosecutors make the decisions on who to arrest, who to charge, and whether to send them home with probation or send them to a juvenile facility, their decisions often are influenced by systemic racism, familial/community support and money. In other words, kids in middle class and upper-class families are less likely to be arrested in the first place, and have the resources to hire lawyers to demonstrate that the child in question will be supported if put on probation. Poor families can’t do that, and so their kids end up in juvenile facilities.

Hobbs features two different facilities – one in Delaware and one in San Francisco – and one intensive non-profit program in New York City. He chooses to focus primarily on two kids, Josiah and Ian, and several staff members at the three facilities. Through these lenses, you are introduced to the juvenile justice system in three different areas of the country. While there are differences in how different states treat juveniles and where they are incarcerated, there are similarities, including the mandate to educate and rehabilitate children so they are less likely to commit crimes in the future. The adults featured in his book struggle with this mandate as they struggle through the COVID-19 outbreak, and general budgetary issues that all governmental agencies deal with. The kids are trying to figure out how to survive the experience of juvenile hall and how they can change their trajectories, even a little, to stay out of the penal system.

Hobbs has written a very compelling book that focuses on the good being done in the area of juvenile justice, but also doesn’t shy away from sharing what still isn’t working well. Hobbs doesn’t try to offer answers or really even commentary on what happens, but simply reports the stories as it was told to him.

If you are interested in the justice system in the U.S., you will find this book fascinating and informative.

Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. You can reach her at madams@alamancelibraries.org.

The Silmarillion. Tolkien, J. R. R. ; edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

As a huge Lord of the Rings fan (I even have a Gandalf tattoo to prove it!), one of my resolutions for this year was to take on The Silmarillion, which J.R.R. Tolkien considered the most important of his works. The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, high fantasy series of all time and The Silmarillion sets the stage for this and all his other writings.

The Silmarillion is a fictional historical account that spans many years, covering Middle Earth’s beginning and history. For a historical narrative that covers so much, it was not as boring as I thought it might be! While I didn’t anticipate so many of the stories being so dark and sad, much more so than Lord of the Rings, there were plenty of beautiful, heroic moments too.

It starts out telling the story of the creation of Middle Earth and the creation of the elves by the “Valar” which are like angels or gods. Later on, it focuses more on the storyline of elves and men and how the precious gems called the Silmaril so easily corrupts their hearts. It’s interesting to note that it follows elves and men because they’re the ones who are powerful and would be deemed the most “significant” in Middle Earth. That just made the story of The Lord of the Rings more powerful to me because, in that instance, the world was saved by hobbits who historically would’ve been overlooked and deemed insignificant.

Tolkien’s writing is beautiful, hard to follow at times, yes, but worth the effort. I found the last half easier than the first. I think it took me that long to start understanding the different terms and who everyone was. That’s the hardest part. It was exciting towards the end to start reading about things that happen in the Rings of Power show and the lead up to Lord of the Rings series.

If you’re a big Lord of the Rings or Rings of Power fan, you should consider trying out The Silmarillion! I used the “Tea with Tolkien” free study guide and found it immensely helpful. I can’t wait to reread it someday because I know my second reading will be even more rich than the first.

Abby Van Wingerden is a Circulation Assistant at Mebane Public Library. She can be reached at avanwingerden@alamancelibraries.org.

Miss Benson’s beetle. Joyce, Rachel. New York : Dial Press, [2020].

Content Warnings: Miscarriage, Suicide, Stalking, Death of a Parent, Aftermath of War

Set in 1950, Miss Benson’s Beetle is the story of a 46-year-old domestic arts teacher who realizes that she hates the person she has become and the life she is living.  So, she sells all her belongings and travels around the world to find what she has always dreamed of—the New Caledonian Golden Beetle—an insect that may or may not exist.  As you have probably already guessed, this is not your standard story of mid-life crisis, let alone historical fiction, and quiet, nervously polite Margery Benson with an encyclopedic knowledge of bugs, but little interest in human interaction is not your standard protagonist.

The zaniness only continues when Miss Benson is joined by Mrs. Enid Pretty, a shockingly blonde woman in a pink suit who seems like Margery’s complete opposite, flirting her way out of almost every situation and talking continuously through the rest.  She latches on to Miss Benson’s journey as her assistant, despite having little interest in New Caledonia or the beetle they are chasing.  Instead, Enid shows shocking displays of strength and desperately guards her heart-shaped valise.

Miss Benson’s Beetle is an adventure into finding yourself, into deep female friendship, and into the pervasive effects of World War II as only Rachel Joyce, the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry could tell it.  The story gets more and more ridiculous as you continue to read it, adding a murder mystery, the story of a traumatized prisoner of war, a hurricane, and bickering high society politics.  However, it also becomes more human.  Margery looks in the mirror for the first time and likes what she sees.  She and Enid learn to appreciate each other for exactly who they are now, not what lies in their pasts.  They both find strength and kindness in the strangest places.

It is no wonder that Miss Benson’s Beetle is one of Graham’s Breakfast Book Club’s favorite reads from this year.  The book bursts with heart and, while it touches on dark, hard topics, it never stays with them long enough to make the reader feel hopeless, always bouncing back with humor and beauty and love.  This novel of historical discovery is a wild-ride worth going on.  Like Margery Benson, you will not be the same person at the end.

Rebecca Mincher is a Children’s Library Assistant at Graham Public Library.  She can be reached at rzimmerman@alamancelibraries.org.

Romantic comedy : a novel. Sittenfeld, Curtis. New York : Random House, [2023]

Romantic Comedy is the perfect, well, romantic comedy!

Sally Milz is a writer for an infamous late night live comedy show called The Night Owls that airs every Saturday night. She was married once, and it ended without too much fanfare. But it made her skeptical about marriage and love, and seeing others around her with failed relationships doesn’t bolster her confidence.

Her office mate, Danny, is engaged to a celebrity, Annabel, and he isn’t the only male staffer at The Night Owls who is in a relationship with a beautiful woman. Sally cynically creates a sketch called the Danny Horst Rule. The Danny Horst Rule, she says, is when an average Joe ends up dating or marrying a beautiful woman, when the opposite would never happen.

Noah Brewster is a world-famous singer/songwriter worth millions, who also looks like a million bucks. He’s the host and musical guest this week, and Sally is trying not to be impressed. He isn’t all that excited about the Danny Horst Rule sketch, saying it’s not fair to poke fun at other people. But his kindness and willingness to do (almost) anything for a laugh on the show slowly wins her over. They spend a night together in her office, rewriting the sketch he created, and she is surprised at how well they work together and the connection between them.

But what will Sally do when it looks like she has a chance with Noah?

The book begins with the week of the show in 2018, then jumps to 2020 and the pandemic. Sittenfeld is a master at writing fully developed characters, witty dialogue, and wonderful story lines. Anyone familiar with a certain Saturday night show will love the behind the scenes view of a late night weekly comedy show. And anyone who has written off love or felt cynical about relationships will relate to Sally, and maybe find a little hope for their future!

Sittenfeld has written a romantic comedy for the ages. Everyone is going to be looking for their Noah after reading this book!

Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at madams@alamancelibraries.org.

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s photographs reveal about the Japanese American incarceration by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2022. 124 pages.

The incarceration of Japanese Americans by the United States Government is one of the darkest events in American history. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced from their homes and into prison camps like Manzanar. In Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s photographs reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration, Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki tell the story of three photographers who documented this historic event, providing an accessible introduction to this time in history.

Seen and Unseen follows three photographers- Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams, who all photographed the prison camps which Japanese Americans were sent to, and had varied reasons for why they photographed these events.

Dorothea Lange, best known for her documentation of the Great Depression while working for the Farm Security Administration, photographed the entire incarceration process of Japanese Americans for the War Relocation Authority from March-July 1942. She photographed the forced relocation of people from their home, as the government hoped that it would show it was being done in a “humane way.” She followed as they were moved to temporary assembly centers, and even photographed prison camps like Manzanar. Lange was troubled by what she witnessed, but felt it was her duty to document what was happening. Many of her photographs were not published until after the war, held back by her supervisor so the government could curate the image they wanted from the camps.

Toyo Miyatake was imprisoned at Manzanar from 1942-1945. Miyatake smuggled in his camera lens, telling his song “I have to record everything. This kind of thing should never happen again.” A friend built a camera from scrap wood, and a salesman friend agreed to smuggle in film and darkroom chemicals for Toyo. Unrest grew among the prisoners, and guards sought ways to raise spirits. A guard asked Toyo to open a portrait studio so prisoners could document monumental events like birthdays and weddings. Eventually rules loosened and Toyo was able to document life outside of the studio.

Ansel Adams, best known for his landscape photography, was invited by the director of Manzanar to photograph prisoners in the camp to show other Americans that they were hardworking, loyal Americans. Rather than take candid shots like Lange and Miyatake did, Adams staged portraits to show prisoners in the best possible light. Eventually, Manzanar and other prison camps were closed in 1945.

Seen and Unseen provides an excellent introduction to a dark period of American history. While the narrative focuses mostly on the photographer’s experiences, there is substantial information about what everyday life was like for the imprisoned Japanese Americans.  Lauren Tamaki’s gorgeous illustrations compliment the photographs, providing a engaging reading experience.  This book could serve as an excellent introduction for upper elementary readers, but adults will likely learn something new as well. Seen and Unseen is a masterful introduction to a very difficult topic, and is well worth seeking out.

Elizabeth Weislak is the Children’s Programming Specialist for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at eweislak@alamancelibraries.org.

 “Blue Marlin” by Lee Smith.  Durham, NC:  Blair-Carolina Wren Press, 2020, 123 pages, $15.95

This slight novella by North Carolina author Lee Smith is a little pocket gem that can probably be read in one-sitting by most readers.  The year is 1958 and 13-year-old Jenny Dale is obsessed with growing up, movie stars, surveilling the neighbors on her bicycle, and puzzling over grown-up relationships.  As a child of her parent’s middle-age, Jenny spends much time amusing herself because she is the only one of her sisters still at home.

Because of her solitary jaunts around town, Jenny is the first to suspect that her attorney father has begun an affair with Carroll Byrd, a painter newly arrived in town who has inherited the family home of her deceased father.  Carroll has an artistic temperament, strong features, and ways that are foreign to the rural Virginia town and the Dale family’s small-town Southern lifestyle.

Jenny’s blonde, bridge-playing, former Debutante mother Billie suffers an emotional breakdown when she learns of the affair by not being able to locate her husband during a family crisis.  Billie’s ne’er-do-well brother dies unexpectedly and her husband’s cover story of a trip to a hunting cabin implodes when he can’t be found after the death.

The aftermath of this tense family situation results in Jenny being shipped off to loud and unfashionable cousins in South Carolina so that her parents can work on their marriage.  Just when she’s starting to warm to her big-boned cousin Rayette, Jenny’s parents swoop down to take her on a “family” road trip vacation to Key West, Florida. 

The car trip is punctuated by bad feelings and long silences until the arrival at the Keys when the Dale family finds that they are unexpectedly staying at a motel being used by the movie crew filming “Operation Petticoat”, a war movie featuring a pink submarine.  Running into the stars of the movie, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis, becomes a preoccupation of Jenny and her mother.

 Finally, a family thaw and truce are negotiated when father John Dale agrees to participate with his wife and daughter in a movie crowd scene to welcome the submarine back to port.  As daughter Jenny quips, “The geographical cure worked. Mama and Daddy would go home refreshed and stay married for the rest of their lives.”

Not all dysfunctional family stories end so well, but this one rings true—even down to Jenny’s adolescent crush on her young brother-in-law reminiscent of the Southern literature classic “Member of the Wedding” by Carson McCullers.  This is a charming story of adolescent awakening that will find a wide audience among those nostalgic for a gentler era.

Lisa Kobrin was the Reference Services and Local History Librarian for the Alamance County Public Libraries. She served in this position for 32 years, and retired on April 1. We will miss Lisa’s book reviews as well as her presence.

“Dead Wake:  The Last Crossing of the Lusitania” by Erik Larson.  New York:  Crown Publishers, 2015.   (430 pages)

“Dead Wake” is the story of the massive Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania that was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland in May 1915 with a huge loss of civilian life.  At the time of the tragedy, only 6 of the ship’s 22 lifeboats were able to launch and many men, women, and children were forced into the water in incorrectly donned lifejackets.

German U-Boat 20 was responsible for the attack—a submarine that had been prowling the North Atlantic water looking for neutral targets that were unprotected by British naval ships.  The submarine launched a single torpedo at the British-flagged passenger liner during the last day of its transatlantic voyage from New York.  It sunk the ship in less than 20 minutes and killed more than two-thirds of the almost 2,000 passengers and crew.

This event took place during a period when military action during the Great War was expanding rapidly and the United States had not yet become a combatant or issued a war declaration.  More than 150 Americans died in the attack and the bodies of as many as 600 passengers were never recovered.  Such submarine predations were cited by the American government as a reason for the US to declare war on Germany.

Author Erik Larson highlights many fascinating subplots including that of President Woodrow Wilson’s romance with second wife Edith Galt and bookseller Charles Lauriat’s antiquarian volumes that traveled on the Lusitania and were lost in the sinking.  Another prominent sub-plot involves female architect Theodate Pope, an aspiring spiritualist and paranormal enthusiast, who lost her traveling companion to drowning.  Playboy Alfred G Vanderbilt, the most socially prominent passenger who perished, is given little notice in the book—probably because he was the focus of a 2013 book on the sinking by another author.

U-Boat Captain Walther Schwieger is the narrator for a portion of the story, making for an interesting juxtaposition of viewpoints between “the hunter” and its prey.  The most telling information revealed is that British intelligence may have had more tracking capability of U-boats than was previously revealed, and therefore greater culpability in the death of innocents.

Described as narrative nonfiction, this is a gripping disaster tale that compares favorably with accounts of the sinking of the Titanic.  Author Erik Larson is an American journalist who has written multiple bestsellers focusing on the sensational, including popular works about both serial killers and Nazi Germany.

Lisa Kobrin is the reference and local history librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at lkobrin@alamancelibraries.org.