Welcome to #FDL! #FDL is an update with book recommendations to help you find your next great read! Lists are curated based on popular authors and novels, trending topics, seasons, and holidays. And don’t miss our occasional book giveaways!
#FDL: International Settings – July Giveaway
These works of fiction foreign-born authors allow the reader to become immersed in a different culture. While the jungles of Venezuela and the dark nights of Iceland may be out of reach for most of us, the political tensions in Ghana and India may resonate with Americans here at home.
The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir
Expected Publication: September 3, 2024
Setting: Iceland
Iðunn is in yet another doctor’s office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something’s not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven’t revealed any cause. When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps. Until one night, Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night…
What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?
Freedom is a Feast by Alejandro Puyana
Expected Publication: August 20, 2024
Setting: Venezuela
In 1964, Stanislavo, a zealous young man devoted to his ideals, turns his back on his privilege to join the leftist movement in the jungles of Venezuela. There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their romance is upended by a decision with consequences that will echo down through the generations.
Forty years later, the country’s political landscape has drastically changed, as have the trajectories that Stanislavo and Emiliana followed in the intervening decades. When a young boy is accidentally shot on the eve of the attempted coup against President Chávez, Stanislavo’s chance encounter with the boy’s mother forces a reckoning with past missteps and the ways his actions have reverberated into the present.
With its epic scope, gripping narrative, and unflinching intimacy, Freedom Is a Feast announces a major new talent. Alejandro Puyana has delivered an extraordinarily wise and moving debut about sticking to one’s beliefs at the expense of pain and chaos, about the way others can suffer for our misdeeds even when we have the best of intentions, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.
The Whitewashed Tombs by Kwei Quartey
Expected Publication: September 3, 2024
Setting: Ghana
Marcelo Tetteh, a twenty-seven-year-old LGBTQ activist, is butchered to death one night after being lured on Grindr to a deserted building site. With high instances of homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer, so he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out.Emma is assigned the case, but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up as usual with Jojo, her trusted colleague. Emma is the only one at work who knows Jojo is gay, and now he reveals something else: for some time, Jojo was dating Marcelo, the victim.
Working with Manu, whom she’s never gotten along with at work, Emma goes undercover in several organizations including International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries. As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined. Emma must race against time to unmask the killer, protect the vulnerable LGBTQ community, and bring justice to the victims, all while navigating the dangerous waters of politics, power, and personal secrets.
Expected Publication: September 10, 2024
Setting: India
Quarterlife is a groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a new age. When the Bharat Party comes to power after a divisive election, Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home to Mumbai. With him is Amanda, a restless New Englander eager to embody her ideals through a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum. Meanwhile, Naren’s charismatic brother Rohit, an amateur filmmaker, sets out to explore his roots and befriends the fiery young men of the Hindu nationalist machine. Their journeys lead them into an astonishing milieu of brutal debates and infatuations as fraught as they are addictive, feeding into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets—where the simmering unrest erupts.
Annotations from the publishers
–Post by Melissa Friedlund, Adult Services Specialist
Giveaway
Enter your name here for a chance to win ARCs of the books mentioned in this post. One entry per person. Drawing to be held approximately 7 days after this post.
ARCs are “advanced reading copies.” These are free copies of a new books given by a publisher to librarians and other reviewers before the book is printed for mass distribution.
#FDL is a weekly update on all things Fondulac District Library and East Peoria.
#FDL: LGBTQ+ Books
Finish out Pride Month with one of these LGBTQ+ book recommendations from our library!
Delilah Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Blackmail, My Love by Katie Gilmartin
Bodies of Water by T. Greenwood
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Let’s Get Back to the Party by Zak Salih
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan
Between Perfect and Real by Ray Stoeve
Nightcrawlers by Bill Pronzini
Post by Susie Rivera, Reference Specialist
#FDL is an update on all things Fondulac District Library and books.
#FDL: Juneteenth Reading List
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all.
“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.” But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period–and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history.
Details the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that re-subjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked a new birth of freedom in Lincoln’s America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the nadir of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.
A “choral history” of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Last year marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas–and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain, editor of The North Star. They’ve gathered together eighty black writers from all disciplines — historians and artists, journalists and novelists–each of whom has contributed an entry about one five-year period to create a single-volume history of black people in America.”
-Annotations from the publishers
#FDL is an update on all things Fondulac District Library and books.
#FDL: Fantasy – June Giveaway
From the barest hint of magic realism to an amazingly detailed epic fantasy with extraordinary world-building, the fantasy genre has a wide spectrum of magic and mysticism. Here are some new and upcoming titles that demonstrate this variety.
The Silverblood Promise by James Logan
Published: 04/25/24
Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, and―thanks to a duel that ended badly―the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His days consist of cheap wine, rigged card games, and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away. When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father’s death.
His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds danger and secrets in every shadow. For in Saphrona, everything has a price―and the price of truth is the deadliest of all.
Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
Expected Publication: 07/09/24
In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur—like the fossilized dragon eye in the family’s possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.
As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather , and Game of Thrones , Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
Expected publication: 07/16/24
As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.
Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
Expected publication: 07/09/24
Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.
When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.
In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries. But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.
-Annotations from the publishers
–Post by Melissa Friedlund, Adult Services Specialist
Giveaway 
Enter your name here for a chance to win ARCs of the books mentioned in this post. One entry per person. Drawing to be held approximately 7 days after this post.
ARCs are “advanced reading copies.” These are free copies of a new books given by a publisher to librarians and other reviewers before the book is printed for mass distribution.
#FDL is a weekly update on all things Fondulac District Library and East Peoria.
Books for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. During this month we celebrate the contributions that Asian and Pacific Islanders have made to our history and culture.
Check out one of these books or place a hold today!
This is Paradise: stories by Kristiana Kahakauwila
The House of Doors Tan Twan Eng
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
The Perfumist of Paris – by Alka Joshi
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
Intimacies by Katie M. Kitamura
The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon
Paper Names by Susie Luo
A Place For Us: A novel by Fatima Farheen Mirza
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Daughters of Madurai Rajasree Variyar
Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner
The Bad Muslim Discount: a novel by Syed Masood
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Farm : A novel by Joanne Ramos
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See
The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
Blackmail and Bibingka by Mia P. Manansala
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
Run Me To Earth by Paul Yoon
Monstress by Marjorie Liu
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
The God of Small Things by Roy Arundhati
The Leavers by Lisa Ko
–Post by Susie Rivera, Reference Specialist
#FDL is an update on all things Fondulac District Library and books.
#FDL: Artfolds Book Giveaway for Mother’s Day
Do you enjoy book art? Book folding is a great way to upcycle and transform an old book into a lovely piece of décor.
Enter the giveaway below to win a copy of The Magic of Mom, an ArtFolds book. An ArtFolds book is a hardcover book that is transformed into a unique paper sculpture merely by folding pages. Follow the folding instructions, and transform the book into a lovely paper sculpture of the word “Mom.”
Giveaway
Enter your name here for a chance to win the book in this post. One entry per person. Drawing to be held approximately 7 days after this post.
#FDL is a weekly update on all things Fondulac District Library and East Peoria.