Lost in the Stacks

This is a biography of the famous scientist Marie Curie that focuses on her relationship with her two daughters, Irène and Ève, who led fascinating lives in their own right. Irène followed in her mother's footsteps as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, and Ève became a pianist, author, and humanitarian. It is a perfect read for Women's History month.

This is a charming, heartwarming mystery novel about Vera Wong, a widowed Chinese woman in her sixties who finds a dead body in her tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown and decides she will do a better job than the police at solving the crime. She rounds up four suspects, and then makes friends with them, cooking them delicious Chinese meals. Which one of her four new friends is a murderer?

This is a wonderful historical mystery and thrilling courtroom drama, inspired by actual events, about Martha Ballard, a midwife in 18th century Maine. When a dead body is found in a frozen river, Martha identifies the dead man as a prominent resident of the town, who was accused of rape. She defies the court system to find justice for the rape victim.

The Appeal is a brilliant mystery novel, told in emails and text messages, about a community theater group in a small town in the UK. They launch a fundraising appeal for cancer treatment for their leader's granddaughter, and tensions arise, leading to murder. Two law students sift through the correspondence to discover the truth of what happened.

This is the first part of an immense 2800-page novel which continues the adventures of the four musketeers--Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan. As the young French king, Louis XIV, comes of age, the musketeers help restore Charles II to the English throne and become involved in the intrigues of the French court.

One of the most popular literary genres in Ladino was the detective novel. This genre first emerged in Western Europe in the nineteenth century. Published in 2014, Julie Scolnik's study, Nat Pinkerton: Diez Novelas Policíacas en Lengua Sefaradí, examines a set of Ladino detective novels and offers Spanish translations, which make them more accessible to contemporary readers and scholars.

Many consider Ladino, the traditional vernacular of Sephardi Jews, a dead language. However, the growing interest in the language and its culture creates opportunities to learn more about it and even read some of its literature. Recently added to the catalog, Ladino novels originally published in the 1930s and now reprinted in new editions provide a glimpse into the fascinating world of Sephardi Jews in the 20th century.

Each year, the United States celebrates Women’s Equality Day on August 26th in recognition of the anniversary of women’s suffrage. This is an excellent opportunity to reflect on the strengths and shortcomings of women’s movements in the U.S. through the lens of intersectionality, which calls on us to understand the interweaving impact of all of our identities on how we experience the world.

Shutter is a thrilling, suspenseful novel about Rita, a Navajo woman who is a forensic photographer and who can see and talk to ghosts. Her unique ability helps her when investigating crime scenes, but she has to keep it secret. The ghost of a murder victim haunts Rita and insists that she find her killer, or she will make Rita's life a misery. The murder story is interspersed with the story of Rita's childhood on the Navajo Reservation and her relationship with her grandmother.

With the start of the school year just under 4 weeks away, it’s a great time to sneak in those last summer reads before recreational reading takes the back burner to school-related reading this fall. What better way to find your next summer book than this list of books that U of M Librarians, UMSI students, and famous authors love to read?