The Learned Owl Book Shop, Mid-May 2016

Kate's Corner

Happy sunshiny day! We would have had the newsletter out sooner, but the snow on Sunday sent us back into hibernation for three days. Thankfully, I think the sun and warmer temperatures are finally here, and that means it's time for Beach Reads. Yes, it's that magical time of year when we get a ton of great new reads with the hopes that people will have a few more minutes to dive into a good book. Be sure to stop in and load up for the season.

It is also that magical time of year known as orange barrel season, and Hudson will be thick with them over the next 5-6 months. There will be massive amounts of work right on Main Street, and we will do our best to keep you updated with conditions. Follow us on facebook, twitter, and instagram for timely updates. Also, don't forget we do have a back entrance down the slightly pothole-ridden alley off of Clinton Street. Hours will remain the same, and we will all look forward to the completion of our face lift and not having to worry about it for another 100 years.

Thank you for your support, and happy reading!

- Kate

Share The Owl

Subscribe me!

Events

Tuesday, May 24, 7 PM (Hudson Library)

Dr. Lisa Damour with Untangled: Guiding Teenaged Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood. Please register online, or call 330-653-6658.

Wednesday, May 25, 7 PM (Hudson Library)

Kathleen Grissom with Glory Over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House. Please register online, or call 330-653-6658.

Thursday, May 26, 6:45 PM (location TBA)

Join us as our Book Club in a Bar meets with guest author Robin Yocum, whose latest book is A Brilliant Death.

Sunday, May 29, 2-3 PM

(at The Learned Owl)

Children's Storytime: Imagination! Hear wonderful stories about what amazing things can happen when you let yourself dream and imagine. We'll break out the special chalk and create pictures on the sidewalk in front of the shop. Refreshments will be served, and everyone is encouraged to come wearing something wonderfully imaginative!

Please call to register for this free event: 330-653-2252.

Tuesday, May 31, 7 PM (Hudson Library)

Paula McLain with Circling the Sun. Please register online, or call 330-653-6658.

The Hudson Players present:

April 29, 30; May 6, 7, 13, 14, 15*, 20 & 21

Curtain Time: 8 p.m.

*2 p.m. matinee

Quick Links

We especially recommend

The Miracle on Monhegan Island by Elizabeth Kelly

[Liveright Publishing Corp., $25.95]

The award-winning author of The Last Summer of the Camperdowns returns with another rollicking, summertime family saga.

Louise says: Great beach read. Always love a story told by a dog.

Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

[William Morrow & Co., $26.99]
Linda says: Lu Brant is the first female state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, the job for which her father was famous and well-respected. She is eager to make her own way and forge her own path in the office, and seizes the opportunity by trying a mentally disturbed man accused of murder. The more she prepares for the trial, the more Lu is reminded of her own past and the actions of her brother AJ, whose behavior one night in his youth saved his best friend but resulted in another man's death. The deeper she delves into the case, the more she realizes that what she believes she knew about the event may not be the whole truth, and that the law does not and cannot hold all of the answers to life's questions.

New in paperback

Sci-fi, fantasy, horror

The Fireman by Joe Hill

[William Morrow & Co., $28.99]

From the author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes, and the improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman. [read more]

The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

[Ballantine Books, $28.00; available May 24]

You followed The Passage. You faced The Twelve. Now enter The City of Mirrors for the final reckoning. As the bestselling postapocalyptic epic races to its breathtaking finale, Justin Cronin's band of hardened survivors awaits the second coming of unspeakable darkness.

The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place?

Smoke by Dan Vyleta

[Doubleday Books, $27.95; available May 24]

England. A century ago, give or take a few years. An England where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours forth from their bodies, a sign of their fallen state. The aristocracy do not smoke, proof of their virtue and right to rule, while the lower classes are drenched in sin and soot. An England utterly strange and utterly real... This is the world of Smoke, a narrative tour de force, a tale of Dickensian intricacy and ferocious imaginative power, richly atmospheric and intensely suspenseful.

[read more]

On the lighter side

The Weekenders

by Mary Kay Andrews

[St. Martin's Press, $27.99]

Some people stay all summer long on the idyllic island of Belle Isle, North Carolina. Others come only for the weekends - and the mix between the regulars and the weekenders can sometimes make the sparks fly. Riley Griggs has a season of good times with friends and family ahead of her on Belle Isle when things take an unexpected turn. While waiting for her husband to arrive on the ferry one Friday afternoon, Riley is confronted by a process server who thrusts papers into her hand. And her husband is nowhere to be found.

So she turns to her island friends for help and support, but it turns out that each of them has his or her own secrets, and the clock is ticking as the mystery deepens... Cocktail parties aside, Riley must find a way to investigate the secrets of Belle Island, the husband she might not really know, and the summer that could change everything.

Modern Lovers by Emma Straub

[Riverhead Books, $26.00; available May 31]

From the bestselling author of The Vacationers comes this smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college, their own kids who are now going to college, and what it means to finally grow up well after adulthood has set in. [read more]

Thanks for supporting The Learned Owl Book Shop. Happy reading!