The Buzz...About Books

This Month on Book Buzz

The Conjoined by Jen Sookfong Lee

On a sunny May morning, social worker Jessica Campbell sorts through her mother’s belongings after her recent funeral. In the basement, she makes a shocking discovery — two dead girls curled into the bottom of her mother’s chest freezers. She remembers a pair of foster children who lived with the family in 1988: Casey and Jamie Cheng — troubled, beautiful, and wild teenaged sisters from Vancouver’s Chinatown. After six weeks, they disappeared; social workers, police officers, and Jessica herself assumed they had run away.

As Jessica learns more about Casey, Jamie, and their troubled immigrant Chinese paren'ts, she also unearths dark stories about Donna, whom she had always thought of as the perfect mother. The complicated truths she uncovers force her to take stock of own life.

Moving between present and past, this riveting novel unflinchingly examines the myth of social heroism and traces the often-hidden fractures that divide our diverse cities.

Publisher’s description

Upcoming Schedule

May

Victoria by Daisy Goodwin
• Regular Print
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Large Print
• Talking Book (Restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Alexandrina Victoria is a teenager until one day, just after her eighteenth birthday when the death of her uncle makes her Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Exhaustively researched, this novel uses Victoria’s diaries to capture the transition of Victoria from young woman to powerful ruler.

June

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
• Regular Print
• eBook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

June is Aboriginal History Month. At the end of his life, Saul Indian Horse reflects on his life. An Ojibway child, he was removed from his home by force and taken to a residential school where his hockey skill is discovered. The book documents his struggles with displacement, racism and alienation in 1960s Canada.

July

In July, Book Buzz will be discussing two modern Western novels. Read one or both and join the discussions.

The Untold by Courtney Collins
• Regular Print
• eBook

Although a fugitive and a posse determined to bring the criminal to justice are common plots in Western novels, The Untold is something different. Set in the Australian Outback, it tells the true story of Eliazbeth Jessie Hickman, a notorious cattle rustler.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles
• Regular Print
• eBook

1870, Texas. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, ageing veteran of two wars, is working as a travelling news reader when he is offered an unusual mission. A young girl, who has spent the past several years living with Kiowa Indians following the deaths of the rest of her family, has been “rescued”. Kidd is enlisted to accompany the child on a treacherous journey to her relatives in San Antonio.