 Hi, welcome to Book Buzz. I'm Jade. I work at the Billie Jean King Main Library. Book Buzz is our monthly feature that highlights new and interesting books aimed at adult audiences. Fall is generally a really good time for book publishing. So I'm going to highlight a range of genres as well as nonfiction books here. So with that, let's go ahead and jump right into it. The first book that I want to highlight is called Death in Her Hands by Oteza Moshvegg. Moshvegg wrote her first novel, Eileen, in 2015, and it was shortlisted for a Booker Prize. But after writing that, she said it was kind of like a death completing that novel, and she needed to write her way into another experience. So she promptly wrote a novel and then stuck it in a drawer. Four years and three books later, she pulled that novel out of the drawer, and that is the book that we have for you today, Death in Her Hands. Death in Her Hands is about a 72-year-old widow named Vesta, who has recently moved to small town, middle America. And one day she is walking through the woods near her home, and she comes across a handwritten note. And the note says, her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me, here is her dead body. Only there is no body, and there is no evidence of crime or violence in the woods anywhere. So Vesta becomes sort of the detective in what would usually be a very kind of familiar murder mystery. Only Vesta has no experience, no qualifications to be a detective. She's isolated and lonely. She's recently lost her husband. So what she uses to investigate is basically her imagination. She creates an entire backstory and characterization for Magda, who may or may not exist. She even goes to the library at some point and fills out a character sheet for novelists on Magda. And instead of meeting her neighbors, her new neighbors, she paints them as suspects and creates elaborate backstories for them as well, which, again, may or may not be true. Vesta is painted very much from the beginning as an unreliable narrator. But she's creating such a full story that you kind of find yourself wishing that she will be reliable after all. What's the most interesting, I think, about this novel is not the story that Vesta is writing, because she's pretty much writing an entire novel. But it's actually Vesta's backstory that we get through bits and pieces throughout the book that I think is really the kind of hidden gem of this novel. So even though it's kind of your typical murder mystery, it does stand out on its head a little bit. So very interesting take. The next title that I want to highlight is called World of Wonders in Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Amy Nezuka Matatell. Nezuka Matatell is actually an award-winning poet with four poetry collections under her belt. And one of the characterizations of her poetry is that she likes to write about the intersection of Filipino, Indian, and American culture, which you do see a little bit in this book as well. But she's kind of moved to a different area of writing and this book is actually a collection of essays about nature. And what's really interesting about this is that her mother was actually a psychiatrist. So she spent a lot of her childhood living on the grounds of psychiatric hospitals. And she's noted that that's where she first found her love of nature is how it grows and kind of thrives in the boundaries and the outskirts of that environment. Now she takes, each essay is a different take on an aspect of nature or a specific part, like plant from nature and she ties it into childhood memory. So it's got a very personal feel to it as well. And it doesn't feel like a scientist wrote it. You're not learning kind of that scientific side of nature. She's very much a poet. So she uses very poetic language and explains nature in kind of a brand that's very her own voice. So if you are a fan of the beauty of nature or even just the beauty of language, this is a really good collection of essays for you. And the next title I wanna talk to you about is called Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. And if that name sounds familiar to you at all, it's probably because he wrote Cloud Atlas. He's written many novels since then. He's kind of characterized by the meta novel. There's kind of a string that connects all of his novels, I guess. In this one, if you've read him before, you might recognize a character. You'll recognize the name Cloud Atlas in this book. But if you haven't read him, don't worry, it is a completely standalone novel. And this one is actually about what I would consider like the coming of age of a rock band in the late 60s. And what he does to kind of tie that into the format is that he writes the novel in three different sections and they're in three albums, vinyl, of course. And each track on the album is told from the perspective of a different bandmate and a manager a couple of times as well. So it's really cool how each bandmate has their own voice and their own backstory and this kind of very individual part to share with you. But the layering of all of those stories and characters is what creates what I would consider the main character of this novel, which is the rock band itself, whose name is Utopia Avenue. If you are a fan of the 60s and that the post-war manners and the musical identity of the 60s, this is a great novel for you. He drops, Mitchell drops a lot of Easter eggs of the era and of the music. And it's kind of fun like picking out those references and then kind of wondering which references I missed and whatnot. So very fun book. The next title that I would like to highlight is called Memorial Drive, A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Traithaway. Traithaway is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet actually and she had a very defining event in her childhood. In 1985, her mother was murdered by her ex-husband by Traithaway's ex-stepfather in the parking lot of their apartment complex on Memorial Drive. This memoir is, it's very much about Traithaway and her mother and it's about the kind of before and after of this hinge in her life, this kind of separating defining moment. And so you do see it from the eyes of the child that she was in this very abusive environment and her mother and her trying to escape from it and find some form of freedom. But then it's also from the eyes of the adulthood but the adult Traithaway. And to write this memoir, she read the case files and the transcripts from her mother's murder, which she had never read before. So, and you do get some of the transcripts in the memoir. It is a heartbreaking read, obviously, but the way that she writes it and puts it all together makes it a little bit easier to digest and definitely worth reading. And then the next title I'd like to talk about is Blacktop Wasteland by Essay Cosby. And this novel follows Beauregard Bugg Montage, who is a loving father, a faithful husband and an honest mechanic. But he has a criminal past and in some circles, he's considered the best driver. But he's come into some hard times in his life. He's got bills piling up. There's a new car shop down the street that's really cut back on his clients. And the straw that kind of breaks the camel's back on this one is that his daughter comes in and tells him that she's gonna go ahead and pass on college, because it's too expensive. And then shortly after that, he is offered a job robbing a jewelry store, which would pretty much set him up and allow him to send his daughter to college. So this book is marketed as a crime novel and it is a crime novel. Cosby understands the anatomy of crime very well and writes about it very well. But Cosby also understands the anatomy of racial tension in America. And I really think this is the star of the novel here. It's the how and the why of why race and crime intersect in America. So it makes this a very timely novel. Cosby does an amazing job. And I highly suggest this one. And then the last title that I would like to talk about is The 99% Invisible City, a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design by Roman Mars. Mars is a radio producer and he's the host of a radio show and a podcast called The 99% Invisible City was a podcast and radio show first. He was also a Ted Talk on the main, he had a Ted Talk on the main stage and he's still the most popular Ted Talk on the subject of design. He was also kind of on the forefront of crowdfunding for his podcast consortiums and some of his radio shows. He is to this day the most funded journalist on Kickstarter. And so the podcast on The 99% Invisible City is hugely successful and very popular. And this book is kind of a compendium to that. And what it does is it takes a look at specifically urban landscapes with new eyes and it holds a magnifying glass up to the things that we look at every day but we don't really see. So this includes like power grids, drinking fountains, the dancing inflatables at car dealerships, the weird graffiti on sidewalks. He looks at the design aspect of it, the history aspect of it and these are some, sometimes there are things that they're looking at that you might not know that it does anything at all and he's gonna explain the history, the reason for it and the design behind it. Each item is really well researched, has great details. It includes these really great line drawings to give kind of that visual aspect but it really will have you looking at your backyard completely differently. So that will wrap us up for book buzz for the month of October. I went ahead and tagged in the library's catalog, all of these books under book buzz 10, 20. So you can go to the library's catalog and just search for that term and it will show you all the formats that these titles are available in. Many of them come in digital formats and audio formats as well. And even though we aren't open to the public quite yet, we are offering LBPL to go services at seven locations. So you can go ahead and place and hold on any of these items and we'll let you know when it's available. And then all you have to do is make an appointment to schedule a pickup and you can do that now from your notification email or directly from our website. So we've made it as easy as we could. If you are interested in more online programming from the library, be sure to check out online library events on the homepage of our website. There's something for everyone and all age groups. So with that, take care and we will see you next month for November's book buzz.