Didn't get much from the library so far this week (will be stopping in again on Saturday....so there may be more goodies to report). Came home with two library books:
The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys: In a haunting story of love in a time of war, Helen Humphreys has created a novel that is both heartrending and heart-mending. This word-perfect, heartbreaking novel is set in early 1941 in Britain when the war seems endless and, perhaps, hopeless. London is on fire from the Blitz, and gardener Gwen Davis has fled the devastated city for the Devon countryside. She volunteers for the Women's Land Army, an organization devoted to growing crops for the war effort. Shy and solitary, she is placed in charge of a disparate group of young women to revitalize the vegetable gardens of a beautiful but long-neglected estate where the grounds have fallen into ruins. Also on the estate, waiting to be posted to the front, is a regiment of Canadian soldiers. She falls in love with a soldier, finds her first deep friendship, and brings a hidden garden back to life.
Use Trouble: Poems by Michael S Harper: For decades, Michael S. Harper has written poetry that speaks with many voices. His work teems with poetry configured as awe, poetry as courtship, and poetry as elegy and homage. Infused with tales and riddles, sass and satire and surprise, Harper’s poetry takes the form of psalms, jazz experiments, soft serenades, and radical provocations.
In Use Trouble, his first major collection since Songlines in Michaeltree, Harper renews poetry as the art of taking nothing for granted. In three groups--"The Fret Cycle," "Use Trouble," and "I Do Believe in People"--he draws on his seemingly inexhaustible resources to paint, sing, sympathize, and sorrow. Here are his tributes to his father and family, his irrepressible playfulness, and his lifelong romance between poetry and music.
I also stopped by the Library's Used/Donated/Discarded Bookstore and picked up an absolutely perfect Dover first Edition of Three Victorian Detective Novels edited by E. F. Bleiler. "Identifying the first modern detective novel requires feats of brain and leg power worthy of the classic ratiocinators. The history of the genre itself is something of a fine art, combining the pleasure of the chase, with the occasional reward of discovering a transitional work whose merits transcend the historical Three such milestones in detective literature are presented here. The Unknown Weapon by Andrew Forrester; My Lady's Money by Wilkie Collins; and The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill.
Have made a note of The Lost Garden as it sounds like my kind of thing. Good loot!
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