The King's English Bookshop

What's worse than a Wyoming winter where the average temperature is 4 below? A Wyoming winter in Durant where a murderer (or two) is on the loose and a shady real estate deal has gone bad. Sheriff Walt Longmire has barely recovered from his last adventure when the Stewart family, owners of the local junkyard, call him to rescue Grampus, who's been pulled behind the family Toronado for 2.5 miles over icy roads before coming to a stop on top of a mailbox. And that's the first three pages! Henry Standing Bear, Vic, and Sancho are all along for the ride again in this chilly tale of modern frontier justice.

A steadfast friend to the animals at the zoo, Amos McGee ensures that he never misses a day to sit quietly with the penguin (who is very shy) and lend a handkerchief to the rhinoceros (who always has a runny nose). So when the day comes that Amos is sick in bed, his friends come to his house to visit him. Children will love this gentle story of friendship and quiet fun reminiscent of The Napping House.

It is 1959 and young Christy Hurley is an Irish pavee or traveller. Upon his grandfather’s death, Christy’s grandmother is determined to have the young boy make his First Holy Communion even though it will mean staying in one place for more than a few days, and, if it’s at all possible, enrolling in school. Christy is more interested in trying to learn who his mother was and where, in all of Ireland, she lived. As Christy tells us his story we learn that the love a father can have for a son transcends all boundaries, including poverty.

It is 1982 and Rachel has come to live with her grandma and beautiful Aunt Loretta after her own family has fallen apart both literally and figuratively. She is 12 years old and the bi-racial daughter of a Danish mother and black father. The story of Rachel’s miraculous escape from tragedy and her subsequent upbringing is told through her eyes and the eyes of those around her. Most importantly, we hear from Brick, the young boy who witnessed her fall from the sky and spent the better part of his young life looking for her. Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time, this is a story you will remember for a long time.

Not since A Prayer for Owen Meany have I read a book like this where the turn of every page leaves me breathless and wondering what will happen next. Brandon Vanderkool is an oversize young man whose dyslexia leaves him speechless more often than not. A recent recruit to the Border Patrol in northern Washington state, his uncanny ability to find and capture illegal aliens and drug runners stems more from his enhanced sense of sight and smell than from his desire to “find the bad guys.” His father is an ailing dairy farmer, their across the border neighbor is a pot-smoking professor trying to re-create Edison’s light bulb experiment, and their newest neighbor, Sophie Winslow appears to be a massage therapist…but what she really does is a mystery. Once you’ve finished this novel, you’ll add Brandon to your cast of never-to-be-forgotten characters.

In this fourth installment in the Bayern series we return to the Forest when Razo’s younger sister Rin is struggling to understand who she is and who she wants to be. Her confusion might seem normal for a girl her age bordering on womanhood if it weren’t for the fact that she has an uncanny ability to become one with the trees that surround her birthplace. Once again, Shannon Hale has given us a heroine whose journey is not just about leaving home to find one’s true self but searching deep within to find and own your power to create good or evil in the world. Every new Bayern book becomes my favorite and this one is no exception. All of Hale’s wonderful characters return in this adventure that calls upon each of them to bring their very best skills, magical and otherwise, in an effort to defeat the face of evil.

In 2005 Heather Lende was riding her bike down a two-lane highway in Haines, Alaska. She was mentally preparing for her first book tour, enjoying a beautiful day when she was hit by a truck and suffered, among other things, a crushed pelvis. She recovered, miraculously, and was able to return to an active life. This new book subtitled, Family, Friends, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska, weaves Lende’s own story of injury and healing with those of her fellow townspeople and their own tribulations and victories. In a town of 2,400 people you get to know each other pretty well; Lende not only knows her neighbors, she cares deeply about them and writes about each of them in a manner that leads you to believe you know them, and her, personally.