Literary and historical fiction, suspense and family drama, true stories and a grandson's quest to learn about a community devastated during WWII are just a few words to describe the following seven titles thoughtfully recommended by the members of the Daytimer's Book Group. The Daytimer's meet monthy at the library and great discussions always ensue.  Read on for some recommendations shared by this terrific group.

Mary recommends . . .    

Cover ArtGreat Circle by Maggie Shipstead
After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At age fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over both the North and South Poles. A century later, actress Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for author Maggie Shipstead.
Find Great Circle in the library catalog Here
Also available for digital checkout:
Montana Library2Go/Libby eBook and audiobook
Axis 360 eBook
Read more about the author Here

 

 

Cover ArtThe Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
Set in 1930s colonial Malaysia, quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master's dying wish: that Ren find the man's finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever. As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths racks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren's increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes. Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love.  Anchoring this dazzling, propulsive novel is the intimate coming-of-age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible. 

Find The Night Tiger in the library catalog Here
Also available for digital checkout:
Montana Library2Go/Libby eBook and audiobook
Hoopla audiobook
Read more about the author Here

 

Lisa recommends . . . 

Cover Art

Long Bright River by Liz Moore
   "A literary hybrid of police procedural, mystery and family drama that is both heart-breaking and uplifting."
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same streets on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.
Find Long Bright River in the library catalog Here
Also available for digital checkout:
Montana Library2Go/Libby eBook and audiobook
Axis 360 eBook 
Read more about the author Here

 

Barb recommends . . . 

Cover ArtApeirogon: a Novel by Colum McCann 
    "One of the most memorable books I have read in the last couple of years is Apeirogon by Colum McCann.  It is based on the true story of two fathers who each lost a child in the Middle Eastern Conflict—one father is Palestinian and one Israeli. The writing is beautiful and McCann’s ways of communicating the vast complexities of the region is remarkable!"
     Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on to the schools their children attend to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate.   But their lives, however circumscribed, are upended one after the other: first, Rami's thirteen-year-old daughter, Smadar, becomes the victim of suicide bombers; a decade later, Bassam's ten-year-old daughter, Abir, is killed by a rubber bullet. Rami and Bassam had been raised to hate one another. And yet, when they learn of each other's stories, they recognize the loss that connects them. Together they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace--and with their one small act, start to permeate what has for generations seemed an impermeable conflict.  
Find Apeirogon in the library catalog Here
Also available for digital checkout:
Montana Library2Go/Libby  audiobook
Read more about the author Here

 

Jessica recommends . . . 

Cover ArtA Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this novel casts a spell as it relates the count's endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
Find A Gentleman in Moscow in the library catalog Here
Also available for digital checkout:
Montana Library2Go/Libby eBook and audiobook
Axis 360 eBook and audiobook
Read more about the author Here

 

Connie recommends . . . 

Cover ArtThe Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction--to New York City. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, author Amor Towles' novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.
Find The Lincoln Highway in the library catalog Here
Also available for digital checkout:
Montana Library2Go/Libby eBook and audiobook
Axis 360 eBook and audiobook
Read more about the author Here

 

Debbie recommends . . . 

Cover ArtThree Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kurtz
Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community-an entire culture-that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival.

Three Minutes in Poland: discovering a lost world in a 1938 family film (the book) is available through interlibrary loan
Interested in watching a lecture by the author, learning more, and seeing the short film? Follow this link.

 

We hope you'll check out some of these titles. Let us know if you've read any of these books or if you have another book to recommend. Stop by the library and tell us about it or leave a comment above. It's great to share the love of reading and learn from a really good book.