Blog Entries

This June, we're asking what kinds of programming for adults you would like to see offered at the Public Libraries of Saginaw. Take the brief online survey here, scan the QR code for the link, or stop in to any of our branches to participate. 

Thank you for your input!

The Unsinkable Greta James By Jennifer E. Smith

Singer/songwriter Greta James has finally made the big time. After years of struggling, her first album hit the charts and life is good, but it all seems meaningless after her mother dies unexpectedly while Greta is performing out of the country.

Helen was her daughter’s number one fan and the referee in Greta’s antagonistic relationship with her father, Conrad. Conrad has never supported Greta’s music career, but maybe that’s not surprising, since her best-known hit was a song raging against him.

After Greta bre...

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

If you haven’t read one of the best books of 2021 yet, what are you waiting for? Although Firekeeper’s Daughter was published as a young adult novel, it’s a rich story that adults can appreciate, too.

The author, Angeline Boulley, is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Her protagonist, Daunis Fontaine, is a recent high school graduate who has always felt like she’s lived between the worlds of her mother’s rich, white family and her late father’s Ojibwe relatives. Daunis had been looking forward ...

The Music of Bees By Eileen Garvin

Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman grew up thinking she would one day become a third-generation Oregon fruit grower, but then her parents sold the family orchard to a land developer, she took an office job, and found herself beekeeping on the side. Her hives pollinate nearby fruit trees and give her something to nurture after the sudden, devastating losses of her husband and parents. When she’s taking care of her bees, she doesn’t have time to remember that she’s the last-living member of her family.

Months ahead of his death last July at age 80, John Lewis informed few people that his cancer of the pancreas was terminal.

One of them was a biographer he highly trusted, a historian and student of the civil rights movement. To add to the attraction, Jon Meacham is also a religious soul who had invested an intense inquiry into Jesus Christ's final words from the cross. This made Meacham a soul mate.

The pair collaborated on His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, which ultimately was a rush job, because the civi...

     Gravel spewed in every direction as the truck careened the corner from smooth pavement to dirt road. A quarter mile away, the sound of screeching tires and lumber thudding against the truck bed caused more than gravel to fly in the wee hours of the morning; seven children flew from their beds. Faces pinched and every muscle taut, their bodies flooded with stress-induced cortisol. Trembling, eyes dilated with dread, they awaited the truck’s headlights to illuminate the two massive pine trees standing sentry to the drive. Hope faded to despair once again as the h...

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, written by Robert Kolker, delves into the world of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia and our country’s attempt to understand and treat people suffering from it. When researchers tried to investigate whether or not there is a genetic origin of schizophrenia, they were astonished to hear of the Galvin family living in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Galvin family...

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston

This collection of short fiction by the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God includes several of her “lost” works that are back in print for the first time since they were published in the early 20th Century. Hurston is best known today for her fiction featuring her real hometown of Eatonville, Florida – but in the middle of the Roaring 1920s, Hurston lived in Harlem and moved in the same circles as Langston Hughes and other writers. The eight r...

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Like all of Mantel’s work, The Mirror & the Light is a weighty, well-researched novel.  It is the final installment in a magnificent trilogy (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) that traces the life of Tudor courtier Thomas Cromwell.  From his humble beginnings as a blacksmith’s son to his meteoric rise to the right hand of King Henry VIII, Cromwell uses his wits to ascend.  The Mirror & the Light picks up with Cromwell at the peak of his power, orch...

A Last Survivor of the Orphan Trains by William Walters and Victoria Golden

A Last Survivor of the Orphan Trains is a memoir depicting William Walters’s life as one of the last survivors of the famous Orphan Trains that transported over 250,000 children from the East Coast streets and orphanages, from 1854 until the early 1930’s. Walter tells of his experience being separated from his brother at one of the many stops, and of the abuse he suf...

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
 

Something is not right at the rundown Sun Down Motel in the outskirts of Fell in upstate New York.  It is 1982 and Viv Delaney finds herself passing through on her way to NYC and gets a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down to make some extra money.  After dark, the place comes alive with a sinister, haunting presence.  Could this hotel be hiding secrets tied to a possible serial killer who has been abducting women in the area for years?  Viv is determine...

Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca

If you are looking for a wonderful, light-hearted work of non fiction to ring in the new year, then Mobituaries by Mo Rocca should be at the top of the list. The author defines a mobituary as “an appreciation for someone who didn’t get the love she or he deserved the first time around.” Throughout the book, Mr. Rocca reminds the reader about people worth remembering who may have been forgotten with the passage of time or circumstance. Did you know that Audrey Hepburn died on the same day as Bill Clinton’s inauguration or tha...

The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton

The Last Train to London is a historical fiction written about a true life World War II heroine Geertruida Wijsmuller also known as Tante (Aunt) Truus. Truus was a Dutch woman that smuggled Jewish children out of Germany and other German occupied countries such as Austria. She would take them to countries such as Britain and have them placed with families. Her mission was called the Kindertransport and she would end up rescuing ten thousand children from the Nazi’s. She never had any biological children, however her tombstone reads “Mo...

Anhaga by Lisa Henry

Anhaga, by Lisa Henry, is a delicious gay fantasy romance with just the right mix of electric sexual tension and magical adventure. We meet Min, the best thief in Amberwich with the worse reputation. His nephew has gotten in trouble with one of the most powerful families in the city, resulting in a nasty curse. In order to undo the curse he must offer his services to the despised Sabadine family. If Min can return from the dangerous city of Anhaga with something of great value, the curse will be lifted.

Of course, this is nowhere near a straightforwa...

Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

More and more often lately, a little voice inside her head is asking questions she doesn’t have answers for. Why you, Gwendy Peterson? Out of all the people in this round world, why did he choose you?

It is the summer of 1974, and 12-year old Gwendy Peterson is doing her daily climb of the Suicide Stairs in Castle Rock when the man with the black hat she has seen sitting on the bench below all week speaks to her.  Smartly, Gwendy points out that she doesn’t speak to strangers, but after the eccentric man d...