March Staff Picks

Heather says:

“Auri­enne is a med­ical researcher and mag­i­cal heal­er, well-respect­ed among her order. Osric is an insid­i­ous mem­ber of the order of assas­sins who has been crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed. Auri­enne is the only one who might be able to save Osric, but she won’t attempt to help a mem­ber of a rival, mur­der­ous order. If his allur­ing charm won’t work, per­haps a bribe will per­suade her. As they trav­el around an alter­nate, mag­i­cal Eng­land, Auri­enne and Osric inad­ver­tent­ly dis­cov­er a plot involv­ing a pox epi­dem­ic tar­get­ing chil­dren. You’re sure to enjoy the epic and often irrev­er­ent clash­ing of per­son­al­i­ties, tongues, and moti­va­tions as these two oppos­ing forces attempt to work togeth­er while very much long­ing to inflict harm on the oth­er. Knightley’s immer­sive imagery and British wit (albeit raunchy on occa­sion) bril­liant­ly coa­lesce in the unfold­ing of this rich and imag­i­na­tive adventure.”

Neil says:

“I was drawn to this book dur­ing the hol­i­days in Decem­ber, when I found myself think­ing about loved ones who are no longer here. We can all relate to that in some way, right? Grief and pain can last a short while or linger for a life­time, and impact us in ways we don’t expect. Have you ever want­ed to just close your eyes and sleep to escape from those feel­ings, hop­ing that you would wake up with a dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship to what you’re going through? This beau­ti­ful nov­el presents the con­cept of sleep-as-escape as an intrigu­ing and work­able way of cop­ing with painful emo­tions. In the midst of this tale about friends who meet dur­ing a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter and trav­el across the coun­try, there’s some real­ly mov­ing writ­ing about how grief and pain affect us, and how we process those feel­ings as humans. I found it to be res­o­nant, but not depress­ing. If you find the notion of sleep­ing away the grief or pain in your life to be com­pelling, pick this one up.”

Les­ley says:

“It’s not that uncom­mon for the detec­tive in a mur­der mys­tery to be an ani­mal, usu­al­ly a cat or a dog. As pets, they have easy access to clues and a lot of expe­ri­ence observ­ing humans. In a unique twist, the detec­tives in this nov­el are sheep. George, their shep­herd, lies dead in the mead­ow and his flock has decid­ed that they will find his mur­der­er. I real­ly enjoyed how the sheep’s point of view informed their inves­ti­ga­tion, and the indi­vid­ual sheep are quite mem­o­rable char­ac­ters – maybe more so than the humans. There’s a movie ver­sion com­ing out this spring and one sequel, Big Bad Wool.