November Staff Picks

Heather says:

“Wel­come to Rennedawn, where good is good and bad is bad … or so it seems. Des­per­ate to pay the bills, Evan­geli­na Sage accepts a job in an office where heads lit­er­al­ly roll, interns get fired out of cas­tle win­dows, and malev­o­lent may­hem ensues on any giv­en week­day. Did she real­ly just get hired to work for the land’s most noto­ri­ous vil­lain? Evie needs to spend less time ogling her boss and more time find­ing the mole sab­o­tag­ing the Villain’s plans. Enjoy this light-heart­ed, slow-burn roman­ta­sy that turns the very def­i­n­i­tion of vil­lainy on its head. Be care­ful when you sip your caul­dron brew, though, because the play­ful ban­ter, com­bined with daffy inter­nal mono­logue, might be the source of a spit take or sev­er­al. Go ahead and chan­nel a teen­sy bit of your inner vil­lain and check out this one-of-a-kind fairy tale.”

Elis­a­beth says:

“Pri­or to read­ing this book, my knowl­edge of Cleopa­tra was lim­it­ed to dates mem­o­rized for his­to­ry class­es and the dra­ma of Shakespeare’s play and Eliz­a­beth Taylor’s movie. (So, basi­cal­ly, just to dry facts and myths.) But what does a biog­ra­ph­er do when there is lim­it­ed fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion and a pletho­ra of spec­u­la­tion shaped by most­ly biased sec­ondary sources?

Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Sta­cy Schiff’s deeply researched biog­ra­phy brings Egypt’s last queen to life, and her rich, beau­ti­ful depic­tions of Mediter­ranean cul­tures – espe­cial­ly those of Egypt and Rome – rival that of the best sword-and-san­dal films. Schiff’s his­to­ry is helped by the fact that the mem­bers of the Ptole­my Dynasty were a noto­ri­ous bunch, with a long his­to­ry of schem­ing, incest, and mur­der. While Cleopa­tra was by no means above that kind of behav­ior, Schiff por­trays an intel­li­gent and edu­cat­ed per­son who was high­ly adept at maneu­ver­ing through the com­plex social and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions of her time … until she wasn’t.”

Haley says:

“Eve­lyn Hard­cas­tle will die tonight, just as she does every night at 11. Aiden Bish­op must iden­ti­fy her killer to break this cycle. How­ev­er, every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a dif­fer­ent guest of Black­heath Manor, and some guests are more help­ful than oth­ers. I love the decay­ing, iso­lat­ed 20^th-cen­tu­ry man­sion set­ting, the intri­cate plot­ting of the many inter­wo­ven char­ac­ters, and the con­cur­rent mys­ter­ies of Aiden’s iden­ti­ty and the killer’s iden­ti­ty. It’s like Agatha Christie meets Ground­hog Day.”