In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb Display
If you're feeling like March has been the never ending month, you're not alone. It always feel long and cold and dreary, even though signs of spring are making themselves known--like these "spring" titles in our "In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb" display. Check out one of these books today:
In Sara Adams's "The Twilight Garden," warring London neighbors Winston and Bernice share an empty patch of greenery lost to time, but when Winston receives photographs of the garden in bloom many years prior, they decide to lay down their arms to revitalize the garden and help revive the community spirit that's been languishing for so long. "In a small pocket of London, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 Eastbourne Road, lies a neglected community garden. It was a beautiful thing once, a little oasis in a bustling city for neighbors by day and the local foxes at twilight. Now it's overgrown and neglected, an empty patch of greenery lost to time. Once a sanctuary, the garden's gate is now firmly closed. And that's exactly how Winston at No.79 likes it - anything to avoid Bernice, who has moved in next door with her young son. Their houses may share the garden, but they're not exactly neighborly. But then a mysterious parcel drops on Winston's doormat. It contains no note, only a bundle of photographs of the garden in bloom many years ago--vibrant with flowers, filled with people from every corner of the community. Is someone trying to tell them something? The seed of an idea is planted...Somewhere out there, a secret gardener made a decades-old promise to keep the community's spirit alive. Now it's time for The Twilight Garden to come out of hibernation."
In "The Ballard of Laurel Springs" by Janet Beard, "ten-year-old Grace is in search of a subject for her fifth-grade history project when she learns that her four times-great grandfather once stabbed his lover to death. His grisly act was memorialized in a murder ballad, her aunt tells her, so it must be true. But the lessons of that revelation - to be careful of men, and desire - are not just Grace's to learn. Her family's tangled past is part of a dark legacy in which the lives of generations of women are affected by the violence immortalized in folksongs like 'Knoxville Girl' and 'Pretty Polly' reminding them always to know their place - or risk the wages of sin. Janet Beard's stirring novel, informed by her love of these haunting ballads, vividly imagines these women, defined by the secrets they keep, the surprises they uncover and the lurking sense of menace that follows them throughout their lives. With the same rich sense of place as Bloodroot or Serena, The Ballad of Laurel Springs is an unforgettable portrait of women fighting to make a safe place in the world for themselves and the people they love."
In "The Heirloom Garden" by Viola Shipman, "Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built anew family ... of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive. When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family--a husband traumatized by his service in the Iraq War and a young daughter searching for stability--Iris is reluctantly yet inevitably drawn into her boisterous neighbor's life, where, united by loss and a love of flowers, she and Abby tentatively unearth their secrets, and help each other discover how much life they have yet to live".
"Spring on the Peninsula" by Ery Shin features a narrator mourning a failed relationship over the course of two hard winters. "The time is roughly now and Kai, a white-collar worker, has just been abandoned by his longtime lover. Follow him through a labyrinth of alleyways as he reels from this sudden departure. Accompany him up snowy mountains where he contemplates ending his own life. That mourning can be both an art and ever-unfolding journey is epitomized in the paths that Kai crosses and the lives he alters for better or worse. Kai is not the only one feeling disoriented and aimless these days. Those in his inner circle similarly experience personal crises as they go through their thirties in a nation simmering with class and generational tensions as well as the specter of new and old wars."
You'll find these titles and lots more signs of spring in our "In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb" display. For additional title suggestions, see the lists below:
