Book Reviews2020 In Review: SMSA’s Top 10 Books
Sections
Top 10 Books
Click the title to see the book in the Library Catalogue
10 | Winona is a young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole. Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, she is educated and loved, forging a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of her unlikely family unit, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. | 
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9 | Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of intractable conflict that colors every aspect of their daily lives, from the roads they are allowed to take to the schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, each attends. But their worlds shift irreparably when ten-year-old old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet meant to quell unruly crowds, and again when thirteen-year-old Smadar becomes the victim of suicide bombers. | 
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8 | FBI investigator, Amos Decker and his colleague, Alex Jamison, are summoned to seek answers in the local community of London, North Dakota, which sits at the very heart of the fracking industry. Enriched with oil money, jealousy and a deep-set rivalry lie beneath a veneer of glitz and opulence. Decker soon realizes that the nearby ‘eye in the sky’, the Air Force Station, may hold the vital clues and that this town holds secrets so explosive that they could destabilize the entire country. | 
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7 | A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, Micah Mortimer seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his significant other tells him she’s facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son. | 
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6 | Alan Barrington, who has evaded capture for ten years, is the suspect in an appalling murder during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horse race meet honoring the late King Edward VII. Meticulously retracing the original inquiry, Rutledge begins to know Alan Barrington well, delving into relationships and secrets that hadn’t surfaced in 1910. His sanity is suddenly brought into question by a shocking turn of events. The only way to save his career – much less his sanity – is to find Alan Barrington and bring him to justice. But is this elusive murderer still in England? | 
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5 | A beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness – the ‘light within’ – which will sustain us even through the darkest times. | 
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4 | Temperance Brennan must use all her tradecraft to discover the identity of a faceless corpse, its connection to a decade-old missing child case, and why the dead man had her cellphone number. | 
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3 | The Zephyr program is monitoring the progress of Britain’s only spy satellite. When Zephyr goes briefly off the air, Hepton finds himself in danger and the mistrusted Dreyfuss, sole survivor of a shuttle crash, has the only key to the riddle that must be solved if both men are to stay alive. | 
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2 | Yesterday, Lydia Quixano Perez had a bookshop in the Mexican city of Acapulco. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Javier Crespo Fuentes was once her friend. They talked about books, shared their secrets, formed a close relationship till one day Lydia’s reporter husband Sebastian wrote an article about Javier, the “jefe” of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When the article is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Now, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left. For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running. | 
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1 | A woman’s cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region. |  |
Honorable Mentions
Click the title to see the book in the Library Catalogue
Have you managed to read all of SMSA’s most popular books?
We hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
Check out the other lists from the SMSA’s Year in Review articles.
We’d love your suggestions
Have you read something you loved this year, but it’s not part of our collection? Or maybe there’s a book you wish we had? We’re always happy to hear your suggestions! You can share your book recommendations by writing in the suggestion book at the library desk, or submit online via the library catalogue or suggest a book for the library to purchase
