Search Results: Returned 2 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 2
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2021., Adult, Harper Perennial Call No: Fic Gal Edition: First Canadian edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The story begins in 1618, in the German duchy of Wurttemberg. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years' War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch. Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbors for her herbal remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It's enough to make anyone jealous, and Katharina has done herself no favors by being out and about and in everyone's business. So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter, witchy drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and next-door neighbor Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets. The story of how a community becomes implicated in collective aggression and hysterical fear is a tale for our time. Galchen's bold new novel touchingly illuminates a society and a family undone by superstition, the state, and the mortal convulsions of history.
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By Foss, Mark2015., Adult, Cormorant Books Call No: QWF Fic Fos Availability:0 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Cosmopolitan and curious seventeen-year-old Chrysler Wong suffers from debilitating fear brought on by belief in a family curse, whereby she and her siblings will each die at age eighteen when they leave their small hometown. Three siblings have already died; the fourth, her favourite, has left town and is incommunicado. Chrysler is afraid of boys, love, sex, leaving town, and eating chicken that's a little pink in the centre. She's taken huge precautions to try to keep herself safe, and the possibilities of her life, as she sees it, are narrow, even though she's smart, curious, hopeful, and longing for more. She vows to continue life in her small town, alone in the shadow of enormous grief, fear, and dread while trying to get her sister Trina to come home. (Trina may or may not still be alive; she may even be on an epic roadtrip adventure to a place Chrysler has always wanted to go, the Northwest Territories.) All Chrysler has is her despairing, ineffectual, sometimes abusive parents whom she takes care of and vivid memories of when things in her family were good. Enter Conrad Green, a boy from a neighbouring town who, like Chrysler, is curious, witty, and smart; unlike her, he fears almost nothing. Conrad challenges much of what Chrysler has accepted as common sense. He dares her to not be alone, to court adventure and danger and to live how she wants to, not just how she thinks she must. Through the course of a narrative that is offbeat, funny, and full of verve, we meet Chrysler's siblings, a lively bunch with a fun dynamic and interesting back-stories of their own. Set in central-western Alberta, the book asks larger questions about growing up, questions about life itself, particularly, how you would live if you knew your life would soon be ending. Would you live a circumscribed life if you thought it meant you would survive? What amount of sacrifice is worth it?"--From publisher.
