See what Lahaska bookseller Zoe is reading...
Kathryn Harlan makes her debut with a fantastic volume of short stories about the places where mythology and girlhood intersect. I loved all these stories, but "Fiddler, Fool, Pair" and "Hunting the Viper King" are exactly the kind of darkly drawn neo-folk tales I'm most drawn to. If you were a spooky little girl, this is the collection for you.
Hardly more than a year before the war in Ukraine began, Erica Fatland toured each country bordering Russia in sequence. This book is the compilation of the stories she heard, the landmaks she saw, and the histories she collected. Though it is by no means a comprehensive review of every single power struggle that has torn these nations apart, it is an engaging ground-view report of their current configurations and the paths they took to get there. I especially enjoyed reading the political musings of the locals (even if I didn't agree with them all); it's always healthy to hear opinions from those who are actually engaged and effected. The history chapters in this book are a little dry, but it's worth it to get to the good stuff.
It's the end of the world, and perrenial outsider Willa Marks is running to the eco-utopia island commune of Eleutheria in order to escape her patchwork past (and an ugly, ideology-based breakup). Fantastic characters, freegans, lost treasure, heartbreak - Eleutheria has it all.