There are one million new books published each year. With so many books and so little time, where do you begin to find your next must-read? There’s the New York Times Bestseller list, the Goodreads app, the Cape Library’s Staff picks shelf and now Martin’s Must-Reads.
Every Wednesday at 6:42 and 8:42 a.m., and Sunday at 8:18 a.m., Betty Martin recommends a must read based on her own personal biases for historical fiction, quirky characters and overall well-turned phrases. Her list includes WWII novels, biographies of trailblazers, novels with truly unique individuals and lots more. Reading close to 100 titles a year, Betty has plenty of titles to share. Tune in each Wednesday and visit KRCU.org for previous must-reads.
Local support for "Martin's Must Reads" comes from the Cape Girardeau Public Library and the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library.
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“At the heart of this vibrant saga is an old slave ship the Ibis. It’s destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight in China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.” -
“The letter arrives on a Friday. Slit ad resealed with a sticker, of course, as all their letters are: Inspected for your safety-PACT...No return address, only a New York, NY postmark, six days old. On the outside, his name - Bird- and because of this he knows it is from his mother.” -
“Emma. For the past five months, I have watched the world die. Glaciers have advanced across Canada and England and Russia and Scandinavia, trampling everything in their path. They show no signs of stopping. The data says they won’t. Within three months, ice will cover the Earth, and life as we know it will end. My job is to find out why. And to stop it.” -
“I didn’t spend a year building a wooden flatboat and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi River simply because I was suffering from a Huck Finn complex, although that certainly played a part....I hungered to see that river country when I stumbled across an account of one of the first boatmen who braved the water route that America followed toward prosperity and greatness.” -
“My mind replays her screams as the orderlies drag her from the ambulance, an otherworldly mix of falcon and banshee interspersed with strangled pleas: Nonono don’t touch me and I will kill myself and - most chillingly of all: They are coming! Do you hear me? They are coming!" -
"Somewhere, out in the world, are the people who touched us, or loved us, or ran from us. In that way we will live on. We are in the back of hundreds of people’s photographs - moving, talking, blurring into the background of a picture two strangers have framed on their living room mantelpiece. And in that way, we will live on too. But it isn’t enough." -
This is “a story about therapy: how we heal and where it leads us.” Gottlieb allows us to follow the progress of several of her patients, as well as her own, as we sit in on their therapy sessions. One of her patients is lonely, one is an alcoholic, one has anger issues and one is dying. -
This is “a story about therapy: how we heal and where it leads us.” Gottlieb allows us to follow the progress of several of her patients, as well as her own, as we sit in on their therapy sessions. One of her patients is lonely, one is an alcoholic, one has anger issues and one is dying.
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Twenty-four year old Catherine has just graduated from nursing school and is soon leaving to begin her job at John’s Hopkins Hospital. She’ll be living away from her mother, Sarah. She’s looking forward to being on her own for the first time in her life. -
“The Wedding Night. The lights go out. Outside a storm is raging. It shrieks around them, it batters the tent. It feels personal, this storm. This isn’t the first time the electric has shorted. They’re beginning to feel afraid. This darkness feels somehow ominous, intent. Then from outside comes a new sound. You might almost mistake it for the wind. But it rises in pitch and volume until it is unmistakable.”
