Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire fromThe Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

Under the Poppy – Kathe Koja

I thought this sounded like a rather interesting novel, plus it’s set in Belgium, a place I’ve visited but don’t think I’ve read much about.

From a wartime brothel to the intricate high society of 1870s Brussels, Under the Poppy is a breakout novel of childhood friends, a love triangle, puppetmasters, and reluctant spies.

Under the Poppy is a brothel owned by Decca and Rupert. Decca is in love with Rupert, but he in turn is in love with her brother, Istvan. When Istvan comes to town, louche puppet troupe in tow, the lines of their age-old desires intersect against a backdrop of approaching war. Hearts are broken when old betrayals and new alliances—not just their own—take shape, as the townsmen seek refuge from the onslaught of history by watching the girls of the Poppy cavort onstage with Istvan’s naughty puppets . . .

Under the Poppy is a vivid, sexy, historical novel that zips along like the best guilty pleasure.

Nominated for the IMPAC Award. Winner of the Gaylactic Spectrum Award.

The Devotion of Suspect X – Keigo Higashino

(I’m not going to copy-paste the blurb here as I don’t really want to know what this book is about!). Instead, I’ll just say that I first heard of this book from Bibliojunkie, who said: “The story is a puzzle embedded in a bigger puzzle. A story that challenges the reader’s blind spot.” And I was like, ooh!

Photographing Fairies – Steve Szilagyi
For Once Upon a Time VI

It all begins in the 1920s, when a blustering country policeman, Constable Michael Walsmear, literally punches his way into American photographer Charles Castle’s London studio. Walsmear has what he claims are photographs of fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom Castle approaches to verify the pictures, offers a large sum of money to have Walsmear’s photographs destroyed. But even more than cash, Castle wants the truth. His quest takes him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful country village seething with secrets. Armed with a camera, he encounters gypsies and wild dogs, the innocent girls of the photos and the murderous thieves who threaten them, a beautiful garden and unspeakable sexual practices. He also discovers the most shocking truth of all: that absolute purity and utter depravity are folded together in the human heart.

The Yellow Wind – David Grossman
I loved Grossman’s To the End of the Land and have been interested in reading some of his non-fiction.

The Israeli novelist David Grossman’s impassioned account of what he observed on the West Bank in early 1987—not only the misery of the Palestinian refugees and their deep-seated hatred of the Israelis but also the cost of occupation for both occupier and occupied—is an intimate and urgent moral report on one of the great tragedies of our time. The Yellow Wind is essential reading for anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of Israel today.

An Overdrive e-book
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy) – N.K. Jemisin
For Once Upon a Time VI

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her family’s bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate – and gods and mortals – are bound inseparably together

For wee reader:

Curious George Color Fun – H.A. Rey

All of Baby, Nose to Toes – Victoria Adler, illustrated by Hiroe Nakata

Spot Goes to the Farm – Eric Hill

Paddington Bear All Day – Michael Bond, illustrated by R.W. Alley

Maisy’s Train – Lucy Cousins

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?
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