The Woolly Hat Knitting Club by Poppy Dolan

This book is such a fun read!  Dee is fired from her fast paced job after leaving an important meeting when she receives an alarming text from her brother.  He has broken both wrists and needs her help running the local yarn shop that they own together.  She runs into an old friend who recently has had her baby prematurely and decides to ask her brother's customers to knit some tiny hats for the baby.  That begins a lovely charity movement to help other mums of premature babies.  There is romance, mystery and mentions of resistance knitting as well in this truly fun read!  I highly recommend this book to knitters and non-knitters alike!

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

I had started to read this book once, years ago and couldn't get past the rape aspect of it and gave up on it.  With the context relating to today's political situation, and the TV series, I decided to give it another go.  I watched the TV series first and again was put off by the rape in the first show and it took me a while to revisit it and actually watch the rest of it and then read the book.  I was astounded at the parallels to some of today's political situations considering the book was written in 1985. I enjoyed the book once I saw the political aspects of it and I do recommend it highly. In this dystopian novel, a combination of factors have changed society.  Chemical spills have made a large part of the population infertile, natural disasters fueled by climate change have altered the earth and a fundamentalist Christian religious group has taken over the government in the US by first killing the president and blaming it on Islamic radicals and starting wars.  Now, women have no rights at all and fertile women are forced to be "handmaids" passed from husband to husband and used to produce children.  The story is told by one handmaid called Offred as she tells her story in the present and remembers how things were in the past.

Unnatural Deeds by Cyn Balog

This is a YA mystery/romance with some twists.  Victoria Zell is an 11th grader who as been going to a private Catholic high school for the past year.  Her next door neighbor, Andrew, who is home schooled and agoraphobic, is her best friend, only friend, and boyfriend until a new boy, Z begins going to her school.  He is outgoing and popular and he likes her.  She is obsessively attracted to him, but we learn that he has some mysteries in his life.  Later, we learn that Victoria has her own mysteries.  There are some pretty bizarre surprise twists in the end of the book.

The List by Patricia Forde

In this post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval world, Letta (I love that her name sounds like letter), is the apprentice to the Wordsmith in the town of Ark, a community lead by John Noa.  Noa has decided that words are the root of all evil and they lead to the downfall of man and the melting of the polar icecaps that decimated most of the population.  Therefore, he limits the vocabulary of the people in his town.  The List of approved words had included 700 words and has now been reduced to 500 words.  When Letta's master leaves for a word finding trip and doesn't return, she meets a strange boy and learns that Noa's plans are sinister.  Can she stop him from destroying everyone and everything?