The Midwest Independent Booksellers Association has selected its Midwest Connections Picks for June. Under this marketing program, the association and member stores promote booksellers' handselling favorites that have a strong Midwest regional appeal.
Loudermilk by Lucy Ives (Soft Skull Press, $16.95, 9781593763909). "A tale of two idiots--the handsome, charismatic Troy Augustus Loudermilk and his unassuming, socially anxious friend Harry Rego--who, in the early days of the new millennium, scam their way into a fellowship at the most prestigious creative writing program in the country."
The Summer Demands by Deborah Shapiro (Catapult, $25, 9781948226301). "On the verge of her fortieth birthday, and shaken by a recent miscarriage, Emily inherits an abandoned summer camp in Massachusetts and discovers a magnetic young woman living undetected in a cabin whose presence will force her to question everything she thought she knew."
Reflections on a Life in Exile by J.F. Riordan (Beaufort Books, $14.95, 9780825308932). "Written in lyrical prose, Reflections on a Life in Exile captures and magnifies the passing beauty of the ordinary and the extraordinary that lingers near the surface of daily life. Although not about dogs, the book is permeated with dog stories, a love of nature, and an almost mystical sense of wonder."
The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair by Amy Makechnie (Atheneum, $17.99, 9781534414464). "Guinevere St. Clair is a lawyer, the fastest girl in NYC, an expert on the human brain, and, now that her family's moved to her parents' hometown of Crowe, Iowa--in hopes of curing her mother's memory loss--she wants to ride into her first day of school on a cow named Willowdale Princess Deon Dawn."
