Recommended Reads

Category
Audience
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Every Living Thing

James Herriot

Description

A perfect gift for anyone who loves animals, this fifth and final installment in James Herriot's heartwarming collection, the basis for the All Creatures Great and Small television series. 

Every Living Thing: The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World's Most Beloved Animal Doctor marks a perfect opportunity for existing fans of Herriot's work to reacquaint themselves with his writing, and for those who've never read him to see what generations of animal lovers have already discovered: James Herriot is that rarest of creatures, a genuine master storyteller.

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Moments of Happiness

Michael Leckrone

Description

When Mike Leckrone retired as director of bands at the University of Wisconsin in 2019, he had served in that role for an astonishing fifty years. A brilliant showman, he became known for aerial stunts and sequined outfits. He created the Fifth Quarter celebration that follows all home football games, removed barriers for women to march in the band, and established regular appearances at Camp Randall by special-needs high school musicians. Above all, Leckrone always sought joy in life--which, along with his sixty-year love affair with his late wife, UW "band mom" Phyllis Leckrone, was perhaps the secret to his remarkable career. A consummate musician, as both a trumpeter and an arranger, Leckrone is also an outstanding raconteur--a talent beautifully on display in his long-awaited memoir.

This book is the next best thing to sitting down with this master storyteller. Coauthor Doug Moe captures the joys of performing--whether at Camp Randall, in the Kohl Center, or along the Rose Bowl Parade route. Reading Leckrone's story, one comes to understand the mix of discipline, showmanship, work ethic, warmth, toughness, wit, and musical skill that make him a Wisconsin treasure. Even for people who know Leckrone, Moments of Happiness details the stories behind the highlights and the unglamorous work that made his accomplishments possible. It both cements his legend and offers unprecedented insights into a career that will never be equaled.

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Kitchen Confidential

Anthony Bourdain

Description

New York Chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir/expose. Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine." 

Bourdain employs a "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

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Gmorning, Gnight!

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the creator and star of Hamilton and In the Heights, with beautiful illustrations by Jonny Sun, comes a book of affirmations to inspire readers at the beginning and end of each day.

Good morning. Do NOT get stuck in the comments section of life today. Make, do, create the things. Let others tussle it out. Vamos!

Before he inspired the world with Hamilton and was catapulted to international fame, Lin-Manuel Miranda was inspiring his Twitter followers with words of encouragement at the beginning and end of each day. He wrote these original sayings, aphorisms, and poetry for himself as much as for others. But as Miranda’s audience grew, these messages took on a life on their own. Now Miranda has gathered the best of his daily greetings into a beautiful collection illustrated by acclaimed artist (and fellow Twitter favorite) Jonny Sun. Full of comfort and motivation, Gmorning, Gnight! is a touchstone for anyone who needs a quick lift.

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The Bookshop Sisterhood

Michelle Lindo-Rice

Description

When life rewrites the story, only friendship will see them through.

After years of hard work, four best friends--Celeste, Yasmeen, Toni and Leslie--are finally on the verge of opening the bookstore of their dreams. A place where their community can find solace with an intriguing new read, a comforting beverage and book-loving friends.  But before they can cut the ribbon, their worlds are upended.  Toni receives devastating news just months before her wedding, while Celeste's struggling marriage threatens to collapse completely. Leslie learns a shocking secret about her family, and a lotto ticket changes Yasmeen's life--but not for the better.

As the bookstore's grand opening fast approaches, the four women must lean on each other now more than ever to navigate their grief and uncertainty. And together, they'll learn that sometimes, even life's most unexpected plot twists can lead to beautiful new beginnings.

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The Full Moon Coffee Shop

Mai Mochizuki

Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Translated from the Japanese bestseller, a charming and magical novel that reminds us it’s never too late to follow our stars.

“Mochizuki dazzles in her beautifully crafted contemporary fantasy debut. . . . This gentle fantasy is not to be missed.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review (Best Books of the Year)

In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon.

This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and it seemingly appears at random.

It’s also run by talking cats.

While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes and coffees and teas, the cats also consult their star charts, offering cryptic wisdom, and letting them know where their lives veered off course.

Every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. For a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the coffee shop’s feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. For there is a very special reason the shop appeared to each of them . . .

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Murder Takes a Vacation

Laura Lippman

Description

Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. She is determined to see the world that she sometimes feels is passing her by.

When Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. He is the first man who's sparked something inside her since her beloved husband passed.

She also didn't expect Allan to be found, dead, twenty-four hours later in Paris, a city he wasn't supposed to be in.

Now Mrs. Blossom doesn't know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He is convinced that Allan was transporting a stolen piece of art, and Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan's death.

Mrs. Blossom's questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. Why does it feel like she is being followed? Who was Allan, and why was he killed? Most alarmingly, why do these mysterious men keep flirting with her?

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Most Wonderful

Georgia Clark

Description

It’s the most romantic time of the year. Three adult siblings, each at a personal and romantic crossroads, reunite with their larger-than-life mother at her Catskills manor for an unforgettable Christmas in “the funny queer holiday rom-com [we’ve] always wanted to read” (Self).

The holidays are fast approaching, and the Belvedere siblings are a mess. Liz, a Hollywood showrunner and responsible eldest, has no idea how to follow up her hit show’s first season, or how to deal with her giant crush on its star, Violet Grace. Birdie turned her chronic middle-child syndrome into a career as a stand-up comic, but since she spends more time wooing women than working on new material, she’s facing one-hit-wonder status, especially once she gets axed by her manager. And Rafi, sensitive romantic and the baby golden boy, proposes to his co-worker girlfriend in front of their entire company, only to be turned down by the woman he thought was the love of his life.

Born to three different fathers, the three adult children share one mother: famed actress and singer Babs Belvedere. Seeking direction and holiday cheer, all three siblings head up to their mother’s house in the country, determined to swear off love and focus on themselves and their work. But the spirit of the season seems to have different plans for them, and their best intentions are quickly derailed in the most delightful and festive of ways.

Emotional, smart, and sexy, this queer holiday rom-com celebrates love, family, and the wild creative life―perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Casey McQuiston.

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We Solve Murders

Richard Osman

Description

A brand new mystery. An iconic new detective duo. And a thrilling new murder to solve . . .

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts . . .

As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?

Solving murders. It’s a family business.

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Sunshine and Spice

Aurora Palit

Description

When two complete opposites agree to fake date in order to solve their cultural dilemmas, they find the only force more powerful than an immigrant mother’s matchmaking schemes might just be true love.

Naomi Kelly will do anything to make her new brand consulting business a success. When she lands a career saving contract to rebrand the Mukherjee family’s failing local bazaar, she knows there can be no mistakes. But as the “oops” baby of a free-spirited Bengali mother, Naomi’s lack of connection to her roots represents everything Gia Mukherjee disdains.

Enter, Dev Mukherjee.

Dev knows everything his mother wants…including her wish for him to get married, like, yesterday. When Gia hires a matchmaker (without, you know, asking him), Dev vows to do whatever it takes to avoid ending up in a cold, loveless marriage. When a potential match assumes Naomi is his girlfriend, the solution to both their problems becomes clear: Naomi will pretend to date Dev in order to sabotage his mother’s matchmaking efforts in exchange for lessons in Bengali culture. Flawless plan, right?

But as Naomi and Dev bond over awful dancing at Garba, couples cooking classes, and tackling the rebrand as a team, they start to realize while their relationship may be fake, their feelings for each other are starting to become very real. As the line between reality and rumor blurs, Naomi and Dev must confront what it means to fit the mold, and decide how much they’re willing to risk for love.

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The Book of Form and Emptiness

Ruth Ozeki

Description

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.
 
At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.
 
And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.
 
With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.

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Funny Story

Emily Henry

Description

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex . . . right?

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The Library of Lost and Found

Phaedra Patrick

Description

A librarian's discovery of a mysterious book sparks the journey of a lifetime.

Librarian Martha Storm has always found it easier to connect with books than people--though not for lack of trying. She keeps careful lists of how to help others in her superhero-themed notebook. And yet, sometimes it feels like she's invisible.

All of that changes when a book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep. Inside, Martha finds a dedication written to her by her best friend--her grandmother Zelda--who died under mysterious circumstances years earlier. When Martha discovers a clue within the book that her grandmother may still be alive, she becomes determined to discover the truth. As she delves deeper into Zelda's past, she unwittingly reveals a family secret that will change her life forever.

Filled with Phaedra Patrick's signature charm and vivid characters, The Library of Lost and Found is a heartwarming and poignant tale of how one woman must take control of her destiny to write her own happy ending.

 

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Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library

Amanda Chapman

Description

Book conservator Tory Van Dyne and a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond join forces to catch a killer in this spirited mystery from Amanda Chapman.

Tory Van Dyne is the most down-to-earth member of a decidedly eccentric old-money New York family. For one thing, as book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, she actually has a job. Plus, she’s left up-town society behind for a quiet life downtown. So she’s not thrilled when she discovers a woman in the library’s Christie Room who calmly introduces herself as Agatha Christie, politely requests a cocktail, and announces she’s there to help solve a murder— that has not yet happened. 

But as soon as Tory determines that this is just a fairly nutty Christie fangirl, her socialite/actress cousin Nicola gets caught up in the suspicious death of her less-than-lovable talent agent. Nic, as always, looks to Tory for help. Tory, in turn, looks to Mrs. Christie. The woman, whoever or whatever she is, clearly knows her stuff when it comes to crime.

Aided by an unlikely band of fellow sleuths —including a snarky librarian, an eleven-year-old computer whiz, and an NYPD detective with terrible taste in suits—Tory and the woman claiming to be her very much deceased literary idol begin to unravel the twists and turns of a murderer’s devious mind. Because, in the immortal words of Miss Jane Marple, “murder is never simple.”

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The Library of Borrowed Hearts

Lucy Gilmore

Description

A.J. Fikry meets The Bookish Life of Nina Hill in this charming, hilarious, and moving novel about the way books bring lonely souls together.

Two young lovers. Sixty long years. One bookish mystery worth solving.

Librarian Chloe Sampson has been struggling: to take care of her three younger siblings, to find herself, to make ends meet. She's just about at the end of her rope when she stumbles across a rare edition of a book from the 1960s. Deciding it's a sign of her luck turning, she takes it home with her--only to be shocked when her cranky hermit of a neighbor swoops in and offers to buy it for an exorbitant price. Intrigued, Chloe takes a closer look at the book only to find notes scribbled in the margins between two young lovers back when the book was new...one of whom is almost definitely Jasper Holmes, the curmudgeon next door.

When she begins following the clues left behind, she discovers this isn't the only old book in town filled with romantic marginalia. This kickstarts a literary scavenger hunt that Chloe is determined to see through to the end. What happened to the two tragic lovers who corresponded in the margins of so many different library books? And what does it have to do with the old, sad man next door--who only now has begun to open his home and heart to Chloe and her siblings?

In a romantic tale that spans the decades, Chloe discovers that there's much more to her grouchy old neighbor than meets the eye. And in allowing herself to accept the unexpected friendship he offers, she learns that some love stories begin in the unlikeliest of places.

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The Starless Sea

Erin Morgenstern

Description

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. 

Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. 

Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.
 

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The Personal Librarian

Marie Benedict

Description

A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.

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The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society

C. M. Waggoner

Description

A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery.

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural.

When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon.

This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers alike: Never mess with a librarian.

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Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng

Description

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him.

Then one day Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will learn the truth about what happened to his mother and what the future holds for them both.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children and the power of art to create change.

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The Borrower

Rebecca Makkai

Description

In this delightful, funny, and moving first novel, a librarian and a young boy obsessed with reading take to the road.

Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten- year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. Desperate to save him from Pastor Bob and the Drakes, Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian. The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and upsetting family history thrown in their path. But is it just Ian who is running away? Who is the man who seems to be on their tail? And should Lucy be trying to save a boy from his own parents?



 

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The Underground Library

Jennifer Ryan

Description

When the Blitz imperils the heart of a London neighborhood, three young women must use their fighting spirit to save the community’s beloved library in this novel based on true events.

When the new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she is expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running the library, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her?

Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she is only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help.

Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. She escapes to the library every chance she can, finding friendship in the literary community and aid in finding her sister, who is still trying to flee occupied Europe.

When a slew of bombs destroys the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city’s residents shelter nightly, determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community. Will Juliet, Kate, and Sofie be able to overcome their own troubles to save the library? Or will the beating heart of their neighborhood be lost forever?

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The Last Chance Library

Freya Sampson

Description

June Jones emerges from her shell to fight for her beloved local library, and through the efforts and support of an eclectic group of library patrons, she discovers life-changing friendships along the way.

Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. Shy and reclusive, the thirty-year-old would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother.

Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend Alex Chen is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way.

To save the place and the books that mean so much to her, June must finally make some changes to her life. For once, she's determined not to go down without a fight. And maybe, in fighting for her cherished library, June can save herself, too.

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The Library

Bella Osborne

Description

Two lonely bookworms. An unexpected friendship. A library that needs their help 


Teenager Tom has always blended into the background of life. After a row with his dad and facing an unhappy future at the dog food factory, he escapes to the library.  Pensioner Maggie has been happily alone with her beloved novels for ten years – at least, that's what she tells herself. When they meet, they recognise something in each other that will change both their lives for ever.

Then the library comes under threat of closure, and they must join forces to prove that it's not just about books – it's the heart of their community.

They are determined to save it – because some things are worth fighting for.
 

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The Reading List

Sara Nisha Adams

Description

An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a list of novels that she's never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she's facing at home.

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list...hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.

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The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

Kim Michele Richardson

Description

The bestselling historical fiction novel from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves, perfect for readers of William Kent Kreuger and Lisa Wingate. The perfect addition to your next book club!

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything--everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.

Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler.

Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere--even back home.

Look for The Book Woman's Daughter, the next novel from Kim Michele Richardson.

 

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The Library at the Edge of the World

Felicity Hayes-McCoy

Description

November 2017 LibraryReads Pick

In the bestselling tradition of Fannie Flagg and Jenny Colgan comes Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s U.S. debut about a local librarian who must find a way to rebuild her community and her own life in this touching, enchanting novel set on Ireland’s stunning West Coast.

As she drives her mobile library van between villages of Ireland’s West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she’s back in Lissbeg, the rural Irish town she walked away from in her teens, living in the back bedroom of her overbearing mother’s retirement bungalow. Or, worse yet, her nagging fear that, as the local librarian and a prominent figure in the community, her failed marriage and ignominious return have made her a focus of gossip. 

With her teenage daughter, Jazz, off traveling the world and her relationship with her own mother growing increasingly tense, Hanna is determined to reclaim her independence by restoring a derelict cottage left to her by her great-aunt. But when the threatened closure of the Lissbeg Library puts her personal plans in jeopardy, Hanna finds herself leading a battle to restore the heart and soul of the Finfarran Peninsula’s fragmented community. And she’s about to discover that the neighbors she’d always kept at a distance have come to mean more to her than she ever could have imagined. 

Told with heart and abundant charm, The Library at the Edge of the World is a joyous story about the meaning of home and the importance of finding a place where you truly belong.

“Heart-warming . . . reminiscent of Maeve Binchy and Roisin Meaney.”—Irish Examiner

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The Covenant of Water

Abraham Verghese

Description

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning--and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl--and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi--will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

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Please Look After Mom

Kyŏng-suk Sin

Description

A million-plus-copy best seller in Korea—a magnificent English-language debut poised to become an international sensation—this is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway.

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

You will never think of your mother the same way again after you read this book.

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The magicians

Description

Follows grad student Quentin Coldwater and others after they are chosen to attend Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy in upstate New York to hone their powers.  Based on the novel by Lev Grossman.

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Kill your darlings

Description

A story of friendship, love, and murder in the early 1940s. The story recounts the pivotal year that changed Allen Ginsberg's life forever and provided the spark for him to start his creative revolution. Based on true events and characters.  For fans of obsession, murder, and the Beat Generation.

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Catherine House

Elisabeth Thomas

Description

"[A] delicious literary Gothic debut." -THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, EDITORS' CHOICE

"Moody and evocative as a fever dream, Catherine House is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step." - THE WASHINGTON POST

A Most Anticipated Novel by Entertainment Weekly * New York magazine * Cosmopolitan * The Atlantic * Forbes * Good Housekeeping * Parade * Better Homes and Gardens * HuffPost * Buzzfeed * Newsweek * Harper's Bazaar * Ms. Magazine * Woman's Day * PopSugar * and more!

A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school's promise of prestige.

Trust us, you belong here.

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world's best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years--summers included--completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year's incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline--only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school's enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she's ever had. But the House's strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school--in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence--might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.

Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless.

 

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Game of Thrones Season 1

Description

Set in a world where summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime. From the scheming south and the savage eastern lands, to the frozen north and ancient Wall that protects the realm from the mysterious darkness beyond, the powerful families of the Seven Kingdoms are locked in a battle for the Iron Throne. This is a story of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honor, conquest, and triumph. In the Game of Thrones, you either win or you die.

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Big Little Lies

Liane Moriarty

Description

From the author of Here One Moment and The Husband’s Secret comes the #1 New York Times bestselling novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE AWARD-WINNING HBO® SERIES STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON, NICOLE KIDMAN, SHAILENE WOODLEY, LAURA DERN, ZOË KRAVITZ, AND MERYL STREEP—AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON MAX®

A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

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Wildlife

Description

The Criterion Collection at HPL

Actor Paul Dano made his debut as a director with this adaptation of Richard Ford's novel. In Wildlife (2018), an unemployed father takes a job fighting forest fires, leaving his wife and teenage son behind. Faced with financial hardship, both mother and son have to take on new responsibilities. The calm cinematography sets a contrast to the inner turmoil of the characters and evokes Edward Hopper paintings at times. Worth mentioning are the outstanding performances by Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould and Jake Gyllenhaal.

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The Player

Description

The Criterion Collection at HPL

Robert Altman's The Player (1992) is a Hollywood satire about a producer (Tim Robbins) who loses his cool over a series of threatening letters from an anonymous writer. The film opens with an impressive eight-minute tracking shot and shows both technical and narrative skill throughout its length. The star-studded ensemble and cinematic prowess make The Player a great contribution to the "movies about filmmaking" subgenre. 

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Charmed

Description

Three daughters, firebrand social justice warrior Melanie 'Mel' Vera, fun-loving Maggie, and brilliant geneticist Macy find out they're actually powerful witches, as was their mother. It's a lot to take in, but ultimately the sisters accept their new destiny.

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Charmed

Description

An old classic, Charmed (1998) is your archetypal "monster of the week" show that follows three sisters who learned that they are a special coven of witches called the Charmed Ones. 

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Ted Lasso

Description

An idealistic all-American football coach, Theodore 'Ted' Lasso and his friend, assistant coach Beard, cross the pond to take up the management of a professional soccer team. Knowing nothing about “this football” - Lasso throws himself into a new city, new career, and new life with wit, wisdom, and an overwhelming dose of positivity.

Ted Lasso tackles topics ranging from divorce (the catalyst for Ted's move), parenting, teamwork, leadership, identity, revenge, LGBTQ, grief, mental health, and more. But it is all done the Ted Lasso way. Most of Ted’s lessons come in quippy quotes, obscure late ‘70s references, and famous role models. 

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Mayfair witches

Description

This new series in the Anne Rice universe is based on the series Lives of Mayfair Witches. It follows Rowan, a neurosurgeon, who suddenly finds she has magical powers and that she is a member of the powerful Mayfair Family of witches. With an absolutely perfect setting of New Orleans, this horror drama explores family dynamics and how power can corrupt a person. A perfect watch for Witch enthusiasts who enjoy stories where you can't tell who are the heroes and villains. 

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The Margaret Code

Richard Hooton

Description

In this bittersweet, hilarious, and suspenseful crime debut, a grandmother with a failing memory teams up with her grandson to solve the mysterious murder of her friend and neighbor.

Margaret Winterbottom, 89, has lived on Garnon Crescent her entire life--except for a few years she never talks about. She knows all the neighbors: their lives, their hopes, their heartbreaks. Only recently, Margaret's memory isn't what it used to be. She's sure Barbara, her best friend and neighbor, told her something very important . . . but what?

​When Barbara is found dead in an apparent homicide, Margaret is determined to recover the missing memory. Margaret and her grandson, James, begin investigating, but soon strange things begin happening in her home--objects moving and cropping up in odd places, the television turning on by itself. Some believe her memory is worsening, but Margaret knows somebody wants her out of the way because she holds the key to solving the case--if only she could recall where she put it . . .

Perfect for fans of Emma Healey's Elizabeth Is Missing, Helene Tursten's An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good, Robert Thorogood's The Marlow Murder Club, and Hulu's Only Murders in the Building.

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The Talented Mr. Ripley

Damon, Matt. Paltrow, Gwyneth, 1972- Law, Jude, 1972-

Description

Adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel about a young American who, commissioned to fetch an old school chum from his carefree life as an expatriate in Italy, instead kills him and assumes his identity.

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Woman of Light

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical” (Roxane Gay) epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina
 
“Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you’re swimming under a big, sparkling night sky.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You
 
A PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK AND AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot

There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories.

Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love—filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz.

LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION

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Black Buck

Mateo Askaripour

Description

A New York Times Bestseller 

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize



"Askaripour closes the deal on the first page of this mesmerizing novel, executing a high wire act full of verve and dark, comic energy."

--Colson Whitehead, author of The Nickel Boys



"A hilarious, gleaming satire as radiant as its author. Askaripour has announced himself as a major talent of the school of Ralph Ellison, Paul Beatty, Fran Ross, and Ishmael Reed. Full of quick pacing, frenetic energy, absurd--yet spot on--twists and turns, and some of the funniest similes I've ever read, this novel is both balm and bomb."

--Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People



For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street--a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.



There's nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.



An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother's home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC's hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.



After enduring a "hell week" of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as "Buck," a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he's hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America's sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.



Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America's workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.

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The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Description

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

With Paulo Coelho's visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people's lives.

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Happy Place

Emily Henry

Description

“The beach-read master hooks us again."—People

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

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Legends & Lattes

Travis Baldree

Description

The much-beloved BookTok sensation, Travis Baldree's novel of high fantasy and low stakes.

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success — not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is. 

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.

“Take a break from epic battles and saving the world. Legends & Lattes is a low-stakes fantasy that delivers exactly what's advertised: a wholesome, cozy novel that feels like a warm hug. This is my new comfort read.”Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch's Heart

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Kitchen Confidential

Anthony Bourdain

Description

New York Chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir/expose. Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine." 

Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Bourdain spared no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

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We Solve Murders

Richard Osman

Description

“Madcap fun, with an entertaining new cast of characters and Osman’s trademark wit. Delightful!” Shari Lapena

An iconic new detective duo. And a thrilling new murder to solve . . .

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s job now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She’s currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts . . .

As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?

Solving murders. It’s a family business.

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Gmorning, Gnight!

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the creator and star of Hamilton and In the Heights, with beautiful illustrations by Jonny Sun, comes a book of affirmations to inspire readers at the beginning and end of each day.

“When the world is bringing you down, Gmorning, Gnight! will remind you that you are awesome.”—Booklist

Good morning. Do NOT get stuck in the comments section of life today. Make, do, create the things. Let others tussle it out. Vamos!

Before he inspired the world with Hamilton and was catapulted to international fame, Lin-Manuel Miranda was inspiring his Twitter followers with words of encouragement at the beginning and end of each day. He wrote these original sayings, aphorisms, and poetry for himself as much as for others. But as Miranda’s audience grew, these messages took on a life on their own. Now Miranda has gathered the best of his daily greetings into a beautiful collection illustrated by acclaimed artist (and fellow Twitter favorite) Jonny Sun. Full of comfort and motivation, Gmorning, Gnight! is a touchstone for anyone who needs a quick lift.

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The Durrells in Corfu

Description

Based on author and naturalist Gerald Durrell's much-loved Corfu trilogy of novels, The Durrells sees impoverished but sparky widow Louisa Durrell make the radical decision to leave 1930s England in hopes of a better life for her children. As Louisa relocates her reluctant brood to a dilapidated house in the Greek sun, the Durrells face a whole new set of challenges as they meet new friends, rivals, lovers, and animals. 

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From Asparagus to Zucchini

Fairshare CSA Coalition (Madison, Wis.)

Description

Ever wonder how you'll ever be able to use all your vegetables? From Asparagus to Zucchini answers the question of what to do with your armloads of greens, exotic herbs (and the never-before-seen vegetables), with recipes that are as concise and doable as they are appealing. Created for and by Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members, the book is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to eat seasonally and locally.

Organized by vegetable--fifty-three in all--each section includes nutritional, historical, and storage information, as well as cooking tips. With more than 420 original recipes created, tested, and enjoyed by chefs, CSA members, and farmers, you'll never be without a delicious recipe to make the most of the season's bounty. The best part is that lesser-known vegetables like burdock and kohlrabi have more recipes, not fewer!

From Asparagus to Zucchini is more than just a cookbook. Also included are essays that address the larger picture of sustainable agriculture, how our food choices fit into our economy, environment, and community, and more information on home food preservation and how to help kids appreciate--and even eat--their vegetables. Readers will find an extensive resource section and recipe index to round out this unique resource. With this book, prepare to awaken and reaffirm your dedication to enjoying the unique flavors of local foods while nourishing the life of sustainable family farms.

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Malibu Rising: A Read with Jenna Pick

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • From the author of Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo . . . 

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Marie Claire, PopSugar, Parade, Teen Vogue, Self • “Irresistible . . . High drama at the beach, starring four sexy, surfing siblings and their deadbeat, famous-crooner dad.”—People

Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, the family drama that ensues will change their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.

This edition includes an interview with the author, book club discussion questions, and more!

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Pretty little liars. Original sin. Season 1

Description

Takes viewers to Millwood, a blue-collar town still healing from tragic events that took place 20 years ago. An unknown assailant has begun tormenting a disparate group of teen girls, a new generation of 'Little Liars,' to make them pay for their parents' secret sin...as well as their own.

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Being John Malkovich

Cusack, John, 1966-

Description

The Criterion Collection at HPL

A hapless puppeteer (John Cusack) starts working as a file clerk on the 7½ floor of an office building. The ceilings are low and everyone has to walk around hunched over. As if that wasn't strange enough, one day he finds a portal that temporarily sends him into the mind of actor John Malkovich. Once he lets his coworker Maxine (Catherine Keener) and his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) in on his discovery, a battle over the newfound vessel ensues. With its commitment to absurdity and exploration of human desire, Being John Malkovich plunges the viewer into a truly unique viewing experience. Written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze.

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Arsenic and old lace

Grant, Cary, 1904-1986.

Description

A young man is shocked when he learns his aunts like to serve men elderberry wine with arsenic, and then bury their bodies in the cellar.  Originally released as a motion picture in 1944.  From the stage play by Joseph Kesselring.

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Sandwich

Catherine Newman

Description

Look for Wreck, the new novel by Catherine Newman--a deeply moving story of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn't go as planned--Coming October 2025.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Sandwich is joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry. Catherine Newman does a miraculous job reminding us of all the wonder there is to be found in life."--Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake

"If you like my novels, you will love love love this . . . . I stand in awe, it's just perfect."--Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Swan Song

"A total delight."--Kate Christensen

From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and--thanks to the cottage's ancient plumbing--septic too.

This year's vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past--except, perhaps, for Rocky's hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing--her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family's history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.

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When the Sea Came Alive

Garrett M. Graff

Description

2025 AUDIE AWARD: MULTI-VOICED PERFORMANCE WINNER

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Absolutely gripping.” —The Washington Post • “A masterpiece of oral history…stirring, surprising, grim, joyous, moving, and always riveting.” —Evan Thomas

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky and Pulitzer Prize finalist for Watergate comes the most complete and up-to-date account of D-Day—the largest seaborne invasion in history and the moment that secured the Allied victory in World War II—featuring hundreds of eyewitness accounts.

June 6, 1944—known to us all as D-Day—is one of history’s greatest and most unbelievable military triumphs. The surprise sunrise landing of more than 150,000 Allied troops on the beaches of occupied northern France is one of the most consequential days of the 20th century. Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, historian and author of The Only Plane in the Sky and Watergate, brings them all together in a one-of-a-kind, bestselling oral history that explores this seminal event in vivid, heart-pounding detail.

The story begins in the opening months of the 1940s, as the Germany army tightens its grip across Europe, seizing control of entire nations. The United States, who has resolved to remain neutral, is forced to enter the conflict after an unexpected attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. For the second time in fifty years, the world is at war, with the stakes higher than they’ve ever been before. Then in 1943, Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Casablanca to discuss a new plan for victory: a coordinated invasion of occupied France, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Failure is not an option. Over the next eighteen months, the large-scale action is organized, mobilizing soldiers across Europe by land, sea, and sky. And when the day comes, it is unlike anything the world has ever seen.

These moments and more are seen in real time. A visceral, page-turning drama told through the eyes of those who experienced them—from soldiers, nurses, pilots, children, neighbors, sailors, politicians, volunteers, photographers, reporters and so many more, When the Sea Came Alive “is the sort of book that is smart, inspiring, and powerful—and adds so much to our knowledge of what that day was like and its historic importance forever” (Chris Bohjalian)—an unforgettable, fitting tribute to the men and women of the Greatest Generation.

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All the Sinners Bleed

S. A. Cosby

Description

2024 AUDIE AWARD: THRILLER/SUSPENSE WINNER

“Fresh and exhilarating. . . Cosby keeps his eye on the story and the pedal to the metal.” —Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

“An atmospheric pressure cooker.” —People

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. 

With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Charon is Titus’s home and his heart. But where faith and violence meet, there will be a reckoning. 

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction” (The Washington Post).

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No Two Persons

Erica Bauermeister

Description

2024 AUDIE AWARD: MULTI-VOICED PERFORMANCE WINNER

One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.”*

That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go...

Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.

Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways—and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.

“With its beautiful parts that add up to a brilliant whole, No Two Persons made my reader’s heart sing.”—*Nina de Gramont, New York Times bestselling author of The Christie Affair

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Bits and Pieces

Whoopi Goldberg

Description

2025 AUDIE AWARD: NARRATION BY THE AUTHOR WINNER

From multi-award winner Whoopi Goldberg comes a new and unique memoir of her family and their influence on her early life.

If it weren't for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010--and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later--she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone.

Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time. Growing up in the projects in New York City, there were trips to Coney Island, the Ice Capades, and museums, and every Christmas was a magical experience. To this day, she doesn't know how her mother was able to give them such an enriching childhood, despite the struggles they faced--and it wasn't until she was well into adulthood that Whoopi learned just how traumatic some of those struggles were.

Fans of personal memoirs such as Finding Me by Viola Davis and In Pieces by Sally Field will be touched by Bits and Pieces: a moving tribute from a daughter to her mother, and a beautiful portrait of three people who loved each other deeply. Whoopi writes, "Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be. So, I thought I'd share mine with you."

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When No One Is Watching

Alyssa Cole

Description

2021 AUDIE AWARD: THRILLER/SUSPENSE WINNER

"If Rear Window and Get Out got married and had a baby that was a book, it would indeed be When No One Is Watching, which takes place in contemporary Brooklyn and combines a page-turning thriller with shrewd social commentary on race, gentrification and greed." -- Seattle Times

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block--her neighbor Theo.

But Sydney and Theo's deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other--or themselves--long enough to find out before they too disappear?



 

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The Chestnut Man

Soren Sveistrup

Description

2020 AUDIE AWARD: MYSTERY WINNER

“A full-throttle thriller in the tradition of classic Stieg Larsson, drenched in atmosphere and charged with adrenaline. Buckle up. You’ll gulp down every word. I loved this book.”—A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

If you find one, he’s already found you.

A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen.

His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene.

Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago.

A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted?

To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues.

Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over.

And no one is safe.

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Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Jesse Q. Sutanto

Description

2024 AUDIE AWARD: MYSTERY WINNER

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to. 

Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer. 

What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?

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The True Love Experiment

Christina Lauren

Description

2024 AUDIE AWARD: ROMANCE WINNER

Sparks fly when a romance writer and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the ultimate Hollywood love story—but only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off script—from the “divine” (Jodi Picoult) New York Times bestselling authors of Love and Other Words and The Unhoneymooners.

Felicity “Fizzy” Chen is lost. Sure, she’s got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she’s asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn’t been practicing what she’s preached.

Fizzy hasn’t ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, can’t-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism she’s spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?

Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work but when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard pass—unless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.

“Full of big laughs, a few tears, and some seriously steamy scenes” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), The True Love Experiment is the book fans have been waiting for ever since Fizzy’s debut in the New York Times bestselling The Soulmate Equation.

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Fairy Tale

Stephen King

Description

2023 AUDIE AWARD: BEST MALE NARRATOR WINNER

Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for that world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.

Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.

King’s storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy—and his dog—must lead the battle.

Early in the Pandemic, King asked himself: “What could you write that would make you happy?”

“As if my imagination had been waiting for the question to be asked, I saw a vast deserted city—deserted but alive. I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street. I saw smashed statues (of what I didn’t know, but I eventually found out). I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds. Those images released the story I wanted to tell.”

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Fire in Paradise

Alastair Gee

Description

2021 AUDIE AWARD: NON-FICTION WINNER 

The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century.
 

There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.

Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped. Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable, including the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it; the firefighter who drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer; the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought would be his final moments as the flames closed in; and the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital, thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap. Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write powerfully about the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.

This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling. It is also the story of a lost community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable. It is, finally, a story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again.

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Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

Description

2022 AUDIE AWARD: AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER; SCIENCE FICTION WINNER

HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library JournalNew York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century 

“An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

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Unprotected

Billy Porter

Description

2023 AUDIE AWARD: AUTOBIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR WINNER

From Billy Porter, the incomparable Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner, Unprotected is a powerful and revealing autobiography about race, sexuality, art, and healing.

"Bold, hilarious, honest, and singular. Unprotected is a record of survival, commitment to authenticity, and healing; a road map out of hell." --Leslie Odom Jr.

Billy Porter is a multitalented, multifaceted treasure at the top of his game, and Unprotected is a resonant, inspirational story of trauma and healing, shot through with his singular voice.

It's easy to be yourself when who and what you are is in vogue. But growing up Black and gay in America has never been easy.

Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic Emmy-winning performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the groundbreaking Tony and Grammy award-winning star of Broadway's Kinky Boots; and before he was an acclaimed recording artist, actor, playwright, director, and all-around legend, Porter was a young boy in Pittsburgh who was seen as different, who didn't fit in.

At five years old, Porter was sent to therapy to "fix" his effeminacy. He was endlessly bullied at school, sexually abused by his stepfather, and criticized at his church. Porter came of age in a world where simply being himself was a constant struggle.

Unprotected is the story of a boy whose talent and courage opened doors for him, but only a crack. It is the story of a teenager discovering himself, learning his voice and his craft amid deep trauma. And it is the story of a young man whose unbreakable determination led him through countless hard times to where he is now; a proud icon who refuses to back down or hide.

Billy Porter's Unprotected is the life story of a singular artist and survivor in his own words.

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The City We Became

N. K. Jemisin

Description

2021 AUDIE AWARD: FANTASY WINNER; BEST FEMALE NARRATOR WINNER 

Three-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a "glorious" story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City. In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. 

"A glorious fantasy." --Neil Gaiman

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Such a Fun Age

Kiley Reid

Description

2021AUDIE AWARD: FICTION WINNER 

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. 

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.

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Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

Description

2024 AUDIE AWARD: FICTION WINNER 

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America's finest writers.

"Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature." --The Guardian

In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

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Still True

Maggie Ginsberg

Description

One summer evening, Lib Hanson is confronted by her painful past when Matt Marlow, the forty-year-old son she abandoned as an infant, shows up on her porch. Fiercely independent, Lib has never revealed her son's existence--or her previous marriage--to her husband, Jack. Married nearly three decades but living in separate houses (to the confusion but acceptance of their neighbors), they enjoy an ease and comfort together in small-town Anthem, Wisconsin. But Jack is a stickler for honesty, and Lib's long-dormant secret threatens to unravel their lives.



When ten-year-old Charlie Taylor arrives at Jack's workshop shortly thereafter, he's not the first kid in town to need help with a flat tire, and Jack gladly makes the repair to his bike. The Taylors are new to Anthem, and Jack soon discovers that Charlie and his mom, Claire, are struggling to fit in, even as Charlie's dad, Dan, is thriving in his new job. Extending friendship and kindness, as well as introductions around the local café, Jack assumes a grandfatherly role. What he doesn't see is the drinking that Claire hides from everyone, or the secret son that Lib has allowed to move into her house and the growing attraction between Claire and Matt. When the terrible events of a fateful evening threaten everyone's carefully crafted lives, Jack, Lib, and their new friends must each determine the value of truth for the ones they love.

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I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around

Ann Garvin

Description

In Ann Garvin's "eccentric and endearing" (Publishers Weekly) novel, Tig Monahan, a radio therapist, finds out the hard way that nothing is fair in love and war...or family.

Everything is falling apart in psychologist Tig Monahan's life. Her mother's dementia is wearing her out; her boyfriend takes off for Hawaii without her; and her sister inexplicably disappears, leaving her newborn behind.

When a therapy session goes horribly wrong, Tig finds herself unemployed and part of the sandwich generation trying to take care of everyone—and failing miserably. Just when she thinks she can redefine herself on the radio as an arbiter of fairness, she discovers a family secret that nobody saw coming.

It will take everything plus a sense of humor to see her way clear to a better life...but only if she can let go of her past.

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The Ascent

Allison Buccola

Description

What would you do if the past showed up on your doorstep?

A woman who grew up in a cult must decide if she can trust the stranger claiming to have answers to the dark mysteries of her childhood in “a standout thriller with something deeper on its mind: how the past doesn’t just haunt you, it reshapes you” (The Seattle Times).

“I tore through this book and was genuinely shocked by its ending!”—Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines

For decades, the whereabouts of The Fifteen has been an unsolved mystery. All the members of this reclusive commune outside Philadelphia vanished twenty years ago, except for one: a twelve-year-old girl found wandering alone on the side of the road.

In the years since that morning, Lee Burton has tried to put the pain of her past behind her, building a new identity for herself with a doting husband and seven-month-old daughter, Lucy. But motherhood is proving a bigger challenge than she anticipated. She doesn’t want to let Lucy out of her sight even for a moment. She can’t return to work. She’s not sleeping, and she has started spiraling into paranoia.

Then a stranger shows up on her doorstep, offering answers to all of Lee’s questions about her past—if Lee could only trust that this woman is who she says she is. Can Lee keep her safe, stable life? Or will new revelations about “the cult that went missing” shatter everything? In The Ascent, Allison Buccola has crafted a nerve-rattling thriller about motherhood, identity, and the truths we think we know about our families.

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The Quiet Librarian

Allen Eskens

Description

After the murder of her best friend, a librarian's search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this "searing and timely" novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from the author of the beloved bestseller The Life We Bury (Kristin Harmel, author of The Paris Daughter).



"Fans of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale or Kate Quinn's books will be caught up in this story of a courageous woman."―Library Journal (starred review)



"Exquisitely written, profoundly affecting, and undoubtedly one of the best books I will read this year."―Louise Fein, author of The London Bookshop Affair



Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared.



Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia--until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend--the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.



Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana's care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora--and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.

 

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The peanut butter falcon

Description

An adventure story set in the world of a modern Mark Twain that begins when Zak, a young man with Down syndrome, runs away from a nursing home where he lives to chase his dream of becoming a professional wrestler and attending the wrestling school of the Salt Water Redneck. Through circumstances beyond their control, Tyler, a small-time outlaw on the run, becomes Zak's unlikely coach and ally.

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Life in pieces. Season 1

Description

Life in pieces follows one big happy family and their sometimes awkward, often hilarious, and ultimately beautiful milestone moments as told by the family's various members. Adoring matriarch, Joan (Dianne Wiest), would do anything for her kids - as long as she agrees with them. Gregarious patriarch, John (James Brolin), is searching for ways to soften the blow of turning 70. Together with their three adult children, Greg (Colin Hanks), Matt (Thomas Sadoski) and Heather (Betsy Brandt), they try to savor the little pieces of life that go by in a flash but are treasured forever.

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Justified. Season 1

Description

After a shooting raises questions about his style of law enforcement, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is transferred to his hometown in Kentucky and unexpectedly encounters people from his past.

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A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Description

Tom Hanks portrays Mister Rogers in a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. After a jaded magazine writer is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning about kindness, love, and forgiveness from America's most beloved neighbor.

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Falling skies. Season 1

Description

Chronicles the chaotic aftermath of an alien attack that leaves most of the world completely incapacitated. In the six months since the initial invasion, survivors band together to begin the difficult task of fighting back against the aggressive aliens. Outside of Boston, history professor Tom Mason helps lead a small army named 2nd Massachusetts in the battle of their lives to preserve their families and what's left of mankind.

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Pulling strings

Description

After his daughter's Visa request to visit her grandparents in America is rejected, a single father and his loyal best friend do everything it takes to win over the Embassy worker who turned her down.

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Ammonite

Description

In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild English coastline. She hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself. When one such tourist arrives in Lyme, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Despite their differences, it is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.

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Sneakers

Description

A thriller about five computer hackers with questionable pasts and an equally questionable government job.

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Crazy rich Asians

Description

A native New Yorker Rachel Chu accompanies her longtime boyfriend, Nick Young, to his best friend's wedding in Singapore. Excited about visiting Asia for the first time but nervous about meeting Nick's family, Rachel is unprepared to learn that Nick has neglected to mention a few key details about his life. It turns out that he is not only the scion of one of the country's wealthiest families but also one of its most sought-after bachelors.

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The adventures of Priscilla, queen of the desert

Description

With a contract to perform a drag show way out in the Australian desert, Tick, Adam, and Ralph each has his own reason for wanting to leave the safety of Sydney. Christening their battered pink tour bus "Priscilla, " the trio heads for the outback and into crazy adventures in even crazier outfits.

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Arabiyya

Reem Assil

Description

IACP AWARD WINNER • A collection of 100+ bright, bold recipes influenced by the vibrant flavors and convivial culture of the Arab world, filled with moving personal essays on food, family, and identity and mixed with a pinch of California cool, from chef and activist Reem Assil 
  
Arabiyya celebrates the alluring aromas and flavors of Arab food and the welcoming spirit with which they are shared. Written from her point of view as an Arab in diaspora, Reem takes readers on a journey through her Palestinian and Syrian roots, showing how her heritage has inspired her recipes for flatbreads, dips, snacks, platters to share, and more. With a section specializing in breads of the Arab bakery, plus recipes for favorites such as Salatet Fattoush, Falafel Mahshi, Mujaddarra, and Hummus Bil Awarma, Arabiyya showcases the origins and evolution of Arab cuisine and opens up a whole new world of flavor. 
  
Alongside the tempting recipes, Reem shares stories of the power of Arab communities to turn hardship into brilliant, nourishing meals and any occasion into a celebratory feast. Reem then translates this spirit into her own work in California, creating restaurants that define hospitality at all levels. Yes, there are tender lamb dishes, piles of fresh breads, and perfectly cooked rice, but there is also food for thought about what it takes to create a more equitable society, where workers and people often at the margins are brought to the center. Reem's glorious dishes draw in readers and customers, but it is her infectious warmth that keeps them at the table. 
  
With gorgeous photography, original artwork, and transporting writing, Reem helps readers better understand the Arab diaspora and its global influence on food and culture. She then invites everyone to sit at a table where all are welcome.

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The Making of Pioneer Wisconsin

Michael E. Stevens

Description

From the mid-1830s through the 1850s, more than a half million people settled in Wisconsin. While traveling in ships and wagons, establishing homes, and forming new communities, these men, women, and children recorded their experiences in letters, diaries, and newspaper articles. In their own words, they revealed their fears, joys, frustrations, and hopes for life in this new place. 

The Making of Pioneer Wisconsin provides a unique and intimate glimpse into the lives of these early settlers, as they describe what it felt like to be a teenager in a wagon heading west or an isolated young wife living far from her friends and family. Woven together with context provided by historian Michael E. Stevens, these first-person accounts form a fascinating narrative that deepens our ability to understand and empathize with Wisconsin’s early pioneers.

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The Wongs of Beloit, Wisconsin

Beatrice McKenzie

Description

Through family interviews, original photographs, and national records, Beatrice Loftus McKenzie traces the many lives of a resilient multigenerational family whose experiences parallel the complicated relationship between America and China in the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, Charles Wong moved from Guangdong Province to the United States and opened the Nan King Lo Restaurant in Beloit, Wisconsin. Soon after, his wife Yee Shee joined him to build the "Chop House" into a local institution and start a family. When the Great Depression hit, the Wongs shared what they had with their neighbors. In 1938, Charles's tragic murder left Yee Shee to raise their seven children—ages one through fourteen—on her own. Rather than return to family property in Hong Kong, she and her children stayed in Beloit, buoyed by the friendships they had forged during the worst parts of the 1930s. 

The Wongs thrived in Beloit despite facing racism and classism, embracing wartime opportunities, education, love, and careers within the U. S. McKenzie's collaboration with descendent Mary Wong Palmer reveals a poignant story of Chinese immigrant life in the Upper Midwest that adds a much-needed Wisconsin perspective to existing literature by and about Asian Americans.

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American Dervish

Ayad Akhtar

Description

Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes.

Mina is Hayat's mother's oldest friend from Pakistan. She is independent, beautiful and intelligent, and arrives on the Shah's doorstep when her disastrous marriage in Pakistan disintegrates. Even Hayat's skeptical father can't deny the liveliness and happiness that accompanies Mina into their home. Her deep spirituality brings the family's Muslim faith to life in a way that resonates with Hayat as nothing has before. Studying the Quran by Mina's side and basking in the glow of her attention, he feels an entirely new purpose mingled with a growing infatuation for his teacher.

When Mina meets and begins dating a man, Hayat is confused by his feelings of betrayal. His growing passions, both spiritual and romantic, force him to question all that he has come to believe is true. Just as Mina finds happiness, Hayat is compelled to act -- with devastating consequences for all those he loves most.

American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life. Ayad Akhtar was raised in the Midwest himself, and through Hayat Shah he shows readers vividly the powerful forces at work on young men and women growing up Muslim in America. This is an intimate, personal first novel that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.

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Behold the Dreamers

Imbolo Mbue

Description

A compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream—the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy

New York Times Bestseller • Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award • An ALA Notable Book

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY 
NPR • The New York Times Book Review • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Chicago Public Library • BookPage • Refinery29 • Kirkus Reviews 

Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty—and Jende is eager to please. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses’ summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future.

However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers’ façades.

When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Jongas are desperate to keep Jende’s job—even as their marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice.

Praise for Behold the Dreamers

“A debut novel by a young woman from Cameroon that illuminates the immigrant experience in America with the tenderhearted wisdom so lacking in our political discourse . . . Mbue is a bright and captivating storyteller.”The Washington Post

“A capacious, big-hearted novel.”The New York Times Book Review

“Behold the Dreamers’ heart . . . belongs to the struggles and small triumphs of the Jongas, which Mbue traces in clean, quick-moving paragraphs.”Entertainment Weekly

“Mbue’s writing is warm and captivating.”People (book of the week)

“[Mbue’s] book isn’t the first work of fiction to grapple with the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, but it’s surely one of the best. . . . It’s a novel that depicts a country both blessed and doomed, on top of the world, but always at risk of losing its balance. It is, in other words, quintessentially American.”—NPR

“This story is one that needs to be told.”Bust 

Behold the Dreamers challenges us all to consider what it takes to make us genuinely content, and how long is too long to live with our dreams deferred.”O: The Oprah Magazine

“[A] beautiful, empathetic novel.”The Boston Globe

“A witty, compassionate, swiftly paced novel that takes on race, immigration, family and the dangers of capitalist excess.”St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Mbue [is] a deft, often lyrical observer. . . . [Her] meticulous storytelling announces a writer in command of her gifts.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

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Brooklyn

Colm Toibin

Description

Colm Tóibín’s New York Times bestselling novel—also an acclaimed film starring Saoirse Ronan and Jim Broadbent nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture—is “a moving, deeply satisfying read” (Entertainment Weekly) about a young Irish immigrant in Brooklyn in the early 1950s.

“One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.

Author “Colm Tóibín…is his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power” (Los Angeles Times). “Written with mesmerizing power and skill” (The Boston Globe), Brooklyn is a “triumph…One of those magically quiet novels that sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY).

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The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri

Description

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. 
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.

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How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez

Description

The Garcías—Dr. Carlos (Papi), his wife Laura (Mami), and their four daughters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—belong to the uppermost echelon of Spanish Caribbean society, descended from the conquistadores. Their family compound adjoins the palacio of the dictator’s daughter. So when Dr. García’s part in a coup attempt is discovered, the family must flee. 

They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Dominican Republic. Papi has to find new patients in the Bronx. Mami, far from the compound and the family retainers, must find herself. Meanwhile, the girls try to lose themselves—by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating being caught between the old world and the new, trying to live up to their father’s version of honor while accommodating the expectations of their American boyfriends. Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez’s brilliant and buoyant first novel sets the García girls free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home—and not at home—in America. 


 

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Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok

Description

From the author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the iconic, New York Times-bestselling debut novel that introduced an important Chinese-American voice with an inspiring story of an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures. 

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. 

Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

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House of Sand and Fog

Andre Dubus

Description

Tense with suspense from the first line, this is one of the great American realist novels. In this page-turning, breathtaking novel, the characters will walk off the page and into your life. And a small house will seem like the most important piece of territory in the world.



On a road crew in California, a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force under the Shah yearns to restore his family's dignity. When an attractive bungalow comes available on county auction for a fraction of its value, he sees a great opportunity for himself, his wife, and his children. But the house's former owner, a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck, doesn't see it that way, nor does her lover, a married cop driven to extremes to win her love and get her house back.



House of Sand and Fog is a narrative triumph in which a traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story are turned upside down with brutal, heartrending consequences. It is an American tragedy, and a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today.

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In the Midst of Winter

Isabel Allende

Description

New York Times Bestseller

Worldwide bestselling “dazzling storyteller” (Associated Press) Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel about three very different people who are brought together in a mesmerizing story that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil.

In the Midst of Winter begins with a minor traffic accident—which becomes the catalyst for an unexpected and moving love story between two people who thought they were deep into the winter of their lives. Richard Bowmaster—a 60-year-old human rights scholar—hits the car of Evelyn Ortega—a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala—in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconvenience takes an unforeseen and far more serious turn when Evelyn turns up at the professor’s house seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant Lucia Maraz—a 62-year-old lecturer from Chile—for her advice. These three very different people are brought together in a mesmerizing story that moves from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil, sparking the beginning of a long overdue love story between Richard and Lucia.

Exploring the timely issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees, the book recalls Allende’s landmark novel The House of the Spirits in the way it embraces the cause of “humanity, and it does so with passion, humor, and wisdom that transcend politics” (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post). In the Midst of Winter will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

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The Son of Good Fortune

Lysley A. Tenorio

Description

A Recommended Book From:

USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * InStyle * The Minneapolis Star-Tribune * Publishers Weekly * Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads * Lit Hub * The Millions

FINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE

WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD

From award-winning author Lysley Tenorio, comes a big hearted debut novel following an undocumented Filipino son as he navigates his relationship with his mother, an uncertain future, and the place he calls home

Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he's not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town's seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight.

But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima's lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel's tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. "We are 'TNT'--tago ng tago," she told him, "hiding and hiding." Excel is undocumented--and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life.

Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies--and existing outside the normal constructs of American society--Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?

Thrumming with energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good Fortune is a luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to their country--and to each other.

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The Penguin Book of Migration Literature

Dohra Ahmad

Description

[Ahmad's] "introduction is fiery and charismatic... This book encompasses the diversity of experience, with beautiful variations and stories that bicker back and forth." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

The first global anthology of migration literature featuring works by Mohsin Hamid, Zadie Smith, Marjane Satrapi, Salman Rushdie, and Warsan Shire, with a foreword by Edwidge Danticat, author of Everything Inside

Every year, three to four million people move to a new country. From war refugees to corporate expats, migrants constantly reshape their places of origin and arrival. This selection of works collected together for the first time brings together the most compelling literary depictions of migration.

Organized in four parts (Departures, Arrivals, Generations, and Returns), The Penguin Book of Migration Literature conveys the intricacy of worldwide migration patterns, the diversity of immigrant experiences, and the commonalities among many of those diverse experiences. Ranging widely across the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, across every continent of the earth, and across multiple literary genres, the anthology gives readers an understanding of our rapidly changing world, through the eyes of those at the center of that change. With thirty carefully selected poems, short stories, and excerpts spanning three hundred years and twenty-five countries, the collection brings together luminaries, emerging writers, and others who have earned a wide following in their home countries but have been less recognized in the Anglophone world. Editor of the volume Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual introduction, notes, and suggestions for further exploration.

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My Side of the River

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Description

A New York Times Editor's Pick
A People Magazine Best Book to Read in February
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2024

My Side of the River is both fierce and poetic. It brilliantly reframes border writing while embracing nature and familial history. There are moments one sees greatness appear. This is one of those moments.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene 

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez reveals her experience as the U.S. born daughter of immigrants and what happened when, at fifteen, her parents were forced back to Mexico in this captivating and tender memoir.

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family.

When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws. 

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother’s dreams easier than it was for her.

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Feeding Ghosts

Tessa Hulls

Description

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOKS CRITICS CIRCLE JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2025 ANISFIELD WOLF PRIZE
WINNER OF THE LIBBY AWARD FOR BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL

KIRKUS NONFICTION PRIZE FINALIST, LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL, SHORTLISTED FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOK AWARD

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Time, Forbes, NPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Chicago Public Library

"Feeding Ghosts reminds us how much the personal is political . . . an audacious, awe-inspiring feat. For me, it was an essential read." —Ling Ma, author of Bliss Montage

An astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir about three generations of Chinese women, exploring love, grief, exile, and identity.

In her acclaimed graphic memoir debut, Tessa Hulls traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations of women in her family. Tessa’s grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist swept up by the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival—then promptly had a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Growing up with Sun Yi, Tessa watches both her mother and grandmother struggle beneath the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness, and bolts to the most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away. Feeding Ghosts is Tessa’s homecoming, a vivid, heartbreaking journey into history that exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, andthe love that holds them together.

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