Staff Picks

Historical fiction at its best! In the early 1940s, Eva Traube and her mother escape from Paris to southern France ahead of a Nazi round-up of Jews. In Vichy-controlled France, Eva discovers her talent for creating forged documents with new identities for Jews escaping to Switzerland. The title of the novel refers to a book in which she keeps coded information about those escaping so that their history will not be erased; she hopes the children especially will be able to re-unite with families after the war. Inspired by true events, this novel is a riveting and absorbing page-turner with themes of love, loss, and courage.

 

Publisher Description:

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names . The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II--an experience Eva remembers well--and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago.

 

Technology, to sum up the author's point, is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. The result is this little book, an excellent primer on the why and the how of becoming a digital minimalist, which means taking control of technologies--apps, notifications, social media--that right now probably have control of you. Fans of Newport's earlier book, Deep Work, will especially appreciate this work, but everyone should read it!

 

Publisher description:

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller "Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and don't, bring value to your life."--Ezra Klein, Vox Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives. Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction. Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.

 

"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." Who can resist a first line like that? This thriller set in Victorian England, with a first-person narrator like no other, more than fulfills the promise of the opener. This was a Costa Book Award nominee for first novel in 2006, and has a follow-up, The Glass of Time. 

 

Publisher Description:

As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his. Glyver's path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses, and finally to a consuming love for the beautiful but enigmatic Emily Carteret. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onward, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. The Meaning of Night is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.

 

Find The Meaning of Night in our online catalog.

I love this hybrid memoir. I am profoundly grateful for Laymon's feminist consciousness that imbues the whole book. It is a gift to read about the intersection of race and gender from the perspective of a black man. The tragic vulnerability of addiction that Keise explores is humanizing and complicated. Heavy interrogates the idea that even ones heroes and perhaps ideals are flawed.

 

Publisher Description:

Provocative and genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon sets out to lose 150 pounds in a year, talks with his mother and grandmother about their relationships to "weight" in America-and chronicles what a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception do to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

 

The characters and prose hooked me in from the very first page. Brit Bennett tells the story of two sisters who leave their small community at sixteen and later separate, with one living her life as openly black while the other secretly passes as white. The Vanishing Half is both a provoking exploration of race, class, gender, and sexuality and a mesmerizing multi-generational novel. Despite finishing it a month ago, I have continued to reflect on its pertinence to our current political and social climate.

 

Publisher description:

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.

Find The Vanishing Half in our online catalog

One of the greatest picture books ever written! Gerald, the giraffe, is too tall, too skinny, and too weird to dance at the Jungle Dance. All the other animals make fun of him. But Gerald soon realizes that being different is okay. This book has a fabulous message for the little ones.

 

Publisher Description:

Giraffes Can't Dance is a touching tale of Gerald the giraffe, who wants nothing more than to dance. With crooked knees and thin legs, it's harder for a giraffe than you would think. Gerald is finally able to dance to his own tune when he gets some encouraging words from an unlikely friend. With light-footed rhymes and high-stepping illustrations, this tale is gentle inspiration for every child with dreams of greatness. This funny, touching, and triumphant story has been a much-loved family favorite for over 15 years!

Julián is riding the subway one day with his grandma when three women dressed up as mermaids board the train. Julián sees how fabulous they look and how they light up the train and he knows he wants to be just like them. Once he gets home he can't wait to dress himself up like a mermaid, but what will his grandma think of what he's done to the drapes?

 

Publisher description:

Winner of a 2019 Stonewall Book Award In an exuberant picture book, a glimpse of costumed mermaids leaves one boy flooded with wonder and ready to dazzle the world. While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he's seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a butter-yellow curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes -- and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself? Mesmerizing and full of heart, Jessica Love's author-illustrator debut is a jubilant picture of self-love and a radiant celebration of individuality.

 

Fun and educational! I laughed out loud at some parts.

 

Publisher Description:

One of the world's most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body takes his ultimate journey--into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.  Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world's most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

 

This is a great book for people who love tense space stories/contagion tales! Zahra and her crew of outsiders have a rock solid plan to take control of the abandoned ship House of Wisdom, and make a home for themselves far from the controlling governments of Earth. The only person they need to do this is bargaining chip/hostage Jaswinder Bhattacharya, who is the sole survivor of a mysterious tragedy on the ship a decade earlier. But when they finally get aboard House of Wisdom, they find much, much more than they'd bargained for...

 

Publisher Description:

A lethal virus is awoken on an abandoned spaceship in this incredibly fast-paced, claustrophobic thriller. They thought the ship would be their salvation. Zahra knew every detail of the plan. But what Zahra and her crew could not know was what waited for them on the ship--a terrifying secret buried by the government. A threat to all of humanity that lay sleeping alongside the orbiting dead,