Staff Picks

Alyssa writes: This book and the connection to nature, science, and imagination is otherworldly. The relationship between the father and son after the loss of the mother is so complex and beautiful and full of so much love. And the condition of the world, the losses, are so heartbreaking in the face of so much beauty. An emotional read that has an enormous impact.

 

Barbara writes: A beautifully sad book. Delicious to read as it softens your heart and opens your eyes to the perils of climate change on our planet through the dynamics of a unique father-son relationship. This is a quick and powerful read, masterfully written.

 

Publisher's description: The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He's also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin's emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother's brain.

I normally don't recommend books I read in school. I read this a year ago in a Language Arts class, and I approached it as a must-read book. I just reread it, and I was captured by details that I hadn't noticed the previous time. The memoir, which describes growing up in a poor, dysfunctional family, is concise and action-packed--it made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. The characters are frustratingly flawed but deep and smart and human. 

- Anonymous tenth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

This story is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a penetrating look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who hated anything to do with domesticity. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

Find The Glass Castle in our online catalog.

A book about remarkable women doing extraordinary things during WWII? Count me in! During WWII, while men were fighting battles overseas, a different war was being fought at home--secret letters were being sent to women in college, asking for their help in war efforts. These unsung heroes left their homes for DC and learned how to code break, shortening the war and saving countless lives. This was a part of history that I had not previously heard about, so it was very interesting to learn about all these women who were such a major part of WWII.

 

Publisher's description:

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

 

I hesitate to recommend Minor Detail, by Palestinian writer ʻAdanīyah Shiblī, but I cannot stop reflecting on its perfect aesthetic approach. The first section of the book is horrifically boring. Narrated by the captain of an occupying army, whose descriptions of the war crimes his unit commits are so dull that they are difficult to read, not because they are graphic, but because they are so mundane. The second section of the book is told from the perspective of a Palestinian woman in occupied Palestine, who is investigating the incident relayed in the first section. The ending is devastatingly brilliant.

 

Publisher's description: 

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba-the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people-and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand. Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. ʻAdanīyah Shiblī masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.

 

Magic, mischievous strange beasts, ominous dark forces, time travel--this book does it all, and does it well. Quicksilver is a refreshingly real main character who is used to doing things by herself and in whatever way she likes, until her destiny is thrust upon her by characters both terrifying and bizarrely familiar. Haunting, enchanting, and just macabre enough, this book surprises you with every chapter, and ultimately shows how powerful a little compassion and empathy can be.

 

Publisher's description:

Twelve-year-old Quicksilver--the self-proclaimed greatest thief in all the Star Lands--must travel back in time to when magic still existed and, with the help of her older self and a dog named Fox, stop the evil Wolf King from hunting witches to extinction.

 

Find Foxheart in our online catalog.

The author, a former CU Journalism professor, has researched the 1920s in Denver, especially the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the city of Denver and state elected offices. The heroine, a theology professor in Chicago, returns to her hometown to solve the mysterious death of her father and runs into several individuals who have benefitted from keeping dirty secrets about government and society leaders. Learn about Five Points in the Twenties compared to your knowledge of that Denver neighborhood today.

 

Publisher description:

In the winter of 1923, Professor Annalee Spain--a daring but overworked theologian at a small Chicago Bible college--receives a cryptic telegram calling her home to Denver to solve the mystery of the murder of her beloved but estranged father. For a young Black woman, searching for answers in a city ruled by the KKK could mean real danger. Still, with her literary hero Sherlock Holmes as inspiration, Annalee launches her hunt for clues, attracting two surprising allies: Eddie, a relentless young white boy searching for his missing father, and Jack, a handsome Black pastor who loves nightclub dancing and rides in his sporty car, awakening Annalee's heart to the surprising highs and lows of romantic love. With their help, Annalee follows clues that land her among Denver's powerful elite. But when their sleuthing unravels sinister motives and deep secrets, Annalee confronts the dangerous truths and beliefs that could make her a victim too.

 

I love this book because it has everything...a sweeping history of the Great Migration--an event that's been overlooked for too long--richly-detailed biographies of three very different people who migrated from the South to the north or west U.S., and beautiful quotes by other authors at the beginning of each chapter. It added to my understanding of the world, and I enjoyed every minute of the book. The audiobook is beautifully narrated.

 

Publisher's description:

Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career. Wilkerson captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. A superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. This book is destined to become a classic, through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein.

At the age of 29, Eleanor Oliphant has settled into a familiar routine: work, vodka, sleep. Little has changed in her life since the traumatic incident that happened in her childhood; the incident that taught her that the best way to live is alone. With the help of IT guy Raymond, Eleanor slowly and painfully learns that she is not alone and she does not have to suffer in silence. Parts funny, sad, and relatable, this quick read is perfect for readers who enjoy stories with cynical characters who find a community. Content warning: attempted suicide and alcohol abuse.

 

Publisher description:

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

 

Menachem Kaiser was named after his Holocaust-surviving grandfather but otherwise does not know much about the pre-war history of his family. Attempting to right historical wrongs, he takes off to Poland on a mission to reclaim an apartment building that his grandfather once owned. On this journey, he encounters a reactionary legal system, suspicious residents, eccentric lawyers, and numerous treasure hunters completely obsessed with the memoir of Kaiser's distant relative. What begins as a "simple" story of reclaiming stolen family property soon morphs into a larger reflection on legacy, memory, and Poland's own complicated history with antisemitism.

 

Publisher description: 

Menachem Kaiser’s story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? This is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

Find Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure in our online catalog. 

This charming book is the perfect place for any parent, educator, or person to begin talking and learning about race. The bright illustrations and simple text make this book accessible for people of all ages, and from all backgrounds. Readers are encouraged to "continue the conversation" at the back of the book, where they can find helpful tips and conversation starters for talking about race.

 

Publisher's description:

An age-appropriate introduction to the concepts of race, gender, consent and body positivity, developed by early childhood and activism experts, combines clear text with engaging artwork to help the youngest children recognize and confront unjust actions.