Staff Picks

Nonfiction readers won't want to miss this new title from Pulitzer Prize-winner Ed Yong, author of the groundbreaking biological sciences book I Contain Multitudes. Already a New York Times bestseller, this exploration of animal perception has received nearly universal acclaim, referred to by Kirkus Reviews as "one of the year's best popular natural histories" and by Publisher's Weekly as "science writing at its best."

 

Publisher's Description:

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses to encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

 

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called "the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes."

 

I began writing when I really began to wish that someone would understand the emotions or the unbearableness I was feeling in the moment.- Sang Young Park, Words without Borders Interview

 

Love in the Big City illustrates this unbearableness from the first page to the last. We see moments of tedium at work alongside dancing in clubs and laying in the street in the rain. Park shows us unbearableness in all its forms: happiness, loneliness, sadness and heartbreak.

 

Publisher's description:
Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.

 

Find Love in the Big City in our online catalog.

Anthem is a book full of unspoken meaning. It's set in a dystopian society where the idea of self has been obliterated and everyone refers to themselves as "we." It follows a man named Equality through a period of time in which he realizes that something is missing--his individuality. This book is beautifully written and is perfect for someone who enjoys spending long hours after a book trying to uncover what one just read. I loved this book, and it really helped me open my eyes to our own society and what it means to be an individual in a group of people.

- Anonymous tenth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

Ayn Rand's searing portrait of a dystopian future in which all ego has been erased in a world where science and learning are banned and the simple utterance of the Unspeakable Word, I, is punishable by death, a man named Equality 7-2521 struggles with his unquenchable desire to investigate, to think, to know. His instincts are a "curse" that threatens to bring him to the attention of a government dedicated to the elimination of the self. But Equality 7-2521 cannot ignore his true nature, just as he cannot ignore the fruits of his curiosity: the discovery of the mysterious "power of the sky." His great awakening-in heart, mind, and soul-represents the inevitable triumph of the individual over the collective. A riveting, thought-provoking parable based on the author's experience of life in a socialist state, Anthem serves as an invaluable introduction to Ayn Rand, her fiction, and her philosophy.

 

Paper Towns is a fantastic coming-of-age story by the amazing author John Green. This book is a modernized adventure story with a hint of mystery. It is captivating from start to finish and really shows the struggles of not knowing your place in the world. I highly recommend this book to teens who like contemporary literature and adventure. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. Content warning: mental health. 

- Jules, ninth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q... until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

 

The author left her job in publishing, where she was underpaid and lacked a clear path ahead, to work first with an e-book start-up and then relocated to San Francisco to work in start-ups for data analytics and an open source community. As a non-technical woman working in customer support, the author provides a fast paced, engaging perspective of an outsider working inside the world of start-ups. She observes the differences from her prior work experiences, including among other things, the tech-bro culture and the emphasis on snacks and company hoodies, and ultimately questions whether having financial security is enough to keep her in the start-up world when she doubts the value of her work.

 

Publisher's description:

In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial—left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress. Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. This memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power.

 

Find Uncanny Valley in our online catalog.

Mostly through historic letters and news articles, Chris Enss reconstructs the adventurous 19th century world travels of Isabella Bird, focusing on her time spent in the Rocky Mountains and particularly the Estes Park area of Colorado, where we meet Jim Nugent, the notorious mountain man she fell in love with. The unlikely pairing should not be a surprise from what we know of Bird, a woman who defied the scope of what was expected of women in the mid-1800s. Overlaying much of the book are the ever-present Rockies and the splendor of the old Mountain West, along with its undercurrent of frontier conflicts. Interesting to read what it was like traversing the local terrain and climbing Long's Peak over 160 years ago.

 

Publisher description: 

Isabella Bird was a proper Victorian lady expected to marry a man of means and position. Instead she was drawn to a gruff mountain man, a desperado named Jim Nugent. This book reveals the true story of Bird's relationship with Nugent as they traveled through the dramatic wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.

 

The Edgar and Lambda award-winning series returns for a third suspenseful installment. This fast-paced mystery finds former CIA agent Vera Kelly in California, investigating the disappearance of her girlfriend, Max. From Publisher's Weekly's starred review: "Filled with well-drawn, quirky characters, the novel captures both the hidden pleasures and not so hidden dangers of a closeted existence. This nuanced portrait of gay life in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots thoroughly satisfies."

 

Publisher's Description:

It's spring 1971 and Vera Kelly and her girlfriend, Max, leave their cozy Brooklyn apartment for an emergency visit to Max's estranged family in Los Angeles. Max's parents are divorcing--her father is already engaged to a much younger woman and under the sway of an occultist charlatan; her mother has left their estate in a hurry with no indication of return. Max, who hasn't seen her family since they threw her out at the age of twenty-one, prepares for the trip with equal parts dread and anger.

Upon arriving, Vera is shocked by the size and extravagance of the Comstock estate--the sprawling, manicured landscape; expansive and ornate buildings; and garages full of luxury cars reveal a privileged upbringing that, up until this point, Max had only hinted at--while Max attempts to navigate her father, who is hostile and controlling, and the occultist, St. James, who is charming but appears to be siphoning family money. Tensions boil over at dinner when Max threatens to alert her mother--and her mother's lawyers--to St. James and her father's plans using marital assets. The next morning, when Vera wakes up, Max is gone.

In Vera Kelly Lost and Found, Rosalie Knecht gives Vera her highest-stake case yet, as Vera quickly puts her private detective skills to good use and tracks a trail of breadcrumbs across southern California to find her missing girlfriend. She travels first to a film set in Santa Ynez and, ultimately, to a most unlikely destination where Vera has to decide how much she is willing to commit to save the woman she loves.

Find Vera Kelly: Lost and Found in our online catalog.

I really loved this graphic novel. Firstly, the art style was absolutely gorgeous. It reminds me of a mixture of Studio Ghibli and Sailor Moon. The art is a mix of traditional and modern Asian stylings. The interweaving of fairy tales with Tiến's story is beautifully done. The fairy tales are not the classic Disney versions that many teens are most familiar with, which gives this novel extra intrigue and uniqueness.

 

These fairy tales are whimsical, sweet, and sometimes sinister. The relationship between Tiến and his mother is incredibly poignant. I appreciated seeing not just Tiến's story, but also his mother's. Tiến's mother is an immigrant and refugee, something that can weigh heavily on someone's soul, which the graphic novel depicts very well. Overall, this graphic novel is powerful, inspiring, and soulful.

 

Publisher description:

Real life isn't a fairytale. But Tié̂n still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tié̂n, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through? Is there a way to tell them he's gay? This beautifully illustrated story follows a young boy as he tries to navigate life through fairytales, an instant classic that shows us how we are all connected, and that no matter what—we can all have our own happy endings.

 

How many times can you die before you're no longer human? I really loved how this book was presented. It has an interesting, challenging idea of cloning wrapped in a gripping story. I also liked how the whole time I was reading it I was constantly thinking not just about the book, but the main character's dilemma, which is that every time he dies he gets remade with all his memories. This relatively simple premise creates a very entertaining read. I would totally recommend this book as a unique sci-fi read that's both smart and funny. Content warning: violence.

- Owen, tenth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

The Martian meets Multiplicity in Edward Ashton's high-concept science fiction thriller, in which Mickey7, an "expendable," refuses to let his replacement clone Mickey8 take his place. Dying isn't any fun...but at least it's a living. Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there's a mission that's too dangerous-even suicidal-the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal...and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it. On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7's fate has been sealed. There's a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein. Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony.