Staff Picks

Morrigan Crow is blamed for everything that goes wrong in Nevermoor. The curse upon Morrigan also dooms her to die at midnight when she turns eleven. Hounds and hunters chase Jupitor North as he wisks Morrigan away to contend for the Wundrous Society, a trial of extraordinary feats.

 

Publisher's description:

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks—and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday.
But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor. It's then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city's most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each with an extraordinary talent that sets them apart—an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests—or she'll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.

 

Chloe the main character is scathing, sarcastic, and one of the only LGBTQ people at her small, Christian high school. I loved everything about her character, especially the fact that she was flawed and not perfect. The side characters were intriguing and Chloe's interactions were always amusing. Although this book was a romance, it definitely struck me as coming of age since Chloe evolved and changed throughout the book. This book kept me on the edge of my seat and delivered great twists I didn't see coming. 

- Anonymous eleventh-grade teen volunteer

Publisher's description:

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and the puritanical administration of Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny. But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes. On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair and square. Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe―probably not, but maybe―more to Shara, too. Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston's I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

Find I Kissed Shara Wheeler in our online catalog.

This fun and heartwarming novel about one very independent woman's journey to making friends on her daily commute is incredibly charming. This is a lighthearted and lovely book that will make you smile and feel warm inside. The perfect book to read when you might be feeling down, it's a delightful little escape into a world of friendship, personal growth, and love.

 

Publisher's description: 

Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He'd have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more. It turns out that talking to strangers can teach you about the world around you--and even more about yourself.

 

This book was a major factor in the author being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is long and not an easy read but well worth the effort. Through contemporaneous vignettes, we are told the story of Jacob Frank, a historical messianic figure from 18th-century Poland, who encouraged his Jewish followers to convert to Catholicism. We see events unfolding from many different viewpoints, including his followers, his grandmother who sees all and cannot die after swallowing an amulet, a Catholic priest writing a history of everything, and an omniscient narrator. Set in the broader context of antisemitism in Poland during the 18th century, we follow the movement of Jacob Frank's followers, who consider themselves "anti-Talmudists" and lean on the mystical learnings of the Kabbalah, and their conflict with the traditional Jewish community.

 

Publisher's description:

In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas--and a new unrest--begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.

 

Don't miss this riveting new historical thriller from the author of last year's hit, All Her Little Secrets. In a starred review, Library Journal calls this a "viscerally frightening novel of the Jim Crow era" and "a stunning, heartbreaking portrayal of being Black in the 1960s U.S. South."

 

Publisher's description:

It's the summer of 1964 and three innocent men are brutally murdered for trying to help Black Mississippians secure the right to vote. Against this backdrop, twenty-one year old Violet Richards finds herself in more trouble than she's ever been in her life. Suffering a brutal attack of her own, she kills the man responsible. But with the color of Violet's skin, there is no way she can escape Jim Crow justice in Jackson, Mississippi. Before anyone can find the body or finger her as the killer, she decides to run. With the help of her white beau, Violet escapes. But desperation and fear leads her to hide out in the small rural town of Chillicothe, Georgia, unaware that danger may be closer than she thinks.

Back in Jackson, Marigold, Violet's older sister, has dreams of attending law school. Working for the Mississippi Summer Project, she has been trying to use her smarts to further the cause of the Black vote. But Marigold is in a different kind of trouble: she's pregnant and unmarried. After news of the murder brings the police to her door, Marigold sees no choice but to flee Jackson too. She heads North seeking the promise of a better life and no more segregation. But has she made a terrible choice that threatens her life and that of her unborn child?

Two sisters on the run--one from the law, the other from social shame. What they don't realize is that there's a man hot on their trail. This man has his own brand of dark secrets and a disturbing motive for finding the sisters that is unknown to everyone but him...

Find Anywhere You Run in our online catalog.

Based on Swedish folklore, The Tomten, by Astrid Lindgren, is a quiet little story of a quiet little troll whose nocturnal visits to a small farm help care for the animals that live there, and give the inhabitants hope for spring. Told in gentle, thoughtful tones with illustrations that depict the hushed nighttime atmosphere of a Nordic winter night. After reading this book as a child, I'd greet any snowy morning with eager excitement, hoping to see the Tomten's footprints outside our windows.

 

Publisher's description:

At a lonely old farm house, deep in the forest on a crisp winter's night, everyone sleeps. All but one . . . the old Tomten, a little troll whom no human being has ever seen. In the moonlight, he moves about the farm, comforting the animals in a silent little language.

 

Virtuosic, beautiful, heart-wrenching but filled with moments of joy, this is the work of two artists at the top of their game. The idea of a COVID book could be wearisome in the wrong hands, but this is a work of beauty about the pandemic, George Floyd, mental health, and being black in the U.S.

 

Publisher's description: 

A smash up of art and text that viscerally captures what it means to not be able to breathe, and how the people and things you love most are actually the oxygen you most need. Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop, in about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW. And so for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is.

Find Ain't Burned All the Bright in our online catalog. 

A thriller taking place on a deserted island that is reached by sail boat. The island is paradise until it is not. The pacing as it switches from the present to the characters' back stories is excellent. I was so engaged trying to piece together the unknown connections among the characters and how it was all going to come to an unexpected climatic end.

 

Publisher's description: 

When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii, and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set out on an adventure. She's also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path. But like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape. Shimmering on the horizon after days at sea, Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome expects, despite a mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumors of murder. But what they don't expect is to discover another boat already anchored off Meroe's sandy beaches.

Find Reckless Girls in our online catalog. 

The award-winning author of the memoir Inheritance and host of the podcast Family Secrets returns with her first novel in 15 years. This will appeal to readers who enjoy nonlinear, character driven literary fiction such as And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass or Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.

 

Publisher's description:

Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive--a young couple expecting a baby boy--it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans' brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife's decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen. In Dani Shapiro's first work of fiction in fifteen years, she returns to the form that launched her career, with a riveting, deeply felt novel that examines the ties that bind families together--and the secrets that can break them apart. Signal Fires is a work of haunting beauty by a masterly storyteller.

 

I was completely drawn in by Fajardo-Anstine's rich story that captures the joys and sorrows of love and life. Woman of Light beautifully and hauntingly explores family systems over four generations, friendships, classism, racism, and the divine, all set in Denver and The Lost Territory of Colorado.

 

Publisher's description: 

1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of an arroyo, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidre's fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show. 1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family.

Find Woman of Light in our online catalog.