Staff Picks

There's just something about Adrienne Young's books-- magic, adventure, seduction! Her world building is very simple but very effective. Young is able to build a fantasy world that still feels grounded and real. Not to mention the semi-historical setting that features amazing fashion. There's also an interesting conversation about femininity and strength and how you present your gender identity. If you're a fan of a pale, dark-haired, quiet, broody, scarred, boy (c'mon, you know who you are!), read this novel. I would recommend Young's books to fans of Holly Black, Sarah J. Maas, and Leigh Bardugo.

 

Publisher's description:

When a letter from her uncle Henrik arrives on Bryn Roth's eighteenth birthday, summoning her back to Bastian, Bryn is eager to prove herself and finally take her place in her long-lost family. Henrik has plans for Bryn, but she must win everyone’s trust if she wants to hold any power in the delicate architecture of the family. It doesn’t take long for her to see that the Roths are entangled in shadows. Despite their growing influence in upscale Bastian, their hands are still in the kind of dirty business that got Bryn’s parents killed years ago. With a forbidden romance to contend with and dangerous work ahead, the cost of being accepted into the Roths may be more than Bryn can pay

 

 

 

This new book of essays is perfect for readers of the One Book One Boulder selection All We Can Save. In much the same way, this is a hopeful and engaging collection of writing from around the world, "a book that provides some brightness, passion, and intelligence in dark times." (Kirkus Reviews).

 

Publisher's description:

An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit ("the voice of the resistance"--New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present--and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz. Guided by Rebecca Solnit's typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by photographs and quotes, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.

Find Not Too Late in our online catalog.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine's Woman of Light is an intergenerational saga that spans the late 1800s in the Lost Territories of the southwest to the 1930s in Denver. The main protagonist Luz endeavors to understand how her Indigenous Chicano family thrived and how they were threatened.

 

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.

 

This novel proceeds like both a fairy tale and a dream, as, in reading it, we follow the plight of a young man to do whatever it takes to win the heart of his beloved. Prepare for a very fulfilling adventure as the story goes along.

 

Publisher's description:

Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria Forester--even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that stone barrier, Tristran learns, lies Faerie...and the most exhilarating adventure of the young man's life.

 

If you have read anything by Duras, chances are it's The Lover, a slim book set in prewar Indochina (colonial Saigon) where Duras spent her childhood. Though The Lover is about an affair between an adolescent French girl and a Chinese man, it was written when Duras was 70 years old. The sensuous and despairing infatuation and brutal shifts of power between the lovers echo many issues of modern colonialism. The North China Lover is a fuller retelling of this same story. It is written in the luminous, confident, and sparse style for which Duras is known and revered.

 

Publisher's description

Far more daring and truthful than any of her other novels, The North China Lover is a fascinating retelling of the dramatic experiences of Duras's adolescence that shaped her most famous work. Initially conceived as notes toward a screenplay for The Lover, this later novel, written toward the end of her life, emphasizes the tougher aspects of her youth in Indochina and possesses the intimate feel of a documentary.

Both shocking and enthralling, the story Duras tells is so powerfully imagined (or remembered) that it . . . lingers like a strong perfume (Publishers Weekly). Hailed by the French critics as a return to the Duras of the great books and the great days, it is a mature and complex rendering of a formative period in the author's life.

 

Find The North China Lover on our online catalog

A sweet story about a kid waiting for her Mommy to return from a work trip. She goes through every day of the week going about her routine with her Mama, but notices the differences when Mommy is not around. This is a great story to use to discuss time and the concept of waiting with children. Not to mention the illustrations are gorgeous and detailed!

 

Publisher's description:

For one little girl, there’s no place she’d rather be than sitting between Mama and Mommy. So when Mommy goes away on a work trip, it’s tricky to find a good place at the table. As the days go by, Mama brings her to the library, they watch movies, and all of them talk on the phone, but she still misses Mommy as deep as the ocean and as high as an astronaut up in the stars. As they pass by a beautiful garden, the girl gets an idea . . . but when Mommy finally comes home, it takes a minute to shake off the empty feeling she felt all week before leaning in for a kiss.

Find Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle in our online catalog.

A recommended next read for fans of Bonnie Garmus's Lessons in Chemistry, this thought-provoking coming of age story from award-winner Ausubel mixes family drama with cutting-edge science. As Publisher's Weekly says, the resulting novel "brims with compassion and makes the reader glad to be alive."

 

Publisher's description:

Teenage sisters Eve and Vera never imagined their summer vacation would be spent in the Arctic, tagging along on their mother's scientific expedition. But there's a lot about their lives lately that hasn't been going as planned, and truth be told, their single mother might not be so happy either. Now in Siberia with a bunch of serious biologists, Eve and Vera are just bored enough to cause trouble. Fooling around in the permafrost, they accidentally discover a perfectly preserved, four-thousand-year-old baby mammoth, and things finally start to get interesting. The discovery sets off a surprising chain of events, leading mother and daughters to go rogue, pinging from the slopes of Siberia to the shores of Iceland to an exotic animal farm in Italy, and resulting in the birth of a creature that could change the world--or at least this family. The Last Animal takes readers on a wild, entertaining, and refreshingly different kind of journey, one that explores the possibilities and perils of the human imagination on a changing planet, what it's like to be a woman in a field dominated by men, and how a wondrous discovery can best be enjoyed with family. Even teenagers.

 

Her husband announces suddenly that he wants a divorce because he deserves joy in his life. I laughed so hard reading this wonderful book.

 

Publisher's description:

Beware the wrath of a woman scorned--she just might save the world. Lillie knew the empty nest would be hard when her son left for college, but she had no idea of the full extent to which her world would come crashing down--until her husband announced out of the blue that he was in love with another woman, and he would be leaving, too. Besides the fact that this announcement was a complete surprise (to say the least), what surprised her most was that she wasn't...sad. She was furious. What was she supposed to do now? She surely couldn't look for help from her mother, who had left the family on Cape Cod to live with her new wife when Lillie was still a little girl. Lillie's sister, Hannah, had abandoned her to live a more interesting life and wouldn't be any help now either. Her father was usually her rock, but recently, he'd betrayed her by taking Ben Harriman under his wing--the man who almost ruined her life in a car accident when she was in high school. Her dad had put the guy up in the family guesthouse, which was certainly no help to Lillie at all. And she sure as hell wasn't going to get any help from Melissa, her husband's gold-digging new wife (or her oddly lost teenage niece, Ophelia). So, who was going to help her? Actually, maybe all of them. And maybe she would save them, too.

 

Sometimes you just want to read a book about nice people. Characters living in the British Isles seem to know how to be especially kind to each other. Meredith's friends, in the suburbs of Glasgow, are just what she needs after 1,214 days of not being able to step out her front door.

 

Publisher's description: 

Not leaving her house in 1,214 days, Meredith Maggs is kept company by visits from her best friend, her online support group, and her treacherous memories of a traumatizing past, but when the world comes knocking at her door, she must find the courage to answer.

Find Meredith, Alone in our online catalog. 

I have never considered why Captain Hook was in Neverland; he was a given. I mean, who else would Peter fight? Lisa Jensen takes us to a part of Neverland that so many of us have overlooked--Captain Hook's mind. It's not what you think it's going to be. And this is definitely not a children's story.

 

Publisher's description: Meet Captain James Benjamin Hook, a witty, educated Restoration-era privateer cursed to play villain to a pack of malicious little boys in a pointless war that never ends. But everything changes when Stella Parrish, a forbidden grown woman, dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of Pan's rules. From the glamour of the Fairy Revels, to the secret ceremonies of the First Tribes, to the mysterious underwater temple beneath the Mermaid Lagoon, the magical forces of the Neverland open up for Stella as they never have for Hook