Staff Picks

Lore Olympus reimagines the world of the Greek Pantheon in explosive color and expressive imagery. While it is a contemporary retelling of the story of Persephone and Hades, all of your favorite Greek myths and monsters make an appearance. A cozy, romantic read that will addict you to the webcomic.

 

Publisher description:

Persephone, young goddess of spring, is new to Olympus. Her mother, Demeter, has raised her in the mortal realm, but after Persephone promises to train as a sacred virgin, she's allowed to live in the fast-moving, glamorous world of the gods. When her roommate, Artemis, takes her to a party, her entire life changes: she ends up meeting Hades and feels an immediate spark with the charming yet misunderstood ruler of the Underworld. Now Persephone must navigate the confusing politics and relationships that rule Olympus, while also figuring out her own place--and her own power.

 

Love Songs is an unapologetically Black, feminist (womanist) novel; it is also an American novel. Ailey Pearl Garfield is a scholar, a feminist, a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, an historian, a girl, is of Indigenous, white, and Black heritage, and has impeccable home training. Spending the majority of this book's 879 pages with her is so delightful. And, though I cried several times during this book, I also cried because it was over. This gift of a book is pedagogical. It helped me to see the flaws in racial assumptions that I didn't even know I possessed. I can't wait to read this one again.

 

Publisher's description: To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family's past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the Black experience in itself.

 

Blankets is a graphic memoir of the author's teenage experience growing up in a fundamentalist faith. In the midst of wrestling with his relationship with spirituality and adolescence he meets an enigmatic girl named Raina at church camp. A raw story of young love and how transformative it can be.

 

Publisher's description:

 

Blankets is the story of a young man coming of age and finding the confidence to express his creative voice. Craig Thompson's poignant graphic memoir plays out against the backdrop of a Midwestern winterscape: finely-hewn linework draws together a portrait of small town life, a rigorously fundamentalist Christian childhood, and a lonely, emotionally mixed-up adolescence.

 

Under an engulfing blanket of snow, Craig and Raina fall in love at winter church camp, revealing to one another their struggles with faith and their dreams of escape. Over time though, their personal demons resurface and their relationship falls apart. It's a universal story, and Thompson's vibrant brushstrokes and unique page designs make the familiar heartbreaking all over again.

 

Find Blankets in our online catalog

In this Gothic horror set in an alternate Victorian England, Jane enters into a marriage that's supposed to be no more than a "business arrangement" -- but it quickly brings more than she bargained for, not least dark magic that threatens her very existence. A great read for fans of Mexican Gothic.

 

Publisher description:
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man--one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.

 

This is so funny!! I loved it! I too hate men! It was very smart and witty, and I loved the author's tone and style of writing. It reads exactly the way I, a semi-hip, internet-obsessed, millennial woman, talk and think. Blythe Roberson is an amazing social commentator. There were so many lines that had me laughing out loud. Read this if you would like a sharp, entertaining exploration on modern dating, womanhood, social media, and Harry Styles.

 

Publisher's description: From New Yorker and Onion writer and comedian Blythe Roberson, How to Date Men When You Hate Men is a comedy philosophy book aimed at interrogating what it means to date men within the trappings of modern society. Blythe Roberson’s sharp observational humor is met by her open-hearted willingness to revel in the ugliest warts and shimmering highs of choosing to live our lives amongst other humans. She collects her crushes like ill cared-for pets, skewers her own suspect decisions, and assures readers that any date you can mess up, she can top tenfold. And really, was that date even a date in the first place?

 

Peterson takes a look at female celebrities who defy the "laws of womanhood" that society has created. It is a refreshing take on what makes a woman a woman and an encouraging narrative that suggests you be yourself, no matter who that is.

 

Publisher's description:

You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

 

In sparse but rich prose, Tsushima evokes unique flavors and seasons of light. Outside lightness, coming into the apartment through the windows on all four sides, plays against the darkness growing within the newly single mother at the center of the story. Poetic and dazzling.

 

Publisher description:
Follows a year in the life of a recently divorced woman in Tokyo who struggles to care for her young daughter while confronting growing inner darkness, painful losses and the changes she is forced to make to survive.

 

In A Million Quiet Revolutions, Robin Gow weaves a captivating narrative through the artful medium of verse, delving into the lives of two trans teens, Oliver and Aaron, as they navigate the complexities of love, identity, and the daunting transition from adolescence to adulthood.

 

Publisher's description: Two seventeen-year-old trans boys in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, struggling to understand themselves and their love for each other, are inspired by an online story about trans soldiers who fell in love during the American Revolution.

 

A heartbreaking story of loss and isolation. There is no happy ending, just the consequences of people's choices and the curves that life throws at them. This Australian novel shows how a "simple life" as a lighthouse keeper is not so simple after all.

 

Publisher's description:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

 

A bakers apprentice with a talent for magic goes on an adventure, enlisted by a sharp tongued bounty hunter who happens to own an incredible cloak. This young adult fantasy novel is a perfect choice for someone looking for a cozy tale of love and friendship.

 

Publisher's description: 

Seventeen-year-old Aurelie, a baker's apprentice, reluctantly agrees to assist a bounty hunter named Iliana and finds herself on an adventure full of magic, danger, and the thrill of first love.