Staff Picks

A multi-generational accounting of the murder of an aboriginal man in Australia's sacred heart by a white police officer in 1934. A clever mix of true crime, history, and reconciliation, Return to Uluru will leave you with a new understanding of the famous rock and the people who call it home.

 

Publisher's description:

Return to Uluru explores the cold case that strikes at the heart of Australia's white supremacy-the death of an Aboriginal man in 1934; the iconic life of a white, "outback" police officer; and the continent's most sacred and mysterious landmark.

 

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It feels as if I just discovered a master novelist. This book was impossible to put down. A murder trial, two jurors having an affair, the trial, the aftermath, the sadness. There is so much emotion in each sentence in this book.

 

Publisher’s description:

The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial involving a rich, white teenage girl--a twin--on trial for the horrific murder of her toddler brother, and the sequestered jury deciding her fate. Two of the jurors sequestered (she, Juror C-2; he, F-17), holed up at the Econo-Lodge off I-75. As the shocking and numbing details of the crime and its surrounding facts are revealed during a string of days and seemingly endless court hours, the nights, playing out in a series of court-financed meals Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath, as jurors, never to discuss the trial. During deliberations the lovers learn they are on opposing sides of the case and realize that their fellow jurors are wise to their affair. After the trial's end, as Hannah returns home to her much older, now, suddenly, frail husband (they married when she was 24; he, 58) an exploding media fury involving the case catches them all up in a frenzy of public outrage at a jury that seems to have convicted the wrong twin, and a judge who has received an anonymous handwritten letter about a series of sexual encounters ("I feel it is my duty as a juror and a citizen to report that two of my fellow jurors had sexual contact on more than seven occasions during our nights at the motel..."), calling into question their respective verdicts, and announcing she is releasing the jurors' names to the media.

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This graphic novel has it all: psychological horror, domestic housewife ennui, and a sexy ghost. I really loved how the author illustrated the main character's dreary life in monochrome while her fantasies are in gorgeous splashy color. The mystery will keep you guessing till the end.

 

Publisher's description: 
After many lonely years, Abby's just gotten married. She met her new husband--a recently widowed dentist--when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it's strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband's first wife, the more things don't add up. And Abby starts to wonder ... was Sheila's death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila's memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life.

 

Danny Rajaratnam has information about a murder that took place in Sydney, but he is afraid to share it with authorities for fear of deportation. Author Arvind Adiga's story of how Danny ended up in this complicated situation has a great humor. I highly recommend the audiobook because certain phrases and words can be heard in their native tongue.

 

Publisher description:

A young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation. Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life. But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients—a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported? Or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of this day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

 

Am I really in control of my thoughts, or are they shaped by the internet, media, and AI? Is there a remedy for an oversaturated mind? This book made me reflect on our world while feeling like I was chatting with a friend. I highly recommend it for anyone struggling with information overload.

Publisher’s description:

'Magical thinking' can be broadly defined as the belief that one's internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain's coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven. Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the 'Halo effect' cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the 'Sunk cost fallacy' can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we've realized they're not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell's prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.

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The author of this book uses such powerful imagery and moving phrases of recollection that I found myself truly touched in the heart when reading it. He talks about the importance of the landscape that he knew in his youth, and the need to save it, preserve it, and reflect on its wider meaning.

 

Publisher's description:

In Earth Keeper: Reflections on an American Land, Momaday reflects on his native ground and its influence on his people. "When I think about my life and the lives of my ancestors, I am inevitably led to the conviction that I, and they, belong to the American land. This is a declaration of belonging. And it is an offering to the earth." he writes. Earth Keeper is a story of attachment, rooted in oral tradition. Momaday recalls stories of his childhood that have been passed down through generations, stories that reveal a profound and sacred connection to the American landscape and a reverence for the natural world. In this moving work, he offers an homage and a warning. Momaday reminds us that the Earth is a sacred place of wonder and beauty; a source of strength and healing that must be protected before it's too late. As he so eloquently yet simply reminds us, we must all be keepers of the Earth.

 

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In this captivating memoir by African-American abolitionist and former escaped slave Frederick Douglass, it is clear to see why this work became one of the most influential texts in abolitionist history. With its heart-wrenching renderings of the beatings Douglass saw administered by his ruthless overseers on his friends, family, and other slaves on the various plantations he was sent to and with the detailing of the natures of his different masters, Douglass conveys how slavery is in every way morally wrong and horrendous even with “kind” masters. He makes many remarks on how slavery is not only awful for the slave but also causes the slaveholder’s character to change for the worse. For example, while writing about when he was first sent to Baltimore to live with Mrs. Sophia Auld and her husband, he nostalgically reminisces about how kind she was (she even taught him the alphabet, though it was because she did not know that it was prohibited to teach slaves to read and write). He then laments how slaveholding made her become more and more cruel and unfeeling and caused her relationship with her husband to deteriorate. Through this and other accounts of his fearful experiences, Douglass was among the first to paint an accurate picture of the horrors of slavery to the white American public and was the very first to gain such immediate success after the publication of his memoir.

 

- Jiyu K, ninth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838, how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.

 

Everyone should read this book as it is so insightful and timely. This explores many of the issues that technology has brought to life, specifically how it has affected younger generations, how we can overcome these challenges, and how we can interact with generations raised in a technology boom.

 

Publisher description:

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on most measures. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the "play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood. Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes-communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children-and ourselves-from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.