Staff Picks

A captivating book full of history and lovely prose.  An older female historian discovers   documents from the 16th century and from there we are led into the fascinating interweaving stories of the historian and the female scribe to a blind rabbi in London. 

 

Publisher's description:

An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers of A.S. Byatt's Possession and Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book. Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation. Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is charming, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: to determine the identity of the documents' scribe, the elusive "Aleph." Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order to reconcile the life of the heart and mind.

 

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This book dives into how some big trends in the past few decades have shaped today's political, social, and cultural atmosphere in the U.S. It takes on three major "untruths" that have crept into modern thinking: “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker” -- where overprotective parenting has shielded children from challenges and has made younger generations less emotionally resilient; “Always trust your feelings” -- where people are encouraged to follow emotional reactions over logical and rational problem-solving; and “Life is a battle between good and evil people” -- where black-and-white mindsets fuel polarization and conflict. The authors connect these trends to the rise of "common enemy politics" and the intense divide in America today. What I really appreciated about this book was that it wasn’t just a pessimistic report of these negative trends. Instead, the authors actually offer advice for parents, schools, and young people to break out of these patterns. This book has a way of being brutally honest about the challenges that America is facing and will continue to face, but still leaves you feeling hopeful by the end, as it ends on a positive note. Personally, as someone who’s grown up in this generation, it made me reflect on how I was raised and how I see others being raised, especially as I get ready for college. It gave me awareness of these issues and practical ideas on how to approach America’s political and social climate with more emotional awareness and resilience. If you like politics, sociology, or just want a better understanding of why things feel so divided these days, I would totally recommend this book. It’s not just informative, well-written, and politically unbiased (which is always nice to see in political non-fiction), but it’s a wonderful guide for anyone who wants to help make things better.

 

-Ainsley, twelfth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's Description: 

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

 

Gorgeous artwork illustrates this story of a Native family's powwow experience. From preparing the dresses and regalia to the musical "rum-rum-tum" and "tink-tink-tink-tink" of the performance, readers discover the anticipation and joy in this American Indian tradition.

 

Publisher's description:
A young Indigenous girl's family helps calm her nervous butterflies before her first Jingle Dress Dance and reminds her why she dances.

Find Why we dance: a story of hope and healing in our online catalog

A fantastic dystopian novel that fostered great works like 1984 and A Brave New World, you simply must read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin if you enjoy futuristic dystopian literature. Set in a heavily-surveilled urban nation with glass-only architecture, Zamyatin creates a haunting setting and story.

 

Publishers description:

We (1924) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Written between 1920 and 1921, the novel reflects its author's growing disillusionment with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. Smuggled out of the country, the manuscript was translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg and published in New York in 1924. In a series of diary entries, D-503, an engineer in charge of building the spaceship Integral, reflects on life in the One State. In this totalitarian society, people live within glass structures under direct, constant surveillance by the Benefactor and his operatives. When he is not working on the Integral, D-503 visits with his state-appointed lover O-90 and spends time with his friend R-13, a poet who reads his works at executions. On a walk with O-90, D-503 meets a free-spirited woman named I-330, who flirts with him and eventually convinces him to transgress the rules he has followed his whole life. Although he plans to turn her over to authorities, he cannot bring himself to betray her trust, and begins to have dreams for the first time in his life. Struggling to balance his duty to the state with his strange new feelings, D-503 moves closer and closer to the limits of law and life. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a classic of Russian literature and dystopian science fiction reimagined for modern readers.

 

The Secret History explores the world of a prestigious and exclusive fine arts school in New England and the exacerbating circumstances that drive a group of Classics students to commit murder. The novel is pensive and brooding, with the tendency to wax poetic, yet still be highly engaging.

 

Publisher description:

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life--in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.

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A sweet and lovely book about the importance of kindness, both to each other as humans and toward our oceans. Plus there are mermaids!

Publisher's description:
An adventurous merman and kind fisherman find love and each other in this gorgeous update to the Little Mermaid story.

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Follow treasure hunter Tommy Thompson on his quest to find the SS Central America, which sank in 1875 off the southeast U.S. coast. He uses his sharp mind, tenacity, and cunning to uncover the ship and its enormous haul of gold. He is still imprisoned for refusing to disclose the location of some of it.

 

Publisher's Description:

Ship of Gold tells the story of the sinking of the SS Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, two hundred miles off the Carolina coast in September 1857. Over four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of California gold were lost.

 

The Rise of Kyoshi is the first book in the Chronicles of the Avatar series. Currently, this series has a total of five books, with two being about Kyoshi (written by F. C. Yee), two about Yangchen (also written by F. C. Yee), and one about Roku (written by Randy Ribay). The Rise of Kyoshi follows her as she finds out that she's the Avatar and it also explains some plot holes, like how if you do the math, Kyoshi lived to be over 200 years old. Anyone who has watched the show (Avatar the Last Airbender) knows that Kyoshi is the Avatar but the former companions of Avatar Kuruk don't. They searched throughout the earth kingdom but couldn't find the Avatar with any traditional methods. They ended up finding Yun, a boy so skilled that there was no way he wasn't the Avatar, right? Kyoshi was just a servant who only worked for the Avatar thanks to the kindness of the former Avatar's airbending teacher. This book has great characters and a plot that keeps you reading. You should read it, even if you haven't watched the show (though context helps and it helps you realize clever references to it as well).

- Kyra, ninth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's Description: 

F. C. Yee's The Rise of Kyoshi delves into the story of Kyoshi, the Earth Kingdom-born Avatar. The longest-living Avatar in this beloved world's history, Kyoshi established the brave and respected Kyoshi Warriors, but also founded the secretive Dai Li, which led to the corruption, decline, and fall of her own nation. The first of two novels based on Kyoshi, this book maps her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar.

 

This is a delightful book that has it all--romance, mystery, comedy and psychic ability! Riley Thorn is so fun to read and her family, friends, and housemates are all characters I want to learn more about. The Dead Guy Next Door is the first in a series and I can wait to dive into the next!

 

Publisher description:

A nice, normal life. Is that too much to ask? For Riley Thorn it is. Divorced. Broke. Living with a pack of elderly roommates. And those hallucinations she's diligently ignoring? Her tarot card-dealing mom is convinced they're clairvoyant visions. Just when things can't get worse, a so-hot-it-should-be-illegal private investigator shows up on her doorstep looking for one of her neighbors…who turns up murdered. Nick Santiago doesn't play well with others. Unless the 'others' are of the female persuasion. Wink. He's a rebel, a black sheep, a man who prefers a buffet of options to being stuck with the same entrée every night, if you catch his drift. When the pretty, possibly psychic Riley lands at the top of the list of suspects, Nick volunteers to find out whodunit. Only because he likes solving mysteries not because he wants to flex his heroic muscles for the damsel in distress. All they have to do is figure out who pulled the trigger, keep a by-the-book detective with a grudge at bay, and deal with a stranger claiming he was sent to help Riley hone her psychic gifts. All before the killer discovers she's a loose end that requires snipping.