Staff Picks

The Martian, a survival story unlike any other, surprised me because of how entertaining the story could be, intertwined with so much technical and scientific detail. Mark Watney, a 42-year-old man, gets stranded on Mars in a novel set in the near future. His experience with botany and mechanical engineering was all he had to survive on a planet, completely alone. With his humor being his closest friend, he calculates what he needs to survive, which includes many, many days of only eating potatoes. Mark’s creativity and optimism make it possible for him to fight any challenges that Mars throws at him. But will this let him live long enough to be rescued? This sci-fi novel weaves together a story of resilience and humor that keeps you on the edge of your seat, both terrified and amused, rooting for Mark through his journey on Mars.

 

Publisher's Description:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive -- and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old 'human error' are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills -- and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit -- he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

 

The Naturals is an amazing book series that is four books long. It follows teenager Cassie Hobbes, who has a gift for figuring people out with just a glance. The FBI asks her to join a group of teenagers with other impressive gifts who are tasked with solving cold cases. This series was really fun to read and has amazing characters (it even starts in Colorado!). It was fun trying to solve the mysteries and cases with Cassie and her friends. I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a new book and likes mystery.

 

                                                                                                                                                - Kyra, ninth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's Description:

"Seventeen-year-old Cassie Hobbes is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But, it's not a skill that she's ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they've begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie. What Cassie doesn't realize is that there's more at risk than a few unsolved homicides--especially when she's sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive."

 

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.

Find The Body in Question in our online catalog

A fast paced mystery thriller, impossible to put down. So many twists and turns in a federal agent's efforts to get to the truth about his childhood friend's alleged murder suicide. Returning to the Australian town that forced him to leave, he faces unanswered questions about his past as well.

Publisher’s description:
After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead. Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.

Find The Dry in our online catalog

I love how I can get lost in this author's books. She takes us to a remote winter lodge in the wilderness and we meet the guests, who are old friends from their days together at University. They are gathered for their annual New Year's Eve celebration and as the author moves between the different characters' point of views we learn their unexpected histories and how no one is whom they seem to be. The setting of the lodge itself is its own dark character, and it is easy to escape into these complicated people and their relationships while trying to figure out who was murdered and why.

 

Publisher's description: A group of thirty-something Oxford friends celebrate New Year's Eve in the Scottish Highlands as a historic blizzard hits, trapping and isolating them, only to discover one of them is a murderer.

 

If you enjoy Shakespeare and plays, this book is for you! M. L. Rio's book If We Were Villains is an intriguing mystery surrounding a group of students/actors at the Dellecher Shakespeare Conservatory, and explores what happens when roles and power dynamics are switched. Following the character Oliver Marks, the reader is given a story of tragic events that turns the group upside down alongside his perspective ten years later. Unlike many other books, chapters are structured alike to a play, and the characters often use lines from scenes that mirror their real world problems. This book's unique characteristics and plot definitely makes it worth reading!  

- Altea, twelfth-grade teen volunteer 

Publisher's description: 

Entreated to tell his side of the story to a detective who put him in prison a decade earlier for a murder he may not have committed, Oliver describes his past as a Shakespearean actor whose rivalry with a castmate escalated in dangerous ways. 

Find If We Were Villains in the library's online catalog. 

A riveting novel told through two (sometimes conflicting) perspectives with a multitude of themes: class warfare, family dysfunction, the power of social media, con artists, mental illness, the pressures of legacy...just to name a few. Recommended for fans of Greer Hendricks and Taylor Jenkins Reid.

 

Publisher's description: 

Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet. Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer--traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family's sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa's past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina. Nina, Vanessa, and Lachlan's paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

 

Fiona Barton wonderfully created this psychological thriller where the reader's curiosity is aroused in each chapter. An investigation of a dead child whose bones were found in a construction site in Woolwich, England, the author guides protagonist Kate Waters very cleverly to solve this mystery.

 

Publisher's description: 

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it's a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby? As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: a newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss ... Kate is drawn, house by house, into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery. And she soon finds herself the keeper of unexpected secrets that erupt in the lives of three women, and torn between what she can and cannot tell.