Staff Picks

Some tense, racist moments in this story of a factory town and its inhabitants. We are reminded that no matter the race or the economic status, all families struggle and love endures. It was also a deep dive into seasons in small-town Ohio, beautifully described.

 

Publisher's description:

Set in failing small town in central Ohio, [this novel] asks how one manages, in an America of increasing division, to find a sense of family and community. [It focuses] on the members of three families: the Baileys, a white family who have put down deep roots in the community; the Marwats, an immigrant family that owns the town's largest employer; and the Shaws, especially young Anthony, an outsider whose very presence gently shakes the town's understanding of itself.

 

Hardly any plot, no compelling characters, and a timeline of one sleepless night make for a surprisingly compelling dive into the economics of John Maynard Keynes, the concept of Utopia, and the life of a mother, wife, economics professor, feminist, and guest lecturer. This is an intellectual gem.

 

Publisher's description:  Martin Riker's poignant and startlingly original novel asks how to foster a brave mind in anxious times, following a newly jobless academic rehearsing a speech on John Maynard Keynes for a surprising audience. In a hotel room in the middle of the night, Abby, a young feminist economist, lies awake next to her sleeping husband and daughter. Anxious that she is grossly underprepared for a talk she is presenting tomorrow on optimism and John Maynard Keynes, she has resolved to practice by using an ancient rhetorical method of assigning parts of her speech to different rooms in her house, and has brought along a comforting albeit imaginary companion to keep her on track-Keynes himself. Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness, Abby repeatedly finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history, utopia, and Keynes's pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist herself, she has been struggling under the burden of supporting a family in an increasingly hostile America after being denied tenure at the university where she teaches. Confronting her own future at a time of global darkness, Abby undertakes a hero's quest through her memories to ideas hidden in the corners of her mind-a piecemeal intellectual history from Cicero to Lewis Carroll to Queen Latifah-as she asks what a better world would look like if we told our stories with more honest and more hopeful imaginations

 

Two sisters, one a cop, the other a drug addict. When one disappears, the other does everything she can to find her. This is a family drama with thriller overtones, and Philadelphia is practically another character. It's a long book but a fast read.

 

 

Don't believe what those male scientists have been telling us about the fairer sex. There are some really tough cookies and oddball behaviors out there, like the baby-killer meerkats, slutty ducks, and sperm-saving lobsters. Informative and hilarious, this book is for fans of Mary Roach.

 

Publisher's description: 

Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser. Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted. In this book, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun.

Find Bitch: On the Female of the Species

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.