Welcome to our latest edition of Staff Picks. It's our 2024 round up!
We've asked all our library staff to submit the best books they've read over the past year, and then we collected all the titles here for easy access. Just select your favorite genre below to find titles and catalog links. Many titles come in a variety of formats, including audiobooks you can check out on CD or download directly to a digital device.
If you haven’t already downloaded the Libby App to access eBooks and digital audiobooks on your Apple (iOS) or Android device, you can get started now! If you prefer to read or listen on a larger device such as a desktop or laptop, go to www.aclib.us/Overdrive for the browser option.
- Fiction
Beth's pick was...
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Christmas with the Queen by Hazel Gaynor [2024]
December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue in the tradition of her late father and grandfather’s beloved Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must move with the times, and the Queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change.
As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, two old friends—Jack Devereux and Olive Carter—find themselves reunited for the festivities. A single mother, typist at the BBC, and aspiring reporter, Olive leaps at the opportunity to cover the holiday celebration, despite self-doubts. When a chance encounter with the Queen presents an exciting opportunity, Olive begins to believe her luck might change.
Jack, a grief-stricken widowed chef originally from New Orleans, accepts a last-minute chance to cook in the royal kitchens at Sandringham. When he bumps into a long-lost friend, an old spark is reignited.
Despite personal and professional heartache, Jack and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmas seasons and they find themselves growing ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret.
Christmas Day, December 1957. As the nation eagerly awaits the Queen’s first televised Christmas speech, Olive decides to reveal the shocking truth of her secret, which threatens to tear her and Jack apart forever. Unless Christmas has one last gift to deliver…
Lesia's pick was...
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Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (Ernest Cunningham #2) by Benjamin Stevenson [2023]
When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.
The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:
the debut writer (me!)
the forensic science writer
the blockbuster writer
the legal thriller writer
the literary writer
the psychological suspense writer
But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.
Of course, we should also know how to commit one.
How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?Read the first in the series here!
Annette's pick was...Image
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt [2022]
After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.
Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.
Mary's pick was...
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Caucasia by Danzy Senna [1998]
In Caucasia—Danzy Senna's extraordinary debut novel and national bestseller—Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness. Then their parents' marriage falls apart. Their father's new black girlfriend won't even look at Birdie, while their mother gives her life over to the Movement: at night the sisters watch mysterious men arrive with bundles shaped like rifles.
One night Birdie watches her father and his girlfriend drive away with Cole—they have gone to Brazil, she will later learn, where her father hopes for a racial equality he will never find in the States. The next morning—in the belief that the Feds are after them—Birdie and her mother leave everything behind: their house and possessions, their friends, and—most disturbing of all—their identity. Passing as the daughter and wife of a deceased Jewish professor, Birdie and her mother finally make their home in New Hampshire.
Desperate to find Cole, yet afraid of betraying her mother and herself to some unknown danger, Birdie must learn to navigate the white world—so that when she sets off in search of her sister, she is ready for what she will find. At once a powerful coming-of-age story and a groundbreaking work on identity and race in America, "Caucasia deserves to be read all over" (Glamour).
Katherine's pick was...Image
Demon's Bluff (The Hollows #18) by Kim Harrison [2024]
What’s a witch to do when the coven of moral and ethical standards demands she untwist a curse—but an essential spell component no longer exists? There’s only one choice: go back in time.
Caught between self-exile and an Alcatraz cell, Rachel must find an Atlantean mirror to reverse the curse and prove to Cincinnati’s brand-new witch coven that, no, she does not practice illicit magic. Unfortunately, the only mirror of its kind in existence belonged to the insane demon Newt, forcing Rachel to go to the past to bargain with her for it.
But the time-travel spell goes awry, dragging Elyse, the young leader of the coven, into the past with Rachel. They expect to land five years in the past but instead arrive two days before Rachel’s long-lost love, Kisten, dies. Heartbroken and torn, Rachel knows she can't change the past.
Even with no allies, Rachel still has one thing going for her: Cincinnati is her city, now and forever. If she can find a way to work with Newt and prevent Elyse from becoming the demon’s next familiar, they might all get home.Read the first in the series here!
Heather's pick was...Image
I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer [2014]
Tom Spanbauer’s first novel in seven years is a love story triangle akin to The Marriage Plot and Freedom , only with a gay main character who charms gays and straights alike. I Loved You More is a rich, expansive tale of love, sex, and heartbreak, covering twenty-five years in the life of a striving, emotionally wounded writer. In New York, Ben forms a bond of love with his macho friend and foil, Hank. Years later in Portland, a now ill Ben falls for Ruth, who provides the care and devotion he needs, though they cannot find true happiness together. Then Hank reappears and meets Ruth, and real trouble starts. Set against a world of struggling artists, the underground sex scene of New York in the 1980s, the drab, confining Idaho of Ben’s youth, and many places in between, I Loved You More is the author’s most complex and wise novel to date.
Caroline's pick was...
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Eruption by Michael Crichton [2024]
A history-making once-in-a-century volcanic eruption is about to destroy the Big Island of Hawaii. But a decades-old military secret could turn the volcano into something even more terrifying... Now it's up to a handful of brave individuals to save the island - and the entire world.
Two of the bestselling storytellers of all time have created an unforgettable thriller. The master of the techno-blockbuster joins forces with the master of the modern thriller to create the most anticipated mega bestseller in years. Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, ER, Twister, and Westworld, had a passion project he’d been pursuing for years, ahead of his untimely passing in 2008. Knowing how special it was, his wife, Sherri Crichton, held back his notes and the partial manuscript until she found the right author to complete it: James Patterson, the world’s most popular storyteller. Eruption brings the pace of Patterson to the concept of Crichton: the most anticipated mega-thriller in years.
Charissa's pick was...
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When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill [2022]
Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.
Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.
In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.
Sofia's pick was...
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Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray [2024]
Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.
When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love.
But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he’s a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she’s a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.
Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR’s most trusted lieutenant—even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she’s willing to do—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to save a nation.
Stefan's pick was...
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The Overstory by Richard Powers [2018]
The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
Sean's pick was...
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The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap [2024]
Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his posh, sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. A shining beacon of medical discovery in the age of New Enlightenment, the city’s university offers everything James desires—except the chance to work on a human cadaver.
For that, he needs to join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square, at a cost he cannot afford. In desperation, he strikes a deal with Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, a dashing young dissectionist with an artist’s eye for anatomy and a reckless passion for knowledge. Nye promises to help him gain the surgical experience he craves—but it doesn’t take long for James to realize he’s made a devil’s bargain . . . Nye is a body snatcher. And James has unwittingly become his accomplice.
Intoxicated by Nye and his noble mission, James rapidly descends into the underground ranks of the Resurrectionists—the body snatchers infamous for stealing fresh corpses from churchyards to be used as anatomical specimens. Before he knows it, James is caught up in a life-or-death scheme as rival gangs of snatchers compete in a morbid race for power and prestige.
James and Nye soon find themselves in the crosshairs of a shady pair of unscrupulous opportunists known as Burke and Hare, who are dead set on cornering the market, no matter the cost. These unsavory characters will do anything to beat the competition for bodies. Even if it’s cold-blooded murder . . .
Exquisitely macabre and delightfully entertaining, The Resurrectionist combines fact and fiction in a rollicking tale of the risks and rewards of scientific pursuit, the passions of its boldest pioneers, and the anatomy of human desire.
Tiffany's pick was...Image
The Blessings by Elise Juska [2014]
When John Blessing dies and leaves behind two small children, the loss reverberates across his extended family for years to come. His young widow, Lauren, finds solace in her large clan of in-laws, while his brother's wife Kate pursues motherhood even at the expense of her marriage. John's teenage nephew Stephen finds himself involved in an act of petty theft that takes a surprising turn, and nephew Alex, a gifted student, travels to Spain and considers the world beyond his family's Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood. Through departures and arrivals, weddings and reunions, The Blessings reveals the interior worlds of the members of a close-knit Irish-Catholic family and the rituals that unite them.
Fiona's pick was...
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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles [2016]
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
Cameron's pick was...Image
North Woods by Daniel Mason [2023]
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?
Beth's pick was...Image
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn [2024]
Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?Charissa's pick was...
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What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall [2023]
Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.
For decades afterward, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods―no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.Makennah's pick was...
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In this haunting and surreal novel, the narrator and a man known as the warden search for an elusive girl in a frozen, seemingly post-nuclear, apocalyptic landscape. The country has been invaded and is being governed by a secret organization. There is destruction everywhere; great walls of ice overrun the world. Together with the narrator, the reader is swept into a hallucinatory quest for this strange and fragile creature with albino hair. Acclaimed upon its 1967 publication as the best science fiction book of the year, this extraordinary and innovative novel has subsequently been recognized as a major work of literature in its own right.
Sabrina's pick was...Image
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides [2019]
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
- Mystery
Patty's pick was...
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One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley [2023]
A mystery she can't remember. A friend she can't forget.
I kept your secret Lucy. I've kept it for more than sixty years . . .
It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living alone with her eccentric mother - who conducts seances for the local Ludthorpe community - she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life.
When the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. But Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep . . .
Then Lucy goes missing.
2018. Edie is eighty-four and still living in Ludthorpe. When one day she glimpses Lucy Theddle, still looking the same as she did at fifteen, her family write it off as one of her many mix ups. There's a lot Edie gets confused about these days. A lot she finds difficult to remember. But what she does know is this: she must find out what happened to Lucy, all those years ago . . .
- Romance
Katelyn's pick was...
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That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming [2021]
All I wanted to do was live my life in peace. Maybe get a cat, expand my spice farm. Really anything that doesn't involve going on a quest where an orc might rip my face off. But they say the Goddess has favourites. If so, I'm clearly not one of them.
After saving the demon Fallon in a wine-drunk stupor, all he wanted to do was kill an evil witch enslaving his people.
I mean, I get it, don't get me wrong. But he's dragging me along for the ride, and I'm kind of peeved about it. On the bright side, he keeps burning off his shirt.
Sofia's pick was...Image
Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne [2022]
All Reyna and Kianthe want is to open a bookshop that serves tea. Worn wooden floors, plants on every table, firelight drifting between the rafters… all complemented by love and good company. Thing is, Reyna works as one of the Queen’s private guards, and Kianthe is the most powerful mage in existence. Leaving their lives isn’t so easy.
But after an assassin takes Reyna hostage, she decides she’s thoroughly done risking her life for a self-centered queen. Meanwhile, Kianthe has been waiting for a chance to flee responsibility–all the better that her girlfriend is on board. Together, they settle in Tawney, a town that boasts more dragons than people, and open the shop of their dreams.
What follows is a cozy tale of mishaps, mysteries, and a murderous queen throwing the realm’s biggest temper tantrum. In a story brimming with hurt/comfort and quiet fireside conversations, these two women will discover just what they mean to each other… and the world.
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sophie's pick was...
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Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo [2021]
Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom with bleeding wrists that mutters of revenge.
As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble, letting in the phantom that hungers for him.
Madison's pick was...Image
To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose [2023]
A young Indigenous woman enters a colonizer-run dragon academy—and quickly finds herself at odds with the “approved” way of doing things—in the first book of this brilliant new fantasy series.
The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations—until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all remember the tales of the days when dragons lived among them and danced away the storms of autumn, enabling the people to thrive. To them, Anequs is revered as Nampeshiweisit—a person in a unique relationship with a dragon.
Unfortunately for Anequs, the Anglish conquerors of her land have different opinions. They have a very specific idea of how a dragon should be raised, and who should be doing the raising—and Anequs does not meet any of their requirements. Only with great reluctance do they allow Anequs to enroll in a proper Anglish dragon school on the mainland. If she cannot succeed there, her dragon will be killed.
For a girl with no formal schooling, a non-Anglish upbringing, and a very different understanding of the history of her land, challenges abound—both socially and academically. But Anequs is smart, determined, and resolved to learn what she needs to help her dragon, even if it means teaching herself. The one thing she refuses to do, however, is become the meek Anglish miss that everyone expects.
Anequs and her dragon may be coming of age, but they’re also coming to power, and that brings an important realization: the world needs changing—and they might just be the ones to do it.
Meaghan's pick was...Image
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys [2022]
On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm--and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force.
The watershed networks aren't ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they rose up to exile the last corporations to a few artificial islands, escape the dominance of nation-states, and reorganize humanity around the hope of keeping their world liveable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they've started to heal the wounded planet.
But now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if any one accepts the aliens' offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone’s eyes turned skyward, everything hinges on the success of Judy's effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species.
Leanna's pick was...Image
Thrum by Meg Smitherman [2024]
Ami awakes from years in stasis to find she’s at the edges of deep space, and the only surviving member of her crew. Utterly alone and unable to contact Earth, she sends out a distress beacon, not expecting a response. When she gets one from a being who calls himself Dorian, she’s welcomed onto his ship as he offers his assistance in any way he can. But nothing on Dorian’s ship is as it seems. And as Ami tries to navigate the maze of hallways and first contact with this alien being, a deep hum begins to resonate, haunting her, as if the ship itself is whispering to her.
Marlin's pick was...Image
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman [2024]
A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.
But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.
Rachael's pick was...Image
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett [2024]
In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.
At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.
Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.
As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.
- Non-Fiction & Biography
Ainsley's pick was...
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We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history. It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction. Yet precious little rigorous study has been done on the broad phenomenon of dechurching in America. Jim Davis and Michael Graham have commissioned the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by renowned sociologists Dr. Ryan Burge and Dr. Paul Djupe. The Great Dechurching takes the insights gleaned from this study to drill down on how exactly people are dechurching with respect to beliefs, behavior, and belonging. This book gives the church in America its first ever deep dive into the dechurched phenomenon. You'll learn about the dechurched through a detailed sketch of demographics, size, core concerns, church off-ramps, historical roots, and the gravity of what is at stake. Then you'll explore what can be done to slow the bleed, engage the pertinent issues winsomely and wisely, and hopefully re-church some of the dechurched.
Cindy's pick was....Image
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn [2018]
Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home and livelihood is taken away. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.
They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.
The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.
Ro's pick was...
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Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer [2003]
Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses. Robin Wall Kimmerer's book is not an identification guide, nor is it a scientific treatise. Rather, it is a series of linked personal essays that will lead general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings, from salmon and hummingbirds to redwoods and rednecks. Kimmerer clearly and artfully explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.
Drawing on her diverse experiences as a scientist, mother, teacher, and writer of Native American heritage, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.
Margaret's pick was...
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Come By Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast by Neesha Powell-Ingabire [2024]
In May of 2020, Neesha Powell-Ingabire’s hometown became infamous after a viral video spread of white vigilantes killing a Black man named Ahmaud Arbery. The small coastal city of Brunswick, Georgia became synonymous with this tragedy, which, along with the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, spurred an international movement that summer to end white supremacy.
Neesha Powell-Ingabire, a millennial journalist, essayist, and organizer, grew up in Brunswick feeling alienated as a Black queer and disabled girl in a fraught racial and political environment. Come By A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast traces the genealogy of systemic racial violence while paying homage to the area’s long history of Black resistance and culture keeping. Powell-Ingabire probes her personal connection to past and the victorious campaign to remove Brunswick’s Confederate monument out of a public park, modern echoes of ancestral practices such as farming, fishing, and basket weaving, the fight for Geechee land in Sapelo Island, and the mass suicide of the Igbo people, who drowned themselves in Dunbar Creek rather than be enslaved.Charissa's pick was...
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On Freedom by Timothy Snyder [2024]
Timothy Snyder has been called “the leading interpreter of our dark times.” As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarianism here and abroad. His book On Tyranny has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Now, in this tour de force of political philosophy, he helps us see exactly what we’re fighting for.Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state We think we're free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from, as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.On Freedom takes us on a thrilling intellectual journey. Drawing on the work of philosophers and political dissidents, conversations with contemporary thinkers, and his own experiences coming of age in a time of American exceptionalism, Snyder identifies the practices and attitudes—the habits of mind—that will allow us to design a government in which we and future generations can flourish. We come to appreciate the importance of traditions (championed by the right) but also the role of institutions (the purview of the left). Intimate yet ambitious, this book helps forge a new consensus rooted in a politics of abundance, generosity, and grace.
Keegan's pick was...
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Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare [1999]
First published in 1999, Exile & Pride established Eli Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. With this critical tenth-anniversary edition, the groundbreaking publication secures its position as essential to the history of queer and disability politics, and, through significant new material that boldly interrogates and advances the original text, to its future as well. Clare’s writing on his experiences as a genderqueer activist/writer with cerebral palsy permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation, and yet Exile & Pride is much too great in scope to be defined by even these two issues. Instead it offers an intersectional framework for understanding how our bodies actually experience the politics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the heart of Clare’s exploration of environmental destruction, white working-class identity, queer community, disabled sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, coalition politics, and his own gender transition is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible for everyone.
Blending prose and theory, personal experience and political debate, anger and compassion, Exile & Pride provides a window into a world where our whole selves in all their complexity can be loved and accepted.
Marlin's pick was...
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2022 winner of two gold medals from the Florida Authors and Writers Association, one for general nonfiction and the other for coffee table book. Besides writing the text, the author took all of the contemporary photos in the book. The rivers in Florida are steeped in a rich natural and cultural history. They are avenues through time, allowing us to wrap ourselves in a rich historical tapestry, and they are showcases for wildlife and natural beauty. On some rivers, idyllic scenes are revealed bend after bend for miles and sometimes days, appearing to have changed little since early native people plied the waters in dugout canoes. Imagine gliding along a clear watercourse beneath a leafy canopy of maple, cypress, and gum. The current swirls eelgrass in undulating patterns as schools of silvery mullet shoot past. Ahead, a manatee's snout breaks the surface in a loud whoosh, its gray body lumbering slowly along and showing little fear as you pass by. A red-shouldered hawk cries and soars over treetops while a black anhinga stretches long wings to dry while perched on a cypress knee. Whether you are viewing a river from the land or, especially, a kayak, canoe, or paddleboard, let Florida's Rivers be your guide to celebrating the state's treasures. "Alderson's prose speaks to Florida's environment as vividly as his photography, with historical accounts weaving in and out of the story like narrative. This is not so much a guidebook as a piece of inspiration, a collection of words and images that tempt you toward riverbanks. "Paige Aigret, Tallahassee Magazine, May/June 2023
Ashley's pick was...
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A vital source of solace and compassion for those whose loved one has dementia, rooted in the author’s unflinching experience of caring for her mother
Dementia enters life through the back door, slipping in unnoticed. Once it’s there, it can make you feel powerless, angry, and unsure how to move forward. When her mother developed dementia, Eveline Helmink wasn’t prepared. As she learned firsthand, when your loved one is suffering, it takes a toll on you, too.
As you navigate finding professional caregivers and adapting to your loved one’s behavioral challenges, this book will help you confront all the complexities of the experience.
When a Loved One Has Dementia weaves together Eveline’s unflinching personal account and her empathetic guidance, allowing you to walk through the endless tunnel and illuminating the path to acceptance, forgiveness, and love.
Tina's pick was...Image
Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses by M.G. Sheftall [2024]
The stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors - lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 - the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its payload over Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings. In this heart-stopping account they relay what they experienced on the day the city was obliterated, and what it has been like to live with those memories and scars over the rest of their lives.M. G. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who were just adolescents at the time but have lived well into their nineties, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens' lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and years afterwards. Fluent in spoken and written Japanese, his deep immersion in Japanese society has given him unprecedented access to the hibakusha in their waning years. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories.The result is a deeply human history of an unfathomable tragedy, which continues to haunt the world today.
Daniela's pick was...Image
More people than ever are discovering Dungeons and Dragons, the tabletop roleplay system that lets you adventure with your friends while playing as fantasy characters. But planning and running your own game can be intimidating to newcomers - where do you start?
Justin Alexander is here to help. He’s the writer behind The Alexandrian, a well-known trove for new and seasoned Dungeon Masters alike. He’s known for teaching readers about gameplay mechanics in a fun, approachable way, breaking down each aspect of gameplay to its barest essentials. He’s here to teach you everything you need to know about D&D, from understanding and enforcing rules to designing your own dungeons. There’s no need to suffer through dense game books – tabletop is meant to be fun, and Justin makes it easier than ever to start a successful campaign that your players will remember for years.
With detailed maps, schematics, tables and more, this book includes a variety of tools and advice for any aspiring game master, so you can build your world and get right to playing.
- Young Adult
Charissa's pick was...
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The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko [2024]
In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, country bumpkin Small Sade needs a job—preferably as a maid, with employers who don’t mind her unique appearance and unlucky foot. But before she can be hired, she accidentally binds herself to a powerful god known only as the Crocodile, who is rumored to devour pretty girls. Small Sade entrances the Crocodile with her secret: she is a Curse Eater, gifted with the ability to alter people’s fates by cleaning their houses.
The handsome god warns that their fates are bound, but Small Sade evades him, launching herself into a new career as the Curse Eater of a swanky inn. She is determined to impress the wealthy inhabitants and earn her place in Oluwan City . . . assuming her secret-filled past—and the revolutionary ambitions of the Crocodile God—don’t catch up with her.
But maybe there is more to Small Sade. And maybe everyone in Oluwan City deserves more, too, from the maids all the way to the Anointed Ones.Sofia's pick was...
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Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou [2023]
Descendants of the Fates are always born in threes: one to weave, one to draw, and one to cut the threads that connect people to the things they love and to life itself. The Ora sisters are no exception. Io, the youngest, uses her Fate-born abilities as a private investigator in the half-sunken city of Alante.
But her latest job leads her to a horrific discovery: somebody is abducting women, maiming their life-threads, and setting the resulting wraiths loose in the city to kill. To find the culprit, she must work alongside Edei Rhuna, the right hand of the infamous Mob Queen—and the boy with whom she shares a rare fate-thread linking them as soul mates before they’ve even met.
But the investigation turns personal when Io's estranged oldest sister turns up on the arm of her best suspect. Amid unveiled secrets from her past and her growing feelings for Edei, Io must follow clues through the city’s darkest corners and unearth a conspiracy that involves some of the city’s most powerful players—before destruction comes to her own doorstep.
- Children's
Ainsley's pick was...
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The Boo Hag Flex by Justina Ireland [2024]
The last thing Tasha Washington wants is to move from her home in Savannah to a trailer park in Middle-of-Nowhere, Georgia. But when her mother dies and Tasha is taken in by her father—a man she’s never met, who abandoned her mom when Tasha was just a baby—she doesn’t have much of a choice. At least, she thinks, she won’t have to spend much time with him—something that becomes clear when he dumps Tasha with her grandmother and disappears to be with his new girlfriend.
The Shady Pines trailer park seems like a miserable place to spend a summer, even before an elderly neighbor suddenly passes away. But then Tasha meets a girl named Ellie who says she knows what really killed old Mr. Harold: a terrifying creature that stalks the trailer park at night, sucking the life from its victims. Tasha doesn’t believe it, but when she discovers a book of hoodoo legends in her grandmother’s trailer, and more people around Shady Pines start to appear unwell, she begins to fear the stories are true—and that danger is much closer than she thinks.Beth's pick was...
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The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys [2024]
Remember, you are bound by the Official Secrets Act…
Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister Lizzie share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they’re living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amidst one of the greatest secrets of World War II—Britain’s eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley’s top minds to crack the Nazi's Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.
The Battle of Britain rages and Hitler’s invasion creeps closer. And at the same time, baffling messages and codes arrive on their doorstep while a menacing inspector lurks outside the gates of the Bletchley mansion. Are the messages truly for them, or are they a trap? Could the riddles of Enigma and their mother's disappearance be somehow connected? Jakob and Lizzie must find a way to work together as they race to decipher clues which unravel a shocking puzzle that presents the ultimate challenge: How long must a secret be kept?
Jenny's pick was...
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The Other Side of Tomorrow by Tina M. Cho [2024]
From never knowing where they’ll find their next meal to avoiding soldiers lurking at every corner, many North Koreans have learned that sticking around can be just as deadly as attempting to flee . . . almost.
Both shy, resourceful Yunho and fierce, vibrant Myunghee know this. So when they each resolve to run away from the bleak futures they face, it’s with the knowledge that they could be facing a fate worse than death.
While Yunho hopes to reunite with his omma, who snuck across the border years ago, Myunghee is reaching for dreams that are bigger than anything the regime would allow her to have. The two are strangers to each other until a chance encounter unwittingly intertwines their fates and Myunghee saves Yunho’s life.
Kept together by their dreams for a brighter future, they face a road plagued by poisonous jungle snakes, corrupt soldiers, and the daily fear of discovery and imprisonment. But with every step toward freedom, there is also hope. Will it be enough for both of them to make it to safety without losing each other along the way?