Pierce County Library System: Read Your Way Reading Challenge: Try Something New!: January 2026

Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Political Life of Malcolm X
by Kehinde Andrews

In Nobody Can Give You Freedom, Kehinde Andrews draws on the speeches and writings of Malcolm X to upend the conventional understanding of Malcolm-from his alleged misogyny to his putative proclivity for violence. Instead, Andrews argues that Malcolm X embraced equality across genders and foresaw a more inclusive approach to Black liberation that relied on grassroots efforts and community building. Far from a doomed ideologue, Malcolm X was in fact one of the most important, and misunderstood, intellectuals of the twentieth century, whose lessons on how to fight white supremacy are more important than ever--

The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes
by Chanel Cleeton

A 2025 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee This captivating story is an ode to book lovers --Woman's World A mysterious book with a legacy spanning from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day unites three women--and their secrets--in this unforgettable novel from New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton. London, 2024: American expat Margo Reynolds is renowned for her talent at sourcing rare antiques for her clients, but she's never had a request quite like this one. She's been hired to find a mysterious book published over a century ago. With a single copy left in existence, it has a storied past shrouded in secrecy--and her client isn't the only person determined to procure it at any cost.Havana, 1966: Librarian Pilar Castillo has devoted her life to books, and in the chaotic days following her husband's unjust imprisonment by Fidel Castro, reading is her only source of solace. So when a neighbor fleeing Cuba asks her to return a valuable book to its rightful owner, Pilar will risk everything to protect the literary work entrusted to her care. It's a dangerous mission that reveals to her the power of one book to change a life.Boston, 1900: For Cuban school teacher and aspiring author Eva Fuentes, traveling from Havana to Harvard to study for the summer is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's a whirlwind adventure that leaves her little time to write, but a moonlit encounter with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. The story that pours out of her is one of forbidden love, secrets, and lies... and though Eva cannot yet see it, the book will be a danger and salvation for the lives it touches.

Fighting for the Puyallup Tribe: A Memoir
by Ramona Bennett Bill

A compelling on-the-ground account of Native activism in the Northwest A relentless advocate for Native rights, Ramona Bennett Bill has been involved in the battles waged by the Puyallup and other Northwest tribes around fishing rights, land rights, health, and education for over six decades. This invaluable firsthand account includes stories of the takeover of Fort Lawton as well as events from major Red Power struggles, including Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and the Trail of Broken Treaties. She shares her experiences at the Puyallup fishing camp established during the Fish War of the 1960s and 1970s, which led to the federal intervention that eventually resulted in the Boldt Decision. She also covers the 1976 occupation of a state-run facility on reservation land and the lobbying that led to the property's return to the tribe. Bennett Bill served for nearly a dozen years as a Puyallup Tribal Council member and ten as chairwoman, organizing social welfare, education, and enrollment initiatives and championing Native religious freedom. Her advocacy for Native children, especially those who had been adopted out of their community, helped pave the way for the Indian Child Welfare Act. Now in her mid-eighties, she continues to organize for Native rights and environmental justice. The book is full of vivid stories of her fearless testimony in courtrooms and press conferences on issues affecting Indian Country, and of the many friends and comrades she made along the way.

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert
by Bob the Drag Queen

In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say. [She] and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way: Harriet wants to create a hip-hop album and live show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her. She calls upon Darnell Williams, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed on a BET talk show. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have a short period of time to write a legendary album she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only create music that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts and learn to find a way to a better future--

Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise Forged in World War II
by Robert M. Edsel

Set during the horrors of World War II, Remember Us by Robert Edsel---#1 New York Times bestselling author of The Monuments Men---opens in Limburg, a small, rural province at the southern tip of the Netherlands. In the pre-dawn hours of May 10, 1940, Hitler's forces rolled through the city, shattering more than 100 years of peace in the Netherlands.

Amity
by Nathan Harris

New Orleans, 1866. The Civil War might be over, but formerly enslaved Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they've been promised. Two years ago, the siblings were separated when their old master, Mr. Harper, took June away to Mexico, where he hoped to escape the new reality of the postbellum South. Coleman stayed behind in Louisiana to serve the Harper family, clinging to the hope that one day June would return. When an unexpected letter from Mr. Harper arrives, summoning Coleman to Mexico, Coleman thinks that finally his prayers have been answered. What Coleman cannot know is the tangled truth of June's tribulations under Mr. Harper out on the frontier. And when disaster strikes Coleman's journey, he is forced on the run with Mr. Harper's daughter Florence--

Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays
by Eric Foner

From one of the most acclaimed and influential historians of the United States, an insightful guide to our history and why it matters.

Apostle's Cove
by William Kent Krueger

A few nights before Halloween, as Cork O'Connor gloomily ruminates on his upcoming sixtieth birthday, he receives a call from his son, Stephen, who is working for a nonprofit dedicated to securing freedom for unjustly incarcerated inmates. Stephen tells his father that twenty years ago, as the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork was responsible for sending an Ojibwe man named Axel Boshey to prison for a brutal murder that Stephen is certain he did not commit. Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth. At the same time, Cork's seven-year-old grandson has his own theory about the investigation: the Windigo, that mythic cannibal ogre, has come to Tamarack County...and it won't leave until it has sated its hunger for human blood--

The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom
by Shari Franke

From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.--

The Lost Baker of Vienna
by Sharon Kurtzman

In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war. Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother, and younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn't look like they imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe. Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father's recipes. As she tries to balance her love of baking against her family's need for security, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions--

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp
by Lynne Olson

Ravensbrèuck was [an atypical place], not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80% of them were political prisoners. Among them was a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance. Already well-practiced in sabotaging the Nazi occupation of France, these women joined forces to defy their German captors and keep each other alive. Calling themselves the maquis (guerillas) of Ravensbrèuck, the sisterhood's members, amid unimaginable terror and brutality, subverted Germany's war effort by refusing to do the work they were assigned. Knowing that they risked death for any infraction did not stop them from defying their SS tormentors at every turn---even staging a satirical musical revue about the horrors of the camp. After the war, when many in France wanted nothing more than to focus on the future and forget about those who'd resisted the enemy, the women from Ravensbrèuck refused to allow their achievements, needs, and sacrifices to be erased--

Make Your Way Home: Stories
by Carrie R. Moore

Gorgeous, resonant, and startling.--Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds Glorious.--Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies A debut collection of stories set across the American South, featuring characters who struggle to find love and belonging in the wake of painful histories. How can you love where you come from, even when home doesn't love you back?

For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising
by Fatemeh Jamalpour

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - A moving exploration of the 2022 women-led protests in Iran, as told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists Unlike anything I've read . . . A searing, courageous, and ultimately beautiful book filled with the spirit of the movement that it covers. --Ben Rhodes, author of The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic's dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians--mostly women--who took to the streets in one of the country's largest uprisings in decades: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Despite the threat of imprisonment or death for her work as a journalist covering political unrest, state repression, and grassroots activism in Iran--which has led to multiple interrogation sessions and arrests--Fatemeh Jamalpour joined the throngs of people fighting to topple Iran's religious extremist regime. And across the globe, Nilo Tabrizy, who emigrated from Iran with her family as a child, covered the protests and state violence, knowing that spotlighting the women on the front lines and the systemic injustice of the Iranian government meant she would not be able to safely return to Iran in the future. Though they had met only once in person, Nilo and Fatemeh corresponded constantly, often through encrypted platforms to protect Fatemeh. As the protests continued to unfold, the sense of sisterhood they shared led them to embark on an effort to document the spirit and legacy of the movement, and the history, geopolitics, and influences that led to this point. At once deeply personal and assiduously reported, For the Sun After Long Nights offers two perspectives on what it means to cover the stories that are closest to one's heart--both in the forefront and from afar.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
by V. E. Schwab

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1827. Boston, 2019. Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth--

Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp
by Tracy Slater

A World War II homefront action that many Americans would like to forget. -- Kirkus Reviews This cinematic and propulsive family saga casts a riveting spotlight on an ignominious episode in U.S. history. -- Publishers Weekly On a late March morning in the spring of 1942, Elaine Yoneda awoke to a series of terrible choices: between her family and freedom, her country and conscience, and her son and daughter. She was the child of Russian Jewish immigrants and the wife of a Japanese American man. On this war-torn morning, she was also a mother desperate to keep her young mixed-race son from being sent to a US concentration camp. Manzanar, near Death Valley, was one of ten detention centers where our government would eventually imprison every person of Japanese descent along the West Coast--alien and citizen, old and young, healthy and sick--or, in the words of one official, anyone with even one drop of Japanese blood. Elaine's husband Karl was already in Manzanar, but he planned to enlist as soon as the US Army would take him. The Yonedas were prominent labor and antifascist activists, and Karl was committed to fighting for what they had long cherished: equality, freedom, and democracy. Yet when Karl went to war, their son Tommy, three years old and chronically ill, would be left alone in Manzanar--unless Elaine convinced the US government to imprison her as well. The consequences of Elaine's choice did not end there: if she somehow found a way to force herself behind barbed wire with her husband and son, she would leave behind her white daughter from a previous marriage. Together in Manzanar tells the story of these painful choices and conflicting loyalties, the upheaval and violence that followed, and the Yonedas' quest to survive with their children's lives intact and their family safe and whole.

The Lilac People
by Milo Todd

In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin's thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend Sofie to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation. In the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him--not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies' vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation becomes fleeing to the United States--

Playing for Freedom: The Journey of a Young Afghan Girl
by Zarifa Adiba

A passionate musician growing up in the war-torn streets of Kabul takes her forbidden talents abroad in this triumphant memoir from debut author Zarifa Adiba. As an Afghan girl, Zarifa Adiba has big, unfathomable dreams. Her family is poor, her country mired in conflict. Walking to school in Kabul, Zarifa has to navigate suicide bombers. But Zarifa perseveres, nurturing her passion for music despite its sinful nature under Taliban law. At sixteen she gains admission to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, and at eighteen she becomes the lead violist, co-conductor, and spokesperson for Zohra, the first all-female orchestra in the Muslim world. Despite Zarifa's accomplishments--which include a stunning performance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland--her future in music demands a reckoning with her life back home. Many of the girls in Zohra are forced to marry, but Zarifa yearns to study, travel, and explore her independence. Her so-called bad girl identity puts her at odds with her culture and her family. Playing for Freedom is the deeply compelling story of a woman who dares to compose a masterpiece even with all odds stacked against her.--

Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths about Disability
by Melissa Blake

In the summer of 2019, journalist Melissa Blake penned an op-ed for CNN Opinion. A conservative pundit caught wind of it, mentioning Blake's work in a YouTube video. What happened next is equal parts a searing view into society, how we collectively view and treat disabled people, and the making of an advocate. After a troll said that Blake should be banned from posting pictures of herself, she took to Twitter and defiantly posted three smiling selfies, all taken during a lovely vacation in the Big Apple.

Blackbirds Singing: Inspiring Black Women's Speeches from the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century
by Janet Dewart Bell

An uplifting collection of speeches by African American women, curated by civil and human rights activist, scholar, and author Janet Dewart Bell. These magnificent speakers explore ethics, morality, courage, authenticity, and leadership, and Bell's substantive introductions provide rich new context for each woman's speech, highlighting Black women speaking truth to power in service of freedom and justice--

Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum
by Daniel Tammet

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Born on a Blue Day and Thinking in Numbers, this poignant, perspective-altering book celebrates the power and beauty of the neurodivergent mind, as told through the true stories of nine contemporary men and women on the autism spectrum.Tammet's exquisite portraits remind us that the variety of brains is every bit as essential as any other form of diversity.--Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree

For additional reading ideas, talk with your library staff

Pierce County Library System
3005 112th St. E, Tacoma, Washington 98446
253-548-3300
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