Albert Lea Public Library: Must-Read Books: November 2025

Adult Fiction

The French Kitchen
by Kristy Cambron

Boston's Kat Fontaine, who as a child spent summers in France, follows her brother into the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Working undercover as a kitchen maid in a chateau occupied by the Nazis, Kat faces danger helping the resistance and hears nothing from her sibling. After the war, she returns to uncover what happened to him, getting help from friends, including Julia Child. Try this next: Amy Lynn Green's The Codebreaker's Daughter.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
by Kiran Desai

While her relatives in India worry about her, Vermont college student Sonia fights loneliness by dating a famous artist, though his affection is costly. Meanwhile, ambitious Manhattan journalist Sunny hasn't told his widowed mother in India that he has a white girlfriend. Then Sonia and Sunny meet in this sweeping saga, a “masterpiece” (Kirkus Reviews) that examines identity, art, love, and belonging. For fans of: Real Americans by Rachel Khong; Dry Spells by Archana Maniar.

Photograph
by Brian Freeman

Private investigator Shannon Wells must unravel a decades-old mystery when her former client, Faith Selby, is found dead. With only a vintage photograph of a girl in a motel parking lot as a clue, Shannon traces the case from Florida to Michigan, confronting dangerous secrets that intertwine with her own troubled past.

Cursed daughters : a novel
by Oyinkan Braithwaite

A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition.

Otherwise Engaged
by Susan Mallery

A twisty, tender and wise look at how secrets can transform the powerful—and sometimes problematic—bond between mothers and daughters.

The Birdwatcher
by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Journalist Renee seizes the chance to cover the sensational trial of her former neighbor Felicity, a gifted student turned call girl accused of murder, but as she probes conflicting evidence and Felicity's cryptic silence, she uncovers an alibi that raises darker, more troubling questions.

Evensong : a novel
by Stewart O'Nan

The Humpty Dumpty Club is distraught when their powerhouse leader, Joan Hargrove, takes a bad fall down her stairs, knocking her out of commission. Now, as well as running errands and shepherding those less able to their doctors' appointments, they have to pick up the slack. Between navigating their own relationships and aging bodies and attending choir practice, these invisible yet indomitable women help where they can. They bake cookies, they care for pets, they pick up prescriptions, they sit vigil by the sick, and most of all, they show up for the people they've pledged to help. In the face of death, divorce, and the myriad directions our lives can take, the Humpty Dumpty club represents the power of community and chosen family.

The color of hope : a novel
by Danielle Steel

A hopeful new novel from Danielle Steel, whose countless #1 New York Times bestselling novels have made her one of America's favorite storytellers.

The Vanishing Place
by Zoë Rankin

After witnessing a shocking murder in the New Zealand bush, Effie is forced to return to the wilderness she once escaped, drawn by a bloodied girl who mirrors her younger self. In her debut thriller, Zoë Rankin delivers vivid, immersive prose that brings the wild bush to life while unraveling dark family secrets and past traumas. Recommended for fans of Jane Harper.

Queen Esther
by John Irving

Esther is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship from Bremerhaven to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. At St. Cloud’s, it’s clear to Dr. Larch that the abandoned child not only knows she’s Jewish; she’s familiar with the biblical Queen Esther she was named for. Dr. Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a family who’ll adopt Esther.
When Esther is fourteen, about to become a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows—a philanthropic family with a history of providing for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren’t anti-Semitic—nor are they Jewish. Esther is enduringly grateful. While she retraces her steps to her birth city, Esther never stops loving and protecting the Winslows—not even in Vienna.

House of day, house of night
by Olga Tokarczuk

A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of the living and the dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. There’s the man whose death – with one leg on the Polish side, one on the Czech—was an international incident. And there are the Germans who still haunt a region that not long ago they called their own. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history, but a cosmology.

Bog Queen
by Anna North

In 2018, a young forensic scientist, homesick and adrift in the North of England, is heading to a coroner's office to identify a body. But this body, found in a moss-layered bog, is not like any Agnes has seen before: its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, yet it is almost perfectly preserved. Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past: the death of an Iron Age queen more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with numerous groups who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Meanwhile, underfoot, there's the land itself: the wet, teeming colony of moss has its own dark stories to tell..

Adult Nonfiction

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
by Jill Lepore

Harvard University historian Jill Lepore's sweeping and accessible history surveys the creation and evolution of the United States Constitution, spotlighting key amendments that continue to shape the country. It's "urgent" (Kirkus Reviews) and "essential" (Library Journal) reading. Try this next: The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story by Kermit Roosevelt III.

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America
by Beth Macy

A deeply personal and eye-opening memoir from journalist Beth Macy, exploring how her once-thriving Ohio hometown unraveled over four decades. Blending family history, reporting, and social insight, Macy traces the loss of community, the rise of anger and division, and the human cost of economic and cultural decline in small-town America.

Youth Fiction

A Cure for the Hiccups
by Jennifer E. Smith

Is it possible to have the hiccups forever? In this delightfully fun picture book, a determined kid who's good at everything discovers that being patient and taking a deep breath may be the perfect place to start. When Max gets a persistent case of the hiccups, she tries everything to make them go away. She tries holding her breath. She tries drinking water upside down. She tries standing on her head and doing a somersault, but nothing works. The only way to get rid of the hiccups is to wait, says her grandmother. But Max doesn't have time to wait Soon, her imagination runs wild. What if she sets a record for the longest case of hiccups? Will doctors study her? Will babies stare at her? And what if, when she becomes president, the entire world hears her hiccup? But then, she starts to listen to the leaves rustling in the wind and feels the sun on her face. She takes a breath, she pauses, she waits...and the unexpected occurs. Jennifer E. Smith's imaginative and funny picture book, with bright illustrations by Brandon James Scott, reminds children--and adults--that discovering the solution to a problem sometimes requires taking a few breaths and slowing down.

War Games
by Alan Gratz

Desperate to help her poor family, American gymnast Evie competes in the 1936 Berlin Olympics with a secret goal: to join with other Olympians in a high-stakes attempt to steal Nazi gold. Fans of author Alan Gratz will know to expect fascinating details and gripping twists in this historical heist thriller.

A Curious Kind of Magic
by Mara Rutherford

Seventeen-year-old Willow Stokes gets by selling fraudulent charms and magical items at her father's shoppe, but when outlander Brianna unintentionally turns her fake wares real, the girls' paths intertwine as they search for a missing grimoire and try to break Brianna's curse.

Fake Skating
by Lynn Painter

A lot has changed since Dani and Alec fell out of touch in middle school. Finally reunited in hockey-obsessed Southview, Minnesota, they hatch a fake dating scheme that forces them to confront their complicated past. Read-alikes: Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick’s Make My Wish Come True; Ellen O'Clover’s Seven Percent of Ro Devereux.

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