The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter
by Brionni Nwosu

Born enslaved in eighteenth-century Georgia, Nella Carter still believes in the will to survive amid the most untenable of conditions, in the glory of life, and in the ultimate goodness of the human race. She asks that Death, doubtful and curious, allow her to live long enough to prove it. He's giving Nella all the time in the world. Challenged, Nella embarks on an epic journey across the globe and centuries. Each new incarnation records the joys and losses, and the friendships and heartbreaks, throughout her lifetimes. When she meets handsome and passionate professor Sebastian Moore—the first man to whom she has ever revealed her secrets—Nella yearns for the mortality that escapes her. She can't bear to leave this love behind. As Death keeps watch, has Nella's journey come to an end? Or is a new one just beginning?

House of Day, House of Night
by Olga Tokarczuk

When the narrator of House of Day, House of Night arrives with her husband in a village in remote southwest Poland, she knows no one. Before long, though, she discovers that everyone—and everything—there has a story. With the help of her neighbor, the eccentric Marta, she pieces together the fragments of the living and the dead. There's the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers 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 German soldiers, not long departed, who still haunt the region. Shard by shard, from the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these stories capture not only a history but a cosmology.

Song of Ancient Lovers
by Laura Restrepo

A reimagining of the legendary relationship between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon within a contemporary setting, shaped by displacement and migration. Bos Mutas, a writer traveling from South America to northern Africa, is researching the Queen of Sheba's legacy. This leads him through historical texts, artistic traditions, and present-day refugee communities. As Bos explores interpretations of the Queen as a figure of independence and influence, he encounters women whose lives reflect enduring themes of resilience and creativity, including a Somali midwife who guides him during his journey. Restrepo weaves together myth, history, and modern experience to examine the persistence of stories and their impact across time and place.

The Great Work
by Sheldon Costa

Alone in a frontier town in the nineteenth-century Northwest, Gentle Montgomery is grieving his best friend. Liam was an alchemist, killed when he tried to capture a creature that shouldn’t exist: a giant salamander that drives men mad. When Gentle’s teenage nephew Kitt arrives at his doorstep, the two set out together to track the monster down, so they can use its blood in an alchemical formula that will bring Liam back to life. It's a hard and haunted journey. The salamander produces surreal nightmares and waking dreams of a blighted, burning future. And Gentle and Kitt soon find themselves pursued by a bloodthirsty hunter, a sadistic judge, and a doomsday cult, all of whom have their own plans for the river monster. Armed with nothing but Liam’s alchemical notebooks, they must not only find the salamander but learn to understand it—and the terrifying visions it causes—before it’s too late.

I, Medusa
by Ayana Gray

Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else's story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents—both gods, albeit minor ones—she dreams of leaving her family's island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home. But when she is noticed by another Olympian, Poseidon, the course of Meddy's promising future is suddenly and irrevocably altered. When her locs are transformed into snakes as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Medusa must embrace a new identity—not as a victim, but as a vigilante—and with it, the chance to write her own story as mortal, martyr, and myth.

Dwelling
by Emily Hunt Kivel

The world is ending. It has been ending for some time. And then, one day, the ending is complete. Every renter is evicted en masse, leaving only the landlords and owners—the demented, the aristocratic, the luckiest few. Evie—parentless, sisterless, basically friendless, underemployed—has nothing and no one. Except, she remembers, a second cousin in Texas, in a strange town called Gulluck, where nothing is as it seems. And so, in the surreal, dislodged landscape, beyond the known world, a place of albino cicadas and gardeners and thieves, of cobblers and shoemakers and one very large fish, a place governed by mysterious logic and perhaps even miracles, Evie sets out in search of a home. A wry and buoyant fairy tale set at the apex of the housing crisis, Kivel takes us on a hapless hero’s journey to the end of the world and back again.

The Bookshop Below
by Georgia Summers

If you want a story that will change your life, Chiron's bookshop is where you go. For those lucky enough to grace its doors, it's a glimpse into a world of powerful bargains and deadly ink magic. For Cassandra Fairfax, it's a reminder of everything she lost when Chiron kicked her out and all but shuttered the shop. Since then, she's used her skills in less ethical ways, trading stolen books and magical readings to wealthy playboys and unscrupulous collectors. Then Chiron dies under mysterious circumstances. And if Cassandra knows anything, it's this: the bookshop must always have an owner. But she's not the only one interested.

A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
by Sangu Mandanna

Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Now she helps her great-aunt run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests' shenanigans, tries to keep a talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power.... Enter Luke Larsen, a handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and might just know how to unlock the spell's secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell.

Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
by Emily Krempholtz

Having spent her life as the right hand of a now deceased dark sorcerer, powerful witch Violet Thistlethwaite is now at loose ends. But she does know one thing: she doesn't want to be evil anymore. For once, she wants to sprout peonies instead of poison. The quaint town of Dragon's Rest, she decides, will be her second chance at life—a place where she can set down roots, open a flower shop, keep her sentient (and mildly homicidal) houseplant out of trouble, and quit dark magic after a lifetime of villainy. While Violet's vibrant bouquets and feats of plant magic soon charm the welcoming townsfolk, nothing she does seems to impress the prickly yet dashingly handsome Nathaniel Marsh, an alchemist sharing her greenhouse.

Wild Reverence
by Rebecca Ross

Matilda, born as a herald to the gods, is tested by abuse and betrayal as she grows and hones her powers. She has an inexplicable connection to Vincent, a noble human who she sees in her dreams. When the two finally collide in reality, their union challenges the balance between the divine and the mortal forever. For fans of: emotionally intense and romantic fantasy tales such as Alix E. Harrow's The Everlasting and Margaret Rogerson's An Enchantment of Ravens. 

Our next discussion:
Tuesday, February 3, 6:30 pm
Library Meeting Room on the Lower Level
Looking to read more Romantasy and meet other readers? Stop by for our Romantasy Book Club! The club usually meets on the first Tuesday of the month at 6:30, but we do recommend confirming details on our events calendar in case of changes. Don't forget to bring your broomstick!

Shield of Sparrows
by Devney Perry

The gods sent monsters to the five kingdoms to remind mortals they must kneel. I've spent my life kneeling—to their will and to my father's. As a princess, my only duty is to wear the crown and obey the king. I was never meant to rule. Never meant to fight. And I was never supposed to be the daughter who sealed an ancient treaty with her own blood. But that changed the fateful day I stepped into my father's throne room. The day a legendary monster hunter sailed to our shores. The day a prince ruined my life. Now I'm crossing treacherous lands beside a warrior who despises me as much as I despise him—bound to a future I didn't choose and a husband I barely know.

Our next discussion:
Thursday, February 5, 7:00 pm
Farthest Star Sake 120 N Meadows Rd, Medfield, MA
If you're a regular sci-fi reader, consider joining our Sci-fi Book Club! The club usually meets on the first Thursday of the month at 7:00, but we do recommend confirming details on our events calendar in case of changes. Copies of our next book are on reserve at the Circulation Desk. We hope to see you there!

A Psalm for the Wild-Built
by Becky Chambers

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of what do people need? is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?