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The Five-Star Weekend by Elin HilderbrandAfter tragedy strikes, food blogger Hollis Shaw gathers four friends from different stages in her life to spend an unforgettable weekend on Nantucket. The Five-Star Weekend is a surprising and captivating story about friendship, love, and self-discovery set on Nantucket. It will be a weekend like no other. Also available on Libby |
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Poetry Says It Better: Poems to Help You Wake Up by Ellen BurstynThe legendary actress reflects on her love affair with poetry and makes us all believers. We all want inspiration. We want to feel connected to something universal. And we want to be able to share that wonder with friends and loved ones. In this beautiful volume, Ellen Burstyn celebrates poetic magic and shares her favorite works. It is a perfect daily companion for everyone looking to deepen and add meaning to their life experience. Throughout, Burstyn's charming voice and luminous insights help readers meet her in this poetic celebration.
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The Glass Hotel by Emily St John MandelA novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it. Also available on Libby |
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Festival & Game of the Worlds by César AiraIn Festival, the genius postmodern sci-fi filmmaker Alec Steryx is the star guest of a film festival in an unnamed country. But he's brought a surprise: his nonagenarian mother. Half-blind and terminally cranky, she does nothing but complain, despite insisting on attending every screening and reception. As Steryx's mother gums up the works for the festival organizers, larger problems are in store ... A delightfully baroque comedy of errors. A loving parody of the institutions that support artists, a meditation on postmodern art, and a propulsive, surreal adventure.
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Cackle by Rachel HarrisonAll her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small picturesque village upstate. The people are all friendly and warm, her new apartment is dreamy. Then Annie meets Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie. She can't help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem...a little afraid of her. Sophie's appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power...but she couldn't be...could she?
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The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy TanIn 2016, author Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds flocking to the feeders in her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater--an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired. Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time--from before the pandemic to the days of quarantine--through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world. Also available on Libby |
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Go Gentle: Oprah's Book Club by Maria SempleAdora has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcee, she lives a contented life. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she's applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. Adora's carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger. Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past--which she has worked so hard to bury--lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she'll risk everything to get it. Adora Hazzard's journey of self-discovery will grip you from the start. Also available on Libby |
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Everyone's Thinking It by Aleema OmotoniWithin an elite boarding school in England, reputation is everything. Iyanu is comfortable observing from behind her camera until her photos are stolen and splashed across the school, each with a secret. Available on Hoopla |
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Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir by Melissa Auf Der MaurA remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock 'n' roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory. Also available on Libby |
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Reel Politik by Nathan GelgudA specter is haunting the cinema. A contrarian crew of small town theatre employees trade quips about directors, film criticism, and contemporary moviegoing, but underneath their banter and clashes with customers, an ideology begins to take shape. With the help of a dissatisfied cinephile and some witchy magic, the employees radicalize, take over the theatre, and seize the means of projection. What starts out as a workplace comedy simmers and then explodes into an absurdist Marxist-Leninist cinema-focused tract.
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Sublimation is a thrilling and provocative debut for fans of Severance that asks what you'd sacrifice for a different life. The border cuts you in two. When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an "instance". One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home. Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral. She doesn't know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life. How far would you go to live the choice you didn't make?
Also available on Libby |
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Strange Pictures by UketsuAn eerie and fiendishly clever Japanese puzzle mystery in which a series of seemingly innocent pictures draws you into a disturbing web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches. This psychological thriller is an exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . .A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning. A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message. A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality. Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the interconnected mysteries behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all.
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The Hounding by Xenobe PurvisEven before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbed to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and when one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before. The truth is that the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls--a little odd; a little high on themselves, perhaps--Something isn't right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it. Also available on Libby |
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The Tapestry of Fate: An Amina Al-Sirafi Adventure, Book Two by Shannon ChakrabortyAuthor Shannon Chakraborty sets sail into the second adventure of pirate Amina al-Sirafi as her quest to track down magical artifacts brings her to the island lair of a sorceress whose woven enchantments are impossible to flee. Available on Libby |
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The Everlasting by Alix E. HarrowSir Una Everlasting was Dominion's greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten. Centuries later, Owen Mallory--failed soldier, struggling scholar--falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives--and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again. But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una's legend-they'll have to rewrite history itself. Available on Libby |
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The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game by C. Thi Nguyen The philosopher, C. Thi Nguyen, one of the leading experts on the philosophy of games and the philosophy of data, takes us deep into the heart of games, and into the depths of bureaucracy, to see how scoring systems shape our desires. Games are the most important art form of our era. They embody the spirit of free play. They show us the subtle beauty of action everywhere in life in video games, sports, and boardgames--but also cooking, gardening, fly-fishing, and running. They remind us that it isn't always about outcomes, but about how glorious it feels to be doing the thing. And the scoring systems help get us there, by giving us new goals to try on. Scoring systems are also at the center of our corporations and bureaucracies--in the form of metrics and rankings. They tell us exactly how to measure our success. Metrics don't capture what really matters; they only capture what's easy to measure. The price of that clarity is our independence. The Score asks us is this the game you really want to be playing?
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Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer An aspiring archivist determined to begin a serious life takes up residence in the Italian countryside. Here, he becomes the assistant to the Baronessa, known to her friends as Coco, a flamboyant woman of ninety-two. Amid a chaotic and milieu of gin-swilling princesses, roaming boar hunters, nuns, and other local wildlife, he does his best to catalog the villa's extensive collections. When the Baronessa loses someone close to her, he becomes an accomplice in the acceleration of Coco's final plan: to locate the love of her life before it's too late. Told with the signature wit, charm, and humanity that made Less an international phenomenon, Villa Coco is a dazzling, sun-soaked ode to life itself, a meditation on how seriously we ought to take ourselves, and a bawdy ballad about becoming who we've always wanted to be. Also available on Libby
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An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana HerreraFor Manuela del Carmen Caceres Galvan, the invitation to show her paintings at the 1889 Exposition Universelle came at the perfect time. Soon to be trapped in a loveless marriage, Manuela has given herself one last summer of freedom--in Paris, with her two best friends. Cora, Duchess of Sundridge, is known for her ruthlessness in business. It's not money she chases, but power. When she sees the opportunity to secure her position among her rivals, she does not hesitate. How difficult could it be to convince the mercurial Miss Caceres Galvan to part with a parcel of land she's sworn never to sell? Tempted by Cora's offer, Manuela proposes a trade: her beloved land for a summer with the duchess in her corner of Paris. A taste of the wild, carefree world that will soon be out of her reach. What follows thrills and terrifies Cora, igniting desires the duchess long thought dead. As they fill their days indulging in a shared passion for the arts and their nights with dark and delicious deeds, the happiness that seemed impossible moves within reach...though claiming it would cause the greatest scandal Paris has seen in decades. Available on Hoopla |
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