|
|
|
|
Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick by Caro Claire BurkeA social media celebrity, a wife and mother who sells her fantasy pioneer lifestyle of sourdough and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of followers, suddenly wakes up cold, dirty, and hungry in the year 1805 and must uncover the nature (hoax, reality show, test from God?) of her terrifying new existence in this sensational debut novel. This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
One Sun Only: Stories by Camille BordasA young woman takes stock after the burglary of her apartment. A teenager becomes obsessed with the obituaries in a weekly magazine. Grandchildren mourn the grandparents who loved them and the grandparents who didn't. Painters and almost-painters try to distinguish Good Art from Bad Art. People grapple with life-altering illness, unrequited love, and promises they have every intention of keeping. In these sinewy, thoughtful stories, Camille Bordas delves into the mysteries of life, death, and all that happens in between. At once darkly funny and poignantly self-aware, Bordas's writing offers a window into our shared, flawed humanity without insisting on a perfect understanding of our experiences.
|
|
|
|
Transcription by Ben LernerThe narrator of Ben Lerner's new novel has traveled to Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail from the future and the past simultaneously and who reenchants the air when he speaks. When the narrator drops his phone in the hotel sink he arrives at Thomas's house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world. One of the first great novels about the early days of COVID, it is also a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory.
|
|
|
|
Half His Age by Jennette McCurdyWaldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: her creative writing teacher with the wife and kid and mortgage, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn't know why she wants him. His life experience? The fact that he knows things that she doesn't? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it's just enough that he sees her when no one else does. Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning teen who disregards all obstacles--or attempts to overcome them--in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
Famesick: A Memoir by Lena DunhamIn this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
Sharp Objects by Gillian FlynnFresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims--a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story--and survive this homecoming. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
The Luminaries by Eleanor CattonIt is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
Vampire Jam Sandwich by Casey LyallOnce upon a time a vampire took a bite of a jam sandwich ... and a legend was born. Now the vampire jam sandwich roams the streets, looking for MORE JAM. Will yours be next?
|
|
|
|
Look in the Mirror by Catherine SteadmanWhen Nina's father dies, she is left something in his will: a gleaming dream vacation home in a balmy tropical paradise. She'll find out the hard way that what you inherit from those you love can end up costing your life.
|
|
|
|
Animan by Anouk RicardPet therapist by day, animal-morphing pet detective by night--fear not, Animan's on the case! Inspired by the 1980s TV series Manimal, award-winning cartoonist Anouk Ricard pairs her unique brand of absurd storytelling and impeccable comedic timing to deliver the riotously funny adventures of Animan, superhero pet detective. Winner of the 2025 Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, veteran cartoonist Ricard delivers a fresh take on the superhero genre, imbued with her signature slapstick sensibility, preposterous scenarios, and off-the-wall punchlines.
|
|
|
|
Small Things Like TheseOscar winner Cillian Murphy delivers a stunning performance as devoted father Bill Furlong in this film based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. While working as a coal merchant to support his family, he discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers truths of his own forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church. Available on DVD |
|
|
|
Stay True: A Memoir (Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Hua HsuKen, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, a first-generation Taiwanese American who has a 'zine and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them. Despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become best friends, a friendship built of late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking. Determined to hold on to all that was left of his best friend, Hua turned to writing. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle BurdenIn March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha's Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was gives way to someone braver, determined to use her voice. With unflinching honesty, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
Best Offer Wins by Marisa KashinoAn insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino's darkly humorous debut novel the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success--and obsession. Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house hunting in the Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo gets a tip about the perfect house slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband, Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it's publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand). As Margo infiltrates the homeowners' lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged--but just when she thinks she's won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove that there's no boundary she won't cross to seize the dream life she's been chasing. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
The Antidote by Karen RussellA gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraska town. Russell's novel is a reckoning with a nation's forgetting--enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
Python's Kiss: Stories by Louise ErdrichWritten over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters: ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father. Accompanied by specially commissioned artwork --an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter--these stories offer an opportunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America's most important writers.
|
|
|
|
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie DrayA fictionalized account of the professional life of Frances Perkins, who served as the United States's fourth Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945--the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and the developer of the social security program. Also available on Libby |
|
|
|
|
|
