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Book Discussion Collection |
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Mycroft Holmes: A Novel
by
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Co-written by the NBA All-Star, an original novel starring the enigmatic brother of Sherlock Holmes follows the early partnership between Mycroft, a rising star in the government; and his best friend, Cyrus Douglas; as they investigate a series of murders in Trinidad.
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The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
by
Diane Ackerman
Documents the true story of Warsaw Zoo keepers and resistance activists Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who in the aftermath of Germany's invasion of Poland saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish citizens by smuggling them into empty cages and their home villa.
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
Escaping Earth just before it is demolished to make way for a new galactic highway, reluctant galactic traveler Arthur Dent embarks on a series of off-beat and occasionally extraterrestrial journeys, accompanied by a variety of unusual companions. (A Walt Disney Pictures film, releasing June 2005, starring Martin Freeman, Mos Def, John Malkovich, Zooey Deschanel, & Sam Rockwell) (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
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Americanah
by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. By the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
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Professional Troublemaker: The Fear Fighter Manual
by Luvvie Ajayi Jones
With humor and honesty, and guided by the influence of her inspiring and professional troublemaking grandmother, Funmilayo Faloyin, Luvvie walks us through what we must get right within ourselves before we can do the things that scare us; how to use our voice for a greater good; and how to put movement to the voice we've been silencing--because truth-telling is a muscle. The point is not to be fearless. It is to know we are afraid and to charge forward regardless, to recognize the things we must do are more significant than the things we are afraid to do. This book shows you how she's done it, and how you can, too.
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The Power: A Novel
by Naomi Alderman
When a new force takes hold of the world, people from different areas of life are forced to cross paths in an alternate reality that gives women and teenage girls immense physical power that can cause pain and death.
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Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
by
Svetlana Aleksievich
The people of Chernobyl talk about their lives before, during, and after the worst nuclear reactor accident in history, which occurred on April 26, 1986 in the Soviet Union in Chernobyl, a disaster that spread radioactive contamination across much of Europe.
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The Japanese Lover: A Novel
by
Isabel Allende
A multigenerational epic by the New York Times best-selling author of The House of the Spirits follows the impossible romance between a World War II escapee from the Nazis and a Japanese gardener's son, whose story is discovered decades later by a care worker who would come to terms with her past.
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Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944
by
Stephen E. Ambrose
Recounts the initial airborne mission that paved the way for the Normandy landings, detailing the mission's preparations, hand-to-hand fighting, heroics, and importance.
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We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
by Josâe Andrâes
Chef José Andrés arrived in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island. The economy was destroyed and for most people there was no clean water, no food, no power, no gas, and no way to communicate with the outside world. Andrés addressed the humanitarian crisis the only way he knew how: by feeding people, one hot meal at a time. From serving sancocho with his friend José Enrique at Enrique's ravaged restaurant in San Juan to eventually cooking 100,000 meals a day at more than a dozen kitchens across the island, Andrés and his team fed hundreds of thousands of people, including with massive paellas made to serve thousands of people alone. At the same time, they also confronted a crisis with deep roots, as well as the broken and wasteful system that helps keep some of the biggest charities and NGOs in business. Based on Andrés' insider take as well as on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico, We Fed an Island movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and human-made, offering suggestions for how to address a crisis like this in the future.
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In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu
by
Tony Ardizzone
A richly detailed chronicle of the slow and steady emigration of a close Sicilian family to America in the early 1900s captures the individual stories of family members as they successive escape their feudal past for a better future.
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Life after Life: A Novel
by
Kate Atkinson
Follows the experiences of a woman, who, after being born on a snowy night in 1910, repeatedly dies and reincarnates into the same life to correct missteps and ultimately save the world.
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Alias Grace
by
Margaret Atwood
A finalist for the Booker Prize, a national best-seller by the author of The Handmaid's Tale tells the story of an enigmatic Victorian woman accused of a double murder and the psychologist who treats her.
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Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman, as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
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Sense and Sensibility
by
Jane Austen
Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love - and its threatened loss - the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are
to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
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A Man Called Ove
by
Fredrik Backman
A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.
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The Sense of an Ending
by
Julian Barnes
Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world
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The Widow
by
Fiona Barton
After Jean's husband dies, the community wants to know the real truth about the crime he was suspected of—but Jean has secrets of her own.
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The Paris Architect: A Novel
by
Charles Belfoure
A Parisian architect is paid handsomely to devise secret hiding spaces for Jews in his Nazi-occupied country but struggles with risking his life for a cause he is ambivalent towards, until a personal failure brings home their suffering.
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The First Ladies
by Marie Benedict
Initially drawn together because of their shared belief in women's rights and the power of education, civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt fight together for justice and equality, holding each other's hands through tragedy and triumph.
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City of Thieves: A Novel
by
David Benioff
Documenting his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he tried to secure pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake
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Alice I Have Been: A Novel
by
Melanie Benjamin
Octogenarian Alice, who as a child inspired Lewis Carroll's famous Wonderland character, looks back on a life marked by an implacable mother, her halcyon days in Oxford and the sons who went off to war.
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The Uncommon Reader
by
Alan Bennett
Obliged to borrow a book when her corgis stray into a mobile library, the Queen discovers a passion for reading, setting the palace upon its head and causing the royal head of Great Britain to question her role in the monarchy.
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The Mothers: A Novel
by Brit Bennett
In a contemporary Black community, seventeen-year-old Nadia Turner mourns the suicide of her mother, leading her to take up with the local pastor's son, but the resulting pregnancy and the subsequent cover-up will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth.
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The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
by
Katarina Bivald
A Swedish tourist opens a bookstore in Broken Wheel, Iowa, to honor her deceased pen pal and makes some unconventional choices that threaten to bring long-hidden secrets to light as she attempts to share her love of reading with the locals.
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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands: A Novel
by
Chris Bohjalian
Living in an igloo of ice and trash bags half a year after a cataclysmic nuclear disaster, Emily, convinced that she will be hated as the daughter of the drunken father who caused the meltdown, assumes a fictional identity while protecting a homeless boy.
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
by
Katherine Boo
A first book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother of a prospective female college student and a young scrap metal thief, in an account that illuminates how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by regional religious, caste and economic tensions.
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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by
Anthony Bourdain
A New York City chef who is also a novelist recounts his experiences in the restaurant business, and exposes abuses of power, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and other secrets of life behind kitchen doors, in a new portable edition that includes annotations from the author.
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Fahrenheit 451
by
Ray Bradbury
A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners, Guy Montag, suddenly realizes their merit.
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Wuthering Heights
by
Emily Bronte
The passionate love of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff mirrors the powerful moods of the Yorkshire moors.
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The Road to Character
by
David Brooks
The New York Times columnist and best-selling author of The Social Animal evaluates America's transition to a culture that values self-promotion over humility, explaining the importance of an engaged inner life in personal fulfillment.
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People of the Book: A Novel
by
Geraldine Brooks
Offered a coveted job to analyze and conserve a priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the volume's ancient binding that reveal its historically significant origins. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March.
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Solutions and Other Problems
by Allie Brosh
The creator of the award-winning Hyperbole and a Half presents a new collection of comedic, autobiographical and deceptively illustrated essays on topics ranging from childhood and very bad pets to grief, loneliness, and powerlessness in modern life. Illustrations.
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The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine
by
Alex Brunkhorst
Collecting quotes for the obituary of a legendary film producer, young journalist Thomas Cleary is invited by the man's eccentric daughter to tour the exclusive upper echelons of Hollywood society, where he pursues a romance with an enigmatic shut-in.
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Tell the Wolves I'm home: A Novel
by
Carol Rifka Brunt
Her world upended by the death of a beloved artist uncle who was the only person who understood her, fourteen-year-old June is mailed a teapot by her uncle's grieving friend, with whom June forges a poignant relationship.
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My Ántonia
by
Willa Cather
In the late nineteenth century, a fourteen-year-old immigrant girl from Bohemia and a ten-year-old orphan boy arrive in Black Hawk, Nebraska, and in teaching each other form a friendship that will last a lifetime.
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel
by
Michael Chabon
In 1939 New York City, Joe Kavalier, a refugee from Hitler's Prague, joins forces with his Brooklyn-born cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic-book superheroes inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams.
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The Last House on the Street
by Diane Chamberlain
From bestselling author Diane Chamberlain comes an irresistible new novel that perfectly interweaves history, mystery, and social justice. When Kayla Carter's husband dies in an accident while building their dream house, she knows she has to stay strong for their four-year-old daughter. But the trophy home in Shadow Ridge Estates, a new development in sleepy Round Hill, North Carolina, will always hold tragic memories. When she is confronted by an odd, older woman telling her not to move in, she almost agrees. It's clear this woman has some kind of connection to the area ... and a connection to Kayla herself. Kayla's elderly new neighbor, Ellie Hockley, is more welcoming, but it's clear she, too, has secrets that stretch back almost fifty years. Is Ellie on a quest to right the wrongs of the past? And does the house at the end of the street hold the key? Told in dual time periods, The Last House on the Street is a novel of shocking prejudice and violence, forbidden love, the search for justice, and the tangled vines of two families.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
by Becky Chambers
Centuries after disappearing into the wilderness en masse, the sentient robots of Panga return to visit with a tea monk and answer their burning question,“What do people need?” in the first novel of a new series.
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Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
by
Jung Chang
Traces three generations of a family in twentieth-century China, during which a warlord's concubine, a powerful Communist Party member, and a Cultural Revolution survivor witness Mao's impact on their nation and their livelihoods
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Skating under the Wire : A Mystery
by
Joelle Charbonneau
When a dead body turns up at her best friend's bridal shower, Rebecca Robbins, while trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner and track down the thieves responsible for a string of home invasions, must solve a murder and get her friend safely married with the help of her Elvis-loving grandmother.
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And Then There Were None
by
Agatha Christie
A killer stalks a group of ten total strangers on an isolated island off the Devon coast, in a suspenseful story of murder and retribution, set to a sinister nursery rhyme.
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Love Lettering
by Kate Clayborn
When a word of warning she had hidden in a wedding program one year earlier leads Reid Sutherland back into her life, skilled hand letterer Meg Mackworth finds both her heart and business in danger unless she can read the messages he is sending her before it's too late.
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Little Bee
by
Chris Cleave
The Somerset Maugham Award-winning author of Incendiary presents a tale of a precarious friendship between an illegal Nigerian refugee and a recent widow from suburban London, a story told from the alternating and disparate perspectives of both women.
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The Girls: A Novel
by
Emma Cline
Mesmerized by a band of girls in the park she perceives as enjoying a life of free and careless abandon, 1960s teen Evie Boyd becomes obsessed with gaining acceptance into their circle, only to find herself drawn into a cult and seduced by its charismatic leader. Reading-group guide available.
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Ready Player One
by
Ernest Cline
Immersed in a mid-21st-century virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty and disease, Wade Watts joins a violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's wealthy creator, who has promised that the winner will be his heir, in a book that is the basis for the forthcoming film.
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Between the World and Me
by
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Told through the author's own evolving understanding of the subject over the course of his life comes a bold and personal investigation into America's racial history and its contemporary echoes.
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The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
A special 25th anniversary edition of Paulo Coelho's extraordinary international bestselling phenomenon--the inspiring spiritual tale of self-discovery that has touched millions of lives around the world. Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom, and wonder, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different--and far more satisfying--than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
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Disgrace
by
J. M. Coetzee
Set between Cape Town and a remote farm in the Eastern Cape, this spare, unflinching novel of the modern South Africa traces the relationship between a farmer and his daughter.
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Harry's Trees
by Jon Cohen
When you climb a tree, the first thing you do is to hold on tight ... Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane works as an analyst for the U.S. Forest Service. When his wife dies suddenly, he is unable to cope. Leaving his job and his old life behind, Harry makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains, determined to lose himself. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana. She and her mother, Amanda, are struggling to pick up the pieces from their own tragedy--Amanda stoically holding it together while Oriana roams the forest searching for answers. And in Oriana's magical, willful mind, she believes that Harry is the key to righting her world. Now it's time for Harry to let go ... After taking up residence in the woods behind Amanda's house, Harry reluctantly agrees to help Oriana in a ludicrous scheme to escape his tragic past. In so doing, the unlikeliest of elements--a wolf, a stash of gold coins, a fairy tale called The Grum's Ledger and a wise old librarian named Olive--come together to create a golden adventure that will fulfill Oriana's wildest dreams and open Harry's heart to a whole new life. Harry's Trees is an uplifting story about the redeeming power of friendship and love and the magic to be found in life's most surprising adventures.
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When No One is Watching: A Thriller
by Alyssa Cole
Finding unexpected support from a new friend while collecting stories from her rapidly vanishing Brooklyn community, Sydney uncovers sinister truths about a regional gentrification project and why her neighbors are moving away.
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The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss
by
Anderson Cooper
A poignant correspondence between the CNN journalist and his iconic designer mother, exchanged in the aftermath of the latter's brief illness, shares a rare window into their relationship and the life lessons imparted by an aging mother to her adult son.
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Razorblade Tears
by S. A. Cosby
When his son Isiah and his husband, Derek, are murdered, ex-con Ike Randolph bands together with Derek's father, another ex-con, to rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys while confronting their own prejudices about each other and their own sons.
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Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others
by Stephen M. R. Covey
We have a leadership crisis today, where even though our world has changed drastically, our leadership style has not. Most organizations, teams, schools, and families today still operate from a model of "command and control," focusing on hierarchies and compliance from people. But because of the changing nature of the world, the workforce, work itself, and the choices we have for where and how to work and live, this way of leading is drastically outdated. Stephen M.R. Covey has made it his life's work to understand trust in leadership and organizations. In his newest and most transformative book, Trust and Inspire, he offers a simple yet bold solution: to shift from this "command and control" model to a leadership style of "trust and inspire." People don't want to be managed; they want to be led. Trust and Inspire is a new way of leading that starts with the belief that people are creative, collaborative, and full of potential. People with this kind of leader are inspired to become the best version of themselves and to produce their best work. In this "beautifully written page-turner" (Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor), Covey offers the solution to the future of work: where a dispersed workforce will be the norm, necessitating trust and collaboration across time zones, cultures, personalities, generations, and technology. Trust and Inspire calls for a radical shift in the way we lead in the 21st century, and Covey shows us how.
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Levi's Will: A Novel
by
W. Dale Cramer
"A family saga of pain and reconciliation set behind the closed doors of an Amish community. Spanning three generations, the story follows the life of Will McGruder, who having fled as a young man, seeks to heal the past by bringing his new family to meet his Amish relatives"
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Sleeping Arrangements
by
Laura Cunningham
A memoir of growing up in the Bronx during the 1950s follows Lily--the illegitimate daughter of Rosie--who, after her mother's death, is raised by a pair of eccentric bachelor uncles.
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The Hours
by
Michael Cunningham
A novel about three very different women--Virginia Woolf, Clarissa Vaughan, and Laura Brown--whose lives and destinies become intertwined spans the nation, from New York to Los Angeles, and follows them to a haunting and surprising conclusion. (A new film, written by David Hare, directed by Stephen Daldry, starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman)
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Second Place
by Rachel Cusk
Examining the possibility that art can both save and destroy us, this fable of human destiny and decline follows a woman as she invites a famed artist to her home in hopes that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and surroundings.
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Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
by
Matthew Dicks
A creative tale imparted from the perspective of long-time imaginary friend, Budo, traces his awareness of his advancing age and constant thoughts of the inevitable day when 8-year-old Max, an boy with autism, will stop believing in him, a progression that is complicated by a teasing bully and Max's abduction by an overly-possessive therapist.
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The Language of Flowers: A Novel
by
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Discovering the symbolic meanings of flowers while languishing in the foster-care system, eighteen-year-old Victoria is hired by a florist when her talent for helping others is discovered, a situation that leads her to confront a painful secret from her past.
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by
Annie Dillard
A collection of essays on the natural world during a year spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia reflects the author's interactions with her wilderness surroundings. Reader's Guide available. Winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize.
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Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War
by
Eva Dillon
In the summer of 1975, seventeen-year-old Eva Dillon was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a U.S. State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA’s highest-ranking double agent—Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov—a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon’s father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s. At the height of the Cold War, the Russian offered the CIA an unfiltered view into the vault of Soviet intelligence. His collaboration helped ensure that tensions between the two nuclear superpowers did not escalate into a shooting war.
Spanning fifty years and three continents, Spies in the Family is a deeply researched account of two families on opposite sides of the lethal espionage campaigns of the Cold War, and two men whose devoted friendship lasted a lifetime, until the devastating final days of their lives. With impeccable insider access to both families as well as knowledgeable CIA and FBI officers, Dillon goes beyond the fog of secrecy to craft an unforgettable story of friendship and betrayal, double agents and clandestine lives, that challenges our notions of patriotism, exposing the commonality between peoples of opposing political economic systems.
Both a gripping tale of spy craft and a moving personal story, Spies in the Family is an invaluable and heart-rending work.
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All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel
by
Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast. By the award-winning author of About Grace. A #1 New York Times best-seller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
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Dancing at the Rascal Fair
by
Ivan Doig
Anna Ramsey and Angus McCaskill engage in a fateful contest of the heart as they forge new lives in the beautiful Two Medicine country of Montana.
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The Whistling Season
by
Ivan Doig
Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent and perpetually whistling Rose and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris, endeavor to educate the widower's reluctant sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project.
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Room: A Novel
by Emma Donoghue
A 5-year-old narrates a riveting story about his life growing up in a single room where his mother aims to protect him from the man who has held her prisoner for seven years since she was a teenager.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
A collection of Sherlock Holmes mystery adventures, including "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-Headed League," "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," and "The Aventure of the Beryl Coronet."
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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
by
Angela Duckworth
Argues that focused persistence is more important than talent in enabling high achievement, drawing on the author's pioneering research and experience to counsel readers on how to promote optimal performance through perseverance
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My Cousin Rachel
by
Daphne Du Maurier
"From the first page...the reader is back in the moody, brooding atmosphere of Rebecca." -The New York Times
From the bestselling author of Rebecca, another classic set in beautiful and mysterious Cornwall.
Philip Ashley's older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose's beautiful English estate, is crushed that the man he loved died far from home. He is also suspicious. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman. But the final, brief letters Ambrose wrote hint that his love had turned to paranoia and fear.
Now Rachel has arrived at Philip's newly inherited estate. Could this exquisite woman, who seems to genuinely share Philip's grief at Ambrose's death, really be as cruel as Philip imagined? Or is she the kind, passionate woman with whom Ambrose fell in love? Philip struggles to answer this question, knowing Ambrose's estate, and his own future, will be destroyed if his answer is wrong.
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Rebecca
by
Daphne Du Maurier
A classic novel of romantic suspense finds the second
Mrs. Maxim de Winter entering the home of her mysterious and enigmatic new husband and learning the story of the house's first mistress, to whom the sinister housekeeper is unnaturally devoted.
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Remember Me this Way: A Novel
by
Sabine Durrant
On the first anniversary of her husband Zach's death, Lizzie goes to lay flowers where his fatal accident took place, only to discover that someone has been there before her, which forces her to realize that she didn't really know him—or what he was capable of.
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Margaret the First
by
Danielle Dutton
Dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess whose husband encouraged her writing and desire for a career, which earned her fame and infamy in England.
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The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream
by
Thomas Dyja
A cultural history of mid-20th-century Chicago traces the emergence of mass-marketing practices, technological advances and artistic development that profoundly influenced modern America, offering additional insight into the role of racial divisions, housing projects and migration.
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Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
by David J. Epstein
Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters, and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.
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American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures
by America Ferrera
From award-winning actress and political activist America Ferrera comes a vibrant and varied collection of first-person accounts from prominent figures about the experience of growing up between cultures. America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents' homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday-morning-salsa-dance-parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative. Now, in American Like Me, America invites thirty-one of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all. Ranging from the heartfelt to the hilarious, their stories shine a light on a quintessentially American experience and will appeal to anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up.
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The Turner House
by
Angela Flournoy
Learning after a half-century of family life that their house on Detroit's East Side is worth only a fraction of its mortgage, the members of the Turner family gather to reckon with their pasts and decide the house's fate.
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Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History
by Richard T. Ford
A law professor and cultural critic offers an eye-opening exploration of the laws of fashion throughout history, from the Middle Ages to the present day, examining the canons, mores, and customs of clothing rules that we often take for granted.
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This is How It Always Is
by Laurie Frankel
A family reshapes their ideas about family, love, and loyalty when youngest son Claude reveals increasingly determined preferences for girls' clothing and accessories and refuses to stay silent.
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The Ensemble
by
Aja Gabel
The addictive novel about four young friends navigating the cutthroat world of classical music and their complex relationships with each other, as ambition, passion, and love intertwine over the course of their lives.
Jana. Brit. Daniel. Henry. They would never have been friends if they hadn't needed each other. They would never have found each other except for the art which drew them together. They would never have become family without their love for the music, for each other.
Brit is the second violinist, a beautiful and quiet orphan; on the viola is Henry, a prodigy who's always had it easy; the cellist is Daniel, the oldest and an angry skeptic who sleeps around; and on first violin is Jana, their flinty, resilient leader. Together, they are the Van Ness Quartet. After the group's youthful, rocky start, they experience devastating failure and wild success, heartbreak and marriage, triumph and loss, betrayal and enduring loyalty. They are always tied to each other - by career, by the intensity of their art, by the secrets they carry, by choosing each other over and over again.
Following these four unforgettable characters, Aja Gabel's debut novel gives a riveting look into the high-stakes, cutthroat world of musicians, and of lives made in concert. The story of Brit and Henry and Daniel and Jana, The Ensemble is a heart-skipping portrait of ambition, friendship, and the tenderness of youth.
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The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by
Neil Gaiman
Storytelling genius Neil Gaiman delivers a whimsical, imaginative, bittersweet and at times deeply scary modern fantasy about fear, love, magic and sacrifice to reveal and to protect us from the darkness inside—a moving, terrifying and elegiac fable.
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Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by
Atul Gawande
A prominent surgeon argues against modern medical practices that extend life at the expense of quality of life while isolating the dying, outlining suggestions for freer, more fulfilling approaches to death that enable more dignified and comfortable choices. By the author of The Checklist Manifesto.
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The Woman in the Library: A Novel
by Sulari Gentill
In the Boston Public Library, on lockdown after a threat is identified, four strangers sitting at the same table pass the time in conversation. It just so happens that one of them is a murderer, but which one?
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by
Doris Kearns Goodwin
An analysis of Abraham Lincoln's political talents identifies the character strengths and abilities that enabled his successful election above three accomplished candidates, in an account that inspired the November 2012 film Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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On Juneteenth
by Annette Gordon-Reed
In this intricately woven tapestry of American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s recounts the origins of Juneteenth and explores the legacies of the holiday that remain with us.
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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by
David Grann
Presents a true account of the early 20th-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. A New York Times best-seller and National Book Award finalist.
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Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work
by Alison Green
From the creator of the popular website "Ask a Manager" and New York magazine's work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to navigating 200 difficult professional conversations--featuring all-new advice! There's a reason Alison Green has been called "the Dear Abby of the work world." Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don't know what to say. Thankfully, Green does--and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career.
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The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-centered Planet
by John Green
The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu - on a five-star scale. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection that includes both beloved essays and all-new pieces exclusive to the book.
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The Fault in Our Stars
by
John Green
Despite the medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, but when Augustus Waters suddenly appears at the Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be rewritten.
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Water for Elephants: A Novel
by
Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
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Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age
by Sanjay Gupta
The Emmy Award-winning CNN chief medical correspondent and best-selling author of Chasing Life draws on cutting-edge scientific research to outline strategies for protecting brain function and maintaining cognitive health at any age.
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Snow Falling on Cedars
by
David Guterson
A Japanese-American fisherman's 1954 murder trial becomes the backdrop of a story that follows a doomed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl, a simmering land dispute, and the wartime internment of San Piedro's Japanese residents.
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Homegoing
by
Yaa Gyasi
Two half sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations marked by wealth, slavery, war, coal mining, the Great Migration and the realities of 20th-century Harlem.
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The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig
A new novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived. By the internationally best-selling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.
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Exit West: A Novel
by
Mohsin Hamid
Two young lovers engage in a furtive affair shaped by local unrest on the eve of a civil war that erupts in a cataclysmic bombing attack, forcing them to abandon their previous home and lives.
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The Nightingale
by
Kristin Hannah
Reunited when the elder's husband is sent to fight in World War II, French sisters Vianne and Isabelle find their bond as well as their respective beliefs tested by a world that changes in horrific ways.
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The Dry
by
Jane Harper
Receiving a sinister anonymous note after his best friend's suspicious death, federal agent Aaron Falk is forced to confront the fallout of a twenty-year-old false alibi against a backdrop of the worst drought Melbourne has seen in a century.
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Living with the Devil: A Family's Search for the Truth in the Face of Deception, Infidelity and Murder
by
Lori Hart
A FAMILY'S SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH IN THE FACE OF DECEPTION, INFIDELITY AND MURDER. As the principal of his own law firm and known as "Mr. Condo" to his Chicago condominium clients, Donnie Rudd was at the top of his game. Charming, offbeat, and eccentric, he appeared on his own television show and taught at a local college. But behind the public persona of a successful lawyer, Donnie Rudd's life was unraveling as police investigated the death of his second wife, the murder of a local woman, and claims of fraud by several clients. The fascinating memoir by Donnie's step daughters describes the chaos of life with a sociopath as the allegations of infidelity, madness, and murder against Donnie interrupt their lives again and again. The sisters recount the riveting true story of events over a span of 40 years that will leave readers breathless and wondering how Rudd was able to evade accountability for so long. In the midst of the madness also lies a story of redemption and triumph as the family overcomes the dysfunction of their early tumultuous life.
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The River: A Novel
by Peter Heller
On a wilderness canoe trip in Northern Canada, best friends Jack and Wynn find their survival skills and longtime friendship tested by a wildfire, white-water hazards, and two mysterious strangers.
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The Sun Also Rises
by
Ernest Hemingway
A brilliant profile of the Lost Generation, Hemingway's first bestseller captures life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and spiritual dissolution of a generation.
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The Book of Unknown Americans
by
Cristina Henríquez
Moving from Mexico to the United States when their daughter suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras confront cultural barriers, their daughter's difficult recovery, and her developing relationship with a Panamanian boy.
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Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
Blends elements of psychoanalysis and Asian religions to probe an Indian aristocrat's efforts to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover ultimate spiritual truths.
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Summer of '69
by Elin Hilderbrand
A pregnant eldest sibling, a middle-sister civil rights activist, an infantry soldier brother deployed to Vietnam, and a lonely 13-year-old youngest child find their lives upended by troubling family secrets. (historical fiction)
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The Keeper of Lost Things: A Novel
by Ruth Hogan
Having collected a lifetime of lost objects in order to deal with the loss of his fiancée, Anthony Peardew bequeaths his secret life's mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and all its lost treasures--and the responsibility to return each one to its owner.
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The Dress Lodger
by Sheri Holman
In a novel set in London during the Industrial Revolution, a prostitute borrows a blue dress to attract a higher class of client and is shadowed through the streets by an evil old woman hired by the dress' owner to keep an eye on her.
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You are One of Them: A Novel about Secrets, Betrayal, and the Friend who Got Away
by Elliott Holt
A first novel by a Pushcart Prize-winning writer traces the friendship between all-American girl Jenny and Sarah, the shy daughter of troubled parents, during the height of the Cold War, a bond that is nearly shattered by Jenny's unexpected fame and plane crash death that Sarah learns a decade later might have been a hoax.
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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
by Gail Honeyman
"Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one."
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The Obituary Writer
by Ann Hood
An obituary writer searching for her missing lover at the turn of the twentieth century is linked to a woman considering leaving her loveless marriage in 1963 in this literary mystery from the best-selling author of The Red Thread.
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11. Verity
by Colleen Hoover
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read.
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The Word Is Murder
by Anthony Horowitz
London. Diana Cowper, wealthy mother of a famous actor, goes to a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home. Disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator, is assigned to the case. Hawthorne decides he needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz. Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself at the center of a story he cannot control.
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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.
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Brave New World: And, Brave New World Revisited
by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's vision of the future comes to life in his astonishing 1931 novel Brave New World--a world of tomorrow in which capitalist civilization has been reconstituted through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering--and its sequel.
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The Fourth Hand: A Novel
by John Irving
When a New York journalist suffers a horrible accident--his left hand eaten by a lion while reporting on a story from India--witnessed by millions on television, viewers rally to help him.
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
While playing baseball in the summer of 1953, Owen Meany hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother, and he becomes convinced that he is an instrument of God.
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Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
From her place in the store that sells artificial friends, Klara--an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities--watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In this luminous tale, Klara and the Sun, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
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Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.
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The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
When four seekers arrive at a notorious old mansion, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena, but Hill House is gathering its powers and will soon choose one of them to make its own.
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The City We Became
by N. K. Jemisin
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can feel the pulse of the city, can see its history, can access its magic. And he's not the only one. All across the boroughs, strange things are happening. Something is threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
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News of the World: A Novel
by Paulette Jiles
In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her family in San Antonio.
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The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
by Kirk Wallace Johnson
On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, Edwin grabbed hundreds of bird skins--some collected 150 years earlier--and escaped into the darkness. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? What became of Edwin and the missing skins? The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, The Feather Thief is a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
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The 100-year-old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared
by Jonas Jonasson
Confined to a nursing home and about to turn 100, Allan Karlsson, who has a larger-than-life back story as an explosives expert, climbs out of the window in his slippers and embarks on an unforgettable adventure involving thugs, a murderous elephant, and a very friendly hot dog stand operator.
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel
by Rachel Joyce
Jolted out of emotional numbness by a letter from an old friend who wants to say goodbye before she dies, Harold Fry embarks on a 600-mile hiking journey to his friend's side without supplies, an endeavor that stirs up memories of his unhappy marital and parenting experiences.
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Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
by Sebastian Junger
Explores the historical, psychological, and anthropological roles of tribal societies to examine the human instinct to belong to small, purposeful groups and how regaining tribal connections may be essential to mental survival in the modern world. By the best-selling author of The Perfect Storm and War.
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The Boy in the Suitcase
by Lene Kaaberbol
Red Cross nurse Nina Borg is drawn into Copenhagen's brutal underworld when she becomes the unwitting caretaker of a three-year-old boy who may be a victim of child trafficking.
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The Stationery Shop
by Marjan Kamali
The award-winning author of Together Tea presents a debut novel in which a young couple, separated in 1953 Tehran by a violent coup d'état, reunite by chance after more than half a century.
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Fever
by Mary Beth Keane
A fictionalized account of the life of Typhoid Mary, an Irish immigrant who moved to New York at the turn of the century and became a successful cook, until the Department of Health noticed the trail of disease she left behind.
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Burial Rites: A Novel
by Hannah Kent
Based on the true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland in 1829, a young woman accused of murdering her master is sent to an isolated rural farm to await execution and tells the farmer's family her side of the story.
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Happiness Falls: A Novel
by Angie Kim
Mia isn't initially concerned when her family fails to return from a walk, until her brother Eugene, who suffers from a rare genetic condition, returns bloody and alone and is unable to describe what happened to their father.
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Writers & Lovers: A Novel
by Lily King
A follow-up to the award-winning Euphoria follows the story of a former child golf prodigy-turned-writer and waitress whose determination to live a creative life is complicated by her relationships with two very different men.
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The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers
by Maxwell King
Drawing on original interviews, oral histories, and archival documents, the author traces the iconic children's program host's personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work.
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Flight Behavior: A Novel
by Barbara Kingsolver
Tired of living on a failing farm and suffering oppressive poverty, bored housewife Dellarobia Turnbow, on the way to meet a potential lover, is detoured by a miraculous event on the Appalachian mountainside that ignites a media and religious firestorm that changes her life forever.
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Orphan Train
by Christina Baker Kline
Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past.
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The Leavers: A Novel
by Lisa Ko
One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he's loved has been taken away--and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.
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The Dinner: A Novel
by Herman Koch
Meeting at a restaurant for dinner, two couples move from small talk to the shared challenge of their teenage sons' violent act that has triggered a police investigation and revealed the extent to which each family will go to protect those they love.
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Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
by Jon Krakauer
Traces the events that surrounded the 1984 murder of a woman and her child by fundamentalist Mormons Ron and Dan Lafferty, exploring the belief systems and traditions, including polygamy, that mark the faith's most extreme factions and what their practices reflect about the nature of religion in America.
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Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
by Ethan Kross
An award-winning psychologist reveals the hidden power of our inner voice and shows how we can harness it to live healthier, more satisfying, and productive lives. Tell a stranger that you talk to yourself, and you're likely to get written off as eccentric. But the truth is that we all have a voice in our head. When we talk to ourselves, we often hope to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead. When we're facing a tough task, our inner coach can buoy us up: Focus--you can do this. But just as often, our inner critic sinks us entirely. I'm going to fail. They'll all laugh at me. What's the use? In Chatter, acclaimed psychologist Ethan Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Interweaving groundbreaking behavioral and brain research from his own lab with real-world case studies--from a pitcher who forgets how to pitch to a Harvard undergrad negotiating her double life as a spy--Kross explains how these conversations shape our lives, work, and relationships. He warns that giving in to negative and disorienting self-talk--what he calls "chatter"--can tank our health, sink our moods, strain our social connections, and cause us to fold under pressure. But the good news is that we're already equipped with the tools we need to make our inner voice work in our favor. These tools are often hidden in plain sight--in the words we use to think about ourselves, the technologies we embrace, the diaries we keep in our drawers, the conversations we have with our loved ones, and the cultures we create in our schools and workplaces. Brilliantly argued, expertly researched, and filled with compelling stories, Chatter gives us the power to change the most important conversation we have each day: the one we have with ourselves.
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Ordinary Grace: A Novel
by William Kent Krueger
Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.
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The Lowland: A Novel
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Frequently mistaken for one another in spite of very different natures, brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue respective lives in rebellion-torn 1960s Calcutta until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Unaccustomed Earth.
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The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
An incisive portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life, in a debut novel that spans three decades, two continents, and two generations. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies. (A Fox Searchlight film, releasing Fall 2006, adapted by Sooni Taraporevala, directed by Mira Nair, starring Kal Penn) (General Fiction)
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Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America
by Laila Lalami
The acclaimed, award-winning novelist--author of The Moor's Account and The Other Americans--now gives us a bracingly personal work of nonfiction that is concerned with the experiences of "conditional citizens." What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth--such as national origin, race, or gender--that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today. Throughout the book, she poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained, keeping the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm, and pushes away with the other. Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together the author's own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture.
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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson
A compelling account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 brings together the divergent stories of two very different men who played a key role in shaping the history of the event--visionary architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and Dr. Henry H. Holmes, an insatiable and charming serial killer who lured women to their deaths.
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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
by Erik Larson
The best-selling author of Devil in the White City documents the efforts of first American ambassador to Hitler's Germany William E. Dodd to acclimate to a residence in an increasingly violent city where he is forced to associate with the Nazis while his daughter pursues a relationship with Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels.
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Broken (in the Best Possible Way)
by Jenny Lawson
The award-winning humorist and author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened shares candid reflections on such topics as her experimental treatment for depression, her escape from three bears and her business ideas for "Shark Tank." Illustrations.
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Go Set a Watchman
by Harper Lee
A highly anticipated release of a newly discovered early work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird continues the stories of iconic characters 20 years later during turbulent 1950s America.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a young girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
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Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness
by Ingrid Fetell Lee
Have you ever wondered why we stop to watch the orange glow that arrives before sunset, or why we flock to see cherry blossoms bloom in spring? Is there a reason that people -- regardless of gender, age, culture, or ethnicity -- are mesmerized by baby animals, and can't help but smile when they see a burst of confetti or a cluster of colorful balloons? We are often made to feel that the physical world has little or no impact on our inner joy. Increasingly, experts urge us to find balance and calm by looking inward -- through mindfulness or meditation -- and muting the outside world. But what if the natural vibrancy of our surroundings is actually our most renewable and easily accessible source of joy? In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive, while another fosters acceptance and delight -- and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.
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We Were Liars
by E. Lockhart
A modern, sophisticated suspense tale by the National Book Award finalist author of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks follows the revolutionary activities of four friends who turn against each other in the wake of trauma, differing political views, and a devastating secret.
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H is for Hawk
by Helen Macdonald
Recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery
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Vesper Flights: New and Collected Essays
by Helen Macdonald
Presents a collection of essays about humanity's relationship with nature, exploring subjects ranging from captivity and immigration to ostrich farming and the migrations of songbirds from the Empire State Building
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In the Dream House: A Memoir
by Carmen Maria Machado
The author's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
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Bright and Dangerous Objects
by Anneliese Mackintosh
Discovering she is on the short list to become one of the first humans to colonize Mars, a commercial deep-sea diver reevaluates her commitment to starting a family with her partner.
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The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
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Station Eleven: A Novel
by Emily St. John Mandel
The sudden death of a Hollywood actor during a production of King Lear marks the beginning of the world's dissolution in a story told at various past and future times from the perspectives of the actor and four of his associates.
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A Constellation of Vital Phenomena: A Novel
by Anthony Marra
A first novel by a Pushcart Prize-winning writer is set in a rural village in December 2004 Chechnya, where failed doctor Akhmed harbors the traumatized 8-year-old daughter of a father abducted by Russian forces and treats a series of wounded rebels and refugees while exploring the shared past that binds him to the child.
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The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World
by Tim Marshall
Tim Marshall's global bestseller Prisoners of Geography offered us a "fresh way of looking at maps" (The New York Times Book Review), showing how every nation's choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn't changed, but the world has. Now, in this revelatory new book, Marshall takes us into ten regions that are set to shape global politics and power. Find out why the Earth's atmosphere is the world's next battleground; why the fight for the Pacific is just beginning; and why Europe's next refugee crisis is closer than we think. In ten chapters covering Australia, The Sahel, Greece, Turkey, the UK, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Space, Marshall explains how a region's geography and physical characteristics affect the decisions made by its leaders. Innovative, compelling, and delivered with Marshall's trademark wit and insight, this is a gripping and enlightening exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity's past, present, and--most importantly--our future.
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Life of Pi: A Novel
by Yann Martel
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.
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An Object of Beauty: A Novel
by Steve Martin
Lacey Yeager takes New York City's art world by storm, charming men and women, old and young, rich and even richer with her magnetic charisma and liveliness and experiencing the highs and lows of the art world from the late 1990s into the present day.
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The Widows of Malabar Hill: A Mystery of 1920s India
by Sujata Massey
Introducing an extraordinary female lawyer-sleuth in a new historical series set in 1920s Bombay! Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a law degree from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's legal rights. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen is going through the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on if they forfeit what their husband left them? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X--meaning she probably couldn't even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah--in strict seclusion, never leaving the women's quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts about the will were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger. Inspired in part by a real woman who made history by becoming India's first female lawyer, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp and promising new sleuth, Perveen Mistry.
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The Glass Room
by Simon Mawer
Newlyweds Viktor and Liesel live in decadence in their new, modern home which they name the "Landauer House," until the Germans' destructive procession across Europe force them to leave for America.
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The Blackhouse: A Novel
by Peter May
When a grisly murder occurs on a Scottish island, Edinburgh detective Fin Macleod must confront his past if he is ever going to discover if the killing has a connection to another one that took place on the mainland.
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Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
by Frances Mayes
In a national best-seller, the author applies a poet's sensibility, a seasoned traveler's eye, and a cook's palate to the pleasures of the Tuscan countryside, where she began restoring an abandoned villa.
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Deacon King Kong : a novel
by James McBride
In the aftermath of a 1969 Brooklyn church deacon's public shooting of a local drug dealer, the community's African-American and Latinx witnesses find unexpected support from each other when they are targeted by violent mobsters. February 21
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Five-Carat Soul
by James McBride
Exciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird. The stories in Five-Carat Soul--none of them ever published before--spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic--all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. And members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their own messy and hilarious lives. As McBride did in his National Book award-winning The Good Lord Bird and his bestselling The Color of Water, he writes with humor and insight about how we struggle to understand who we are in a world we don't fully comprehend. The result is a surprising, perceptive, and evocative collection of stories that is also a moving exploration of our human condition.
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
Working in Gaborone, Botswana, sleuth Precious Ramotswe investigates several local mysteries, including a search for a missing boy and the case of the clinic doctor with different personalities for different days of the week.
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Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies.
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Atonement: A Novel
by Ian McEwan
In 1935 England, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses an event involving her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie Turner, and she becomes the victim of her own imagination, which leads her on a lifelong search for truth and absolution.
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Every Heart a Doorway
by Seanan McGuire
"Sent away to a home for children who have tumbled into fantastical other worlds and are looking for ways to return, Nancy triggers dark changes among her fellow schoolmates and resolves to expose the truth when a child dies under suspicious magical circumstances. By the best-selling author of the "InCryptid" series.
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Celia, A Slave
by Melton Alonza McLaurin
A true story about the abuse and execution of an enslaved Black woman in antebellum Missouri
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Sutton
by J. R. Moehringer
A fictionalized account of Willie Sutton, one of the most notorious criminals in American history, traces his life, his doomed romance with his first love, and his surprise pardon on Christmas Eve in 1969.
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Oona Out of Order
by Margarita Montimore
A young woman destined to wake up on her birthday to a random year in her life struggles through an out-of-order existence to reconcile her inner youth with the realities of shifting external identities, appearances, and period norms.
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Daytripper
by Fábio Moon
Presents key moments in the life of Brás de Oliva Domingos, a Brazilian writer and sometime journalist, and the son of a prominent author, as if each episode would turn out to be the day in which he was about to die
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The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat: A Novel
by Edward Kelsey Moore
Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean meet regularly at the first diner owned by Black proprietors in their Indiana city and are watched throughout the years by a big-hearted man who observes their struggles with school, marriage, and parenthood.
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Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel follows the experiences of a courageous socialite in 1950s Mexico who is drawn into the treacherous secrets of an isolated mansion. By the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow.
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The Night Circus: A Novel
by Erin Morgenstern
Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.
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The Chaperone
by Laura Moriarty
Accompanying a future famous actress from her Wichita home to New York, chaperone Cora Carlisle shares a life-changing five-week period with her ambitious teenage charge during which she discovers the promise of the 20th century and her own purpose in life. By the author of The Center of Everything.
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The Lake House: A Novel
by Kate Morton
Decades after the disappearance of her toddler brother shatters her family, successful author Alice Edevane is approached by a young London police force detective who triggers a series of events that lead to a shocking revelation. By The New York Times best-selling author of The Secret Keeper.
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The Secret Keeper: A Novel
by Kate Morton
Withdrawing from a family party to the solitude of her tree house, 16-year-old Laurel Nicolson witnesses a shocking murder that throughout a subsequent half century shapes her beliefs, her acting career and the lives of three strangers from vastly different cultures. By the best-selling author of The Distant Hours.
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Me Before You
by Jojo Moyes
Taking a job as an assistant to extreme sports enthusiast Will, who is wheelchair-bound after a motorcycle accident, Louisa struggles with her employer's acerbic moods and learns of his shocking plans before demonstrating to him that life is still worth living, in a book that is soon to be a major motion picture.
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The Boat Runner: A Novel
by Devin Murphy
Sent to a Hitler Youth Camp to secure German business for his family's Dutch company, Jacob Koopman, the privileged nephew of a fisherman, finds his world upended by the outbreak of the war, which eventually forces him to make a transformative decision about his life purpose.
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If the Shoe Fits
by Julie Murphy
A fashion-obsessed plus-size woman fills in for a no-show contestant on her executive producer stepmother's popular dating reality show and becomes a body-positivity viral sensation overnight and could actually picture herself falling for the eligible suitor.
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You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why it Matters
by Kate Murphy
Despite living in a world where technology allows constant digital communication and opportunities to connect, it seems no one is really listening or even knows how. In this illuminating and often humorous deep dive, Murphy explains why we're not listening, what it's doing to us, and how we can reverse the trend. She makes accessible the psychology, neuroscience, and sociology of listening while also introducing us to some of the best listeners out there, including a CIA agent, a focus group moderator, and a bartender.
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Enrique's Journey
by Sonia Nazario
Describes one Honduran boy's difficult and dangerous journey to find his mother, who had made the trek northward to the United States in search of a better life when Enrique had been five years old, but who had never made enough money to return home for her children, in a poignant account that addresses the issues of family and the implications of illegal immigration
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Everything I Never Told You
by Celeste Ng
Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue--in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest of the family--Hannah--who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
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The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine
by Janice P. Nimura
The vivid biography of two pioneering sisters who, together, became America's first female doctors and transformed New York's medical establishment by creating a hospital by and for women. Elizabeth Blackwell believed from an early age that she was destined for greatness beyond the scope of "ordinary" womanhood. Though the world recoiled at the notion of a woman studying medicine, her intelligence and intensity won her the acceptance of the all-male medical establishment and in 1849 she became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree. But Elizabeth's story is incomplete without her often forgotten sister, Emily, the third woman in America to receive a medical degree. Exploring the sisters' allies, enemies, and enduring partnership, Nimura presents a story of both trial and triumph: Together the sisters founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Both sisters were tenacious and visionary; they were also judgmental, uncompromising, and occasionally misogynistic--their convictions as 19th-century women often contradicted their ambitions. From Bristol, England, to the new cities of antebellum America, this work of rich history follows the sister doctors as they transform the nineteenth century medical establishment and, in turn, our contemporary one.
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Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
by Trevor Noah
The comedian traces his coming of age during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed, offering insight into the farcical aspects of the political and social systems of today's world.
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How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
by Jenny Odell
A galvanizing critique of the forces vying for our attention--and our personal information--that redefines what we think of as productivity, reconnects us with the environment, and reveals all that we've been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world. Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity. doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious--and overdrawn--resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind's role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent.
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Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague
by Maggie O'Farrell
A ... moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580 ... A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.
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The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club.
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Bel Canto: A Novel
by Ann Patchett
When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxane Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan. By the author of The Magician's Assistant.
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The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
by Phaedra Patrick
Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater-vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden. But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam's death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam's possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he's never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife's secret life before they met--a journey that leads him to find hope, healing, and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.
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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
An ecological and anthropological study of eating offers insight into food consumption in the twenty-first century, explaining how an abundance of unlimited food varieties reveals the responsibilities of everyday consumers to protect their health and the environment. By the author of The Botany of Desire.
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Bewilderment: A Novel
by Richard Powers
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He's also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin's emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother's brain ..."
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Laziness Does Not Exist : A Defense of the Exhausted, Exploited, and Overworked
by Devon Price
Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles. Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity. Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the "laziness lie," including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history, yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.
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22. The Maid
by Nita Prose
A dead body is one mess she can't clean up on her own. Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and often misreads people's intentions. But no matter--she still throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid at the five-star Regency Grand. Her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette makes her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps, and returning guest rooms to a state of perfection. But Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find Mr. Black dead--very dead--in his bed. Perplexed by Molly's unusual behavior, the police immediately suspect her of murder. She's soon caught in a web of deception with no idea how to untangle herself. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had join her in a search for clues about what really happened to Mr. Black--but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?
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Abyss
by Pilar Quintana
With extraordinary perception and sensitivity, a young girl reflects on her parents' troubled marriage and tries to construct her reality by predicting, guessing, or interpreting what is not said, and what is half said. With a background of the small female universe comprised of well-to-do women for whom it is impossible to break from the customs and mold of a previous time, Pilar Quintana has constructed an intimate novel, with a narrative voice dazzling in its naivety.
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With Grace Under Pressure
by M. Rae
Japlo's loving family life is suddenly torn apart by a band of violent rebels in Liberia. Blinded and homeless, she depends on her small daughter, as they both courageously run for their lives. Across the globe, in the city of Chicago, a completely different world of struggles face a small and equally brave group of women: Eva must try to save her family from the damage caused by long held secrets. Anna is destroying herself with anger and bitterness toward a mother who has betrayed and abandoned her. Having lost her chance at love, Kristina tries to win back her high school sweetheart, but is overwhelmed by just how much she will need to change to make that happen.It is the strength of one woman, Gracie Carlson, that ties these stories of self-realization and survival together as she leads them to transformations beyond anything they had dreamed possible.An inspiring and heartwarming story of motherhood, friendship, and personal achievement, With Grace Under Pressure will bring you into the pulse of Chicago, the intimate lives of women, and the bond of runners everywhere.
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Such a Fun Age: A Novel
by Kiley Reid
A story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both
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All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
The testament of Paul Baumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I, illuminates the savagery and futility of war
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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
by Ransom Riggs
After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales, discovering disturbing facts about the children who were kept there.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
A compelling look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, the testing of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, space exploration, a Tennessee human decay research facility, and a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting.
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Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays
by Phoebe Robinson
New York Times bestselling author, comedian, actress, and producer Phoebe Robinson is back with a new essay collection that is equal parts thoughtful, hilarious, and sharp about human connection, race, hair, travel, dating, Black excellence, and more. Written in Phoebe's unforgettable voice and with her unparalleled wit, Robinson's latest collection, laced with spot-on pop culture references, takes on a wide range of topics. From the values she learned from her parents (including, but not limited to, advice on not bringing outside germs onto your clean bed) to her and her boyfriend, lovingly known as British Baekoff, deciding to have a child-free union, to the way the Black Lives Matter movement took center stage in America, and, finally, the continual struggle to love her 4C hair, each essay is packed with humor and humanity. By turns insightful, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartfelt, Please Don't Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes is not only a brilliant look at our current cultural moment, but a collection that will stay with you for years to come.
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Doc: A Novel
by Mary Doria Russell
After the burned body of mixed-blood boy Johnnie Sanders is discovered in 1878 Dodge City, Kansas, part-time policeman Wyatt Earp enlists the help of his professional-gambler friend Doc Holliday, in a novel that also features Doc's girlfriend, the Hungarian prostitute Kate Katarina Harony.
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Straight Man
by Richard Russo
The author of Nobody's Fool chronicles a singularly eventful week in the life of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., a once-promising novelist and now the middle-aged chairman of a university English department in hilarious disarray.
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Yes, Chef: A Memoir
by Marcus Samuelsson
The "Top Chef: Masters" winner and proprietor of Harlem's Red Rooster traces his Ethiopian birth, upbringing by an adoptive family in Sweden, and rise to fame as a New York chef, sharing personal insights into his challenges as a Black man in a deeply prejudiced industry.
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Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by Marjane Satrapi
The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.
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Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
by George Saunders
A long-awaited first novel by the National Book Award-nominated, New York Times best-selling author of Tenth of December traces a night of solitary mourning and reflection as experienced by the 16th President after the death of his 11-year-old son at the dawn of the Civil War.
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Tenth of December: Stories
by George Saunders
A collection of stories includes "Home," a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory Lap," a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient saves the life of a young misfit.
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The Five Red Herrings
by Dorothy L. Sayers
The supposedly accidental death of a painter who was universally disliked in a Scottish village prompts Lord Peter Wimsey to search for a murderer.
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Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel
by Maria Semple
When her notorious, hilarious, volatile, talented, troubled, and agoraphobic mother goes missing, teenage Bee begins a trip that takes her to the ends of the earth to find her in this new novel from the author of This One is Mine.
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The Revisioners
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine's family. Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine's descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha's behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine's converge.
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The Island of Missing Trees
by Elif Shafak
The fig tree in her parents' garden, which unbeknownst to her bore witness to their secret meetings decades ago, is her only knowledge of a home she has never known as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey--a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
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The Muralist
by Barbara A. Shapiro
Auction-house employee Danielle Abrams investigates the unsolved disappearance of her famous artist great-aunt when she discovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind Abstract Expressionist works created decades earlier. By the New York Times best-selling author of The Art Forger.
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Something From The Oven: Reinventing Dinner In 1950s America
by Laura Shapiro
A fun, lively history of the revolution in American cooking that took place in the 1950s traces the innovations, cookbooks, products, techniques, and marketing campaigns that changed the way Americans prepared food forever.
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The Cartographers: A Novel
by Peng Shepherd
When her estranged father is found dead with a seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, cartographer Nell Young soon discovers the map is extremely valuable--and that a mysterious collector will stop at nothing to destroy it and anyone who gets in the way.
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The Walls Begin to Crumble
by Jeaneen Sica
"If you could eliminate all pain, would you give up love?" When Maggie Sloan poses this simple question to her high school students, she's surprised by her own answer: could you live without love? For her, it's a resounding hell yes. Sure, there was a time when she was a hopeless romantic who was idealistic about love. That was until her "dream guy" crushed her soul and in a single moment her world fell apart. Now, almost six months later, she's replaced wedding plans with travel plans, idleness with exercise, a fiancé with two cats, and dates with lesson planning. Her heart is safe. No one can hurt her. Or so she thinks.
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization and gene mapping. Includes reading-group guide.
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Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan
After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.
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I Capture the Castle
by Dodie Smith
A classic, romantic novel from earlier this century is now available in paperback and tells the enduring story of Cassandra, a young woman who lives in poverty with her family in England and who strives to become loved as a writer and a woman.
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The Sun Down Motel
by Simone St. James
The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls. Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden there. Upstate NY, 2017. Carly Kirk has always been fascinated by her aunt Viv who disappeared from the Sun Down before Carly was born. Using a small inheritance from when her mom dies, Carly leaves college to go to Fell to figure out what happened to her aunt thirty-five years ago. Soon, Carly is mirroring her aunt's life, working as the night clerk at the motel, which hasn't changed since 1982. The guest book is still handwritten, the rooms still have actual keys, and a haunting presence still lingers. Carly discovers that Viv had been trying to unravel mysteries of her own--including a possible serial killer working in Fell. If Carly can find the answers Viv was searching for, she might be able to solve the mystery that has haunted her family for years.
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Travels with Charley: In Search of America
by John Steinbeck
The acclaimed author records his emotions and experiences during a journey of rediscovery in his native land, accompanied by his French poodle named Charley.
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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson
The executive director of a social advocacy group that has helped relieve condemned prisoners explains why justice and mercy must go hand-in-hand through the story of Walter McMillian, a man condemned to death row for a murder he didn't commit.
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Girl Waits with Gun
by Amy Stewart
Living in virtual isolation years after the revelation of a painful family secret, Constance Kopp is terrorized by a belligerent silk factory owner and fights back in ways outside the norm for early twentieth-century women.
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The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart
Traces the author's 2002 journey by foot across Afghanistan, during which he survived the harsh elements through the kindness of tribal elders, teen soldiers, Taliban commanders, and foreign-aid workers whose stories he collected along his way. By the author of The Prince of the Marshes.
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The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project against a backdrop of the budding civil rights era.
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Playing St. Barbara
by Marian Szczepanski
The secrets, struggles, and self-redemption of a Depression-era coal miner's wife and three daughters play out against a turbulent historical backdrop of Ku Klux Klan intimidation and the 1933 Pennsylvania Mine War. Their intertwined lives eerily mirror the 7th century legend of St. Barbara, patroness of miners, reenacted annually in the town pageant. Tested by scandal, heartbreak, and tragedy, each woman will write her own courageous ending to St. Barbara's story.
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They Called Us Enemy
by George Takei
The iconic actor and activist presents a graphic memoir detailing his experiences as a child prisoner in the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, reflecting on the hard choices his family made in the face of legalized racism.
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The Perfume Collector: A Novel
by Kathleen Tessaro
After receiving a large inheritance from a complete stranger, London socialite and newlywed Grace Monroe searches for the identity of her mysterious benefactor and uncovers the story of a unique woman who inspired one of Paris' greatest perfumers, which transforms her own life.
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Death in the Details
by Katie Tietjen
Maple Bishop is ready to put WWII and the grief of losing her husband, Bill, behind her. But when she discovers that Bill left her penniless, Maple realizes she could lose her Vermont home next and sets out to make money the only way she knows how: by selling her intricately crafted dollhouses. Business is off to a good start--until Maple discovers her first customer dead, his body hanging precariously in his own barn. Something about the supposed suicide rubs Maple the wrong way, but local authorities brush off her concerns. Determined to help them see "what's big in what's small," Maple turns to what she knows best, painstakingly recreating the gruesome scene in miniature: death in a nutshell. With the help of a rookie officer named Kenny, Maple uses her macabre miniature to dig into the dark undercurrents of her sleepy town, where everyone seems to have a secret--and a grudge. But when her nosy neighbor goes missing and she herself becomes a suspect, it'll be up to Maple to find the devil in the details--and put him behind bars.
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Rules of Civility
by Amor Towles
A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults witty Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow.
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Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood
by Dawn Turner
The three girls formed an indelible bond: roaming their community in search of hidden treasures for their "Thing Finder box," and hiding under the dining room table, eavesdropping as three generations of relatives gossiped and played the numbers. The girls spent countless afternoons together, ice skating in the nearby Lake Meadows apartment complex, swimming in the pool at the Ida B. Wells housing project, and daydreaming of their futures: Dawn a writer, Debra a doctor, Kim a teacher. Then they came to a precipice, a fraught rite of passage for all girls when the dangers and the harsh realities of the world burst the innocent bubble of childhood, when the choices they made could--and would--have devastating consequences. There was a razor thin margin of error--especially for brown girls. With a keen investigative eye and intimate detail, Dawn chronicles the dramatic turns that send their lives careening in very different--and shocking--directions over the decades. The result is a powerful tour de force on the complex interplay of race and opportunity, class and womanhood, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.
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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
The notable host of "StarTalk" reveals just what people need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
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Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel
by Shelby Van Pelt
After her husband dies, widow Tova Sullivan starts working at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, where she forms a special bond with a giant Pacific octopus who holds the key to solving the mysterious disappearance of her 18-year-old son, Erik, over thirty years ago on Puget Sound.
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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by J. D. Vance
Shares the poignant story of the author's family and upbringing, describing how they moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan that included the author, a Yale Law School graduate, while navigating the demands of middle-class life and the collective demons of the past.
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When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky
by Margaret Verble
Two Feathers, a young Cherokee horse diver on loan to the Glendale Park and Zoo from a Wild West show, is determined to find her own way in 1920s Nashville's highly segregated society. When disaster strikes during one of the shows, strange things start to happen. Vestiges of the ancient past begin to surface, apparitions appear, and then the hippo mysteriously falls ill. An eclectic group of performers, employees, and even wealthy stakeholders come together in this unforgettable and irresistable tale of exotic animals, lingering spirits, and unexpected friendship.
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The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
by Benjamin Wallace
A real-life historical mystery journeys behind the scenes of the secretive world of wine aficionados to describe the 1985 purchase of a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux for $156,000, the mysterious background of the wine, and the enigmatic wine collector who discovered the bottle, once supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, in a bricked-up Paris cellar.
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Hang the Moon: A Novel
by Jeannette Walls
After encouraging her younger step-brother to participate in daredevil activities leads to an accident, Sallie Kincaid is cast out of her family, in the new novel from the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Glass Castle.
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The Love of My Life
by Rosie Walsh
When Emma suffers a serious illness, her husband, an obituary writer, unravels her dark past, and she must somehow prove to him that she really is the woman he married, but first, she must tell him about the other love of her life.
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Beautiful Ruins: A Novel
by Jess Walter
The award-winning author of The Financial Lives of the Poets presents his most romantic and enjoyable novel yet that follows a young Italian innkeeper and his almost-love affair with a beautiful American starlet, which draws him into a glittering world filled with unforgettable characters.
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Joan Is Okay
by Weike Wang
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU physician at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who moved to America to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life according to their own cultural and social expectations. Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, their parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan's father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could imagine. Deceptively spare and quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on deeply resonant matters: being Chinese American right now, working in medicine at a high-stakes time, being a woman in a male-dominated workplace, and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it's a portrait of a remarkable woman so marvelously surprising that you can't get her out of your head.
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Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
by Jesmyn Ward
Living with his grandparents and toddler sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's terminal cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip. National Book Award winner.
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Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel
by S. J. Watson
Without her husband's knowledge, Christine, whose memory is damaged by a long-ago accident, is treated by a neurologist who helps her to remember her former self through journal entries until inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising disturbing questions.
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The Martian: A Novel
by Andy Weir
Stranded on Mars by a dust storm that compromised his space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, astronaut Watney struggles to survive in spite of minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that test his ingenuity in unique ways.
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Project Hail Mary: A Novel
by Andy Weir
The sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission to save both humanity and the earth, Ryland Grace is hurtled into the depths of space when he must conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
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The Personal History of Rachel DuPree
by Ann Weisgarber
Rachel, struggling to feed her family in 1917 South Dakota, struggles with her need to do what is right and her desire to stay with her husband Isaac, who will never leave their Homestead Act ranch.
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The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells
A complete and unabridged edition of Wells's classic novel of the future follows the Time Traveller as he hurtles one million years into the future and encounters the childlike Eloi and the disgusting Morlocks.
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All Systems Red
by Martha Wells
A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial intelligence. In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid -- a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot."
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Educated: A Memoir
by Tara Westover
Traces the author's experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family's paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn an acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.
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Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University
by Richard White
A premier historian penetrates the fog of corruption and cover-up still surrounding the murder of a Stanford University founder to establish who did it, how, and why. In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford co-founded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner's jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university's lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked. Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford's murder and its cover-up. Against a backdrop of the city's machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars and heated newspaper rivalries, White's search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford's imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had the means.
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American Spy: A Novel
by Lauren Wilkinson
Marie Mitchell, a Cold War FBI intelligence officer, joins an undercover task force to undermine Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary Communist president of Burkina Faso, who she secretly admires and comes to love, in a novel inspired by true events.
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The Family Fang
by Kevin Wilson
When their parents, performance artists who have dedicated themselves to making great art by sacrificing normality, plan one last performance, siblings Annie and Buster, returning home after their individual worlds collapse, are faced with a difficult decision.
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Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir
by Franz Wisner
A columnist and political spokesperson recounts how after being jilted by his fiancée, he strengthened his relationship with his brother, Kurt, by sharing a fifty-three-country, two-year vacation that was to have been his honeymoon.
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The One-in-a-Million Boy
by Monica Wood
After his eleven-year-old son dies, guitarist Quinn Porter does yard work for an aged Lithuanian immigrant, Ona Vitkus, whom his son had often visited and comes to a resolution about his son's death as Ona discusses his son's capacity to listen and learn.
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Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure
by F. A. Worsley
The full story of the doomed expedition of the Endurance and its incredible rescue from a seemingly hopeless situation in the deadly cold and ice of the South Pole offers an unrelenting tribute to an inspiring and courageous leader.
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Irmina
by Barbara Yelin
A graphic novel based on the experiences of the author's grandmother tells the story of a German woman who falls in love with Howard, a Black student, in 1930s London, only to have to return to Berlin, where she does not hear from Howard for thirty years.
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Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II
by Emily Yellin
A tribute to the contributions of women during World War II examines how the war transformed traditional women's roles, drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews to describe the experiences of nurses, factory employees, the military's first women soldiers, female prisoners of war, and others.
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Bread Givers: A Novel
by Anzia Yezierska
A young Jewish girl from New York's Lower East Side rebels against the tyranny and chauvinism of her immigrant father, determined to assert her freedom and independence.
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The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
by Farahad Zama
Working for Mr. Ali's matchmaking service in India, Aruna, who has no dowry and little hope of finding a match herself, discovers that sometimes fate has surprising things in store for those busy negotiating the love lives of others.
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Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
The Japanese Breakfast indie pop star presents a full-length account of her viral New Yorker essay to share poignant reflections on her experiences of growing up Korean-American, becoming a professional musician, and caring for her terminally ill mother.
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The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science
by Kate Zernike
In 1999, Nancy Hopkins, a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at MIT, found herself underpaid and denied the credit and resources given to men of lesser rank. Galvanized by the flagrant favoritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted MIT to make the historic admission that it had long discriminated against female scientists. The MIT sixteen were formidable in their respective fields: their work has advanced our understanding of everything from cancer to geology, from fossil fuels to the inner workings of the human brain. And their effort to highlight the inequity they observed would set off a national reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science that continues to this day. Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the story in 1999 for the Boston Globe, The Exceptions is the intimate and unforgettable story of Nancy Hopkins--a surprisingly reluctant feminist who became a hero to two generations of women in science.
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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry: A Novel
by Gabrielle Zevin
When his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A. J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family, and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life.
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I Am the Messenger
by Markus Zusak
The dull and drab life of Ed, an underage cab driver with a coffee-addicted dog, takes an unexpected turn when he accidentally stops a bank robbery and finds himself being placed in charge of watching out for the entire town per a visit from the mysterious Ace.
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Elmhurst Public Library 125 S Prospect Ave. Elmhurst, Illinois 60126 (630) 279-8696
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