Recommended Reads
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Chez Bob
Bob, a bright yellow alligator intent on laziness, thinks, “Maybe if I ask nicely, a bird will fly in my mouth and down into my belly.” When that comes to naught, he hits on the idea of opening a birdseed restaurant for birds—on his nose—and figures he’ll get rich franchising it (“I will have diamond teeth and a solid-gold hat!”). But Chez Bob becomes so popular that its avid avian following builds a town around the restaurant, and Bob, now the proverbial small business owner, finds himself a pillar of the community. When he finally has the opportunity to get his mouth around his feathered patrons and neighbors, he makes a new choice. Shea (Who Wet My Pants?) puts a fresh spin on the tale of a villain reformed by spoofing contemporary rhetoric around the communal good: as a “positive role model for the birds I’m going to eat,” Bob even coaches a local bird basketball team. Shea’s always-striking art has a marvelous lightness here, thanks to the bevy of bird characters and a cheery tropical palette, making for a book that’s funny and lovely to look at, too. Ages 4–8. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Aug.) --Staff (Reviewed 05/17/2021) (Publishers Weekly, vol 268, issue 20, p)
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The Painter's Daughter
Psychotherapist and sketch comedy writer Howes (The Ladies) portrays sisterhood, family secrets, and mental illness in her intricate and vibrant debut. The novel takes place in late-18th-century Ipswich, England, where as young girls, Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are given free rein by their emotionally absent painter father and corralled by their society-conscious mother. Molly’s bouts of sleepwalking, blackouts, and memory loss have been increasing in frequency, despite Peggy’s attempts to help her sister in an era when mental illness was viewed as witchcraft and loved ones were shipped to asylums. Terrified of separation, Peggy shoulders the burden of her sister’s episodes alone, a responsibility that becomes even heavier when the girls are 12 and 13 and the family moves to Bath, where they must make a good impression so their father can bring in customers for portraits. The novel is rife with secrets—including a past the sisters’ mother refuses to speak about, forbidden lovers, and the mysterious interwoven story of an innkeeper’s daughter and her abusive father—but the Gainsboroughs persevere through illness and betrayal. Though a rushed ending feels out of sync with the carefully laid details of the sisters’ lives, Howes excels in her depiction of truth and rumors. Readers will want to linger in this singular world. Agent: Andrianna Yeatts, CAA. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed 12/04/2023) (Publishers Weekly, vol 270, issue 50, p)
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Listen for the Lie
YA author Tintera (The Q) makes her adult debut with the outstanding story of a young woman haunted by rumors that she killed her best friend. Five years ago, 20-something golden girl Savannah Harper was brutally murdered in her hometown of Plumpton, Tex. The same day, Savannah’s best friend, Lucy Chase, was discovered amnesia-stricken on the side of the road with her dress covered in Savannah’s blood. While Lucy was never charged with the murder, most of Plumpton has long assumed she’s guilty—and given the gap in her memory, Lucy has questions of her own. Now living in L.A., she’s fired from her investment job when the new season of hit true crime podcast Listen for the Lie renews public interest in Savannah’s case. Humiliated, Lucy accepts an invitation from her grandmother, Beverly, to return to Plumpton for a visit. When Lucy arrives in town, she finds Ben Owens, the charismatic host of Listen for the Lie, already poking around, and attempts to stay one step ahead of him as she pieces together the events of that fateful night. Tintera alternates transcripts of the podcast with chapters from Lucy’s perspective, getting a lot of mileage from her protagonist’s dry wit (“A podcaster has decided to ruin my life, so I’m buying a chicken,” goes the book’s first sentence) and some devilish plot twists. Readers will be hard-pressed not to wolf down this intelligent page-turner in a single sitting. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed 01/22/2024) (Publishers Weekly, vol 271, issue 3, p) and irreversibly linked.
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The House of Hidden Meanings
RuPaul's memoir is the polar opposite of his breezy 1995 autobiography, Letting It All Hang Out. In this book, the drag superstar, Tony Award winner and 12-time Emmy winner, bares his soul about his dysfunctional family and the battles he has fought. He eloquently excavates old memories of growing up in San Diego with three sisters and a flinty and hot-tempered mother. Although he learned independence and self-sufficiency from his mother, she often told him (even when he was as young as five) that he was too sensitive and pensive. When his father left the family, his mother was bedridden for years. At 15, he moved in with one of his older sisters and her husband in Atlanta. By age 21, he had found supportive friends and experimented with non-glamorous, thrift-store drag items that were more punk than disco. After several attempts to live in New York City (often couch surfing or sleeping in parks), RuPaul reinvented himself and found success with the 1993 single "Supermodel (You Better Work)." VERDICT A probing, emotionally raw memoir that's an introspective examination of RuPaul's family and the issues he confronted before embracing self-love. --Kevin Howell (Reviewed 03/01/2024) (Library Journal, vol 149, issue 3, p108)
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The Sour Grape
A recovering curmudgeon narrates life lessons in the latest entry in the punny Food Group series.Grape wasn’t always sour, as they explain in this origin story. Grape’s arc starts with an idyllic childhood within “a close-knit bunch” in a community of “about three thousand.” The sweet-to-sour switch begins when Grape plans an elaborate birthday party to which no one shows up. Going from “sweet” to “bitter,” “snappy,” and, finally, “sour,” Grape “scowled so much that my face got all squishy.” Minor grudges become major. An aha moment occurs when a run of bad luck makes Grape three hours late for a meetup with best friend Lenny, who’s just as acidic as Grape. After the irate lemon storms off, Grape recognizes their own behavior in Lenny. Alone, Grape begins to enjoy the charms of a lovely evening. Once home, the fruit browses through a box of memorabilia, discovering that the old birthday party invitation provided the wrong date! “I realized nobody’s perfect. Not even me.” The remaining pages reverse the downturn as Grape observes that minor setbacks are easily weathered when the emphasis is on talking, listening, and working things out. Oswald’s signature illustrations depict Grape and company with big eyes and tiny limbs. The best sight gag occurs early: Grape’s grandparents are depicted as elegant raisins. The lessons are as valuable as in previous outings, and kids won’t mind the slight preachiness. (This book was reviewed digitally.)Sweet, good-hearted fun. (Picture book. 4-8) (Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2022)
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Written in the Stars
Gr 9 Up — Naila is a Pakistani American high school senior. As the story opens, her greatest trouble is the risk of going to the prom with her high school sweetheart against the wishes of her protective and conservative parents. She does anyway, her parents find out, and their reaction is swift and extreme: the family departs immediately for Pakistan and negotiates an arranged marriage for Naila. Her impassioned struggle against the constraints of an arranged marriage is contrived in places, but it is a compelling story nonetheless. This is a cross-cultural eye opener; since Naila had never left the US until she was 18, her first-person account resonates in its explanations of the rituals, especially how they would look and feel from an American point of view. Yet the setting is pure Pakistani, with culturally rich descriptions of Naila's extended family, their cuisine, and strongly held beliefs. The prose is simple and straightforward. Although the book's hallmark is not text complexity, the spare prose is more evocative than stilted: Saeed shows rather than tells, allowing readers to imagine how Naila must feel. There is some violence and sex, both appropriate to the context and the age of the protagonist. A good choice for libraries looking to diversify their shelves.—Amy Thurow, New Glarus School District, WI --Amy Thurow (Reviewed December 1, 2014) (School Library Journal, vol 60, issue 12, p142)
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Birding to Change the World: A Memoir
In this affecting memoir, O’Kane (Guatemala in Focus), a natural sciences lecturer at the University of Vermont, elegantly weaves personal and natural history as she details how her fascination with birds compelled her to quit her journalism career, return to school at age 45 to get a PhD in environmental studies and become an ardent conservationist. Interspersed with O’Kane’s account of deciding to go back to school after observing the resilience of New Orleans sparrows in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are riveting details about how the birds likely followed humans out of Africa and were alternately treated with admiration (the first sparrows were brought to the U.S. in 1850 because “European immigrants simply missed” them) and contempt (extermination campaigns from the 1700s through the 1930s collectively killed hundreds of millions). Opening on what she’s learned from birds, O’Kane writes that the eastern phoebe’s habit of nesting in bridges, sheds, and other human structures taught her that “the presence of our species doesn’t have to hurt other species.” Her reverence for her avian subjects comes through on every page, and she retains a journalist’s keen eye for detail: “The male cardinal reminded me of an Irishman, standing up to leave his pub at midnight, head held high and chest inflated as he sang his traditional a cappella goodbye song.” This soars. Illus. Agent: Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed 12/18/2023) (Publishers Weekly, vol 270, issue 52, p)
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American Spirits
Banks’s elegant tryptic of novellas, arriving a year after his death at 82, evoke a hardscrabble Upstate New York setting reminiscent of his novels The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone. Each story touches on themes of community, family, and survival in small-town Sam Dent, N.Y., where hiking and hunting are prized and everyone knows one another. “Nowhere Man” starts with a minor confrontation between local hunter Doug and brusque businessman Yuri Zingerman, who owns property in the area but lives elsewhere. After Yuri tells Doug not to hunt on his land, Doug does so anyway, with his young son in tow. From there, the narrative steadily intensifies into a grudge match whose outcome on is both inevitable and devastating. “Homeschooling” follows the slow descent of Judith and Claire Weber, whose progressive parenting of their adopted children sets tongues wagging. After their neighbors grow concerned that the children are being neglected, the family edges to the brink of tragedy. The intimate and propulsive “Kidnapped” is a macabre tale about the Dent family that gave the town its name. Told in a wry and folksy first person, its tangled plot involves not only kidnapping but blackmail, murder, and a late night heart-to-heart over Double Quarter Pounders. As ever, the reader senses the confidence in Banks’s narrative voice. This is a welcome addition to the legacy of a master storyteller. (Mar.) --Staff (Reviewed 11/27/2023) (Publishers Weekly, vol 270, issue 49, p)
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The Salt Grows Heavy
In this viciously dark fantasy, a horrific siren who can’t speak, thanks to a cruel husband who captured her and cut out her tongue, and a plague doctor who has watched the kingdom succumb to a plague impossible for them to stop leave their now-desolate city in search of a new adventure. When the two creatures stumble on a sinister cult of children who believe gods can resurrect them, their interest is piqued. But then, in the snow-covered, frigid forest, they meet the children’s gods, the kind of monsters who enjoy taking apart a child and stitching it back together, and the siren and the doctor realize that it will take quick thinking, sharp teeth, and a lot of courage to get out alive. This novella is short but action-packed, unctuous, and deliciously creepy, a mash-up of Angela Carter’s dark fairy-tale retellings and the poetic love story core of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2019). The book is overflowing with eerie body horror, sensory details of cold snow and warm blood, and terrifying monsters (both protagonists and villains). -- Leah von Essen (Reviewed 4/15/2023) (Booklist, vol 119, number 16, p30)
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Wild and Distant Seas
Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island's small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed--but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out.
One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. He seeks only a warm bed and a bowl of chowder, and yet suddenly, unsettlingly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain.
Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dick as its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.
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You Only Call When You're in Trouble
“I don’t think I will find a book I love more this year.”
—Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author
“Funny, poignant, joyous, explosive, but most of all affirming of our connections to one another. You Only Call When You're in Trouble is a book to cherish. A book that loves you back. What more could you want, my gosh? Read it!”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost
Is it ever okay to stop caring for others and start living for yourself?
After a lifetime of taking care of his impossible but irresistible sister and his cherished niece, Tom is ready to put himself first. An architect specializing in tiny houses, he finally has an opportunity to build his masterpiece—“his last shot at leaving a footprint on the dying planet.” Assuming, that is, he can stick to his resolution to keep the demands of his needy family at bay.
Naturally, that’s when his phone rings. His niece, Cecily—the real love of Tom’s life, as his boyfriend reminded him when moving out—is embroiled in a Title IX investigation at the college where she teaches that threatens her career and relationship. And after decades of lying, his sister wants him to help her tell Cecily the real identity of her father.
Tom does what he’s always done—answers the call. Thus begins a journey that will change everyone’s life and demonstrate the beauty or dysfunction (or both?) of the ties that bind families together and sometimes strangle them.
Warm, funny, and deeply moving, You Only Call When You’re in Trouble is an unforgettable showcase for Stephen McCauley’s distinctive voice and unique ability to create complex characters that jump off the page and straight into your heart. -
Lore of the Wilds
A stunning Romantasy debut about an enchanted library, two handsome Fae, and one human who brings them all together.
A library with a deadly enchantment.
A Fae lord who wants in.
A human woman willing to risk it all for a taste of power.
In a land ruled by ruthless Fae, twenty-one-year-old Lore Alemeyu's village is trapped in a forested prison. Lore knows that any escape attempt is futile--her scars are a testament to her past failures. But when her village is threatened, Lore makes a desperate deal with a Fae lord. She will leave her home to catalog/organize an enchanted library that hasn't been touched in a thousand years. No Fae may enter the library, but there is a chance a human might be able to breach the cursed doors.
She convinces him that she will risk her life for wealth, but really she's after the one thing the Fae covet above all: magic of her own.
As Lore navigates the hostile world outside, she's forced to rely on two Fae males to survive. Two very different, very dangerous, very attractive Fae males. When undeniable chemistry ignites, she's not just in danger of losing her life, but her heart to the very creatures she can never trust.
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All My Secrets
Bestselling author Lynn Austin returns with a luminous work of historical fiction set amid the opulence of Gilded Age New York, where three generations of women in one family must reckon with the choices they have made and their hopes for the future.
New York, 1898. The only thing more shocking than Arthur Stanhope III's unexpected death is the revelation that his will bestows his company--and most of the vast fortune that goes with it--to the nearest male heir, leaving his mother, wife, and daughter nearly impoverished. His widow, Sylvia, quickly realizes she must set aside her grief to ensure their daughter, Adelaide, is launched into society as soon as the appropriate mourning period passes. If Sylvia can find a wealthy husband for Addy before anyone realizes they're practically destitute, there will be little disruption to the lifestyle they're accustomed to.
Sylvia's mother-in-law, Junietta, believes their life could use a little disruption. She has watched Sylvia play her role as a society wife, as Junietta once did, despite what it cost them both. Junietta vows to give her granddaughter the power to choose a path beyond what society expects.
But for Addy to have that chance, both mother and grandmother must first confront painful truths about their own choices. Only in bringing their secrets to light can they hope to reshape their family inheritance into a legacy more fulfilling than they ever dared dream.- Stand alone Christian historical romance from Christy Award Hall of Fame author
- Historical drama full of complex family dynamics
- Perfect for fans of Eve's Daughters and other family sagas
- Includes discussion questions for book clubs
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Slugfest
From Gordon Korman, the New York Times bestselling author of Restart, comes a hilarious new story about a group of underdogs who come together when they are forced to attend summer school--for failing PE.
Yash is the best athlete at Robinette Middle School--so good, in fact, that he's already playing on the high school's JV sports teams. Imagine his shock when he learns that his JV practices have kept him from earning a state-mandated credit for eighth-grade PE. To graduate, he has to take Physical Education Equivalency--PEE, also known as "Slugfest"--in summer school.
Yash gets to know his fellow "slugs": Kaden, an academic superstar who's physically hopeless; twins Sarah and Stewart, who are too busy trying to kill each other to do any real PE; Jesse, a notorious prankster; Arabella, who protests everything; and Cleo, a natural athlete who has sworn off sports.
But when one of them tries to blow the lid off a scandal that could make all their time in summer school a waste, Yash is forced to take drastic action.
Teaming up with the most hapless crew in school can really surprise a person. And their teacher might be hiding the biggest surprise yet. . . .
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Legacy
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“This book is more than a memoir—it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women.” —Essence
One of NPR’s 11 Books to Look Forward to in 2024
One of Good Morning America’s 15 New Books to Read for the New Year
“Legacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a force of nature.” —Abraham Verghese, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Covenant of Water
“[An] extraordinary family story.” —Dr. Damon Tweedy, The New York Times Book Review
“This book should be required reading for all medical students.” —Gayle King, CBS Mornings
The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.
What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.
Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.