Browse our regularly updated lists of staff picks, bestsellers, genre selections, and more.
New for Adults
-
The Metropolitan Affair
Now the assistant curator of Egyptology for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lauren receives two unexpected invitations. The first is her repentant father's offer to finally bring her to Egypt as his colleague on a new expedition. The second is a chance to enter the world of New York's wealthiest patrons who have been victims of art fraud. With Egyptomania sweeping the city after the discovery of King Tut's tomb, Detective Joe Caravello is on the hunt for a notorious forger preying on the open wallets of New York's high society. Dr. Westlake is just the expert he needs to help him track the criminal. Together they search for the truth, and the closer Lauren and Joe get to discovering the forger's identity, the more entangled they become in a web of deception and crime.
-
Once Upon a Tome
One morning, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd. in London to interview for what he thought would be a year-long bookselling apprenticeship. Captivated by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and fending off overeager collectors while placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram). By turns unhinged and earnest, Once Upon a Tome is a hilarious coming-of-age story that brings us into a strange and fascinating profession.
-
Saved
When veteran war reporter Benjamin Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. With Hall gravely injured and stuck in Kyiv, it was unclear if he would make it out alive. Featuring nail-biting accounts from the many people across multiple countries who banded together to get him to safety, Hall offers a stunning look at complex teamwork and heartfelt perseverance that turned his life into a mission. He'd been telling war stories for years, and now, suddenly, he was one.
-
Our Best Intentions
Babur "Bobby" Singh, single parent and owner of fledging Uber business "Move with Bobby," lives in an affluent suburb of New York with his daughter Angie, an introverted teenager who is uncomfortable in her own skin unless she's swimming. During summer break, Angie is walking home after training at the high school pool when she finds Henry McCleary, a classmate from a wealthy, prominent family, stabbed and bleeding on the football field. The police immediately focus their investigation on Chiara Thompkins, a runaway Black girl who disappears after the stabbing. As the town fractures, Angie must navigate conflicting narratives and wrestle with her own moral culpability. Babur's painstaking efforts to shield Angie and protect his hard-earned efforts to assimilate overshadow his ability to see right from wrong.
-
Born Extraordinary
Meg Zucker was born with one finger on each hand, shortened forearms, and one toe on each misshapen foot, caused by a genetic condition called ectrodactyly. She would eventually pass this condition on to her two sons, and, along with her husband, raise them and their adopted daughter, who has her own invisible differences. Born of the family’s hard-won experiences, this book offers invaluable advice on raising confident, empathetic, and resilient children who succeed, not despite but because of their differences.
-
Black Ball
"Against the backdrop of ongoing massive resistance to racial desegregation and increasingly strident calls for Black Power, the press and the public blamed young Black players for the chaos in the NBA, citing drugs, violence, greed, and criminality. Spotlighting legendary players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bernard King, and Connie Hawkins, scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball's "Dark Ages," weaving together her deep knowledge of the game's key icons and institutions with incisive social and political analysis of the era. Black ballers created an aerial, improvisational, and creative style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods, laying the foundation for the explosive popularity and profitability of the league in subsequent decades. They also transformed labor in the pro-basketball world, filing lawsuits and organizing unions to demand better salaries and greater autonomy. Without their skills, style, and savvy, there would be no Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or LeBron James today."
-
The Foxglove King
When Lore was thirteen, she escaped a cult in the catacombs beneath the city of Dellaire. And in the ten years since, she's lived by one rule: don't let them find you. Mortem, the magic born from death, is a high-priced and illicit commodity in Dellaire, and Lore's job running poisons keeps her in food, shelter, and relative security. But when a run goes wrong and Lore's power is revealed, she's taken by the Presque Mort, a group of warrior-monks sanctioned to use Mortem working for the Sainted King. Lore fully expects a pyre, but King August has a different plan. Lore is thrust into the Sainted King's glittering court, where she attempts to navigate a debauched and opulent society. But the life she left behind in the catacombs is catching up with her.
-
Birnam Wood
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common.
-
All the Blood We Share
At first the townspeople of Cherryvale welcome the rising medium Kate Bender and her family. Kate's messages from the Beyond give their tedious dreams hope and her mother's potions cure their little ills—for a price. No one knows about their other business, the shortcut to a better life. But even a gifted seer like Kate can make a misstep. Now as the secrets festering beneath the soil of the family orchard threaten to bring them all to ruin, the Benders must sharpen their craft—or vanish themselves.
-
The Laughter
Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor. Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver's long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession. After protests break out demanding diversity across the university, Oliver finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems attainable yet not, and as the women of his past taunt his memory, Oliver reacts in ways shocking and devastating.
-
The Declassification Engine
Before the Second World War, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply unamerican. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and secret laboratories to grow unchecked. Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really does not want us to know, but why. He sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy and how the relentless accumulation of secrets makes it impossible to protect truly vital information.
-
We Are Electric
Every cell in our bodies--bones, skin, nerves, muscle--has a voltage, like a tiny battery. It is the reason our brain can send signals to the rest of our body, how we develop in the womb, and why our body knows to heal itself from injury. When bioelectricity goes awry, illness, deformity, and cancer can result. But if we can control or correct this bioelectricity, the implications for our health are remarkable: an undo switch for cancer that could flip malignant cells back into healthy ones; the ability to regenerate cells, organs, even limbs; to slow aging and so much more. The next scientific frontier might be decrypting the bioelectric code, much the way we did the genetic code.
-
Oscar Wars
For nine decades, perfectly coiffed starlets, debonair leading men, and producers with gold in their eyes have chased the elusive Oscar. What began as an industry banquet in 1929 has now exploded into a hallowed ceremony, complete with red carpets, envelopes, and little gold men. But don't be fooled by the pomp: the Oscars, more than anything, are a battlefield, where the history of Hollywood--and of America itself--unfolds in dramas large and small. The road to the Oscars may be golden, but it's paved in blood, sweat, and broken hearts.
-
Nocturne
Growing up in Chicago’s Little Sicily in the years following the Great War, Grace Dragotta has always wanted to be a ballerina, ever since she first peered through the windows of the Near North Ballet company. So when Grace is orphaned, she chooses the ballet as her home. Years later, with the Great Depression in full swing, Grace has become the company’s new prima ballerina. She attracts the attention of the enigmatic Master La Rosa as her personal patron and realizes the world is not as small or constricted as she had come to fear.
-
Sink
Stranded within an ever-shifting family's desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach. He began to escape into fantasy and virtual worlds, wells of happiness in a childhood assailed on all sides. SINK follows Thomas's coming-of-age towards an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in and how good it feels to build community, love, and salvation on your own terms.
Romance Me Book Club Picks
-
It Ends with Us
Lily has come a long way from the small town where she grew up. When she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant but also sensitive and brilliant with a total soft spot for Lily. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. When questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan, her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
-
The Dead Romantics
Florence Day, the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, no longer believes in love thanks to a terrible break-up. When her new editor won't give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father. Then she finds the ghost of her new editor standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is. Romance may be dead, but so is her new editor. His unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.
-
Island Affair
When social media influencer Sara Vance's unreliable boyfriend is a no-show for a Florida family vacation, Sara recruits Luis Navarro, a firefighter paramedic and dive captain willing to play the part of her smitten fiancé. Luis’s big Cuban familia has been in Key West for generations, and his quiet strength feeds off the island’s laidback style. Though guarded after a deep betrayal, he’ll always help someone in need, especially a spunky beauty with a surprising knowledge of Spanish curse words. Soon, he and Sara have memorized their “how we met” story and are immersed in family dinners, bike tours, private snorkeling trips and slow, melting kisses. But when it’s time for Sara to return home, will their fake relationship fade like the stunning sunset or blossom into something beautiful?
-
Part of Your World
After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who's ten years younger than her and as casual as they come, the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. Every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she's discovering just what's really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her ultra-wealthy family and the opportunity to help thousands of people. Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can't just give up the joy she's found with him either.
-
Get a Life, Chloe Brown
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s made a 'Get a Life' list with six directives for spicing up her life. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job. Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her, like what really lies beneath his rough exterior.
-
It Happened One Summer
When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper Bellinger in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father's dive bar in Washington. Piper hasn't even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won't last a week outside of Beverly Hills. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there's an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn't want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. LA is calling her name, but Brendan--and this town full of memories--may have already caught her heart.
-
Girl Gone Viral
One minute, Katrina King's enjoying an innocent conversation with a random guy at a coffee shop; the next, a stranger has live-tweeted the entire encounter with a romantic meet-cute spin and #CafeBae has the world swooning. Going viral isn't easy for anyone, but Katrina has painstakingly built a private world for herself, far from her traumatic past. With the internet on the hunt for the identity of #CuteCafeGirl, Jas Singh, bodyguard and possessor of the most beautiful eyebrows Katrina's ever seen, offers his family's farm as a refuge. Alone with her unrequited crush feels like a recipe for hopeless longing, but Katrina craves the escape. She's resigned to being just friends with Jas--until they share a single electrifying kiss. Now she can't help but wonder if her crush may not be so unrequited after all.
-
The Love Hypothesis
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships, but her best friend Anh does. Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
-
The Bromance Book Club
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it'll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.
-
The Boyfriend Project
Samiah Brooks never thought she would be "that" girl. But a live tweet of a horrific date just revealed the painful truth: she's been catfished by a three-timing jerk of a boyfriend. Suddenly Samiah-along with his two other "girlfriends," London and Taylor -- have gone viral online. Now the three new besties are making a pact to spend the next six months investing in themselves. No men, no dating, and no worrying about their relationship status. For once Samiah is putting herself first, and that includes finally developing the app she's always dreamed of creating. Which is the exact moment she meets the deliciously sexy, honey-eyed Daniel Collins at work. But is Daniel really boyfriend material or is he maybe just a little too good to be true?
-
The Unhoneymooners
Olive Torres is used to being the unlucky twin. By contrast, her sister Ami is an eternal champion who even financed her entire wedding by winning a slew of contests. Now Olive has to spend the wedding day with the best man (her nemesis), Ethan Thomas. When the entire wedding party gets food poisoning, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. Suddenly there’s a free honeymoon up for grabs, and Olive will be damned if Ethan gets to enjoy paradise solo. Agreeing to a temporary truce, the pair head for Maui. After all, ten days of bliss is worth having to assume the role of loving newlyweds. But the more Olive pretends to be the luckiest woman alive, the more it feels like she might be.
Stranger than Fiction: A Nonfiction Book Club Picks
-
Black Klansman
Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick - February 2023
-
Into the Wild
Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick - January 2023
-
Conditional Citizens
Stranger than Fiction Book Club Pick for December 2022
-
Braiding Sweetgrass
Stranger than Fiction Book Club pick for November 2022
-
The Best We Could Do
Stranger than Fiction Book Club pick for October 2022
-
Good Boy
Stranger than Fiction Book Club Pick for June 2022
-
Ruthless Tide
Stranger than Fiction Book Club Pick for September 2022
-
The Unwomanly Face of War
Stranger than Fiction Book Club Pick for August 2022
-
The Stranger in the Woods
Stranger than Fiction Book Club pick for July 2022
-
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
Stranger than Fiction Book Club pick for May
-
Furious Hours
Stranger than Fiction Book Club pick for April 13, 2022
Adult Reading Challenge Book Brunch
Join us to discuss what you are reading for this month's Adult Reading Challenge. Tell us what you loved (or didn't) about the month's theme and get some recommendations from others, too!
This event will take place in-person and virtually on Zoom. Registration is required. To find out more and to register visit our events calendar.
Romance Me Book Club
Love is in the air! We will be discussing mostly romantic fiction, along with some love-related nonfiction.Our choices will reflect romance between various couples and cultures, and all genders are welcome to respectfully attend these discussions. Be prepared to talk about sweet, steamy, or downright hilarious content as we spill our thoughts about this month's read.
Registration is required. To find out more and to register visit our events calendar.
Stranger than Fiction
Non-Fiction Book Club
This group will meet once a month to discuss memoirs, biographies, true crime and other nonfiction titles.
Registration is required. To find out more and to register visit our events calendar.