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The library will be closed beginning at 5 pm Saturday, March 30

Normal Public Library at 206 W. College Ave. will be closed beginning at 5 pm Saturday, March 30 for asbestos abatement and renovation. The building will remain closed for the duration of the project. Limited library services will be available at 201 W. College Ave. beginning at 9 am on Monday, April 1.

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The Purest Bond

Jen Golbeck

Dogs have been considered people’s best friend for thousands of years, but never has the relationship between humans and their canine companions been as vitally important as it is today. With all of the seismic shifts in today’s world, rates of anxiety and depression have been skyrocketing, and people have been turning to their dogs for solace and stability. Amidst these dire realities, something wonderful has taken shape. In the United States alone, dog adoptions doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people have brought furry friends into their lives for the first time or seized this opportunity to deepen the connections they already have, they are looking to understand how owning a dog can change their lives.
 

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What the Bears Know

Steve Searles

In the late 1990s, the town of Mammoth Lakes, California hired Steve Searles as a hunter to cull half its troublesome bear population. But as he began to prepare for the grim task, the bears soon won him over, and Searles realized there had to be a better way. He soon developed non-lethal tactics to control their behavior and overpopulation that heralded a landmark moment in the care and handling of the American black bear. As Searles shares his remarkable knowledge and we become immersed in the ursine world, you’ll never look at bears or nature the same way again. 

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The Mars House

Natasha Pulley

In the wake of an environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London's Royal Ballet, has become a refugee in Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. There, January's life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger-a person whose body is not adjusted to lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalized to, Mars. Now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to naturalize, a process that is always disabling and sometimes deadly. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January's future without naturalization and ensure Gale's political success. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. They're kind, compassionate, and much more difficult to hate than January would prefer. Then January discovers Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay-and January may be the only person standing in the way.

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The Mystery Writer

Sulari Gentill

When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.

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Those Beyond the Wall

Micaiah Johnson

Scales is the best at what she does: keeping everyone and everything in line in Ashtown. As a skilled mechanic—and an even more skilled fighter, when she needs to be—Scales is a respected member of the Emperor’s crew, who’s able to keep things running smoothly. But the fragile peace Scales helps to maintain is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed before her eyes. When more bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause—and putting an end to it by any means necessary. To protect the people she loves, she teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner from Ashtown and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist from the City, delving into both worlds to track down an invisible killer. 
 

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Lore of the Wilds

Analeigh Sbrana

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.

 

 

 

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The Life of the Qur'an

Mohamad Jebara

Building on his intimate portrait of the Qur`an’s prophet in Muhammad the World-Changer, Mohamad Jebara returns with a vivid profile of the book itself. While viewed in retrospect as the grand scripture of triumphant empires, Jebara reveals how the Qur`an unfolded over 22 years amidst intense persecution, suffering, and loneliness. The Life of the Qur`an recounts this vivid drama as a biography examining the book’s obscured heritage, complex revelation, and contested legacy.
 

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Clay and Bones

Bailey G. Lisa

Lisa Bailey never considered a career working in death until she saw the FBI job posting for a forensic artist. The idea of using her artistic skill to help victims of crime was too compelling to pass up. Soon she was documenting crime scenes, photographing charred corpses, and digitally retouching the disembodied heads of suicide bombers. But it was facial approximation--sculpting a face from the remnants of an unidentified victim's skull--that intrigued her the most. Bailey knew that if she could capture that person's likeness in clay, she just might help them be identified, and that might help law enforcement track down their killer.
 

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What Grows in the Dark

Jaq Evans

Sixteen years ago, Brigit Weylan's older sister, Emma, walked into the woods in their small hometown of Ellis Creek. She never walked out. Now Brigit travels around the country investigating paranormal activity (and faking the results) with her cameraman, Ian. But when she receives a call from Ellis Creek, she's thrust into the middle of a search for two missing teenagers. As Brigit and Ian are drawn further into the case, the parallels to Emma's death become undeniable. And worse, Brigit can't explain what's happening to her: trees appearing in her bedroom in the middle of the night, something with a very familiar laugh watching her out in the darkness, and Emma's voice on her phone, reminding Brigit to finish what they started.
 

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Parasol Against the Axe

Helen Oyeyemi

For reasons of her own, Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline, and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. Little does she know she’s arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. A book Hero has brought with her seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being read and who’s doing the reading, revealing startling new stories of fictional Praguers past and present. Uninvited companions appear at bachelorette activities and at city landmarks, offering opinions, humor, and even a taste of treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s past appears unexpectedly, the tensions between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level.

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Birding to Change the World

Trish O'Kane

In Birding to Change the World, O'Kane details the astonishing science of bird life, from migration and parenting to the territorial defense strategies that influenced her own activism. A warm and compelling weave of science and social engagement, this is the story of an improbably band of bird lovers who saved their park. And it is a blueprint for muscular citizenship, powered by joy.

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If You See Them

Vicki Sokolik

If You See Them is a powerful and moving exploration of the issue of youth homelessness, told through the perspective and experience of one woman who has been at the forefront of an effort to not only bring the issue to light but to change laws in order to emancipate these young people and give them agency. It tells her own inspiring story of advocacy--or coming to recognize a problem and then founding a non-profit, Starting Right, Now, that provides housing stability, academic support, food, and life-skill classes for kids, helping them become independent. But it also allows the youth to speak in their own voices and tell their own stories.

 

 

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Lucky Duck

Greg Pizzoli

Susan the duck has the worst luck. Her rollerskates are two sizes too big. She's lost her favorite marble. And she's run out of pickles.
But with each unfortunate discovery, Wolf shows up with a gift she's won. Her luck has turned around . . . hasn't it?
 

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Where Have You Been, Little Cat?

Richard Jones

As a little cat rushes in from a day's adventuring, her owner asks her where she's been and what she's seen. Was she happy? Was she brave? Was she kind? The richly imagined answers, depicted in beautifully nostalgic illustrations and a direct, simple text, encourage empathy, conversation and imagination. It has all the hallmarks of a modern classic.
 

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Bumps in the Night

Amalie Howard

Darika “Rika” Lovelace is in trouble. The kind of trouble that sends her to her grandmother’s estate in Trinidad for the whole summer. But something about the island feels…different. As soon as she steps off the plane, strange things start happening!

Rika meets a group of kids called Minders, who seem to have elemental powers. Even worse, she can sense jumbies lurking in the shadows. Needless to say, she wants a ticket home. But when the Minders let slip that her long-lost mom is in danger, she knows she can’t leave.

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Wandering Stars

Tommy Orange

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

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A Fire So Wild

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman

As a wildfire threatens Berkeley, the city's inhabitants are forced to reckon with the cracks in the lives they've built. Abigail, a wealthy homeowner, decides to throw a lavish birthday in a hillside mansion to raise money for the city's newest affordable housing project--and prove to her family that she's made something worthwhile of her life. Sunny, a construction worker who sleeps in a van along the bay's shore, is in the running for an apartment--but only if enough funds are raised at the party. As the heat and smoke from the approaching blaze descend upon the town, tensions rise and residents confront the inequities laid bare, and the fragility of building a life in a world on fire.

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2020

Eric Klinenberg

At the heart of 2020 are seven vivid profiles of ordinary New Yorkers—including an elementary school principal, a bar manager, a subway custodian, and a local political aide—whose experiences illuminate how Americans, and people across the globe, reckoned with 2020. Through these poignant stories, we revisit our own moments of hope and fear, the profound tragedies and losses in our communities, the mutual aid networks that brought us together, and the social movements that hinted at the possibilities of a better world.

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A Map of Future Ruins

Lauren Markham

In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece, in search of her own Greek heritage and to cover the aftermath of a fire that burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp—not activists, not the country’s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government. But almost immediately, on scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime. Markham soon saw that she was tracing a broader narrative, rooted not only in centuries of global history but also in myth. 

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Inheritance

Nora Roberts

Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about—and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Trey, the young lawyer who greets her at the sprawling clifftop manor, notes Sonya’s unease and acknowledges that yes, the place is haunted. It’s becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it...

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Cross Down

James Patterson

For the first time, John Sampson is on his own. The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC's, Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random--Sampson's friend, his partner, his brother--have told him. Don't trust anyone. As a shadow force advances on the nation's capital, Sampson alone must protect the Cross family, his own young daughter, and every American, including the president.

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12 Months to Live

James Patterson

Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might've committed several murders. She's also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn't have much time. She's just received a terminal diagnosis giving her twelve months. Unless she's murdered before her expiration date.

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The Dutch House

Ann Patchett

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart siblings who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

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A Modern Way to Cook

Anna Jones

Eating healthy isn't always easy when you’re coming home late at night and tired. In this genius new collection of vegetarian recipes, author Anna Jones tackles this common problem, making nourishing vegetable-centered food realistic on any day of the week.
 

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The Women

Kristin Hannah

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

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The Secret

Lee Child

1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate with Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy. But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind or his own kind?

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Simply Lies

David Baldacci

Mickey Gibson, single mother, former detective, and remote worker for ProEye gets a call from a colleague named Arlene Robinson to go inventory the vacant home of an arms dealer who cheated ProEye's clients and fled. That is, until she arrives at the mansion to discover a dead body in a secret room. Not only does the arms dealer not exist but the murder victim turns out to be Harry Langhorne, a man with mob ties who used to be in Witness Protection. What's more, no one named Arlene Robinson works at ProEye. In the blink of an eye, Gibson has become a prime suspect in a murder investigation. She's locked in a battle of wits with a brilliant woman with no name, a hidden past, and an end game is as mysterious as it is deadly.

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Random in Death

J. D. Robb

Jenna’s parents had finally given in, and there she was, at a New York club with her best friends, watching the legendary band Avenue A, carrying her demo in hopes of slipping it to the guitarist, Jake Kincade. Minutes later, Jake’s in the alley getting some fresh air, and the girl from the dance floor comes stumbling out, sick and confused and deathly pale. He doesn’t know that someone in the crowd has jabbed her with a needle. When his girlfriend Nadine arrives, she knows the only thing left to do for the girl is call her friend, Lieutenant Eve Dallas. But there are no obvious clues why this levelheaded sixteen-year-old, passionate about her music, would be targeted. If Jenna was just the random, unlucky victim of a madman consumed by hatred, there are likely more deaths to come.

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Judgment Prey

John Sandford

Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers. With each potential lead flawed, Davenport and Flowers are determined to chase every theory until they figure out who killed the Sands. But when they find themselves being stonewalled by the most unlikely of forces, the two wonder if perhaps each misdirection could lead them closer to the truth.

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The Exchange

John Grisham

What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications--and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family. Mitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there's nowhere to hide.

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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fannie Flagg

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter—even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again.

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Broken (in the Best Possible Way)

Jenny Lawson

As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
 

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Must Love Flowers

Debbie Macomber

Widow Joan Sample hires someone to tame her overgrown garden, joins a grief support group, and even rents out a room to a local college student, Maggie Herbert, barista and nursing student. But will Maggie’s budding attraction to one of her favorite customers ruin the harmony she’s only recently found with Joan? Meanwhile, what is Joan to make of the mysterious landscaper who’s been revitalizing her garden—a man who seems to harbor a past loss of his own? As Maggie and Joan confront difficult life choices, they draw strength from this new friendship in surprising ways.

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Animals in Translation

Temple Grandin

Why would a cow lick a tractor? Why are collies getting dumber? Why do dolphins sometimes kill for fun? How can a parrot learn to spell? How did wolves teach man to evolve? Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals act, think, and feel. She has a perspective like that of no other expert in the field, which allows her to offer unparalleled observations and groundbreaking ideas. People with autism can often think the way animals think, putting them in the perfect position to translate "animal talk." 

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Act Your Age, Eve Brown

Talia Hibbert

Jacob Wayne's on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman named Eve Brown turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he tells her the brutal truth: not a chance in hell. Then she hits him with her car--supposedly by accident. Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Sunny, chaotic Eve is his natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else. 

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How to Build a Dinosaur

Jack Horner

Based on new research in evolutionary developmental biology on how a few select cells grow to create arms, legs, eyes, and brains that function together, Jack Horner takes the science a step further in a plan to "reverse evolution" and reveals the awesome, even frightening, power being acquired to recreate the prehistoric past. The key is the dinosaur's genetic code that lives on in modern birds- even chickens. From cutting-edge biology labs to field digs underneath the Montana sun, How to Build a Dinosaur explains and enlightens an awesome new science.

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The Cider House Rules

John Irving

The Cider House Rules is set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century. The novel tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch—saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud’s, ether addict and abortionist. This is also the story of Dr. Larch’s favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.
 

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Call Us What We Carry

Amanda Gorman

In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. 

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The Book Eaters

Sunyi Dean

Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.

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Through My Eyes

Tim Tebow

Former University of Florida star quarterback, 2010 first-round draft pick for theDenver Broncos, and devout Christian Tim Tebow tellsthe story of his faith, his life, and his career in football in Through My Eyes. Written with Nathan Whitaker, the New York Times bestsellingcoauthor of Quiet Strength, with Tony Dungy, Through My Eyes givesfans a first look into the heart of an athlete whose talent and devotion havemade him one of the most provocative figures in football.

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Kindred

Octavia E. Butler

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
 

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Superman's Not Coming

Erin Brockovich

In her long-awaited book—her first to reckon with the condition of water on our planet—Erin Brockovich writes powerfully of the fraudulent science disguising our national water crisis: Cancer clusters are not being reported. People in Detroit and the state of New Jersey don’t have clean water. The drinking water for more than six million Americans contains unsafe levels of industrial chemicals linked to cancer and other health issues. The saga of PG&E continues to this day. Yet communities and people around the country are fighting to make an impact, and Brockovich tells us their stories.

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Nothing to See Here

Kevin Wilson

Madison's twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth.

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Because We Are Bad

Lily Bailey

Written with the indelible power of Girl, Interrupted, Brain on Fire, and Reasons to Stay Alive, a lyrical, poignant memoir by a young woman about her childhood battle with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, and her hard-won journey to recovery.

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The Gingerbread Man: Buttons on the Loose

Laura Murray

The Gingerbread Man loves living in his gingerbread house at school. The kids there made him and baked him, gave him a hat and a little bow tie, and—oh no! His two candy buttons are missing!

This smart cookie starts searching right away, looking all over the school. And luckily, he meets someone who is a great help and a new friend.

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Arfy Has a Ball

Troy Cummings

Arfy loves his forever home! He has his sweet person and so many toys! Arfy wants to play but what should he play with? A ball! That's it! But there are so many kinds of balls! Some balls are too big, some too heavy, and others are too far away. Will Arfy be able to find the perfect ball for him? 

 

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The Cozy Home

Ame Dyckman

What happens when three friends—a bat, a cat, and a rat—move in together?

In “Sharing,” Bat, Cat, and Rat find a cozy home to share. But will choosing rooms put their sharing skills to the test?

In “Joking,” Rat sets off a series of pranks and shenanigans with his rubber spider that have the trio screaming in surprise and laughing in delight.

In “Reading,” Cat catches Bat and Rat reading over her shoulder—or so she thinks, until it turns out they haven’t learned to read yet. Can Cat teach her friends to read along with her?

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Sons of Darkness

Gourav Mohanty

The Mathuran Republic simmers on the brink of oblivion. Senator Krishna and his third wife Satyabhama have put their plans in motion, both within and beyond the Republic's blood-soaked borders, to protect it from total annihilation.Mati, Pirate-Princess of Kalinga, has decided to mend her ways and become a good wife. Brooding and beautiful Karna hopes to bury his brutal past, but finds that destiny is a miser when it comes to granting second chances. Hero-turned-torturer Shakuni limps through a path of daggers. Their lives are about to become yet more difficult, as a cast of sinister queens, naive kings, pious assassins and ravenous priests are converging where the Son of Darkness is prophesied to rise... even as forgotten Gods prepare to play their hand.

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Sun of Blood and Ruin

Mariely Lares

In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of mythical creatures that once roamed the land have become whispers in the night. Hidden behind a mask, Pantera uses her magic and legendary swordplay skills to fight the tyranny of Spanish rule. To all who know her, Leonora de las Casas Tlazohtzin never leaves the palace, faints at the sight of blood, and would rather be caught dead than meddle in court affairs. No one suspects that Leonora and Pantera are the same person. When an ancient prophecy of destruction threatens to come true, Leonora--and therefore Pantera--is forced to decide: surrender the mask or fight to the end.

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Fangirl Down

Tessa Bailey

Wells Whitaker was once golf's hottest rising star, but lately, all he has to show for his "promising" career is a killer hangover, a collection of broken clubs, and one remaining supporter. No matter how bad he plays, the beautiful, sunny redhead is always on the sidelines. Then a determined Wells shows up at her door with a wild proposal: be his new caddy, help him turn his game around, and split the prize money. And considering Josephine's professional and personal life is in shambles, she could really use the cash. Before long, they're inseparable, Wells starts winning again, and Josephine is surprised to find a sweet, thoughtful guy underneath his gruff, growly exterior. But Wells is technically her boss and an athlete falling for his fangirl would be ridiculous... right?

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The Catch

Amy Lea

In a last-ditch effort to rescue her brand from the brink of irrelevance, Boston fashion influencer Melanie Karlsen finds herself in a rural fishing village on the east coast of Canada. The burly and bearded bed-and-breakfast owner and fisherman, Evan Whaler single-handedly disproves the theory that Canadians are “nice.” After a boating accident lands Evan unconscious in the hospital, Mel is mistaken for his fiancée by his welcoming yet quirky family, who are embroiled in a long-standing feud over the B&B. In a bold attempt to mend family fences, Mel agrees to fake their engagement for one week in exchange for Evan’s help with her social media content. But reeling in their budding feelings for each other proves more difficult by the day. Is Mel willing to sacrifice her picture-perfect life in the city for a chance at a true, unfiltered love in the wild?

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The Mona Lisa Vanishes

Nicholas Day

On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone!

No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?

Travel back to an extraordinary period of revolutionary change: turn-of-the-century Paris. Walk its backstreets. Meet the infamous thieves—and detectives—of the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the Mona Lisa—the most famous painting in the world should never have existed at all.
 

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Amil and the After

Veera Hiranandani

At the turn of the new year in 1948, Amil and his family are trying to make a home in India, now independent of British rule.

Both Muslim and Hindu, twelve-year-old Amil is not sure what home means anymore. The memory of the long and difficult journey from their hometown in what is now Pakistan lives with him. And despite having an apartment in Bombay to live in and a school to attend, life in India feels uncertain.

Nisha, his twin sister, suggests that Amil begin to tell his story through drawings meant for their mother, who died when they were just babies. Through Amil, readers witness the unwavering spirit of a young boy trying to make sense of a chaotic world, and find hope for himself and a newly reborn nation.

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Baker Makers

Kim Smith

Naveen loves to bake. In fact, he’s sure he’s practically a master baker. So, he is thrilled when his class is assigned to tackle creative cake-making at Baker Makers Lab.

Naveen is positive his cake will be the most astonishing and extraordinary one of all. But the mismatch between his fertile imagination and his actual skills leads to disaster. Will he find a way to embrace the unexpected?  

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A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Tia Williams

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers. One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.
 

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Dear Mom and Dad

Patti Davis

Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Just as she re-examines her own role in an increasingly dysfunctional family drama, Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents--on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth.

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Dixon, Descending

Karen Outen

Dixon was once an Olympic-level runner. But he missed the team by two-tenths of a second, and ever since that pain decades ago, he hasn’t allowed a goal to consume him. But when his charming older brother, Nate, suggests that they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, Dixon can’t refuse. The brothers are determined to prove something—to themselves and to each other. In one devastating moment, Dixon’s world is upended. Ultimately, Dixon must confront the truth of what happened on the mountain and come to terms with who can and cannot be saved. 

 

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The Bishop and the Butterfly

Michael Wolraich

Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks filled with hundreds of names--businessmen, socialites, gangsters, and bootleggers. And something else: a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by the governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Led by the imperious Judge Samuel Seabury, the commission had uncovered a police conspiracy to frame women as prostitutes; many suspected that Vivian Gordon had been executed to bury her secrets. As FDR pressed the police to solve her murder, Judge Seabury doggedly pursued the trail of corruption to the top of Gotham's powerful political machine--the infamous Tammany Hall. A final dramatic showdown between Seabury and playboy mayor Jimmy Walker precipitated Tammany's downfall and cleared the way for FDR's presidency.

 

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Down the Hole

Scott Slater

When a suspiciously polite fox attempts to coax his next meal out of a burrow, he is met with a clever rabbit who has been cooking up a surprise for this very moment!

Careful readers may spot what is in store for fox before he does in this darkly funny cautionary tale that roots for the underbunny.

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Frosting & Icing Workshop: Decorating Desserts

Megan Borgert-Spaniol

This how-to book provides readers with information they need to get started on a career in dessert decorating. Included are the history and cultural significance of frosting and icing; kitchen tools, terms, and techniques; how to become a dessert decorator; and career paths in the dessert decorating industry. Step-by-step recipes help readers practice cooking skills and apply what they've learned. 

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Three Tasks for a Dragon

Eoin Colfer

After his father's death, Prince Lir is tricked into embarking on a perilous quest to rescue a maiden from a dragon. The studious young prince is no warrior, but he uses his brains to make himself indispensable to the ill-tempered dragon. However, neither prince not dragon has bargained on the dark magic that manipulates them both -- and it may be left to the maiden herself to save them all. A clever prince, an unsuspectingly powerful woman, and an ornery dragon with heart are at the center of this luminously illustrated classic in the making.

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Shark Teeth

Sherri Winston

Sharkita “Kita” Hayes is always waiting.
Waiting for her mama to mess up.
Waiting for social services to be called again.
Waiting for her and her siblings to be separated.
Waiting for her worst fear to come true.

But Mama promises things are different now. She's got a good job, she's stopped drinking, stopped going out every night-it's almost enough to make Kita believe her this time. But even as Kita's life is going good, she can't shake the feeling that everything could go up in flames at any moment. When her assistant principal and trusted dance coach starts asking questions about her home life, Kita is more determined than ever to keep up appearances and make sure her family stays together-even if it means falling apart herself.

As the threat of her family being separated again circles like a shark in the water, the pressure starts to get to Kita. But could it be that Kita's worst fear is actually the best thing that could happen to her family . . . and to her?

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The Expectant Detectives

Kat Ailes

For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation. With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier, and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.

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The Secret History of Bigfoot

John O'Connor

Journalist and self-diagnosed skeptic John O'Connor is fascinated by Sasquatch. Curious to learn more, he embarks on a quest through the North American wilds in search of Bigfoot, its myth and meaning. Alongside an eccentric cast of characters, he explores the zany and secretive world of "cryptozoology," tracking Bigfoot through ancient folklore to Harry and the Hendersons, while examining the forces behind our ever-widening belief in the supernatural. As O'Connor treks through the shrouded forests of the Pacific Northwest, listens to firsthand accounts, and attends Bigfoot conventions, he's left wondering--what happens when the lines between myth and reality blur?

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One Nation Under Guns

Dominic Erdozain

Historian Dominic Erdozain argues that we have wrongly ceded the big-picture argument on guns: As we parse legislation on background checks and automatic-weapons bans, we fail to ask what place guns should have in a functioning democracy. Taking readers on a brilliant historical journey, Erdozain shows how the founders feared the tyranny of individuals as much as the tyranny of kings—the idea that any person had a right to walk around armed was anathema to their notion of freedom and the peaceful republic they hoped to build. They wrote these ideas into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, ideas that were subsequently affirmed by two centuries of jurisprudence. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court reinvented the Second Amendment in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, an opinion that Erdozain convincingly eviscerates, many Americans had already acceded to the fiction: the unfreedom of an armed society. To save our democracy, he argues, we must fight for the founders’ true idea of what it means to be free.

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Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Benjamin Stevenson

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime writing royalty: the debut writer (me!); the forensic science writer; the blockbuster writer; the legal thriller writer; the literary writer; the psychological suspense writer. But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

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Dirty Thirty

Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum, Trenton’s hardest working, most underappreciated bounty hunter, is offered a freelance assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler Martin Rabner wants her to locate his former security guard, Andy Manley (a.k.a. Nutsy), who he is convinced stole a fortune in diamonds out of his safe. Stephanie is also looking for another troubled man, Duncan Dugan, a fugitive from justice arrested for robbing the same jewelry store on the same day. As the body count rises and witnesses start to disappear, it won’t be easy for Stephanie to keep herself clean when everyone else is playing dirty. It’s a good thing Stephanie isn’t afraid of getting a little dirty, too.

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The Edge

David Baldacci

When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much. Dak, Jenny's brother, who's working to revitalize the town. Earl, the retired lobsterman who found Jenny's body. And Alex, Jenny's sister with a dark past of her own. There's a long history of secrets and those who will stop at nothing to keep them from being exposed, leaving Devine with no idea who he can trust and who wants him dead.

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Good Omens

Neil Gaiman

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

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This Is Where I Leave You

Jonathan Tropper

The death of Judd Foxman’s father marks the first time that the entire Foxman clan has congregated in years. There is, however, one conspicuous absence: Judd's wife, Jen, whose affair with his radio- shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the demise of his father and his marriage, Judd joins his dysfunctional family as they reluctantly sit shiva and spend seven days and nights under the same roof. The week quickly spins out of control as longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed and old passions are reawakened. Then Jen delivers the clincher: she's pregnant.

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My Sister, the Serial Killer

Oyinkan Braithwaite

Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood (bleach, bleach, and more bleach), the best way to move a body (wrap it in sheets like a mummy), and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.
 

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Hark! A Vagrant

Kate Beaton

Hark! A Vagrant is an uproarious romp through history and literature seen through the sharp, contemporary lens of New Yorker cartoonist and comics sensation Kate Beaton. No era or tome emerges unscathed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction.

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Wow, No Thank You.

Samantha Irby

Irby is forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads. This is the bourgeois life of a Hallmark Channel dream. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "tv executives slash amateur astrologers" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," who still hides past due bills under her pillow.

 

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Bad Monkey

Carl Hiaasen

Andrew Yancy-late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff's office-has a human arm in his freezer. There's a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it's not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy's new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey.
 

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Bossypants

Tina Fey

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true.
At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've always suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.
 

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Hyperbole and a Half

Allie Brosh

FROM THE AUTHOR:
This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures; words; stories about things that happened to me; stories about things that happened to other people because of me; eight billion dollars*; stories about dogs; the secret to eternal happiness.* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

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Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?” Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!

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Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris

A recent transplant to Paris, humorist David Sedaris, bestselling author of "Naked", presents a collection of his strongest work yet, including the title story about his hilarious attempt to learn French. 

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One for the Money

Janet Evanovich

Meet Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie’s opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey.
Out of work and out of money, Stephanie blackmails her bail-bondsman cousin Vinnie into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. Stephanie knows zilch about the job requirements, but she figures her new pal, primo bounty hunter Ranger, can teach her what it takes to catch a crook. Her first assignment: nail Joe Morelli, a former vice cop on the run from a charge of murder one. Morelli’s the inamorato who charmed Stephanie out of her virginity at age sixteen. There’s still powerful chemistry between them, so the chase should be interesting…and could also be extremely dangerous.

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The Wangs Vs. the World

Jade Chang

Charles Wang, a brash, lovable businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, has just lost everything in the financial crisis. So he rounds up two of his children from schools that he can no longer afford and packs them into the only car that wasn't repossessed. Together with their wealth-addicted stepmother, Barbra, they head on a cross-country journey from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the Upstate New York retreat of the eldest Wang daughter, Saina.

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Born a Crime

Trevor Noah

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy, Trevor Noah, who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother —his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
 

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Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

Phoebe Robinson

Wouldn't it be great if life came with instructions? Of course, but like access to Michael B. Jordan's house, none of us are getting any. Thankfully, Phoebe Robinson is ready to share everything she has experienced to prove that if you can laugh at her topsy-turvy life, you can laugh at your own.
 

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition

Douglas Adams

Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together, this dynamic pair began a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox—the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphod’s girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he’s bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? For all the answers, stick your thumb to the stars!

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Ali the Great and the Market Mishap

Saadia Faruqi

Ali Tahir loses something important at the market--his brother!

Who's hungry? Ali, his grandfather, and little brother Fateh head to the South Asian market to stock up on snacks. So much to see! But what Ali can't see is Fateh.... Where did he go? Will Ali's quick thinking save the day? Ali the Great, by Yasmin author Saadia Faruqi, is a charming chapter book series about Pakistani American second grader Ali Tahir.

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Claudia and the Bad Joke (#15)

Ann M. Martin

Claudia isn't worried when she hears her newest baby-sitting charge, Betsy Sobak, is a big practical joker. After all, how much harm can one little girl do?

Plenty. Claudia breaks her leg as a result of one of Betsy's jokes. Now Claudia is feeling like baby-sitting might be too dangerous and she's talking about quitting the club. Kristy thinks Betsy needs to be taught a lesson, and that the baby-sitters are just the ones to do it.

Watch out, Betsy Sobak. The joke war is on!

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Who's Got Mail?

Linda Barrett Osborne

Who’s Got Mail? is an intriguing and fact-filled look at how the mail has been delivered in the United States since before the Constitution was even signed. In the United States, the spread of the postal service went hand in hand with the spread of democracy and transportation. As settlement spread west, communication became even more important to let distant residents feel that they were American; no part of the country was too far away, no village or farm too small to have access to the post.

Moreover, the Post Office has always been a public service—it was not originally designed to make a profit or act like a business, but to deliver letters, medical supplies, packages ordered through catalogs, and all the things that Americans need at a reasonable cost. Over the centuries, it has also been one of the largest employers in the United States, particularly as a means for African Americans and women to secure stable, middle-class jobs.

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Yasmin the Vet

Saadia Faruqi

Mama and Baba are away on a trip, and Yasmin is moping because she misses them. Then Yasmin, Nani, and Nana discover an injured cat that needs a rescue. Could helping a creature in need be just the thing to cheer up Yasmin? Best-selling author Saadia Faruqi shares another delightful story featuring Yasmin and her multigenerational Pakistani American family.

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Blood

Jen Gunter

Most women, transgender, and non-binary people who menstruate can expect to have hundreds of periods in a lifetime. Not knowing how your body works makes it challenging to advocate for yourself. Consequently, many suffer in silence thinking their bodies are uniquely broken, or they turn to disreputable sources. Blood is a practical, empowering guide to what's typical, what's concerning, and when to seek care--recounted with expertise and frank, fearless wit that have made Dr. Jen today's most trusted voice in gynecology.

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Legacy

Uché Blackstock, MD

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. Dr. Uché Blackstock and her sister followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from Harvard Medical School. But neither understood 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.
 

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Martyr!

Kaveh Akbar

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
 

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People Collide

Isle McElroy

When Eli leaves the cramped Bulgarian apartment he shares with Elizabeth, his more organized and successful wife, he discovers that he now inhabits her body. Not only have he and his wife traded bodies but Elizabeth, living as Eli, has disappeared without a trace. What follows is Eli's search across Europe to America for his missing wife--and a roving, no-holds-barred exploration of gender and embodied experience. Is this transformation the very thing Eli and Elizabeth need for their marriage to thrive?

 

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Flashback to the . . . Fly '90s!

Patty Michaels

In the 1990s, grunge music and clothing were all the rage, lunchboxes held Crystal Pepsi and Lunchables, and a strange thing called the internet was just about to take over the world. Kids will love learning about all things 90s, from the Beanie Babies craze to must-see preschool shows like Barney & Friends and Teletubbies

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Wish Soup

Junghwa Park

Sohee's favorite part of Seollal is tteokguk--the special Korean rice cake soup traditionally only enjoyed on New Year's Day. Each bowl is said to make the person who eats it one year older. This year, Sohee wants to eat as many bowls as she can to finally be an eonni, or "big girl," to her younger siblings and cousins. Before Sohee can even get to her first bowl, though, she's interrupted by a series of holiday-related chores, leaving plenty of opportunity for her mischievous younger sister Somi to eat not only Sohee's tteokguk, but their whole family's! Despite this outrageously silly setback, Sohee eventually learns that being a big girl is more than just how many bowls of tteokguk you eat.

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The Last Fire Season

Manjula Martin

In 2020, when a dry lightning storm ignited hundreds of simultaneous wildfires across the West and kicked off the worst fire season on record, Martin, along with thousands of other Californians, evacuated her home in the midst of a pandemic. Both a love letter to the forests of the West and an interrogation of the colonialist practices that led to their current dilemma, The Last Fire Season, follows her from the oaky hills of Sonoma County to the redwood forests of coastal Santa Cruz, to the pines and peaks of the Sierra Nevada, as she seeks shelter, bears witness to the devastation, and tries to better understand fire’s role in the ecology of the West. As Martin seeks a way to navigate the daily experience of living in a damaged body on a damaged planet, she comes to question her own assumptions about nature and the complicated connections between people and the land on which we live.

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Material World

Ed Conway

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new perspective: the ground up.

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Say You'll Be Mine

Naina Kumar

Meghna Raman defied her parents’ wishes and followed her life’s passion, becoming a theater teacher and aspiring playwright. When she discovers that her best friend and secret crush, Seth, is engaged, she realizes he’s about to become the one-that-got-away. Determined to try and move on, Meghna agrees to let her parents introduce her to a potential match. Grumpy engineer Karthik Murthy has agreed to his mother’s matchmaking attempts to make her happy, never dreaming he would meet someone as vibrant as Meghna. Though he can’t offer her something real, a fake engagement could help Meghna soothe the sting of Seth’s wedding festivities and Karthik avoid the absurd number of set-ups his mother has planned for him. But soon, their expectations and insecurities threaten something that’s become a lot more real than they’d planned.
 

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The Fury

Alex Michaelides

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island. We found ourselves trapped there overnight. What followed was a game of cat and mouse ― a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, building to an unforgettable climax. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered. But who am I? My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.

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Dolls of Our Lives

Mary Mahoney

Combining history, travelogue, and memoir, Dolls of Our Lives follows Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney on an unforgettable journey to the past as they delve into the origins of this iconic brand. Continuing the conversations that began on their podcast, they set out to answer the lingering questions that keep them up at night. What did American Girl inventor Pleasant Rowland hope to say to children with these dolls? Was girl power something that could be ordered from a catalogue, described by a magazine, or modeled in the plot lines of books? And how - and why - did this brand shape an entire generation?

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Not the End of the World

Hannah Ritchie

Packed with the latest research, practical guidance, and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you've been told about the environment. Not the End of the World will give you the tools to understand our current crisis and make lifestyle changes that actually have an impact. Hannah cuts through the noise by outlining what works, what doesn't, and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.

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