“Time is a thief. It steals our memory, our hopes, and our strength, leaving only the sense there’s never enough of it.” – Clive Cussler (1931 – 2020), The Solomon Curse
FICTION
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue ★
“We should have known the end was near.”
So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company.
Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle would last for decades and come at a steep price.
Told through the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.
Description from Goodreads.
“Among the many virtues of Mbue’s novel is the way it uses an ecological nightmare to frame a vivid and stirring picture of human beings’ asserting their value to the world, whether the world cares about them or not. A fierce, up-to-the-minute novel that makes you sad enough to grieve and angry enough to fight back.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“This challenging and empathetic novel gives voice to African villagers desperate to save their land and children from a greedy U.S. corporation.” – Shelf Awareness
“[A] stirring, decades-spanning portrait of an African village striking back against environmental exploitation… With a kaleidoscope of perspectives, Mbue lyrically charts a culture in the midst of change, and poses ethical questions about the resisters’ complex set of motives… heartbreaking.” – Publishers Weekly
“…paints a gripping and nuanced picture of resistance.” – Booklist
Available Formats:
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The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan ★
The Nasr family is spread across the globe—Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut—a constant touchstone—and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father’s recent death, Idris, the family’s new patriarch, has decided to sell.
The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets—lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame—that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together.
In a novel teeming with wisdom, warmth, and characters born of remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us again that “fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us” (NPR).
Description from Goodreads.
“Feels revolutionary in its freshness… The book has all the elements we expect from a family saga, but set against the backdrop of Lebanon’s long, sad history, the narrative stakes are so much higher.” – Entertainment Weekly
“A profound inquiry into what it means to be a family, determine your identity, and hold onto a home — particularly in a world that doesn’t always weigh equally the importance of everyone’s home, identity, and family… Alyan is virtuosic at portraying the complicated bonds that exist between family members, and she is unafraid to show both the beauty and the despair that come with true intimacy, love, and loss.” – Refinery29
“Exquisite… Tenderly and compassionately told, and populated with complicated and flawed characters, the Nasrs’ story interrogates nostalgia, memory, and the morality of keeping secrets against the backdrop of a landscape and a people in constant flux. Alyan’s debut was striking, and this one’s even better.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Riveting… Alyan is masterful at clarifying the complicated sociopolitical realities surrounding Lebanon’s and Syria’s intertwined histories in terms of class, caste, colonialism, and tribalism. But even more masterful here… is her laserlike focus on her multifaceted characters in big and small moments that come together to create a singular family. Painful and joyous, sad and funny—impossible to put down.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
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The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter ★
Book-smart, devoutly Catholic, and painfully unsure of herself, Jane becomes pregnant in high school; by her early twenties, she is raising three children in the suburbs of western New York State. In the fall of 1991, as her children are growing older and more independent, Jane is overcome by a spiritual and intellectual restlessness that leads her to become involved with a local pro-life group. Following the tenets of her beliefs, she also adopts a little girl from Eastern Europe. But Mirela is a difficult child. Deprived of a loving caregiver in infancy, she remains unattached to her new parents, no matter how much love Jane shows her. As Jane becomes consumed with chasing therapies that might help Mirela, her relationships with her family, especially her older daughter, Lauren, begin to fray.
Feeling estranged from her mother and unsettled in her new high school, Lauren begins to discover the power of her own burgeoning creativity and sexuality—a journey that both echoes and departs from her mother’s own adolescent experiences. But when Lauren is confronted with the limits of her youth and independence, Jane is thrown into an emotional crisis, forced to reconcile her principles and faith with her determination to keep her daughters safe. The Fourth Child is a piercing love story and a haunting portrayal of how love can shatter—or strengthen—our beliefs.
Description from Goodreads.
“This is a work of precise social realism, in which the intricate tableau of detail offers a backdrop for larger questions about morality, family, and obligation.” – Vogue
“Excellent writing and well-developed characters…” – Kirkus Reviews
“…smart… Winter’s surprisingly complex characters make it worthwhile.” – Publishers Weekly
“[Forces] readers—to ask big questions about how firmly held principles can affect a family.” – Real Simple
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Brood by Jackie Polzin
Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for another creature entails. From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer which brings a surprise tornado, she battles predators, bad luck, and the uncertainty of a future that may not look anything like the one she always imagined.
Intimate and startlingly original, this slender novel is filled with wisdom, sorrow and joy. As the year unfolds, we come to know the small band of loved ones who comprise the narrator’s circumscribed life at this moment. Her mother, a flinty former home-ec teacher who may have to take over the chickens; her best friend, a real estate agent with a burgeoning family of her own; and her husband whose own coping mechanisms for dealing with the miscarriage that haunts his wife are more than a little unfathomable to her.
A stunning and brilliantly insightful meditation on life and longing that will stand beside such modern classics as H is for Hawk and Gilead, Brood rewards its readers with the richness of reflection and unrelenting hope.
Description from Goodreads.
“Witty and profound… Told in short vignettes studded with breath-catching wisdom, this novel feels both delicate and sustaining from beginning to end.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Calling to mind the cerebral works of Olivia Laing and Jenny Offill, Polzin’s story has a quiet intensity that churns throughout. It’s in the tension she builds within her narrator’s isolated world, navigating the paradox of domestic intimacy, the comfort and terror it sows, and the unexpected shapes motherhood can take… A moving meditation on loss, solitude, and the hope that can rise from both.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Polzin’s debut conjures humors and sadness in Minnesota, where the narrator ponders the potential of motherhood, a pending move, and the strangeness of raising animals who force us to consider the world in a new, slower, sideways perspective (which leads us to wonder: maybe the strangeness is us?).” – The Millions
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Everything After by Jill Santopolo
Two loves. Two choices. One chance to follow her dreams.
Emily has come a long way since she lost her two passions fifteen years ago: music, and Rob. She’s a psychologist at NYU who helps troubled college students like the one she once was. Together with her caring doctor husband, Ezra, she has a beautiful life. They’re happy. They hope to start a family. But when a tragic event in Emily’s present too closely echoes her past, and parts of her story that she’d hoped never to share come to light, her perfect life is suddenly upturned. Then Emily hears a song on the radio about the woman who got away. The melody and voice are hauntingly familiar. Could it be? As Emily’s past passions come roaring back into her life, she’ll find herself asking: Who is she meant to be? Who is she meant to love?
Description from Goodreads.
“Santopolo draws tears with this one, even from the least sentimental readers.” – Palm Beach Daily News
“[A] profound contemporary romance… Santopolo crafts an unconventional but realistic love triangle by celebrating her characters’ flaws and grounding the story in earnest emotion. This moving tale is sure to entice.” – Publishers Weekly
“Offer this to fans of women’s stories like those by Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid, readers who appreciate a good ‘what if…?’ and those who like interpersonal drama set in New York City.” – Booklist
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Edie Richter is Not Alone by Rebecca Handler
Funny, acerbic Edie Richter is moving with her husband from San Francisco to Perth, Australia. She leaves behind a sister and mother still mourning the recent death of her father. Before the move, Edie and her husband were content, if socially awkward―given her disinclination for small talk.
In Perth, Edie finds herself in a remarkably isolated yet verdant corner of the world, but Edie has a secret: she committed an unthinkable act that she can barely admit to herself. In some ways, the landscape mirrors her own complicated inner life, and rather than escaping her past, Edie is increasingly forced to confront what she’s done. Everybody, from the wildlife to her new neighbors, is keen to engage, and Edie does her best to start fresh. But her relationship with her husband is fraying, and the beautiful memories of her father are heartbreaking, and impossible to stop. Something, in the end, has to give.
Written in clean spare prose that is nevertheless brimming with the richness and wry humor of the protagonist’s observations and idiosyncrasies, Edie Richter is Not Alone is Rebecca Handler’s debut novel. It is both deeply shocking and entirely quotidian: a story about a woman’s visceral confrontation with the fundamental meaning of humanity.
Description from Goodreads.
“Handler gets it right from the title on out. Edie is definitely not alone. Her plight is one many readers will respond to deeply and perhaps even be soothed by… Profound yet often quite funny, keenly observed, and deeply affecting.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Edie’s increasingly unpredictable behavior reaches its crescendo with a heartbreaking climax, and along the way, the author explores not merely Edie’s guilt, but the complicated feelings over her loss. This quick, engrossing novel brings laughter and tears.” – Publisher’s Weekly
“Handler’s Edie joins the ranks of unforgettably eccentric, intelligent women protagonists, such as the titular character in Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Eleanor Flood in Maria Semple’s Today Will Be Different.” ―Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
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The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina
When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain.
Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around.
Soon Yui makes her own pilgrimage to the phone booth, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Instead she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of her mother’s death.
Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is the signpost pointing to the healing that can come after.
Description from Goodreads.
“This book is one to read now.” – Cosmopolitan
“A story about the dogged survival of hope when all else is lost… Messina shows us that even in the face of a terrible tragedy, such as an earthquake or a loss of a child, the small things – a cup of tea, a proffered hand – can offer a way ahead. Its meditative minimalism makes it a striking haiku of the human heart.” – The Times
“This is a beautiful book. And a timely one. It tells a story about the aftermath of a disaster, long after the disaster. It tells of memories of the first few weeks after horror struck, but more it tells about the years after. If we’re not directly affected, we lose sight of the years after that others have to endure. Or survive.” – Bookbag
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A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better by Benjamin Wood
For twenty years, Daniel Hardesty has borne the emotional scars of a childhood trauma which he is powerless to undo, which leaves him no peace.
One August morning in 1995, the young Daniel and his estranged father Francis – a character of ‘two weathers’, of irresistible charm and roiling self-pity – set out on a road trip to the North that seems to represent a chance to salvage their relationship. But with every passing mile, the layers of Fran’s mendacity and desperation are exposed, pushing him to acts of violence that will define the rest of his son’s life.
Description from Goodreads.
“A resounding achievement… Rich, beautiful and written by an author of great depth and resource.” – The Guardian
“Haunts the imagination long after the final page.” – The Independent on Sunday
“With his third novel, Wood’s talent has burgeoned spectacularly. The book is a tremendous achievement, an unputdownable domestic thriller that is also subtle and moving… travelling well beyond his earlier fiction, Wood has produced a tour de force that marks his creative arrival.” – The Sunday Times
Available Formats:
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Sandcastle Beach by Jenny Holiday
Maya Mehta will do anything to save her tiny, beloved community theater. Put on musicals she hates? Check. Hire an arrogant former-pop-star-turned-actor? Done. But what Maya really needs to save her theater is Matchmaker Bay’s new business grant. She’s got some serious competition, though: Benjamin “Law” Lawson, local bar owner, Jerk Extraordinaire, and Maya’s annoyingly hot arch nemesis. Let the games begin.
Law loves nothing more than getting under Maya’s skin, and making those gorgeous eyes dance with irritation. But when he discovers the ex-pop star has a thing for Maya, too, Law decides he’s done waiting in the wings-starting with a scorching-hot kiss. Turns out there’s a thin line between hate and irresistible desire, and Maya and Law are really good at crossing it. But when things heat up, will they allow their long-standing feud to get in the way of their growing feelings?
Description from Goodreads.
“…as funny as it is sexy.” – PopSugar
“The witty banter between Maya and Benjamin makes the evolution of their relationship thoroughly believable, and their romance is enhanced by the idyllic small-town setting and meddlesome, matchmaking townsfolk. Series fans and new readers alike will find much to love.” – Publishers Weekly
Available Formats:
eBook
SUSPENSE
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
A lot has changed in the years since Ambrosia Wellington graduated from college, and she’s worked hard to create a new life for herself. But then an invitation to her ten-year reunion arrives in the mail, along with an anonymous note that reads “We need to talk about what we did that night.”
It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she’d believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything.
At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused—the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding. And it was all because of the game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else, and the girl who paid the price.
Alternating between the reunion and Amb’s freshman year, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a shocking novel about the brutal lengths girls can go to get what they think they’re owed, and what happens when the games we play in college become matters of life and death.
Description from Goodreads.
“A sharp, pitch-black thriller that takes the mean-girls trope to another level.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Sex, betrayal, scheming — all come into play in dark and heavy loads. Is there someone to root for in all of this? Only at the reader’s peril.” – Toronto Star
“Alternating between Amb’s time at college and the present day, Flynn reveals the darkness girls are capable of, building toward a thrillingly unsettling ending.” – Electric Literature
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Fast Ice by Clive Cussler & Graham Brown
After a former NUMA colleague disappears while researching the icebergs of Antarctica, Kurt Austin and his assistant Joe Zavala embark for the freezing edge of the world to investigate. Even as they confront perilous waters and frigid temperatures, they are also are up against a terrifying man-made weapon–a fast-growing ice that could usher in a new Ice Age.
Pitted against a determined madman and a monstrous storm, Kurt and the NUMA team must unravel a Nazi-era plot in order to save the globe from a freeze that would bury it once and for all.
Description from Goodreads.
“Gripping… This is another classic Cussler action thriller.” – Publishers Weekly
“The pace never slows, and the villains are extra nasty in this entry that delivers what readers expect when they see Cussler’s name on the cover. Cussler, who died in 2020, and frequent cowriter Brown convey marine biology’s complexities in a way that makes it believable and understandable. Grab a comfy chair and plan to read all night.” – Library Journal
“The adrenaline junkie reader will love this.” – Mystery and Scene
Available Formats:
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MYSTERY
The Windsor Knot by S.J. Bennett
It is the early spring of 2016 and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The Queen leaves the investigation to the professionals—until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction.
Unhappy at the mishandling of the case and concerned for her staff’s morale, the monarch decides to discreetly take matters into her own hands. With help from her Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, a British Nigerian and recent officer in the Royal Horse Artillery, the Queen secretly begins making inquiries. As she carries out her royal duties with her usual aplomb, no one in the Royal Household, the government, or the public knows that the resolute Elizabeth will use her keen eye, quick mind, and steady nerve to bring a murderer to justice.
SJ Bennett captures Queen Elizabeth’s voice with skill, nuance, wit, and genuine charm in this imaginative and engaging mystery that portrays Her Majesty as she’s rarely seen: kind yet worldly, decisive, shrewd, and most importantly a great judge of character.
Description from Goodreads.
“[An] amusingly decorous debut… the queen makes a wonderfully self-effacing sleuth.” – Kirkus Reviews
“The Queen shows a little Sherlock Holmes and a dash of George Smiley. She also charms the reader in all her scenes.” – Toronto Star
“SJ Bennett brilliantly sets up the Queen as detective… Our super-sleuth Queen unites sharp intuition and first-class memory with a lifetime of observation to outwit the police and MI5. She is Miss Marple with a crown.” – Daily Mirror
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Transient Desires by Donna Leon
In his many years as a commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native city, Venice, to discover the person responsible. Now, in Transient Desires, the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon’s masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti’s curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it?
As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumored to be involved in more sinister nighttime activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organized.
Donna Leon’s Transient Desires is as powerful as any novel she has written, testing Brunetti to his limits and forcing him to listen very carefully for the truth.
Description from Goodreads.
“Leon’s devoted audience may be shocked to realize that this latest Guido Brunetti novel is the thirtieth in the series, which only goes to show that sometimes abiding relationships never lose the shock of the new… Leon’s beloved series shows no signs of aging.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Atmospheric… The action builds to a thrilling denouement involving coast guard boats and navy commandos.” – Publishers Weekly
“Why would two young men dump two injured American girls outside a hospital in the middle of the night and then disappear? This is the question facing Commissario Guido Brunetti in a tricky case that requires the help of the Carabinieri and the Guardia Costiera to solve. What the Venetian detective and his colleagues eventually discover is genuinely horrific. The climax is nothing less than a trip―across the laguna―into the heart of darkness… Leon’s special skill is to splice glimpses of la dolce vita with acute analysis of moral and ethical dilemmas… The series that has shadowed Brunetti for three decades is an epic achievement―in its own way quite the equal of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time.” – The Times
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HISTORICAL FICTION
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn ★
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes.
Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.
1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter–the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger–and their true enemy–closer…
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] page-turner you don’t want to put down.” – Red Carpet Crash
“Quinn returns to WWII in this immersive saga. [Her] page-turning narrative is enhanced by her richly drawn characters and by the fascinating code-breaking techniques, which come alive via Quinn’s extensive historical detail. This does not disappoint.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“…captivating… Quinn’s writing is expertly crafted, blending history, intrigue and drama. She nimbly juggles multiple time lines and delivers a story with perfect pacing.” – Blue Stocking Reviews
“[A] fascinating look at the dedication and brilliance of the British Code Breakers during World War II… [Quinn] really shines with this story that has well-researched history blended seamlessly with romance, friendship, and intrigue.” – Books and Recipes
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The Recent East by Thomas Grattan
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beate Haas, who defected from East Germany as a child, is notified that her parents’ abandoned mansion is available for her to reclaim. Newly divorced and eager to escape her bleak life in upstate New York, where she moved as an adult, she arrives with her two teenagers to discover a city that has become an unrecognizable ghost town. The move fractures the siblings’ close relationship, as Michael, free to be gay, takes to looting empty houses and partying with wannabe anarchists, while Adela, fascinated with the horrors of the Holocaust, buries herself in books and finds companionship in a previously unknown cousin. Over time, the town itself changes—from dismantled city to refugee haven and neo-Nazi hotbed, and eventually to a desirable seaside resort town. In the midst of that change, two episodes of devastating, fateful violence come to define the family forever.
Moving seamlessly through decades and between the thoughts and lives of several unforgettable characters, Thomas Grattan’s spellbinding novel is a multigenerational epic that illuminates what it means to leave home, and what it means to return. Masterfully crafted with humor, gorgeous prose, and a powerful understanding of history and heritage, The Recent East is the profoundly affecting story of a family upended by displacement and loss, and the extraordinary debut of an empathetic and ambitious storyteller.
Description from Goodreads.
“An arresting and resplendent family saga.” – O, the Oprah Magazine
“A sprawling, captivating story of identity, displacement, family, and belonging, Thomas Grattan’s debut novel is at turns heart-breaking and life-affirming, a necessary reminder of the different ways we can find, or create, a home for ourselves… The novel goes back and forth in time, offering a fascinating, clear-eyed view of the quickly changing landscape of Germany in the late 20th century, but what it does best of all is show the ways in which we are all of us, always, searching to better understand who we are, and how we fit into an ever-changing world.” – Refinery29
“[A] striking and surprising debut… At turns funny and frightening, this is a moving, memorable portrait of a family and town in turmoil.” – Publishers Weekly
Available Formats:
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Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan
When Savannah history professor Everly Winthrop is asked to guest-curate a new museum collection focusing on artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she’s shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later. Everly can’t resist the opportunity to try to solve some of the mysteries and myths surrounding the devastating night of its sinking.
Everly’s research leads her to the astounding history of a family of eleven who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found, along with her child. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah’s society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions. This is a moving and powerful exploration of what women will do to endure in the face of tragedy, the role fate plays, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] vivid account of an historic tragedy.” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Gripping… bringing to life a little-known shipwreck in meticulous detail. [An] engrossing, centuries-spanning tale.” – Publishers Weekly
“Both Augusta and Lilly are women of their times, dependent on their family, especially the males, but their struggles at sea after the boiler explosion, and amid the fear and heavy loss, reveal courage and a resilience to survive that elevates them and brings on newfound strength.” – Historical Novel Society
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ROMANCE
Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert ★
Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong—so she’s given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It’s time for Eve to grow up and prove herself—even though she’s not entirely sure how…
Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner’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 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. Yeah, right.
Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Before long, she’s infiltrated his work, his kitchen—and his spare bedroom. Jacob hates everything about it. Or rather, he should. 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. Like Eve, the heat between them is impossible to ignore—and it’s melting Jacob’s frosty exterior.
Description from Goodreads.
“If you love rom-coms, this incredibly charming novel will sweep you off your feet.” – PopSugar
“Their biting banter and saucy looks will delight readers who enjoy a good enemies-to-lovers tale that doesn’t shy away from epic sex scenes or raw emotions. Hibbert concludes the brilliant Brown Sisters series on high a note.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Eve’s journey to understanding her fears is sweet, and Jacob’s belief in her as a caring, capable adult is the stuff romance heroes are made of. Hibbert has a gift for writing truly funny dialogue and genuinely tender emotional moments. Full of heart and humor, this is a sexy, satisfying end to a beloved series. Absolutely charming.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
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NONFICTION
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson ★
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code.
Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm… Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids?
After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
Description from Goodreads.
“It is a gripping tale, showing how our new ability to hack evolution will soon start throwing us curveballs.” – New Scientist
“This challenging, fascinating story examines Doudna’s background and excavates the moral quandaries she grapples with as her creation opens up more and more avenues for scientific advancement.” – Elle
“In Isaacson’s splendid saga of how big science really operates, curiosity and creativity, discovery and innovation, obsession and strong personalities, competitiveness and collaboration, and the beauty of nature all stand out.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“A vital book about the next big thing in science—and yet another top-notch biography from Isaacson.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book | Audiobook | eBook | eAudiobook
Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Queer New York by Elon Green ★
The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable.
He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.
Nor will he be his last.
The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten.
This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.
Description from Goodreads.
“Green’s excellent treatment of an underreported topic makes this a book true crime readers won’t want to miss.” – BookPage
“This captivating and thought-provoking read is a humanity-filled twist on the true crime genre.” – Booklist
“These crimes have been covered before, but Green sets his work apart by offering nuanced portraits of the victims and exploring how they navigated lives that led them to the bars that might have seemed like safe spaces but turned out to be anything but… Reflecting both its author’s compassion and journalistic chops, this gripping narrative also focuses on forensic innovation and jurisdictional intrigue. A stellar tale of justice eluded, to add to the growing queer true crime genre justice.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“True crime too often focuses on the ‘bad guys’… In Last Call, Green instead foregrounds [the] known victims. He shows us the people they were and the lives they left behind. Their lives mattered, and Last Call is a testament to how homophobia shaped these men’s lives and, eventually, their deaths.” – BookPage, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town by Brian Alexander
By following the struggle for survival of one small-town hospital, and the patients who walk, or are carried, through its doors, The Hospital takes readers into the world of the American medical industry in a way no book has done before. Americans are dying sooner, and living in poorer health. Alexander argues that no plan will solve America’s health crisis until the deeper causes of that crisis are addressed.
Bryan, Ohio’s hospital, is losing money, making it vulnerable to big health systems seeking domination and Phil Ennen, CEO, has been fighting to preserve its independence. Meanwhile, Bryan, a town of 8,500 people in Ohio’s northwest corner, is still trying to recover from the Great Recession. As local leaders struggle to address the town’s problems, and the hospital fights for its life amid a rapidly consolidating medical and hospital industry, a 39-year-old diabetic literally fights for his limbs, and a 55-year-old contractor lies dying in the emergency room. With these and other stories, Alexander strips away the wonkiness of policy to reveal Americans’ struggle for health against a powerful system that’s stacked against them, but yet so fragile it blows apart when the pandemic hits. Culminating with COVID-19, this book offers a blueprint for how we created the crisis we’re in.
Description from Goodreads.
“This wrenching account brilliantly diagnoses the flaws in America’s healthcare system.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“The time Alexander spent embedded in the community gives continuity and depth to the stories of the individuals he connected with and puts a human face on broader issues of social inequality. This expertly reported account will resonate and find a wide audience.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Alexander’s scorching reportage provides a distressing, infuriating picture of health care delivery and highlights the heroic fight of a little hospital and humble hamlet to stay vital.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
Available Formats:
Hoopla eAudiobook
Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer
We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world–from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses–the harder they find it is to locate life’s edge.
Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts–whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
Life’s Edge is an utterly fascinating investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to re-create life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It’s never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab?
Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein’s monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up.
Description from Goodreads.
“A fascinating and well-written mapping of the edges of biology, which will have broad appeal to nonscientists.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Diligently tackles the true definition of life… Zimmer invites us to observe, ponder, and celebrate life’s exquisite diversity, nuances, and ultimate unity.” – Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“A master science writer explores the definition of life… An ingenious case that the answers to life’s secrets are on the horizon.” – Kirkus Reviews
Available Formats:
Print Book | eBook
A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon
In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered.
But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside Ancient Rome’s darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.
Description from Goodreads.
“Along the way, Southon works in intriguing history lessons about Roman law, politics, marriage, and sport, and makes breezy yet enlightening analogies… This colorful chronicle of ancient Rome has an appealingly modern sensibility.” – Publishers Weekly
“This narrative style provides not only humor but a sense of relevance to today’s world… Brutal, graphic, amusing, and enthralling, this work is a must-read for true crime fans as well as history lovers.” – Booklist
“[A] witty and erudite summary of murder and death as a part of Roman daily life… Southon uses her knowledge lightly so that you learn a lot without realising it… will guide you through the bloody annals of history and give you an entertaining and appropriate commentary while doing so.” – Historical Novel Society
Available Formats:
Hoopla eBook
I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, A Movement by Jessica Zucker
Sixteen weeks into her second pregnancy, psychologist Jessica Zucker miscarried at home, alone. Suddenly, her career, spent specializing in reproductive and maternal mental health, was rendered corporeal, no longer just theoretical. She now had a changed perspective on her life’s work, her patients’ pain, and the crucial need for a zeitgeist shift. Navigating this nascent transition amid her own grief became a catalyst for Jessica to bring voice to this ubiquitous experience. She embarked on a mission to upend the strident trifecta of silence, shame, and stigma that surrounds reproductive loss–and the result is her striking memoir meets manifesto.
Drawing from her psychological expertise and her work as the creator of the #IHadaMiscarriage campaign, I Had a Miscarriage is a heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, and validating book about navigating these liminal spaces and the vitality of truth telling–an urgent reminder of the power of speaking openly and unapologetically about the complexities of our lives.
Jessica Zucker weaves her own experience and other women’s stories into a compassionate and compelling exploration of grief as a necessary, nuanced personal and communal process. She inspires her readers to speak their truth and, in turn, to ignite transformative change within themselves and in our culture.
Description from Goodreads.
“Miscarriages are often considered an uncomfortable and taboo topic. Jessica Zucker’s memoir is a response to that, a bold first step in kicking down the stigma that surrounds this common event… A melding of the theoretical and the personal that makes for a powerful feminist framework around this topic.” – Literary Hub
“Psychologist Zucker delivers an illuminating discussion of miscarriage in her strikingly intimate debut memoir… Zucker’s story is a profound personal reflection, and her remarkable storytelling sheds new light on a difficult topic. Miscarriage survivors will find affirmation and hope in this stirring account.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“This book should serve as both balm and guidebook for those suffering from such loss. A contemplative, sensitive, and necessary work in the field of pregnancy and parenting.” – Kirkus Reviews