Our staff is constantly reading broadly. Take a look at some of our tried and true recommendations:
Kayla: “I enjoy thrillers, books with TV or movie adaptions, self improvement, or anything my book club (book bums) chooses to read”
Shanghai Girls
See, Lisa.
Two sisters leave Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles in this fresh, fascinating adventure.
Check AvailabilityLauren: “I like exploring all kinds of books – literary and historical fiction, mysteries, biography, social and cultural issues, and history”
March
Brooks, Geraldine.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize--a powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.
Check AvailabilityStill Life
Penny, Louise.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.--From publisher description.
Check AvailabilityImmie: “My favorite books are gritty, mostly fantasy or sci-fi settings. I’m also interested in vegan cooking, graphic novels, and crafts”
Thieftaker
Jackson, D. B.
A beautiful balance of magic and crime, history and fantasy that was fast-paced, compelling, and completely absorbing. Historical fantasy that reads like an old-school crime novel, as if Raymond Chandler were channeling Jonathan Swift. I loved it!"--Kat Richardson.
Check AvailabilityThieftaker
Jackson, D. B.
A beautiful balance of magic and crime, history and fantasy that was fast-paced, compelling, and completely absorbing. Historical fantasy that reads like an old-school crime novel, as if Raymond Chandler were channeling Jonathan Swift. I loved it!"--Kat Richardson.
Check AvailabilityPower Plates
Hamshaw, Gena
Provides one hundred recipes for one-dish vegan meals, including such dishes as maple cinnamon granola, sesame citrus soba salad, white bean ribolita, golden beet risotto, skillet chili mac, and spiced lentil tamale pie.
Check AvailabilityBlood Of Elves
Sapkowski, Andrzej.
Into a tumultuous time is born a child for whom the witches of the world have been waiting. Ciri, the granddaughter of Queen Calanthe, the Lioness of Cintra, has strange powers and a strange destiny, for prophecy names her the Flame, one with the power to change the world: for good, or for evil.
Check AvailabilityJeff: “My book preferences include those of science, history, and economics”
Against Empathy
Bloom, Paul
We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don't have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In Against Empathy, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices"--Dust jacket flap
Check AvailabilityAmerican Nomads
Grant, Richard
Richard Grant spent fifteen years wandering throughout the United States, never spending more than three weeks in one place, and getting to know America's nomads: truckers, tramps, rodeo cowboys, tie-dyed T-shirt concert followers, flea market traders, retirees who live year-round in their RVs, and the murderous Freight Train Riders of America (FTRA). As an outsider aching for the "balm of motion," Grant uses these lives and his own to examine the myths and realities of the wandering life. Along with a personal account, American Nomads traces the history of wandering in the New World, through vividly told stories of frontiersmen, fur trappers and cowboys, Comanche and Apache warriors, all the way back to the first Spanish explorers who crossed the continent.
Check AvailabilitySkin In The Game
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
The phrase "skin in the game" is one we have often heard but have rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it's also an astonishingly complex worldview that, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows in this book, applies to literally all aspects of our lives. In his inimitable style, Taleb pulls on everything from Antaeus the Giant to Hammurabi to Donald Trump to Seneca to the ethics of disagreement to create a jaw-dropping tapestry for understanding our world in a brand new way.
Check AvailabilityEnlightenment Now
Pinker, Steven
In seventy-five graphs, Steven Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked, but now more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Check AvailabilityJulia Rae: “Give me anything well-written– whether it be a thriller, history, or romance”
She's Not There
Boylan, Jennifer Finney
The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny. By turns funny and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the remarkable territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family.
Check AvailabilityBehind Her Eyes
Pinborough, Sarah
Destined to the the blockbuster book of 2017, Behind Her Eyes is a psychological thriller with a to-die-for twist for fans of Luckiest Girl Alive and Stephen King"--
Check AvailabilityAyiti
Gay, Roxane
A married couple seeking boat passage to America prepares to leave their homeland. A mother takes a foreign soldier into her home as a boarder, and into her bed. And a woman conceives a daughter on the bank of a river while fleeing a horrific massacre, a daughter who later moves to America for a new life but is perpetually haunted by the mysterious scent of blood.
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