Librarian Picks

Browse our "Librarian Picks" bookshelves, where every book has been thoughtfully selected by one of our librarians. This month's picks feature the following:

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Traces the author's adventurous trek along the Appalachian Trail past its natural pleasures, human eccentrics, and offbeat comforts. (Publisher Summary)

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

The award-winning author of Everything Is Illuminated exposes common misconceptions about how animals are slaughtered and processed for food, drawing on sources from popular culture to national tradition to reveal how the meat industry misrepresents its practices. (Publisher Summary)

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel 

In an exploration of the limitations of language in understanding and describing the Holocaust, the award-winning, best-selling author of The Life of Pi presents a tale about a novelist and a taxidermist who collaborate on a play about a donkey and a howler monkey who have survived a genocide. (Publisher Summary)

Library Reads announces the top books published in May that librarians across the country love!

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. (Publisher Summary)

The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths

Norfolk is suffering from record summer heat when a construction crew unearths a macabre discovery—a downed World War II plane with the pilot still inside. Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway quickly realizes that the skeleton couldn’t possibly be the pilot, and DNA tests identify the man as Fred Blackstock, a local aristocrat who had been reported dead at sea. When the remaining members of the Blackstock family learn about the discovery, they seem strangely frightened by the news. Then human bones are found on the family’s pig farm. Can the team outrace a looming flood to find a killer? (Publisher Summary)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

"Agnieszka loves her quiet village, the forests, and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia,  her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose"-- (Publisher Summary)

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances and the power of choices, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century over and over again. A GOD IN RUINS tells the dramatic story of the 20th Century through Ursula's beloved younger brother Teddy--would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather-as he navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world. After all that Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have. An ingenious and moving exploration of one ordinary man's path through extraordinary times. (Publisher Summary)

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

The American Southwest has been decimated by drought. Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, deciding if it should just take the whole river all for itself. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and its boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious archeology developments can bloom in the desert and that anyone who challenges her is left in the gutted-suburban dust. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent to investigate. (Publisher Summary)

The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza

When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Under Eve’s reign, Glossy is rapidly becoming a digital sweatshop—hackathons rage all night, girls who sleep get fired, and “fun” means mandatory, company-wide coordinated dances to Beyoncé. Wildly out of her depth, Imogen faces a choice—pack up her Smythson notebooks and quit, or channel her inner geek and take on Eve to save both the magazine and her career. A glittering, uproarious, sharply drawn story filled with thinly veiled fashion personalities,The Knockoff is an insider’s look at the ever-changing world of fashion and a fabulous romp for our Internet-addicted age. (Publisher Summary)

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. As the country moves out of post–World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s & ’70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world. And they now have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shock waves through the Langdon family. (Publisher Summary)

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf’s inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis’s wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with. (Publisher Summary)

Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton

In such a small community as the Falkland Islands, a missing child is unheard of. In such a dangerous landscape it can only be a terrible tragedy, surely... When another child goes missing, and then a third, it's no longer possible to believe that their deaths were accidental, and the villagers must admit that there is a murderer among them. Even Catrin Quinn, a damaged woman living a reclusive life after the accidental deaths of her own two sons a few years ago, gets involved in the searches and the speculation. And suddenly, in this wild and beautiful place that generations have called home, no one feels safe and the hysteria begins to rise. (Publisher Summary)

Check out our Pinterest Board to view more picks from previous months!

Librarian Picks

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Relocating to a family farm in Connecticut after surviving the Columbine school shootings, Caelum and Maureen discover a cache of family memorabilia dating back five generations, which reveals to Caelum unexpected truths about painful past events. (Publisher Summary)

East of Eden of John Steinbeck

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. (Publisher Summary)

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

Accompanying a future famous actress from her Wichita home to New York, chaperone Cora Carlisle shares a life-changing five-week period with her ambitious teenage charge during which she discovers the promise of the twentieth century and her own purpose in life. (Publisher Summary)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The book about a migrant family seeking a better life in California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was not only banned, it was burned by people citing vulgar words and sexual references, nevertheless the Nobel Prize committee later indicated that the work was one of the prime reasons that its author won the top award in literature. (Publisher Summary)

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid. (Publisher Summary)

Library Reads announces the top books published in March that librarians across the country love!

Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

When Queenie Hennessy is told she has days to live she sends a letter to Harold Fry. It is a letter that inspires an unlikely walk, a cast of well-wishers and the examination of many lives unlived. But there is a second letter, a longer, quieter more complicated letter which she will never send. (Publisher Summary)

Sequels are often slippery things, books readers welcome a bit hesitantly, fearful that the second installment won't hold a candle to the first. In telling Queenie's side of the story, Joyce accomplishes the rare feat of endowing her continuing narrative with as much pathos and warmth, wisdom and poignancy as her debut. Harold was beloved by millions; Queenie will be, too.(Booklist *Starred Review*)

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

A chronicle of the sinking of the Lusitania discusses the factors that led to the tragedy and the contributions of such figures as Woodrow Wilson, bookseller Charles Lauriat, and architect Theodate Pope Riddle. ~ (Publisher Summary)

Reader engrossment is tightly sustained as we move back and forth between the Lusitania on its return from New York City to its home port of Liverpool under a black cloud of warnings that the imperial German government considered the waters around Britain to be a war zone, and the rapacious German submarine U-20, stalking the seas for prey like a lion on the Serengeti. Factual and personal to a high degree, the narrative reads like a grade-A thriller.  ~ (Booklist *Starred Review*)

Prudence by Gail Carriger

Raised in London as the adopted daughter of the vampire Lord Akeldama, Prudence has inherited a variation of her mother Alexia's preternatural abilities: she can borrow the powers of any werewolf or vampire that she touches. Her father sends her on a mission to India to investigate a possible new source for tea, and Prudence sails by airship to Bombay where she becomes embroiled in a conflict between the local vampires and shapeshifters. This opener, a spin-off of the recently completed steampunk "Parasol Protectorate" series that began with Soulless, has a younger heroine but a similar narrative voice.  A fun launch for a new line of steampunk adventures from the popular Carriger.  (Library Journal Reviews)

The Witch of Painted Sorrows by M. J. Rose

This haunting tale of possession, set in 1894 Paris, from M.J. Rose inaugurates a new trilogy. "I did not cause the madness, the deaths, or the rest of the tragedies... I had help." So says New York socialite and artist Sandrine Salome, who bears the scars of her first traumatic experience with love. At 15, she was caught, naked, with 18-year-old Leon Ferre. When Leon's father learned of the nature of their relationship, he slapped his son, accidentally triggering a fatal asthma attack in the boy. Ten years later, to escape her treacherous husband, Sandrine flees New York for her grandmother's home in Paris, where her grandmother reminds Sandrine that the City of Lights is "poison" to her. Sure enough, Sandrine finds herself taken over by the spirit of La Lune, the woman of "moon dreams, of legends and of nightmares  (Publisher Weekly Reviews)

Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

Alec Charlesworth, a librarian suddenly facing the loss of his job, the death of his wife, and his sister's disappearance, hears a shocking tale of dark forces from his sister's cat, Roger, who is the only witness to what happened to her. ~ (Publisher Summary)

In this novel, British author Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) presents a potent and darkly humorous tale featuring a demonic cat and a murder. Written in impeccable, grammatically refined sentences, this book has a tinge of a 19th-century gothic sensibility. ~ (Publisher Weekly Reviews)




Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

Hannaham's seductive and disturbing second novel grips the reader from page one. In the prologue, 17-year-old Eddie has escaped from a farm somewhere in Louisiana, terrified he's headed closer to a place "where someone might capture or kill him, away toward freedom." Hannaham safely delivers Eddie into a new life, though one full of agonizing memories, "like dark birds poised to attack him." The narrative then shifts back to the story of Eddie's mother, Darlene, an educated woman devastated by the loss her husband. In her grief, Darlene disappears into a fog of drug use. When Darlene is lured into taking a job on a mysterious farm, "it felt like the first luck Darlene had touched in the whole six years since she lost Nat." Instead, it's a horror show of human suffering, through which Darlene and Eddie struggle to reunite. (Publisher Weekly Reviews)


Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are the largest branches of the Christian-religion tree. Almost unknown are Eastern Catholics, who follow Eastern traditions but proclaim their loyalty to the pope. Brothers Simon and Alex are priests, though Simon is climbing the Vatican ladder, while Alex has followed his father into the Eastern Catholic priesthood. Allowed to marry before ordination, Alex has a young son, Peter, which makes him even more of an oddity in Vatican City, where he lives. His life takes a dangerous turn when a friend, the curator of a Shroud of Turin exhibit, is murdered on the eve of the show's opening. There are secrets here, slowly revealed, that could change the face of Christianity. (Booklist *Starred Review*)


Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy

Jacob has always been resigned to play the cards that were dealt him, but when a fatal mistake changes everything, he’s faced with a choice: stay and appease his father, or leave the mountains with the girl he loves. ~ (Publisher Summary)

Joy's first novel is an uncompromising noir, its downward thrust pulling like quicksand on both the characters and the reader. And, yet, there is poetry here, too, as there is in Daniel Woodrell's novels, the kind of poetry that draws its power from a doomed character's grit in the face of disaster. And Jacob McNeely, the son of a meth dealer in hardscrabble North Carolina, is surely doomed, as is his stoned mother and even his all-powerful father. It's only a question of what form that doom will take. (Booklist Reviews)

Librarian's Picks of the Month

Not sure what to read next? Come check out this month's Librarian's Picks display (on the main floor across from the video room) featuring some gems you may have missed (or want to read again!) including:

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich: (Mystery)

Go back to the beginning of this witty series and enjoy again how Stephanie Plum turns to bounty hunting for quick cash and finds herself tracking her first quarry, an ex-cop accused of murder, who turns out to be her first lover, with whom she still shares a powerful chemistry.

The Husband by Dean Koontz: (Suspence/Psychological Fiction)

When landscaper Mitchell Rafferty receives a phone call that his wife has been kidnapped and there is a two million dollar ransom, his extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing, seventy-two-hour journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption. 

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks: (Love Story)

Katie, a newcomer to the small town of Southport, North Carolina, resists forming any personal ties until she is drawn into relationships with Alex, a young widower, and Jo, her plainspoken single neighbor, who help her overcome her fearful past.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: (Historical Fiction)

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.

Librarian's Picks of the Month

Not sure what to read next? Take a look at our "Librarian's Picks" display where you'll find these and many more titles on display today:

The King's Mistress by Emma Campion: (Historical Fiction)

A tale inspired by the life of Edward III's notorious mistress finds a young Alice dutifully marrying a dangerously secretive man and accepting royal protection while reluctantly participating in a strategically beneficial affair with the king to safeguard her family.

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira: (Historical Fiction)

Traveling to Civil War-era Washington, D.C. to tend wounded soldiers and pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon, headstrong midwife Mary receives guidance from two smitten doctors and resists her mother's pleas for her to return home.

Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani:(Autobiography)

After her identical twin sister, who, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, succumbs to drugs and depression, the author, after reading a statistic that 50% of the time the surviving twin dies within two years, decides to beat the odds.

The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks: (Romantic Suspense Fiction)

Coming into the possession of a photograph of a smiling woman he has never met, a man experiences a chain of fortuitous events that causes him to regard the photograph as a lucky charm, a belief that prompts a heartfelt search for the woman.

The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak: (Historical Fiction)

A re-imagining of the early years of Catherine the Great traces the story of a naive German duchess as observed by young Barbara, a servant who watches her mistress's elevation and rises to become one of Russia's most clever royal spies.

Librarian's Picks

Check out our Librarian's Picks display for October! This month's selection includes the following titles, plus many others:

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: (Bildungsromans)
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. (Publisher Summary)

The Tooth of Time by Sue Henry: (Mystery Fiction; a Maxie and Stretch Mystery)

Heading for New Mexico in her mini-Winnebago, Maxie McNabb and her dog, Stretch, find their cross-country odyssey interrupted by the attempted suicide of a local woman despondent over the infidelity of her middle-aged husband. (Publisher Summary)

Mrs. Lincoln's Rival by Jennifer Chiaverini: (Historical Fiction)

A follow-up to Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker traces the rivalry between the daughter of an antebellum presidential cabinet member and the 16th President's wife, the former of whom becomes the bride of governor William Sprague and one of the most highly regarded women of her day. (Publisher Summary)

The Top Ten . . .

Want to know which new books librarian's across the country love? According to the August issue of Library Journal, here are the top ten:

1. One Kick: A Kick Lannigan Novel by Chelsea Cain (Mystery/Suspense): A debut installment in a new series by the author of the Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell best-sellers introduces Kick Lannigan, a famous kidnapping survivor who as an adult uses her martial-arts mastery and affiliation with a wealthy patron to find and rescue missing children.
2. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom (Historical Fiction): Forging a life together after being abandoned by their parents, half sisters Eva and Iris share decades in and out of the spotlight in golden-era Hollywood and mid-twentieth-century Long Island.
3. Heroes Are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Contemporary Romance): A down-on-her-luck actress reduced to staging kids' puppet shows finds herself trapped on a remote island off the coast of Maine with a sexy horror novelist who knows a dozen ways to kill with his bare hands.
4. Lock In by John Scalzi (Science Fiction): When a new virus causes one percent of the population to become completely paralyzed in body but not in mind, the United States pursues a scientific initiative to develop a virtual-reality world for victims, with unexpected consequences.
5. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton (Historical Fiction): Engaging the services of a miniaturist to furnish a cabinet-sized replica of her hew home, Nella Oortman, the wife of a merchant in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, discovers that the artist's tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways.
6. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (Mystery/Suspense): Follows three mothers, each at a crossroads, and their potential involvement in a riot at a school trivia night that leaves one parent dead in what appears to be a tragic accident, but which evidence shows might have been premeditated.
7. The Truth About Leo by Katie MacAlister (Historical Romance): When she finds English spy Leopold Ernst George Mortimer left for dead and without his memory, Dagmar Marie Sophie, an impoverished Danish princess, marries him in order to escape the country and avoid an arranged marriage.
8. An Unwilling Accomplice by Charles Todd (Mystery/Historical Fiction): While home on leave, World War I battlefield nurse Bess Crawford finds her career, honor, and life in jeopardy when the wounded soldier she is supposed to accompany to Buckingham Palace commits murder and then disappears.
9. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman (Fantasy Fiction): Visiting his magical college after being cast out of the land of Fillory, Quentin Coldwater, accompanied by Plum, encounters practitioners of gray magic before discovering a spell that could dissolve the boundaries between Fillory and Earth. (Third in the Magician's Trilogy. Start with The Magicians)
10. The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar (Psychological Fiction): Befriending a young Indian woman named Lakshmi--who is suicidal, lonely, and trapped in a loveless marriage--psychologist Maggie finds their relationship warped by conflicting expectations and threatened by the revelation of long-buried secrets.

Librarian's Picks

Check out our Librarian's Picks display for August! This month's selection includes the following titles, plus many others:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. 

The Red Thread by Ann Hood 

After losing her infant daughter in a freak accident, Maya Lange opens The Red Thread, an adoption agency that specializes in placing baby girls from China with American families. Maya finds some comfort in her work, until a group of six couples share their personal stories of their desire for a child. Their painful and courageous journey toward adoption forces her to confront the lost daughter of her past.

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Meet Dolores Price. She's thirteen, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly up.