Category: Library news

July’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Bestsellers Club is a service that automatically places you on hold for authors, celebrity picks, nonfiction picks, and fiction picks. Choose any author, celebrity pick, fiction pick, and/or nonfiction pick and The Library will put the latest title on hold for you automatically. Select as many as you want! Still have questions? Click here for a list of FAQs.

It’s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Oprah has also recently announced a new pick. Reminder that if you join Bestsellers Club, you can choose to have their selections automatically put on hold for you.

Jenna Bush Hager has selected Happy Wife by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores for her July pick.

Curious what Happy Wife is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

A young woman must find her missing husband and prove her innocence in this twisty, unputdownable novel set in an ultrawealthy Florida community where looks can kill.

Nora Davies doesn’t exactly fit in to Winter Park, Florida, where old-guard Floridians mix with the tax-fleeing coastal elite. Twenty-eight and barely making ends meet working at a country club, Nora feels like she’s going nowhere fast. Enter Will Somerset: a prominent forty-six-year-old lawyer, father to a teenage daughter, and recently divorced. The two set Winter Park’s social scene agog when they fall in love and marry after a whirlwind Cinderella-style courtship.

But Winter Park is fully upended when Will disappears the morning after a birthday bash Nora throws for him. Going back and forth between Nora and Will’s romance and the search in the wake of Will’s mysterious disappearance, Nora must answer the question from all angles: Where. Is. Will?

Combining breathless suspense, glittering and juicy social dynamics, and an unforgettable cast of characters, Happy Wife is a clever and subversive novel that explores marriage, wealth, and the secrets that lurk behind closed doors. – Bantam

Reese Witherspoon has selected Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein for her July pick.

Curious what Spectacular Things is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

What would you give up for the person you love most? What would you expect in return?

Mia and Cricket have always been close. The gifted daughters of a young single mother, the “Lowe girls” are well-known in the small Maine town they call home. Each sister has a role to fill: The responsible and academically minded Mia assumes the position of caregiver far too young, while Cricket, a bouncing ball of energy and talent, seems born for soccer stardom. But the cost of achieving athletic greatness comes at a steep price.

As Mia and Cricket grow up, they must grapple with the legacy of their mother’s secret past while navigating their own precarious future. Can Mia allow herself to fall in love at the risk of repeating a terrible history? Will Cricket’s relentless chase of a lifelong goal drive her sister away? When does loyalty become self-sabotage?

A sharply observed and tender portrait of sisters, love, and ambition, Spectacular Things is a sweeping story about the impossible choices we’re forced to make in pursuit of our dreams. – The Dial Press

Oprah Winfrey has selected Culpability by Bruce Holsinger for her latest pick.

Curious what Culpability is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them each in the accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative. – Spiegel & Grau

Join Bestsellers Club to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!

July’s Bestsellers Club Fiction and Nonfiction Picks

- Stephanie Leave a comment

It’s a new quarter and that means new fiction and nonfiction picks have been selected for you courtesy of Bestsellers Club! Four fiction picks are available for you to choose from: diverse debuts, graphic novel, historical fiction, and international fiction. Four nonfiction picks are available for you to choose from: biographies, cookbooks, social justice, and true crime. Our fiction and nonfiction picks are chosen quarterly and are available in regular print only. If you would like to update your selections or are a new patron who wants to receive picks from any of those four categories, sign up for Bestsellers Club through our website!

Bestsellers Club is a service that automatically places you on hold for authors, celebrity picks, nonfiction picks, and fiction picks. Choose any author, celebrity pick, fiction pick, and/or nonfiction pick and The Library will put the latest title on hold for you automatically. Select as many as you want! Still have questions? Click here for a list of FAQs.

Below you will find information provided by the publishers and authors on the titles we have selected for January from the following categories in fiction: diverse debuts, graphic novel, historical fiction, and international fiction and the following categories in nonfiction: biographies, cookbooks, social justice, and true crime.

Acronym definitions
BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
LGBTQ+: Lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, and more.

FICTION PICKS

Diverse Debuts:

Diverse Debuts: Debut fiction novel by a BIPOC author, LGBTQ+ author or an author from another marginalized community.

Woodworking by Emily St. James

An unforgettable and heartwarming book-club debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.

Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced–and trans. Not that she’s told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn’t exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.

Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She’s also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty–and loneliness–that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.

As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community. And soon, both women–and those closest to them–are forced to ask: Who are we if we choose to hide ourselves? What happens once we disappear into the woodwork

Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy. – Zando – Crooked Media Reads

Graphic Novel:

Graphic Novel: Fiction novel for adults of any subgenre with diverse characters depicted by color illustrations, sketches, and photographs.

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls

An astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir about three generations of Chinese women, exploring love, grief, exile, and identity.

In her acclaimed graphic memoir debut, Tessa Hulls traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations of women in her family. Tessa’s grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist swept up by the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival—then promptly had a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Growing up with Sun Yi, Tessa watches both her mother and grandmother struggle beneath the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness, and bolts to the most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away. Feeding Ghosts is Tessa’s homecoming, a vivid, heartbreaking journey into history that exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, andthe love that holds them together. – MCD

Historical Fiction:

Historical Fiction: Historical fiction novel written by a BIPOC author, LGBTQ+ author or an author from another marginalized community, with main character(s) from a marginalized community.

The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne

Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.

Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde’s mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde’s descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: can he save himself, too?

Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction. – Little, Brown and Company

International Fiction:

International Fiction: Fiction novel originally written in another language with main character(s) from marginalized communities.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ ; translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King.

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman—who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name—is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.  – Graywolf Press

NONFICTION PICKS

Biography pick

Queen of All Mayhem: the Blood-Soaked Life and Mysterious Death of Belle Starr, the most dangerous woman in the West by Dane Huckelbridge

A riveting, deeply researched, blood-on-the-spurs biography of Belle Starr, the most legendary female outlaw of the American West.

On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley—better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr”—was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic, and dangerous women in the history of the American West.

While today’s household names like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane had dubious criminal bona fides, Belle’s were not in any doubt. She led a gang of horse thieves (a very serious crime in an era when horses were often the basis of one’s livelihood); was romantically involved with two of the West’s most legendary outlaws, Cole Younger and Jim Reed (her first husband); and participated in stickups and robberies across present-day Texas and Oklahoma. When Reed was murdered, Belle crossed into Indian Territory, where she assimilated into the Cherokee tribe, a matrilineal society, and soon married Sam Starr, a direct descendant of Nanye’hi, the greatest female warrior in Cherokee history.

Dane Huckelbridge, acclaimed author of No Beast So Fierce, probes a life rich in contradictions and intrigue. Why did a woman who had considerable advantages in life—a good family, a decent education, solid marriage prospects, a clear path to financial security—choose to pursue a life of crime? The life of Belle Starr is one of almost endless trauma: the horrors of the Civil War, which destroyed her hometown and killed her beloved brother, Bud; the untimely deaths of her first two husbands, both of them murdered; a stint in Detroit’s notorious women’s prison. Her career coincided with those of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and yet Belle Starr was a very different sort of feminist icon.

Queen of All Mayhem is a triumph of biography, revealing one of the most-mythologized figures of Western lore as she truly was. – William Morrow

Cookbook pick

The How Not to Age Cookbook by Michael Greger

New from Michael Greger M.D., FACLM, whose books have sold more than one million copies worldwide, comes a fully-illustrated cookbook filled with recipes to make you healthier as you age.

In his instant New York Times bestseller, How Not To Age, Dr. Michael Greger revealed that diet can regulate every one of the most promising strategies for combating the effects of aging. His Anti-Aging Eight streamlined evidence-based research into simple, accessible steps for ensuring physical and mental longevity. Now, in How Not To Age Cookbook, decades of scientific research are put to use in over a hundred recipes that will leave readers feeling nourished for years to come.

Each of these simple, nutrition-packed dishes uses ingredients that have been proven to promote a healthy lifespan and inspiration from the places around the world where people traditionally live the longest. Grounded in the latest nutrition science, How Not to Age Cookbook is chock-full of delicious meals, snacks, and beverages that will keep the body both nourished and youthful. – Flatiron Books

Social Justice pick

American Teenager: How Trans Kids are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era by Nico Lang

From an award-winning journalist comes a vivid and moving portrait of eight trans and nonbinary teenagers across the country, following their daily triumphs, struggles, and all that encompasses growing up trans in America today

Media coverage tends to sensationalize the fight over how trans kids should be allowed to live, but what is incredibly rare are the voices of the people at the heart of this debate: transgender and gender nonconforming kids themselves.

For their groundbreaking new book, journalist Nico Lang spent a year traveling the country to document the lives of transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid teens and their families. Drawing on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground interviews with them and the people in their communities, American Teenager paints a vivid portrait of what it’s actually like to grow up trans today.

From the tip of Florida’s conservative panhandle to vibrant queer communities in California, and from Texas churches to mosques in Illinois, American Teenager gives readers a window into the lives of Wyatt, Rhydian, Mykah, Clint, Ruby, Augie, Jack, and Kylie, eight teens who, despite what some lawmakers might want us to believe, are truly just kids looking for a brighter future. – Abrams Books

True Crime pick

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again. – Random House

This title is also available in large print and CD audiobook.

Join Bestsellers Club to have the newest fiction and nonfiction picks automatically put on hold for you every quarter.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.” ― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

In a dystopian future, Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in a color-coded society. Darrow and his fellow Reds toil all day beneath the surface of Mars, believing that they are humanity’s only hope of survival. They are working to make the surface of Mars habitable for future generations, but despite their horrific living and working conditions, the majority of Reds are happy as they know they will eventually create a better world for future generations.

Humanity has been split into a colored caste system with Golds at the top, Reds toiling at the bottom, and many other colors in-between. Not many other colors are on Mars, but the ones that Darrow meets aren’t especially kind. As Darrow works to terraform Mars, he does so grudgingly, hoping to earn his family and group more supplies with his diligent and nimble work. After a catastrophe destroys Darrow’s future, he learns the truth: all Reds have been fed lies. They have been betrayed. Desperate for justice, Darrow is recruited to infiltrate the Institute, the proving ground for the Golds. As Gold students struggle for power amongst themselves, Darrow is right alongside them, fighting for something much bigger. He wants to destroy the Golds and the very system they represent, but is he willing to give up all he knows? He’ll have to in order to have a chance of survival.

Red Rising, a first in series science fiction debut, was absolutely phenomenal. I was hooked from the start. As I was listening to the audiobook, I kept drawing parallels to Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, and The Hunger Games. In fact, I described this book as a bloodier Hunger Games that happens on Mars! Highly, highly recommend you read this book, specifically that you listen to the audiobook if you can as the narrator is amazing (and he sings to you)! This is the start to an epic series that I absolutely cannot wait to keep reading.

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”

“I live for you,” I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” ― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

Red Rising Series

  1. Red Rising (2014)
  2. Golden Son (2015)
  3. Morning Star (2016)
  4. Iron Gold (2018)
  5. Dark Age (2019)
  6. Light Bringer (2023)

Interested in this book? Red Rising is the August 2025 See YA Book Club selection. We will be discussing this book on Wednesday, August 6th at 6:30pm at our Eastern Avenue branch. For more information about future See YA book picks, visit our website.

See YA Book Club

Join our adult book club with a teen book twist. See why so many teen books are being turned into movies and are taking over the best seller lists.

Registration is not required. Books are available on a first-come, first-serve basis at the Eastern Avenue library. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at Eastern at 6:30pm. Stop by the service desk for more information.

August 6 – Red Rising by Pierce Brown

September 3 – Man O’War by Cory McCarthy

October 1 – A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

November 5 – Rez Ball by Byron Graves

December 3 – Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance by Denali Sai Nalamalapu

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance by Denali Sai Nalamalapu is the illustrated stories of six changemakers who are fighting for their communities and the planet. This debut graphic memoir focuses on the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia and the actions of six frontline resisters, while also contributing to the history of climate justice. The people interviewed in this graphic memoir paint a portrait of the diversity of people and places in Appalachia.

Denali Nalamalapu has interviewed six ordinary people who, through their own unique circumstances, have become resistors to the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The MVP covers approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia with the developers hoping to expand even further in the future. Her cast includes a teacher, a single mother, a nurse, an organizer, a photographer, and a seed keeper. Each shares their motivations for joining the fight against the MVP, as well as their different methods of resistance. Standing up for what you love, fighting for what’s right, and working together as a community highlight how everyday resistance can make a difference.

Holler highlights the importance of standing up when the world would rather you stay quiet and accept what they want you to. What stuck with me were the various ways that each person chose to resist. Their paths to activism were different, but they highlight how small actions can have a large impact.

Oprah’s Latest Book Club Pick: The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Join Bestsellers Club to have certain celebrity book club picks automatically put on hold for you: Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush Hager, and Oprah Winfrey. While Reese and Jenna generally announce a new title each month, Oprah’s selections are more sporadic. Reminder that if you join Bestsellers Club, you can choose to have these titles automatically put on hold for you.

Oprah Winfrey’s latest selection is The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb.

Curious what The River is Waiting is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model. Buoyed by them and by his mother’s enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves? – S&S/Marysue Rucci Books

This title is also available in large print.

Join Bestsellers Club to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!

Online Reading Challenge – June

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge is focusing on queer fiction. Our main title for June is Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn’t hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn’t happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she’s pregnant with his baby—and that she’s not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he’s been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can’t reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel. – One World

Looking for some other queer fiction? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Oprah’s Latest Book Club Pick: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Join Bestsellers Club to have certain celebrity book club picks automatically put on hold for you: Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush Hager, and Oprah Winfrey. While Reese and Jenna generally announce a new title each month, Oprah’s selections are more sporadic. Reminder that if you join Bestsellers Club, you can choose to have these titles automatically put on hold for you.

_________________________________

Oprah Winfrey’s latest selection is The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong.

Curious what The Emperor of Gladness is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance. – Penguin Press

This title is also available in large print.

_________________________________

Join Bestsellers Club to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!

Brighter Than the Sun by Daniel Aleman

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Sixteen-year-old Sol spends her life divided between two countries. She lives in her hometown of Tijuana, Mexico with her family, but makes the trip across the border early every weekday to go to school in the United States. Sol’s dream is to be the first person in her family to go to college, so even though her life is exhausting, she keeps trekking between Mexico and the United States to keep her dream alive.

The family has hit some rough times, throwing Sol’s dreams into question. With her mother’s recent death, Sol and her family are struggling to keep the family restaurant afloat. The restaurant was her mother’s dream, but her father and oldest brother are running into difficulties. Needing a way to add income to the family, Sol picks up a part-time job in San Diego. Doing this means that she has to move in with her friend in the United States, only coming back to Tijuana on the weekends. This new job adds complications to her life. Her schedule becomes more chaotic, her schoolwork suffers, and her relationships deteriorate.

Sol has to decide what she wants out of life. Although she has goals to attend college, she feels a debt to her family that she must repay. Although she is only 17, the pressure she feels to succeed and provide for her family is immense. Her future is in limbo, her present is a mess, and her past continues to haunt her. What is Sol willing to risk to help her family make it through?

Brighter Than the Sun by Daniel Aleman was a heartbreaking and exhausting read. Although this is a young adult book, the story will resonate with people of all ages.

Interested in this book? Brighter Than the Sun is the June 2025 See YA Book Club selection. We will be discussing this book on Wednesday, June 4th at 6:30pm at our Eastern Avenue branch. For more information about future See YA book picks, visit our website.

See YA Book Club

Join our adult book club with a teen book twist. See why so many teen books are being turned into movies and are taking over the best seller lists.

Registration is not required. Books are available on a first-come, first-serve basis at the Eastern Avenue library. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at Eastern at 6:30pm. Stop by the service desk for more information.

June 4 – ‘Brighter than the Sun’ by Daniel Aleman

July 2 – The Cousins by Karen M. McManus

August 6 – Red Rising by Pierce Brown

September 3 – Man O’War by Cory McCarthy

October 1 – A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

November 5 – Rez Ball by Byron Graves

December 3 – Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

New nonfiction titles in large print

- Beth Leave a comment

Large print readers of nonfiction will find inspiration, connection and nuance in these titles recently added to the collection.

Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed by Dashka Slater. When a high school student started a private Instagram account that used racist and sexist memes to make his friends laugh, he thought of it as “edgy” humor. Then a few other kids found out about the account. Pretty soon, everyone knew. Ultimately no one in the small town of Albany, California, was safe from the repercussions of the account’s discovery. In the end, no one was laughing. And everyone was left asking: Where does accountability end for online speech that harms? And what does accountability even mean?

 

American Heroes by James Patterson. U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts — from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan — share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America’s most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero.

 

 

Comfort is an Old Barn: Stories from the Heart of Maine by Amy Calder. Amy Calder is an award-winning newspaper reporter and columnist, covering city government and everything from murders and car crashes to fires and drug busts. Since 2009, Calder has written a weekly human-interest column, “Reporting Aside,” which appears in both the Waterville Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal. Comfort Is an Old Barn is a curated collection of those columns, which include sketches of the colorful characters, quirky animals she has encountered, and special moments, as well as personal stories that make living in Maine special.

 

 

Lucy Burdette’s Kitchen: Recipes and Stories from the Key West Food Critic Mysteries. The Key West Food Critic series is known for its dastardly deaths, creative clues, and mouth-watering mysteries. Now, for the first time, all the recipes featured in the series are gathered in a collection. Recipes include: Lucy Burdette’s One Bowl Chocolate Cake, Sam’s Cornbread Sausage Stuffing, Scarlett O’Hara Cupcakes, Chef Edel’s Cheesy Polenta, Hayley Snow’s Shrimp Salad, and many more.

 

 

 

The Wives: A Memoir by Simone Gorrindo. When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone — until she meets the wives. Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, The Wives offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

Winners of the 2025 Libby Book Awards

- Stephanie Leave a comment

The 2025 Libby Book Award Winners have been announced! As a lover of book awards, I wanted to share some of the winners that are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Check out the 2025 Libby Book Award Winners website for a more comprehensive list of the winners and the runner-ups!

At the time of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publisher.

Winner for Book of the Year — Adult Fiction
The Women by Kristin Hannah

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

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. – St, Martin’s Press

Winner for Book of the Year — Adult Nonfiction AND Winner for Audiobook of the Year
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.

Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late. – Crown

Winner for Book of the Year — Young Adult Fiction
Heir by Sabaa Tahir

An orphan.
An outcast.
A prince.
And a killer who will bring an empire to its knees.

Growing up in the Kegari slums, AIZ has seen her share of suffering. An old tragedy fuels her need for vengeance, but it is love of her people that propels her. Until one hotheaded mistake lands her in an inescapable prison, where the embers of her wrath ignite.

Banished from her people for an unforgivable crime, SIRSHA is a down-on-her-luck tracker who uses magic to trace her marks. Destitute, she agrees to hunt down a killer who has murdered children across the Martial Empire. All she has to do is carry out the job and get paid. But when a chance encounter leads to an unexpected attraction, Sirsha learns her mission might cost her far more than she’s willing to give up.

QUIL is the crown prince of the Empire and nephew of a venerated empress, but he’s loath to take the throne when his aunt steps down. As the son of a reviled emperor, he, better than anyone, understands that power corrupts. When a vicious new enemy threatens the survival of the Empire, Quil must ask himself if he can rise above his tragic lineage and be the heir his people need.

Beloved storyteller Sabaa Tahir interweaves the lives of three young people as they grapple with power, treachery, love, and the devastating consequences of unchecked greed, on a journey that may cost them their lives—and their hearts. Literally. – G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Winner for Debut Author of the Year AND Winner for Best Science Fiction
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future. – Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Winner for Best Book Club Book
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet’s always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price? – William Morrow

Winner for Best Fantasy
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she hasn’t had to.

She and her assistant, Caz, a magically sentient spider plant, have spent the last eleven years sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite. But when a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz save as many books as they can carry and flee to a faraway island Kiela was sure she’d never return to: her childhood home. Kiela hopes to lay low in the overgrown and rundown cottage her late parents left her and figure out a way to survive without drawing the attention of either the empire or the revolutionaries. Much to her dismay, in addition to a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor, she finds the town neglected and in a state of disrepair.

The empire, for all its magic and power, has been neglecting for years the people who depend on magical intervention to maintain healthy livestock and crops. Not only that, but the very magic that should be helping them has been creating destructive storms that have taken a toll on the island. Due to her past role at the library, Kiela feels partially responsible for this, and now she’s determined to find a way to make things right: by opening the island’s first-ever secret spellshop.

Her plan comes with risks—the consequence of sharing magic with commoners is death. And as Kiela comes to make a place for herself among the kind and quirky townspeople of her former home, she realizes that in order to make a life for herself, she must learn to break down the walls she has built up so high. – Bramble

Winner for Best Horror
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell.

But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, “for the algorithm,” in the upcoming season finale.

Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles.

Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future—before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good. – Tor Nightfire

Winner for Best Thriller
One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon

Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.

Jasmyn’s only friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by most residents’ outlook. Then Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders. Frustration turns to dread as their loved ones start embracing the Liberty way of life.

Will the truth destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined? – Knopf

Check out the 2025 Libby Book Award Winners website for the complete list of winners and runner-ups!