Category: Read-a-likes

New History and Geography Nonfiction

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Take a journey through important moments in history and through important geographical locations with this list of new history and geography nonfiction. As of this writing, these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions provided by the publishers.

Battle of the Arctic: The Maritime Epic of World War II by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

No campaign during World War II contained more spinetingling drama, outstanding courage, and heartbreaking tragedy than the Arctic convoys. Yet they—and the multifaceted battle of the Arctic that had to be fought to get them through to Russia—remain one of the war’s most under-celebrated feats.

As this book’s title implies, Battle of the Arctic tells a unique story. For much of the conflict was complicated by terrific storms, snow, ice, fog, whales and Arctic mirages, so that what is chronicled at times sounds like a cross between the nightmarish torment experienced by both Shackleton in his ship Endurance and Scott of the Antarctic, and an Arctic version of Robinson Crusoe.

The action unfolded as Allied naval and merchant seamen, airmen, submariners, soldiers and intelligence officers delivered on their countries’ promise to take arms to Russia notwithstanding the German attempts to hunt them in their aircraft, U-boats and surface fleet spearheaded by Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. When ships were attacked and went down in seas so cold that a man could die after just five minutes of immersion, it triggered events reminiscent of the do-or-die moments during the sinking of the Titanic. Men perished one by one in lifeboats and as castaways on deserted Arctic islands where they were stalked by polar bears. Frostbitten and wounded survivors ended up in Russian hospitals so primitive that amputations were carried out without anaesthetics. Other survivors, while stranded for months in the communist state they were aiding, experienced the murky worlds of the NKVD and the gulag as well as famine and prostitution.

Using new material unearthed in American, British, Russian and German archives, as well as Polish, Norwegian, French and Dutch sources, and a remarkable collection of vivid witness accounts brought together at the passing of the last survivors, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore can at last shine a revealing light on this extraordinary tale that oscillates between the sailors’ eye view on the front line, and the controversies that infuriated world leaders. – Pegasus Books

A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore by Matthew Justin Davis

A comprehensive narrative history of Mt. Rushmore, written in light of recent political controversies, and a timely retrospective for the monument’s 100th anniversary in 2025

“Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore can’t do that if you do it the right way. If you do it the right way people are going to be leaving pissed.”

Gerard Baker, the first Native American superintendent of Mt. Rushmore, shared those words with author Matthew Davis. From the tragic history of Wounded Knee and the horrors of Indian Boarding Schools, to the Land Back movement of today, Davis traces the Native American story of Mt. Rushmore alongside the narrative of the growing territory and state of South Dakota, and the economic and political forces that shaped the reasons for the Memorial’s creation.

A Biography of A Mountain combines history with reportage, bringing the complicated and nuanced story of Mt. Rushmore to life, from the land’s origins as sacred tribal ground; to the expansion of the American West; to the larger-than-life personality of Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the presidential faces into the mountain; and up to the politicized present-day conflict over the site and its future. Exploring issues related to how we memorialize American history, Davis tells an imperative story for our time. – St. Martin’s Press

A Black Queer History of the United States by C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost

The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day

Gender and sexual expression have always been part of the Black freedom struggle

In this latest book in Beacon’s award-winning ReVisioning History series, Professors C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost unearth the often overlooked history of the Black queer community in the United States.

Arguing that both gender and sexual expression have been an intimate and intricate part of Black freedom struggle, Snorton and Bost present historical contributions of Black queer, trans, and gender non-conforming Americans from slavery to the present day to highlight how the fight against racial injustice has always been linked to that of sexual and gender justice.

Interweaving stories of queer and trans figures such as:

  • Private William Cathay/Cathay Williams, born female but enlisted in the Army as a man in the mid-1860s
  • Josephine Baker, internationally known dancer and entertainer of the early 20th century who was also openly bisexual
  • Bayard Rustin, prominent Civil Rights activist whose well known homosexuality was viewed as a potential threat to the movement
  • Amanda Milan, a Black trans woman whose murder in 2000 unified the trans people of color community,

This book includes a deep dive into the marginalization, unjust criminalization, and government legislation of Black queer and trans existence. It also shows how Black Americans have played an integral role in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, countering narratives that have predominantly focused on white Americans.

Through storytelling and other narratives, Snorton and Bost show how the Black queer community has always existed, regardless of the attempts to stamp it out, and how those in it continue to fight for their rightful place in the world. – Beacon Press

Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone by Mark Lee Gardner

A colorful and groundbreaking account of the most storied friendship of the American West: the bond between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday: Legendary gunfighters and friends who gained immortality because of a thirty-second shootout near a livery stable called the O.K. Corral. Their friendship actually began three years before that iconic 1881 gunfight, in the rollicking cattle town of Dodge City. Wyatt, an assistant city marshal, was surrounded by armed, belligerent cowboys. Doc saw Wyatt’s predicament from a monte table in the Long Branch saloon and burst out the door with two leveled revolvers shouting, “Throw up your hands!” The startled cowboys did, and Wyatt and Doc led them off to jail. Wyatt credited Doc with saving his life, and thus began their lasting—and curious—friendship.

In this illuminating dual biography, the first about Earp and Holliday, the lives of these two men, one a sometime lawman and the other a sometime dentist, are chronicled in a swirling tableau of saloons, brothels, gambling dens, stage holdups, arrests, manhunts, and revenge killings. And while there’s plenty of gunsmoke in this saga, hero-worshipping won’t be found. Wyatt and Doc, just like anyone else then and now, had their flaws and failings, and the unsavory parts of their lives are here, too.

In Brothers of the Gun, Old West authority Mark Lee Gardner reveals fresh information about Wyatt’s and Doc’s early lives, their famous friendship, the O.K. Corral gunfight, and Wyatt’s controversial “vendetta ride” following the assassination of his brother Morgan. Drawing upon new research into diaries, letters, court records, and contemporary newspaper reports, as well as firsthand observation at several historic sites, this is the definitive book on Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and their enduring bond. Brothers of the Gun is edge-of-your-saddle nonfiction storytelling at its best. – Dutton

Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor by Christine Kuehn

A propulsive, never-before-told story of one family’s shocking involvement as Nazi and Japanese spies during WWII and the pivotal role they played in the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It began with a letter from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. World War II. Nazi spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her seventy-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then wept. He knew this day would come.

The Kuehns, a prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times that had befallen them. When the daughter of the family, Eberhard’s sister, Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels at a party, the two hit it off, and they had an affair. But Ruth had a secret—she was half Jewish—and Goebbels found out. Rather than having Ruth killed, Goebbels instead sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii, to work as spies half a world away. There, Ruth and her parents established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles down the road from Pearl Harbor, shielding Eberhard from the truth. They passed secrets to the Japanese, leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. After Eberhard’s father was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the assault, Eberhard learned the harsh truth about his family and faced a decision that would change the path of the Kuehn family forever.

Jumping back and forth between Christine discovering her family’s secret and the untold past of the spies in Germany, Japan, and Hawaii, Family of Spies is fast-paced history at its finest and will rewrite the narrative of December 7, 1941. – Celadon Books

Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic by Volker Ullrich

Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical events illustrate this as vividly as the failure of the Weimar Republic. Germany’s first democracy endured for fourteen tumultuous years and culminated with the horrific rise of the Third Reich. As one commentator wrote in July 1933: Hitler had “won the game with little effort. . . . All he had to do was huff and puff—and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards.” But this tragedy was not inevitable.

In Fateful Hours, award-winning historian Volker Ullrich chronicles the captivating story of the Republic, capturing a nation and its people teetering on the abyss. Born from the ashes of the First World War, the fledgling democracy was saddled with debt and political instability from its beginning. In its early years, a relentless chain of crises—hyperinflation, foreign invasion, and upheaval from the right and left—shook the republic, only letting up during a brief period of stability in the 1920s. Social and cultural norms were upended. Political murder was the order of the day. Yet despite all the challenges, the Weimar Republic was not destined for its ignoble end.

Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other sources, Ullrich charts the many failed alternatives and missed opportunities that contributed to German democracy’s collapse. In an immersive style that takes us to the heart of political power, Ullrich argues that, right up until January 1933, history was open. There was no shortage of opportunities to stop the slide into fascism. Just as in the present, it is up to us whether democracy lives or dies. – W.W. Norton & Company

Mexico: A 500-Year History by Paul Gillingham

At the beginning of his masterful work of scholarship and narration, Paul Gillingham writes, from its outset “Mexico was more profoundly, globally hybrid than anywhere else in the prior history of the world.” Over the ensuing five centuries, Mexicans have prefigured and shaped the course of human lives across the globe.

Gillingham begins in 1511 with the dramatic shipwreck of two Spanish sailors in the far south of Mexico. Ten years later Hernán Cortés led an army of European adventurers and indigenous rebels to seize the legendary island city of Tenochtitlán, the center of Montezuma’s empire, the largest in the Americas. The capture of the future Mexico City was, more than an extraordinary military event, the collision of two long-separated worlds, radically different in everything from biota to urban planning. Spaniards discovered tomatoes, chocolate, and a city larger and more sophisticated than anything they had ever seen. Mexicans discovered horses, wheels, and lethal germs, sparking a cataclysmic century of disease that wiped out a majority of the pre-existing population and led to a unique recombination of European and indigenous cultures. The industrial mining of Mexico’s silver transformed the wealth and trade of the world. Mexico’s independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821 led to a calamitous mid-century war with the United States and one of the first great social revolutions that brought peace for Mexicans throughout many of the global horrors of the 20th century, before the country itself collapsed into the violence of the cartels and a refugee crisis in the 2000s.

The history of Mexico has been, Gillingham shows, one of suffering empire but also of overcoming. Through it all the country set new standards for inclusivity, for progressive social policies, for artistic expression, for adroitly balancing dictatorship and democracy. While racial divides endured, so too did indigenous peoples, who enjoyed rights unthinkable in the United States. Mexico was among the first countries to abolish slavery in 1829, and Mexicans elected North America’s first Black president, Vicente Guerrero, its only indigenous president, Benito Juárez, and its only woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum.

As elegantly written as it is powerful in scope, rich in character and anecdote, Mexico uses the latest research to dazzling effect, showing how often Mexico has been a dynamic and vital shaper of world affairs. – Atlantic Monthly Press

Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire by Julian Sancton

Roger Dooley wasn’t looking for the San José. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime, the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain. But that ship, the galleon San José, met a darker fate. It was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war off the coast of Cartagena, and when the smoke cleared, the San José and its bounty had disappeared into the ocean, its coordinates lost to time.

Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the San José. He had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to finding and excavating the ship powered him across four decades, even as he became a man in exile from the country of his birth. As Dooley jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors, he slowly homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three-hundred-year-old shipwreck—or nothing at all.

Neptune’s Fortune is a thrilling adventure, taking readers from great naval battles on the high seas to the sun-soaked shores that nurtured history’s most notorious treasure hunters, to the archives that held the secret keys to lost fortune on the ocean floor. – Crown

The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty by Tracy Borman

In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that which ended the Tudor dynasty and launched the Stuart in March 1603. At her death, Elizabeth I had reigned for forty-four turbulent years, facing many threats, whether external from Spain or internal from her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. But no danger was greater than the uncertainty over who would succeed her, which only intensified as her reign lengthened. Her unwillingness to marry or name a successor gave rise to fierce rivalry between blood claimants to the throne—Mary and her son, James VI of Scotland, Arbella Stuart, Lady Katherine Grey, Henry Hastings, and more—which threatened to destabilize the monarchy.

As acclaimed Tudor historian Tracy Borman reveals in The Stolen Crown, according to Elizabeth’s earliest biographer, William Camden, in his history of her reign, on her deathbed the queen indicated James was her chosen heir, and indeed he did become king soon after she died. That endorsement has been accepted as fact for more than four centuries. However, recent analysis of Camden’s original manuscript shows key passages were pasted over and rewritten to burnish James’s legacy. The newly uncovered pages make clear not only that Elizabeth’s naming of James never happened, but that James, uncertain he would ever gain the British throne, was even suspected of sending an assassin to London to kill the queen. Had all this been known at the time, the English people—bitter enemies with Scotland for centuries—might well not have accepted James as their king, with unimagined ramifications.

Inspired by the revelations over Camden’s manuscript, Borman sheds rare new light on Elizabeth’s historic reign, chronicling it through the lens of the various claimants who, over decades, sought the throne of the only English monarch not to make provision for her successor. The consequences were immense. Not only did James upend Elizabeth’s glittering court, but the illegitimacy of his claim to the throne, which Camden suppressed, found full expression in the catastrophic reign of James’ son and successor, Charles I. His execution in 1649 shocked the world and destroyed the monarchy fewer than fifty years after Elizabeth died, changing the course of British and world history. – Simon & Schuster

The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany – and the Spy Who Betrayed Them by Jonathan Freedland

When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth.

Berlin, 1943: A group of high society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer’s afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo.

They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador’s widow and a pioneering head mistress. What unites every one of them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance: meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer’s rule. Or so they believe.

How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap?

Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich’s cruelest men, they showed a heroism in the face of the most vengeful regime in history that raises the question: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny? – Harper

Never Been Shipped by Alicia Thompson

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“What’s that saying? Love is friendship caught fire? I’ve been waiting about a billion years for this one to catch.” – Alicia Thompson, Never Been Shipped

A band reunion set on a cruise ship is destined to change everyone’s lives in Alicia Thompson’s Never Been Shipped. As a teenager, Micah was the lead singer in a band that was shot to stardom after performing a song on a popular television show. The whole time she’s been in the band, Micah has had an uncomfortable and complicated relationship with music. After releasing their sophomore album, the group broke up. Well….. Micah destroyed the group and she hasn’t talked to her bandmates since she made that fateful decision. Over a decade later, the band is getting back together! They are reuniting for one more performance on a cruise themed to the popular television show they were on. Micah agrees to the cruise and, despite her reservations, is hopeful that she will learn from her past.

John, one of her bandmates, hasn’t seen or talked to Micah since she broke up the band. This was particularly hard on him, because Micah was his best friend until the band broke up. Did he want to be more than friends? Probably, but when the band was still together, he sat back and took a more passive role, hardly daring to rock the boat or cause waves. Getting back together with the band on the cruise means that John has one more chance to see Micah and see if he can get her to stay in his life.

The two forge a new relationship when they are onboard. Adult John and Adult Micah find themselves navigating new personal feelings as they work with their three other bandmates to make a new sound. Tensions build though, pushing them all to a point that the band might not able to recover from. Five days on the cruise. Five days for their lives to change forever.

This book had all the elements of my favorite romances: friends to lovers, forced proximity, unrequited feelings, queer representation, and spice! While this book is about rockstars, it’s more of a minor character. This slow burn to a happily-ever-after was absolutely enjoyable. I wasn’t as emotionally connected to the main characters, but the story was one that I had not read before.

New Picture and Toddler Books about Spring

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It’s time for spring! The weather is warming up, plants are blooming, and there’s more daylight! This time of growth and renewal is represented below in this list of new spring picture and toddler books. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.

Picture Books

Bunny Made Tea written and illustrated by Amanda Baehr Fuller

A cozy story about sharing, showing gratitude, and a fondness for tea

One soggy spring morning, Bunny decides to make a cup of tea. Before they can take a sip, Opossum arrives for an impromptu visit. Like a good host, Bunny kindly offers the unexpected guest their tea and gathers ingredients to brew another cup. But just as they’re settling in to enjoy it, Opossum returns with their babies in tow. They all want tea too! Ingredients are gathered, and more tea is made—enough for Opossum’s babies, but not enough for Bunny. Disappointed, Bunny goes to bed without tea, until a knock at the door the next morning reveals their hospitality has been repaid: one of Opossum’s babies has made tea for Bunny in return!

With charming illustrations, simple text, and hilariously expressive characters, this cozy tale invites readers to practice generosity and meet acts of kindness with gratitude. – Owlkids Books

Escargot and the search for Spring story by Dashka Slater, pictures by Sydney Hanson

After a long winter spent indoors, Escargot can’t wait to look outside for the first signs of Spring. Will he find a new friend in the fluffy white bunny he meets along the way?

From New York Times–bestselling author Dashka Slater and former Pixar animator Sydney Hanson, Escargot and the Search for Spring is an irresistibly sweet and charming story about unlikely friendship, changing seasons, and springtime fun. This hilarious and interactive addition to the award-winning Escargot series is the ideal read aloud for story time and animal lovers alike. – Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Everyone starts small by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Dominique Ramsey

Sun and Grass, Water and Tree, Fire and Rain—nature’s cycle of creation unfolds in a compelling lyrical text and striking illustrations.

Sun grows beams

and Grass grows blades

and Cloud cannot contain herself.

Spring rains change Water from a tumbling creek to a roaring river and bring Tree nutrients it needs to stretch toward the sky. As Sun’s rays intensify, the sprouts and fruits and insects of the forest grow and bloom and develop, all working together in harmony. Even Fire, whose work causes Tree to ache from the inside, brings opportunity for the next generation of flora and fauna. Paired with the vivid, organic imagery of Dominique Ramsey, Liz Garton Scanlon’s poetic tribute to our planet’s resilience is a resonant story of life, death, and regeneration. – Candlewick

The First Day of May written and illustrated by Henrique Coser Moreira

Here is a book to celebrate firsts. That first magical day of spring, when it seems the whole world is bursting with life. That first time bursting out of your house after being cooped up for SO long. Your first time on the swingset. Your first time seeing a butterfly. Your first time exploring the world with someone you love. From Henrique Coser Moreira comes a wordless ode to joy and discovery that will stir readers young and old. – Levine Querido

Grumpy Monkey Spring Fever by Suzanne Lang, illustrated by Max Lang

Everyone’s favorite grump, Jim Panzee, star of the bestselling Grumpy Monkey series, has caught a bad case of spring fever and wakes up feeling very silly in this delightful new picture book.

When Jim runs through the jungle laughing and shouting with glee,  the other animals are very concerned.  This just isn’t the grumpy Jim they know.  Soon Norman diagnoses Jim with a bad case of spring fever and tells Jim that he needs to find a cure. The other jungle animals offer suggestions: Take a calming breath! Sniff lavender! Take a nap! Try a time-out! Jim tries everything to get his grump back, but when nothing works, it becomes contagious and the other animals catch spring fever too. Soon the jungle erupts into a silly celebration of springtime as they all join in the fun.

From the bestselling team Suzanne and Max Lang comes another fun filled adventure starring the beloved chaacter Jim Panzee. Lively illustrations offering a belly laugh on every spread will delight the many Grumpy Monkey fans. – Random House Studio

Something on the hill written by Jane Kohuth and illustrated by Sonia Sanchez

Celebrate the arrival of Spring with this picture book that follows a small field mouse as she rallies the larger woodland animals  to join her on a journey up a hill, sensing that something is about to happen at the top…. What could it be?!

When Field Mouse wakes from her nap, the air is no longer chilly, and she feels like there’s something has changed. Something is out there, calling to her…. Something is on the Hill.

She spots her friend, Squirrel. “Help me find the Something,” Mouse tells him. And so the two scamper through a clearing. Soon, they spot Doe. “Where are you hurrying today?” Doe asks them. “We’re going to the Hill,” says Mouse.

And so it goes, as Turtle, the Ducks, and the Bears join the group, all making their way to the Something on the Hill. As they climb to the tippy-top, this parade of animals will discover just what that Something is: a leaf shoot, tiny and green.

Just in time for spring comes this delightful picture book–perfect for storytime–that reminds us that the smallest of things can matter just as much as the big ones. – Anne Schwartz Books

Spring Seeds written and illustrated by Mirka Hokkanen

A funny and informative nonfiction picture book introducing the life cycle of seeds and exploring the season of spring, including interactive back matter.

Discover how seeds spring into action! As winter warms into spring, the amazing life cycle begins—seeds root and sprout and start to grow. From tiny carrot seeds to big avocado seeds and everything in between, discover what seeds can do in this pitch-perfect picture book for younger readers. With clear, informative text and bright, charming illustrations, as well as a removable interactive matching card game at the end, this is an exciting start to a new nonfiction picture book series exploring life cycles and the seasons. – Odd Dot

This Little Kitty in the Garden by Karen Obuhanych

Spring is blooming, and what better way for rascally kittens to celebrate than by causing mischief in the garden in this charming picture book!

Spring has sprung on Sakura Way.

The five little kittles will garden today!

Read along as these frisky felines plant seeds, pounce and play, claw and climb, and splish, splash and swirl—until they end their day asleep in the garden bed. Filled with bright and playful illustrations, here is an adorable picture book that introduces kids to the wonders of spring as they spend time in the garden with these delightful cats—all brimming with cattitude. Here is a picture book sure to charm cat lovers and kids alike. – Knopf Books for Young Readers

Toddler Books

The ABCs of Spring written and illustrated by Jill Howarth

A is for ants hiking the Alps. B is for bunnies biking to baseball practice. C is for chipmunks camping with caterpillars.

Featuring plenty to discover on each charmingly illustrated page, this board book perfectly pairs seasonal art with the letters of the alphabet for the youngest of readers. – Tinker: An Imprint of Penguin Workshop

Little Bunny, spring is here! Written and illustrated by Deborah Marcero

Little Bunny and his friends are looking for the first signs of spring, but as hard as they try, they can’t seem to find them. But when a spring rain comes, at last the rivers flow, the flowers bloom, the birds sing, and the bees zoom. It’s finally time to let everyone know that spring is here!

Readers will fall in love with Little Bunny and his friends in this gorgeous celebration of the changing seasons. – G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Spring! Written and illustrated by Leslie Patricelli

Puddle, puddle, puddle, MUD! Our favorite bald baby celebrates a new season with an adorable friend.

Squish! Squoosh! Squash! It’s raining, but that’s OK, because rain means that spring is here! Baby and a best buddy love to be outside, enjoying the tulips and daffodils, the leaves on the trees, the butterflies and bumblebees. Look, there’s a bunny hopping! And a froggy plopping! Best of all is playing together in the slippery mud . . . oops! Good thing the rain is coming down to clean everyone off! Little fans and big ones alike will skip along with Baby in this salute to the season of everything new. – Candlewick Press

Spring ABC by Jannie Ho

Have some springtime fun with this colorful, stylish, and sturdy ABC board book for babies and toddlers.

A is for apple blossom, B is for bird, C is for caterpillar, of course! This sturdy board book introduces simple words to get children excited about the start of the spring season. It’s the perfect book to introduce first letter sounds to say out loud and letter recognition. – Candlewick Press

If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang

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“I’d rather be the villain who lives to the end than the hero who winds up dead”
― Ann Liang, If You Could See the Sun

This new genre-bending, speculative young adult debut tells the story of a Chinese American girl working hard to find her place at her elite Beijing boarding school. As the only scholarship student at her school, Alice Sun has always felt awkward and uncomfortable. Her classmates are rich and influential, her teachers are award winners, and Alice… is just Alice. After a tense conversation with her parents regarding their inability to pay for her tuition and an award ceremony that leaves her feeling uneasy among her peers, Alice’s life changes completely when she starts uncontrollably turning invisible.

This new ability doesn’t mean that Alice feels invisible – she is actually invisible. Freaked out and understandably concerned, Alice turns to her aunt for help. Not having her questions answered there, Alice quickly decides that she is going to use her new powers for good. Working with her academic rival, they design a way to monetize her invisibility by capitalizing on the secrets her classmates want to know. The tasks start out simple, yet petty, but quickly escalate to actual crimes that make Alice feel uncomfortable. Committing these actual crimes comes with a hefty price though. Alice would be able to pay for the rest of her tuition, but would it be worth losing her conscience or her life? Only time will tell.

Interested in this book? If You Could See the Sun is the May See YA Book Club pick. We will be discussing this book on Wednesday, May 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.

May 6 – If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang

June 3 – Shut Up, This is Serious by Carolina Ixta

April 2026 Bestsellers Club Fiction and Nonfiction Picks

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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 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.

Ravishing by Eshani Surya

A provocative, razor-sharp novel about two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a beauty tech company, Ravishing is an incisive portrait of a predatory industry and its dangerous ability to capitalize on our deepest insecurities. Full of heart and vulnerability, Eshani Surya’s dazzling debut shines a light on the dark enticements of wellness culture and the ill-fated pursuit of perfection.

For teenage Kashmira, it’s painful to look in the mirror; she has her father’s face, and every feature is a reminder of his abandonment. When a friend introduces her to Evolvoir, a beauty product that changes users’ features, Kashmira is quickly seduced by its ability to erase the triggers of her grief. Meanwhile, at Evolvoir corporate, Kashmira’s estranged brother Nikhil sees the product as an opportunity to make a difference, but is quickly mired in complicity as reports surface of severe side effects in some users. As Kashmira becomes more dependent on the escape the product offers, she is hospitalized with inexplicable symptoms and must negotiate the constraints of her new reality, while Nikhil uncovers a vicious truth that forces him to decide where his loyalties lie.

Deftly excavating the repercussions of living in white spaces, and fearlessly examining the realities of what it means to live with chronic illness, Ravishing is perfect for readers of Gold Diggers and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. Eshani Surya delivers a piercing novel that asks how much quiet suffering we’ll endure in exchange for beauty, for acceptance, for love. – Roxane Gay Books

Graphic Novel:

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

Milk Without Honey by Hanna Harms ; with a foreword by Sarah Wyndham Lewis ; with an afterword by Professor Jürgen Tautz ; translated from German by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp.

What would the future of the world look like without bees?

Bees are vital to securing our food supply. We could live in a paradise where insects, especially bees pollinate fragrant seas of flowers whose fruits we harvest. Instead, vast lawns are now replacing flower gardens, and agriculture is characterized by monocultures. Pesticides and climate change are also causing insect mortality, with dramatic consequences for the global ecosystem. As we destroy the insect populations, honey is just one of many foods that will no longer be available to us, unless we learn to honor our innate connection with nature before it’s too late.

In gorgeous, limited palette artwork, using contemplative images as well as informative charts, Hanna Harms brings us into the world of bees: their hives, their colonies, and their interactions with the global ecosystem. This is the perfect gift book for anyone concerned about climate change and the environment. – Street Noise Books

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 Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams

It’s 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family’s past, including why she left Land’s End, Alabama, in 1953. As Tati digs deeper, she uncovers a legacy of family secrets, where every generation of Dupree women has posed more questions than answers.

From Jubi in 1917, whose attempt to pass for white ends when she gives birth to Ruby; to Ruby’s fiery lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own; to the night in 1980 that changed Nadia’s future forever, the Dupree women carry the weight of their heritage. Bound by a mysterious malediction that means they will only give birth to daughters, the Dupree women confront a legacy of pain, resilience, and survival that began with an enslaved ancestor who risked everything for freedom.

The Seven Daughters of Dupree masterfully weaves together themes of generational trauma, Black women’s resilience, and unbreakable familial bonds. Echoing the literary power of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, Nikesha Elise Williams delivers a feminist literary fiction that explores the ripple effects of actions, secrets, and love through seven generations of Black women. – Gallery / Scout Press

International Fiction:

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

The jaguar’s roar : a novel / Micheliny Verunschk ; translated by Juliana Barbassa.

The story of an Indigenous girl’s kidnapping during a colonial expedition intertwines with a young woman’s modern-day search for identity and ancestral truths.

In 1817, two German scientists traveled across Brazil and into the Amazon gathering flora and fauna to study and display in Europe. Among the collection they brought to the Bavarian court were two Indigenous children.

The children’s images became widespread, satisfying European curiosity about the distant land they came from. But little was known about the children themselves. Despite the scientists’ detailed records about many of the plant and animal specimens, they only noted the children’s tribes: the girl was a Miranha, and the boy, a Juri. After a few months, the children died in Germany, far from anyone who knew their names.

The Jaguar’s Roar, a spellbinding poetic novel told in many voices, imagines the children’s journey and a modern Brazilian woman’s effort to counter their disappearance from history.

In her award-winning fifth novel, Micheliny Verunschk inhabits the fictional perspective of the Miranha girl, of the jaguar she conjures for protection, of the German scientists who determine her fate, and of the two rivers that frame her life. Intertwined in this narrative is a story of Brazil’s suppression of its Indigenous history, and of a young woman named Josefa, a newcomer unmoored in the megacity of São Paulo, who identifies with the girl after seeing her image in an exhibit and tries to recover the child’s voice and story.

In Juliana Barbassa’s vivid translation, Verunshuk’s lyrical sentences carry the reader through a powerful exploration of memory, colonialism, and belonging, and make a lasting contribution to world literature. – Liveright

NONFICTION PICKS

Biography pick

Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln by Matthew Pinsker

An eye-opening portrait of Lincoln behind the scenes: Here is the career-long party politician whose brilliant coalition-building during the Civil War set the political foundation for emancipation and Union victory.

We know Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a master of party politics. Schooled as a Whig in the rough-and-tumble of Illinois electioneering in the 1830s, Lincoln skillfully navigated treacherous partisan crosscurrents and helped build the Republican party into a viable force. His decades of experience as a party leader proved invaluable to him as president and commander in chief during the Civil War.

Matthew Pinsker’s groundbreaking history draws extensively on Lincoln’s private correspondence to move beyond the marble icon and realize a flesh-and-blood character in Boss Lincoln. Behind closed doors he was shrewd and insistent, capable of deft manipulation, blunt intimidation, or thoughtful argument as needed. As a decision-maker he was attentive to detail but kept his own counsel and trusted his own acumen. His aides noted that in cabinet meetings Lincoln had the final say, and “there is no cavil.” Devoted to elections, he kept careful, handwritten tallies of party turnout, even gifting one to Mary Todd, another partisan, during their courtship. His hymn to democracy at Gettysburg in 1863 carried a partisan message to the political leaders gathered there: The fight for the union would take place at the polls as well as on the battlefield. Boss Lincoln often sacrificed candor for purpose. He used his White House meeting with Frederick Douglass in 1864, ostensibly about emancipation, to send a message to radicals about his need for their support.

With emancipation and the war’s outcome at stake, facing withering criticism from all sides, Lincoln won reelection by building a new political coalition through the Union party. Here was Boss Lincoln at his height, captured in absorbing detail in this indelible portrait of our greatest president. – W.W. Norton & Company

Cookbook pick

Breaking the Rules: A Fresh Take on Italian Classics by Joe Sasto with Thea Baumann ; photographs by Huge Galdones.

A bold, fun, and daring collection of recipes that break the rules of Italian cooking from Top Chef and Food Network star Joe Sasto.

It’s time to ditch the same boring recipes and get creative in the kitchen. Known for his signature curled mustache and dynamic presence on shows like Bravo’s Top Chef and Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, Joe Sasto brings his culinary expertise and passion for pasta to your kitchen. Breaking the Rules is a celebration of Italian cuisine, reimagined with Joe’s unique flair, playfulness, and creativity.

Dive into a world of pasta with step-by-step techniques that guide you through creating dishes in all forms, shapes, and sizes. From classic Italian recipes like meatballs and focaccia to innovative creations such as Corn Cacio e Pepe, Marinated Tomato “Amatriciana,” and Pesto Pinwheel Pull-Apart Bread, Joe’s recipes are designed to inspire both novice and experienced cooks. Each recipe begins with a simple version, perfect for beginners, and offers variations to elevate the dish for those ready to “break the rules” and take their skills to the next level.

With stunning full-color photographs and pro tips throughout, Breaking the Rules is more than just a cookbook—it’s an invitation to embrace creativity in the kitchen. Whether you’re a fan of Joe’s many television appearances or a home cook looking to expand your repertoire, this book is a must-have for anyone passionate about Italian cuisine and culinary innovation. – S&S / Simon Element

Social Justice pick

By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests—in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country. – Harper

True Crime pick

A Killing in Cannabis: A True Story of Love, Murder, and California Weed by Scott Eden

Santa Cruz is one of the country’s surf meccas and a favored getaway of the Silicon Valley elite. For decades, marijuana has been cultivated, consumed, and trafficked in these mountains, one of the most important regions in the country for the crop. It’s where Ken Kesey threw his wild parties, where back-to-the-land types came to live off the grid, and where Tushar Atre, Silicon Valley founder, was found brutally murdered.

Charismatic, ambitious, arrogant, and rich, Atre was the leader among a clutch of tech execs and venture capitalists with a voracious appetite for risk, work, and money, riding waves at dawn and then putting in fourteen-hour days. When he met Rachael Lynch, a maverick cannabis grower and mover of product, he had a vision of how their lives could come together in business and in love. Atre sought to disrupt the newly legal cannabis trade by funding a start-up with black market capital. This illegal pursuit would entangle him with an array of colorful and dangerous characters, many of whom had compelling reason to want him dead.

Award-winning journalist Scott Eden’s panoramic investigation exposes the symbiotic relationship between the legal weed world and its shadowy, illegal counterpart. It is a story of love, greed, and betrayal, set in a world where visionaries, hippies, masters of the universe, and stone-cold killers are all stakeholders, eager to exploit the power of the plant. – Spiegel & Grau

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New Debut Novels

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If you want something new, try a debut novel! By choosing a debut novel, you are introduced to authors who are brand new to fiction. Below is a collection of new voices, stories, and characters just waiting to become someone’s favorite.

As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang

A dark, magical realist debut family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate.

Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call—there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he’s asking for her. This man isn’t the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.

While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother’s youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions—fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.

Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing employs a combination of stunningly rendered folklore and atmospheric prose to examine the legacy of colonialism through the eyes of three generations. Alice Evelyn Yang’s debut novel is a story of family and forgiveness, of folklore and fate, that will leave you unsettled and undone. – William Morrow

Burn Down Master’s House by Clay Cane

As turmoil simmers within a divided nation, smoke from another blaze begins to rise. Sparked by individual acts of resistance among those enslaved across the American South, their seemingly disparate rebellions fuel a singular inferno of justice, connecting them in ways quiet at times, explosive at others. As these flames rise, so will they.

Luke, quick-witted and literate, and Henri, a man with a strong and defiant spirit, forge an unbreakable bond at a Virginia plantation called Magnolia Row. Both seek escape from unimaginable cruelty. And sure as the fires of hell, Luke and Henri will leave their mark, sparking resistance among the lives they touch…

One is Josephine, a young, sharp, and observant girl who wields silence as her greatest weapon. A witness to Luke and Henri’s resilience, she listens, watches, waits for the moment to make her move.

Then there is Charity Butler, her husband a formerly enslaved man who proved his ferocity as a young boy standing alongside Josephine. At his encouragement, Charity fights for her freedom in court and wins – only to battle a deeply unjust system designed to destroy the life they’ve built.

And finally, there is Nathaniel, who ruthlessly exploits other Black people and mirrors the cruelty of the white men who, like him, are enslavers. A perversion of the system of slavery, his fragile and contradictory rule will become a catalyst of its own.

Inspired by the true stories of the profoundly courageous men and women who dared to fight back, Burn Down Master’s House is a singular tour de force of a novel—breathtaking in scope, compassion, and a timeliness that speaks powerfully to our present era. – Dafina

Dandelion is Dead by Rosie Storey

Jake has fallen head over heels for Dandelion. The only problem? Dandelion is dead.

When Poppy discovers unanswered messages from a charming stranger in her late sister’s dating app, she makes an impulsive choice: She’ll meet him, just once, on what would have been Dandelion’s fortieth birthday. It’s exactly the kind of wild adventure her vivacious sister would have pushed her toward.

Jake is ready to find something real—and not least because his ex-wife’s twentysomething boyfriend has moved into their old family home. When he meets the intriguing woman who calls herself Dandelion, their connection is undeniable, and he can think of little else.

As their relationship deepens, Poppy finds herself trapped in a double life she never meant to create. Every moment with Jake feels genuine, electric, and totally right—despite the fact they’re tangled in deceit. As the lines between grief and love blur, Poppy faces a choice: keep her sister’s memory alive through her lies, or risk everything for a chance at her own happiness?

With sparkling wit and aching tenderness, debut author Rosie Storey gives us a modern love story about the courage it takes to live again after loss and finding hope in the most unexpected places. – Berkley

This title is also available in large print.

Discipline by Larissa Pham

I have the sense that something is being drawn between us. Not drawn as in line but as in arrow pulled back. Yet I don’t know which of us holds the bow, and which of us faces the arrow.

Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, she’s seeking answers—about how to live a good life and what it means to make art—through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers, and friends.

But when the antagonist of her novel—her old painting professor—reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her that he’s read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his house, on a remote island off the coast of Maine, their encounter threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she’s imagined it.

A pristine and provocative high-wire act toggling the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive and the possibilities that lie beyond them, Discipline launches a spellbinding inquiry into the nature of art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release. – Random House

Escape! by Stephen Fishbach

Everyone gets the story arc they deserve.

Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory—to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type—Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest—but everyone is more than they appear.

The contestants’ goals seem simple—survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc.

As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece. – Dutton

This title is also available in large print.

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does.

Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved. – Ballantine Books

This title is also available in large print.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley

Summer, 1986. The Creel sisters, Georgie Ayyar and Agatha Krishna, welcome their aunt, uncle and young cousin—newly arrived from India—into their house in rural Wyoming where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do. That is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die.

According to Georgie, the British are to blame. And to understand why, you need to hear her story. She details the violence hiding in their house and history, her once-unshakeable bond with Agatha Krishna, and her understanding of herself as an Indian-American in the heart of the West. Her account is, at every turn, cheeky, unflinching, and infectiously inflected with the trappings of teendom, including the magazine quizzes that help her make sense of her life. At its heart, the tale she weaves is:

  1. a) a vivid portrait of an extended family
    b) a moving story of sisterhood
    c) a playful ode to the 80s
    d) a murder mystery (of sorts)
    e) an unexpected and unwaveringly powerful meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independence

Or maybe it’s really:

  1. f) all of the above. – Pantheon

The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski

The Remains of the Day meets The Royal Tenenbaums in this darkly funny debut novel about a wealthy, eccentric family in decline and the secrets held within the walls of their crumbling country manor.

Thornwalk, a once-stately English manor, is on the brink of transformation. Its keys are being handed over to a luxury hotelier who will undertake a complete renovation—but in doing so, what will they erase? Through the keen eyes of an enigmatic neighbor, the reader is taken on a guided tour into rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings.

Spanning the eve of World War II to the early 2000s, this contemporary gothic novel weaves a rich tapestry of English country life. As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn into a world where the echoes of an Edwardian idyll clash with the harsh realities of war, neglect, and changing times. The Gilberts’ tale is one of great loves, lofty ambitions, and profound loss, and Angela Tomaski’s mordantly witty yet loving account is an immersive experience. Reminiscent of the haunting atmospheres in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Infamous Gilberts offers a fresh take on a classic genre, capturing the essence of a troubled but fascinating family. – Scribner

Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg

Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption.

Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy.

Dell is her stream’s dungeon master, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on earth: the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.

Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this misguided striver with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both a razor-sharp tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched, and the terror of being seen. – Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Online Reading Challenge – April

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Welcome Readers!

Our 2026 Online Reading Challenge is … KNOW YOUR HISTORY! Each month we will be reading about a different observance month and highlighting a main title about that month.

For April, we will be reading books that celebrate Arab American culture and heritage by reading books that feature Arabic culture and history. Our main title for April is Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the seventies to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties. – Washington Square Press

Looking for some other books that celebrate Arab American culture and heritage? Try any of the following.

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

Online Reading Challenge – March Wrap-Up

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How did your reading go this month? Did you read something to commemorate the roles of women in history and society? In March, we focused on Women’s History Month. Are you finishing strong? Or do you still have some months to catch up on? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: Code Girls by Liza Mundy. This title had been on my to-read list for a very long time, so when I was researching what I wanted our main title to be for March, I knew I wanted Code Girls by Liza Mundy. This book tells the stories of the more than ten thousand American women who served as codebreakers during World War II. Readers learn about their efforts from before and how they came to be in their positions during the war.

With men shipping off to serve in the Armed Forces during World War II, the Unites States government realized that they needed to recruit women to serve as codebreakers. The Army and Navy were sent to small towns and colleges to recruit women to move to Washington to learn code-breaking. They didn’t know what they signing up for, just that their efforts were vital to the war effort. Their tireless work would end up shortening the war, saving lives, and eventually giving them access to careers that were denied to them previously. Code Girls was a fascinating and illuminating read telling these women’s stories that were previously unknown. A vow of secrecy forced the women to remain silent for years, basically erasing their stories from history. (Fun fact: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, known as Miss Aggie, one of the leading Navy crytanalysts, was born in Geneseo, Illinois!)

Next month, we will be reading about Arab American Heritage Month.

In addition to following the Online Reading Challenge here on our Info Cafe blog, you can join our Online Reading Challenge group on Goodreads and discuss your reads!

New Romystery

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I would like to start a movement that romystery becomes the next big trend in literature (move over romantasy!). Romystery is the mix between romance and mystery. This genre is typically less high stakes than romantic suspense, but still contains a mystery that will keep the romantically entangled characters linked. Below is a list of new romystery titles that we can’t wait to get our hands on (and that we hope you’ll like too)!

As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions provided by the publishers.

And Then There Was the One by Martha Waters

In a quaint village in the Cotswolds, Georgiana Radcliffe has accidentally become an amateur detective after helping solve four murders in a single year. When the chairman of the village council turns up dead, everyone agrees with the official ruling of a heart attack, but Georgie can’t help but suspect that the council chairman is a fifth victim. Now, murder tourists are flocking from around the country, in hopes of becoming sleuths themselves.

Along with her reporter friend, she reaches out to a famous London detective for assistance in ascertaining why they have become a magnet for murder. But the fancy detective is simply too busy—or can’t be bothered—to help, and instead dispatches his secretary, Sebastian Fletcher-Ford—a posh womanizer who, truthfully, is just trying to get out of his hair, much to practical, no-nonsense Georgie’s dismay. But as they investigate in the charming Buncombe-upon-Woolly—with plentiful scones, sheep on the village green, and murder tourists at every turn—Georgie finds that her previous assessment of Sebastian may have been wrong, and rather than solving a murder, she may be solving for love instead. – Atria Books

This title is also available in large print.

Crazy Spooky Love by Josie Silver

Ghosts and spirits are business as usual, but love just might be enough to scare Melody Bittersweet.

In the leafy, charming town of Chapelwick, the Bittersweet family has been a fixture on High Street for as long as anyone can remember. Their rambling black-and-white building houses all three generations of ghost-sensitive Bittersweet women and their business, Blithe Spirits.

On her twenty-seventh birthday, Melody Bittersweet converts the disused back storeroom into her office and opens her own business. Unlike the rest of her family, she’s not taking down messages from ghosts—she’s taking them out.

Right away, the freshly minted Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency takes on its first case: a grand old house that won’t sell because a trio of incumbent ghost brothers raise merry hell whenever prospective owners arrive to view it.

It soon becomes clear that there’s a whole heap of unfinished business between the Scarborough brothers—including murder—and Melody isn’t the only one trying to unravel the mystery. Leo Dark, her rakish ex and business rival, is also on the case, along with the TV crew that trails him.

To make matters worse, the sarcastic and skeptical (and annoyingly good-looking) local reporter Fletcher Gunn has his nose in the story as well. Sniffing out a way to publicly discredit the Bittersweets is his favorite assignment—and has absolutely nothing to do with his inability to resist Melody.

With her business on the line, it’s up to Melody to work out the brothers’ issues, but can she protect her own very susceptible heart from Fletcher’s charm? Does she even want to? – Dell

This title is also available in large print.

Cross Your Heart and Hope He Dies by Jenny Elder Moke

Juliette Winters is used to taking care of business alone. She has no time for petty things like romance, friendships, or emotional commitments. Love is for people who believe in reality TV dating and holding hands in public. She’s too busy dominating the publishing world by single-handedly saving her company from financial ruin with the book deal of the century.

Business magnate Warren Ellingham has guaranteed Juliette exclusive rights to his explosive memoir that promises to expose the secrets of his ultra-exclusive country club, Pacific Pines. But when Warren drops dead of an apparent heart attack and the memoir is stolen, Juliette suspects that someone was willing to resort to murder to keep their secrets from being exposed.

Enlisting the help of Charlie Hawkins, a doctor with a heart of gold and abs of steel, Juliette dives into the glamorous and messy world of Pacific Pines Country Club. As the investigation heats up, so does the tension between Juliette and Charlie. But Juliette can’t afford any distractions because the bodies keep dropping, and Juliette is tee-d up to take the blame. If she doesn’t uncover Warren’s killer soon, the thing that was supposed to secure her future might just be the thing that ends it.

Jenny Elder Moke’s twisty mystery rom-com blend will delight readers with its outrageous characters, laugh-out-loud jokes, and opposites attract romance. – Minotaur Books

Definitely Maybe Not a Detective by Sarah Fox (book 1 in The Wyatt Investigations Mysteries)

In this delightfully charming rom-com mystery, a woman becomes accidentally entangled in a murder investigation (and with a handsome stranger) when her fake detective agency is enlisted to solve a real homicide.

Emersyn Gray is definitely not a detective.

Really, she’s an unemployed twenty-eight-year-old raising her beloved niece in the only place she can afford after her ex-boyfriend ran off with her life savings: a run-down, seniors-only apartment complex that was desperate for tenants. But never fear—her wild best friend has the perfect plan to get Emersyn back on her feet and stick it to her thieving ex: scare him into returning her money by hiring a private investigator to prove he stole it. Only, there won’t be an actual detective, just a fabricated business card from Wyatt Investigations . . . and a ridiculously hot stranger, who steps in to play the part—a stranger whose name is, coincidentally, Wyatt.

Emersyn can’t help but notice the real-life Wyatt is capital H-O-T hot, even though she’s wary of his intentions. But her ex does seem flustered, and if she can get her money back and regain control of her life, maybe it’ll finally prove to her parents that she can be a responsible caregiver to her niece.

But the day after they set their plan in motion, the superintendent of Emersyn’s apartment building winds up dead, and her neighbors turn to her fake detective agency for help after finding one of the phony business cards. With so many eyes on them—or maybe just their eyes on each other—Emersyn and Wyatt agree to take on the case. Now the question is, Can they solve the murder without getting tangled up in their own fictions—or each other? – Bantam

He’s to Die For by Erin Dunn

Brooklyn 99 meets The Charm Offensive in this sparkling romantic murder mystery: it’s murder cute in the first degree when a detective finds himself falling for the lead suspect in a career-making case.

At 29, Detective Rav Trivedi is the youngest member of the NYPD’s homicide squad, and his future looks bright. He may be a bit of an outsider in the department—an ivy-league educated gay Brit with a weakness for designer suits—but his meteoric rise and solve rate prove he belongs.

So when his CO assigns him lead on the high-profile murder of a record executive, Rav is ready for action. He won’t be distracted by TV crews, tabloids, or what’s trending on social media, nor by the ridiculously hot rock star with a clear motive and no alibi.

This is it, his shot, and he is not going to screw it up—certainly not by falling in love with his number one suspect… – Minotaur Books

A Killer Getaway by Sierra Sharpe

Falling in love can be murder…

No one in Lily Lennox’s life can understand why, for each of the past five summers, she has left her successful business behind to work a lifeguarding job at the exclusive Riovan Wellness Resort on a sun-soaked Caribbean Island.

Fortunately for her, they also aren’t aware of the mysterious deaths that occur on the island every time she’s there. You see, Lily has a secret. She’s determined to make toxic people pay for the damage they do – and she’s very good at getting away with it.

But this summer, there’s a problem in the form of a very attractive guest, Daniel Black, who is asking a few too many inconvenient questions. Hoping to lead him off her trail, Lily decides to keep her enemy close, but as their attraction grows into something much deeper, Lily’s plans start to unravel. Because Daniel is set on finding the murderer – and Lily plans to get away with it – no matter what. – Sourcebooks Landmark

A Killer Kind of Romance by Letizia Lorini

Scarlett Moore doesn’t do romance.

She’s made a name for herself narrating gritty crime fiction on a local podcast. But when her boss hands her the reins to the network’s romance show, Scarlett finds herself neck-deep in swoony love stories on top of her usual murder plots.

Then someone begins reenacting the chilling crimes she discusses on air, down to the last twisted detail.

Determined to protect her small town, Scarlett launches her own investigation. But the line between reality and fiction blurs even more when Rafael Gray—the brooding bad boy who disappeared five years ago—unexpectedly returns. Suddenly, her life reads like a romance novel filled with every trope she used to mock, with Rafael playing the dangerously irresistible lead.

He’s perfect in every way…except last time, he broke her heart, and now he’s the prime suspect in the string of brutal murders.

Will this be the love story she never saw coming, or is it a killer kind of romance? – Gallery Books

Without a Clue by Melissa Ferguson

A laugh-out-loud rom-com wrapped in a whodunit, this high-seas adventure proves that sometimes the best love stories start with a little murder.

Penelope Mae Dupont has one superpower: keeping her cool. Which is essential when you’re the personal assistant to renowned mystery author Hugh Griffin. But when Pip organizes a luxury book cruise featuring The Fabulous Seven–a glittering cast of seven bestselling authors known for both their brilliance and their drama–her trademark composure starts slipping. One boat. Seven egos. Hundreds of fans. What could possibly go wrong?

Well . . . murder, for starters.

On day two, Hugh is found dead–and the cruise security team proves to be utterly incompetent. Stranded in the middle of the Atlantic with no help in sight, Pip realizes if anyone’s going to solve the case, it’ll have to be her. And so, with her friend and ally Nash, the dreamy Western author who’s just as rugged as the cowboys he writes about, she puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test.

As Pip and Nash navigate an ocean of secrets, shocking twists, and one too many red herrings, she’ll have to decide whether she’s meant to stay behind the scenes–or finally step into the spotlight . . . and maybe, just maybe, find love along the way.

In the world of mystery and love, sometimes you have to risk going overboard to find the truth. – Thomas Nelson

New Children’s Fiction

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The term ‘children’s fiction’ covers a large variety of books. This includes classics all the way to modern popular titles. In this section, you will find fantasy, mysteries, animal stories, fairy tales, and so many other types of children’s fiction that teach important lessons. Below you will find a small sampling of what was published in 2025. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers. This is not a complete list of all of the new children’s fiction.

Busted by Dan Gemeinhart

When 12-year-old Oscar Aberdeen decided he would do anything to save the only home he’s ever known, he didn’t realize that anything would include theft, trespassing, gambling, a broken nose, grand theft auto, a federal prison, and a police chase. He had no idea it would be so dangerous…or so fun.

Oscar Aberdeen is a bit of an oddball. He’s an ace at playing bridge, loves Frank Sinatra, and attends a whole lot of funerals. He’s also the youngest resident of Sunny Days retirement home by more than a half-century—and he wouldn’t have it any other way. So when his grandpa’s suddenly served an eviction notice that threatens their place at Sunny Days, he needs to find some cash. Fast.

Enter Jimmy Deluca, a shady elderly man with a reputation for being bad news, who makes Oscar an offer he can’t refuse. He’s got the drop on riches hidden away on the “outside” and he’ll share the loot with Oscar on one condition: he busts him out of Sunny Days.

In this humdinger of an adventure, the ultimate odd couple, along with an uninvited stowaway, go from high-stakes escape to rollicking escapade as they search for the secret stash—and forge an unlikely friendship along the way. Will Oscar succeed in saving the only home he’s ever known? Or will he have to fuggedaboutit and return a failure? – Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

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

Graciela in the Abyss by Meg Medina

A sea ghost, a mortal boy, and a dangerous enchanted harpoon . . . A Newbery Medalist takes us far beneath the waves in this extraordinary foray into fantasy.

In the deepest recesses of the ocean, Graciela—once an ordinary girl—now makes sea glass and assists her friend, Amina, as she welcomes newly awakened sea ghosts from their death sleep. Though Graciela’s spirit is young, she has lived at the bottom of the ocean for more than a hundred years. Meanwhile, in the mortal world on land, twelve-year-old Jorge Leon works in his family’s forge. He’s heard of the supernatural spirits living beneath the ocean’s waves—tales that do nothing to quell his fear of the water. But when Jorge discovers a hand-wrought harpoon with the power to spear a sea ghost, he knows he must destroy it any way he can.

When the harpoon is accidentally reunited with its vengeful creator, unlikely allies Graciela and Jorge have no choice but to work together to keep evil spirits from wreaking havoc on both the living and the dead. If only the answer to saving what they care about didn’t lie within the depths of the abyss . . . Newbery Medal winner Meg Medina and illustrators Anna and Elena Balbusso have crafted a thoughtful tale infused with magic and high-stakes adventure that will leave readers wondering what power lies in the depths of the ocean—and inside each of us. – Candlewick

This title is also available in large print.

The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze by Derrick Barnes

In the small town of Great Mountain, Mississippi, all eyes are on Henson Blayze, a thirteen-year-old football phenom whose talents seem almost superhuman. The predominately white townsfolk have been waiting for Henson to play high school ball, and now they’re overjoyed to finally possess an elite Black athlete of their own.

Until a horrifying incident forces Henson to speak out about injustice.
Until he says that he might not play football anymore.
Until he quickly learns he isn’t as loved by the people as he thought.

Overnight, Henson’s town is divided into two chaotic sides—those that support his decisions, and those that don’t—when all he wants is justice. Even his best friends and his father can’t see eye to eye. When he is told to play ball again or else, Henson must decide whether he was born to entertain those who may not even see him as human, or if he’s destined for a different kind of greatness.

Written for children ages 10 and up, Derrick Barnes’s groundbreaking novel masterfully combines a modern-day allegory with classic-style tall tales to weave a compelling story of America’s obsession with relegating Black people to labor or entertainment. Spanning the 1800s to today, this exceptional novel shows how much has changed over centuries . . . and, at the same time, how little. – Viking Books for Young Readers

This title is also available in large print.

J vs. K written by Kwame Alexander & Jerry Craft, illustrated by Jerry Craft

J and K are the most creative fifth graders at Dean Ashley Public School (DAPS). J loves to draw and his wordless stories are J-ENIUS! K loves to write and his stories are K-LASSIC!! Both J and K are determined to win the DAPS annual creative storytelling contest or at least get in the top five. And when they find out that they are both entering The Contest, it’s the beginning of one of the most intense rivalries the world has ever seen.

It’s artist vs. writer with plenty of shady double crosses as J and K plot their way to the top. This epic match-up from Newbery medal winners Kwame Alexander (The Crossover) and Jerry Craft (New Kid) celebrates comics, creativity, and the magic of collaboration. – Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

The Library of Unruly Treasures written by Jeanne Birdsall, illustrated by Matt Phelan

Gwen MacKinnon’s parents are dreadful. Truly, deeply, almost impressively dreadful. So Gwen’s not upset at all when she’s foisted onto her never-before-seen Uncle Matthew for two weeks. Especially when it turns out he has a very opinionated dog named Pumpkin.

Things take a turn for the weird when Gwen makes a discovery in the local library. A discovery that involves tiny creatures with wings. And no, they’re not birds. They’re called Lahdukan. But why can only Gwen and the youngest children, gathered for storytime, see them?

The Lahdukan insist that Gwen is destined to help them find a new home. But how can a girl as unwanted, uncourageous, and generally unheroic as Gwen possibly come to the rescue? Pumpkin has a few ideas… – Knopf Books for Young Readers

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

A Little Too Haunted by Justine Pucella Winans

The only thing worse than having ghost hunters for parents is having fake ghost hunters for parents. Luna Catalano would know. Her moms are haunted house flippers who use their home reno skills and pretend psychic powers to turn spooky old houses into ghost-free modern homes. Not only does their job require the family to move all the time–meaning Luna is completely friendless–but the only thing haunting any of those houses is bad decor. For once Luna wishes there was an actual, for-real ghost.

When they move yet again, Luna isn’t expecting much. But this house feels… different. Things start out innocent enough–items not where they should be, strange noises–but soon things turn sinister. Her moms are waking up with cuts and bruises, and disturbing drawings showing them with even worse injuries are being left in Luna’s room. With the help of her next-door neighbors and a mysterious woman who seems to know a lot about the home, Luna starts to piece together what exactly happened in that house before she moved in. But not everything is as it seems. In order to save her moms, Luna will have to get the story right before everything goes completely wrong.

Stonewall Honor-winning author Justine Pucella Winans returns with another middle grade horror with heart about friendship, family, and the stories we tell when real life feels too scary. – Bloomsbury Children’s Books

The Reel Wish by Yamile Saied Méndez

Ballet is Florencia del Lago’s entire world. After years of hard work, she is chosen as Clara in the winter production of The Nutcracker. Not only is she the youngest dancer to receive such an honor but also the first Latina. She’s on track to be recruited by the best ballet companies.

Unfortunately, she suffers a panic attack on opening night–on stage, in front of everyone. And then Selena, Florencia’s best friend, steps right into the role to replace her. Just like that, Florencia’s whole world falls apart–the ballet studio expels her, and her best friend turns on her, tormenting her on social media and in real life.

But even though the one thing she was driven toward has come to an end, therapy and family support help Florencia open up to new experiences. She notices people at school she’s never paid attention to before, and she even stumbles upon an Irish dance school and decides to give it a try. Can a new passion for Irish dance help Florencia find the joy of performing on the stage that she lost that fateful winter night? – Lee & Low Books

Scarlet Morning written and illustrated by ND Stevenson (book 1)

From the powerhouse creator of Nimona comes a breathtaking illustrated novel, the start of a duology, following two orphans who leave the only home they’ve ever known to sail with an eccentric crew of pirates.

Viola and Wilmur have been waiting for their parents for fifteen boring years in the colorless town of Caveat. Their lives are a drudge of salt, trash, pirate stories, and what-ifs . . . until one very stormy night, when Captain Cadence Chase breaks down their door. They cut a deal with the captain: Chase can take their most prized possession, a mysterious book, but only if she takes them, too. After all, if their parents aren’t coming, Viola and Wilmur might as well have a grand adventure to find them.

Setting sail into the treacherous and beautiful world beyond Caveat, the two inseparable friends must uncover the facts behind legend—and the key to saving all of Dickerson’s Sea from obliteration—before the truth tears them apart.

Wickedly funny, deeply emotional, and sharply incisive, Scarlet Morning is a tale of love, betrayal, and the extraordinary lengths we’d go to save a world broken beyond repair. – Quill Tree Books