A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She\u2019s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she\u2019s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn\u2019t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she\u2019s dreamed of coming for years\u2014she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she\u2019s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan\u2014which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can\u2019t stop confiding in each other.<\/em><\/p>\n In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach\u2019s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined\u2014and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.<\/em> – Henry Holt & Co.<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print and as a Playaway Audiobook.<\/p>\n Historical Fiction Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances \u201cFrankie\u201d 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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\u2014and becomes one of\u2014the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm\u2019s 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.<\/em> – St. Martin’s Press<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print, CD audiobook, and Playaway audiobook.<\/p>\n Mystery & Thriller Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide<\/em><\/p>\n Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn\u2019t just any thirteen-year-old: she\u2019s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region\u2019s residents. And this isn\u2019t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara\u2019s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.<\/em><\/p>\n As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore\u2019s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore\u2019s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.<\/em> – Riverhead Books<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n Romance Winner (ALSO the Audiobook Winner!)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Daphne always loved the way her fianc\u00e9 Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it\u2026right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.<\/em><\/p>\n Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children\u2019s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra\u2019s ex, Miles Nowak.<\/em><\/p>\n Scruffy and chaotic\u2014with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads\u2014Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she\u2019s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?<\/em><\/p>\n But it\u2019s all just for show, of course, because there\u2019s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fianc\u00e9\u2019s new fianc\u00e9e\u2019s ex\u2026right?<\/em> – Berkley<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print, CD audiobook, and Playaway audiobook.<\/p>\n Romantasy Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she’s going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that’s no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.<\/em><\/p>\n Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he’s in the Asteri’s dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce’s fate. He’s desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri’s leash, his hands are quite literally tied.<\/em> – Bloomsbury Publishing<\/p>\n Fantasy Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.<\/em><\/p>\n Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.<\/em><\/p>\n He\u2019s the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.<\/em><\/p>\n Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.<\/em><\/p>\n But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.<\/em><\/p>\n And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home\u2014one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from\u2014Arthur knows they\u2019re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.<\/em><\/p>\n Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur\u2019s story.<\/em><\/p>\n Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.\u00a0<\/em> – Tor Books<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n Science Fiction Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she\u2019ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering \u201cexpats\u201d from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible\u2014for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.<\/em><\/p>\n She is tasked with working as a \u201cbridge\u201d: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as \u201c1847\u201d or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin\u2019s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he\u2019s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as \u201cwashing machines,\u201d \u201cSpotify,\u201d and \u201cthe collapse of the British Empire.\u201d 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2014and whether she believes\u2014what she does next can change the future.<\/em> – Avid Reader Press \/ Simon & Schuster<\/p>\n Horror Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cYou like it darker? Fine, so do I,\u201d writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life\u2014both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel \u201cthe exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,\u201d and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTwo Talented Bastids\u201d explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In \u201cDanny Coughlin\u2019s Bad Dream,\u201d a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny\u2019s most catastrophically. In \u201cRattlesnakes,\u201d a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance\u2014with major strings attached. In \u201cThe Dreamers,\u201d a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. \u201cThe Answer Man\u201d asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.<\/em><\/p>\n King\u2019s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.<\/em> – Scribner<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print, CD audiobook, and Playaway audiobook.<\/p>\n Debut Novel Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Helen Zhang hasn\u2019t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.<\/em><\/p>\n Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She\u2019s even scored a coveted spot in the writers\u2019 room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer\u2019s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he\u2019s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn\u2019t have taken the job on Helen\u2019s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can\u2019t pass up.<\/em><\/p>\n Grant\u2019s exactly as Helen remembers him\u2014charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she\u2019s never been. And Helen\u2019s exactly as Grant remembers too\u2014brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen\u2019s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he\u2019s in the picture at all.<\/em><\/p>\n When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet\u2026 the key to making peace with their past\u2014and themselves\u2014might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.<\/em> – Avon<\/p>\n Young Adult Fantasy Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The epic conclusion to the intensely romantic and beautifully written story that started in Divine Rivals.<\/em><\/p>\n Two weeks have passed since Iris Winnow returned home bruised and heartbroken from the front, but the war is far from over. Roman is missing, and the city of Oath continues to dwell in a state of disbelief and ignorance. When Iris and Attie are given another chance to report on Dacre\u2019s movements, they both take the opportunity and head westward once more despite the danger, knowing it\u2019s only a matter of time before the conflict reaches a city that\u2019s unprepared and fracturing beneath the chancellor\u2019s reign.<\/em><\/p>\n Since waking below in Dacre\u2019s realm, Roman cannot remember his past. But given the reassurance that his memories will return in time, Roman begins to write articles for Dacre, uncertain of his place in the greater scheme of the war. When a strange letter arrives by wardrobe door, Roman is first suspicious, then intrigued. As he strikes up a correspondence with his mysterious pen pal, Roman will soon have to make a decision: to stand with Dacre or betray the god who healed him. And as the days grow darker, inevitably drawing Roman and Iris closer together\u2026the two of them will risk their very hearts and futures to change the tides of the war.<\/em> – Wednesday Books<\/p>\n Young Adult Fiction Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Nick and Charlie are very much in love. They\u2019ve finally said those three little words, and Charlie has almost persuaded his mum to let him sleep over at Nick\u2019s house \u2026 But with Nick going off to university next year, is everything about to change?<\/em><\/p>\n By Alice Oseman, winner of the YA Book Prize, Heartstopper encompasses all the small moments of Nick and Charlie\u2019s lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.<\/em><\/p>\n Contains discussions around mental health and eating disorders, and sexual references.<\/em> – Hachette Children’s Group<\/p>\n Nonfiction Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?<\/em><\/p>\n In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the \u201cplay-based childhood\u201d began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the \u201cphone-based childhood\u201d in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this \u201cgreat rewiring of childhood\u201d has interfered with children\u2019s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.<\/em><\/p>\n Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the \u201ccollective action problems\u201d that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.<\/em><\/p>\n Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes\u2014communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children\u2014and ourselves\u2014from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.<\/em> – Penguin Press<\/p>\n Memoir Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Kelly Bishop\u2019s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey\u2019s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.<\/em><\/p>\n Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she\u2019s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced\u2014among them marching for women\u2019s rights and losing her second husband to cancer\u2014Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.<\/em><\/p>\n Full of witty insights and featuring a special collection of personal and professional photographs, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and spirited memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades and has no plans on slowing down.<\/em> – Gallery Books<\/p>\n History & Biography Winner<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations<\/em><\/p>\n Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.<\/em><\/p>\n Evan Friss\u2019s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin\u2019s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago\u2019s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries\u2014including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who signed books at Marshall Field\u2019s in 1944.<\/em><\/p>\n The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life\u2014and why we still need them.<\/em> – Viking<\/p>\n How many of these have you read? Do you have any favorites from this list? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/the-wedding-people1.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>The Wedding People<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Alison Espach<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The Women<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Kristin Hannah<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The God of the Woods<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Liz Moore<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Funny Story<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Emily Henry<\/p>\n
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<\/a>House of Flame and Shadow<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Sarah J. Maas<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Somewhere Beyond the Sea<\/a><\/em> <\/strong>by T.J. Klune<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The Ministry of Time<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Kaliane Bradley<\/p>\n
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<\/a>You Like It Darker: Stories<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Stephen King<\/p>\n
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<\/a>How to End a Love Story <\/a><\/em><\/strong>by Yulin Kuang<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Ruthless Vows<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>by Rebecca Ross<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Heartstopper: Volume 5<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Alice Oseman<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness <\/a><\/em><\/strong>by Jonathan Haidt<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The Third Gilmore Girl<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Kelly Bishop<\/p>\n
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<\/a>The Bookshop: The History of the American Bookstore <\/a><\/em><\/strong>by Evan Friss<\/p>\n
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