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<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Fiction: My Friends<\/em><\/a> by Fredrik Backman<\/strong><\/p>\nMost people don\u2019t even notice them\u2014three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it\u2019s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.<\/em><\/p>\n Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.<\/em><\/p>\n Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa\u2019s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting\u2019s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she\u2019ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don\u2019t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.<\/em> – Atria Books<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA\u2019s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.<\/em><\/p>\n Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston\u2019s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.<\/em><\/p>\n As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.<\/em><\/p>\n Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.<\/em><\/p>\n Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love\u2014this time among the stars.<\/em> – Ballantine Books<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n In seven days, Jet Mason will be dead.<\/em><\/p>\n Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old and back home, she\u2019s still waiting for her life to begin. I\u2019ll do it later, she always says. She has time.<\/em><\/p>\n Until Halloween night, when she is violently attacked by an unseen intruder, suffering a catastrophic head injury. Doctors are certain that within a week, the injury will trigger a fatal aneurysm. To her parents\u2019 dismay, Jet rejects an extremely risky operation in order to guarantee herself at least a few more days.<\/em><\/p>\n Jet never thought of herself as having enemies. But now, in the one week she has left, she looks at everyone in a new light: her family, her former best friend turned sister-in-law, her ex-boyfriend.<\/em><\/p>\n As her condition deteriorates, she reconnects with her childhood friend Billy, the only one willing to help her. With Billy at her side, she\u2019s absolutely determined to finally finish something:<\/em><\/p>\n Jet is going to solve her own murder. –\u00a0<\/em>Bantam<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they\u2019re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years\u2014or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century.<\/em><\/p>\n When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she\u2019ll choose the person who\u2019ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice\u2019s head in the game.<\/em><\/p>\n One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice\u2014and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.<\/em><\/p>\n Two: She\u2019s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.<\/em><\/p>\n Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.<\/em><\/p>\n But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can\u2019t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they\u2019re in the same room.<\/em><\/p>\n And it\u2019s becoming abundantly clear that their story\u2014just like the tale Margaret\u2019s spinning\u2014could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who\u2019s telling it.<\/em> – Berkley<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there\u2019s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.<\/em><\/p>\n Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it\u2019s impossible to know who to trust.<\/em><\/p>\n Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves\u2014her dragons, her family, her home, and him.<\/em><\/p>\n Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.<\/em><\/p>\n They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find\u2014the truth.<\/em><\/p>\n But a storm is coming…and not everyone can survive its wrath. <\/em>– Entangled Publishing, LLC<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n This is a story about hunger.<\/em> This is a story about love.<\/em> This is a story about rage.<\/em> This is a story about life\u2014how it ends, and how it starts.<\/em> – Tor Books<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n Lily\u2014a bored, beautiful twenty-something\u2014wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.<\/em><\/p>\n Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she\u2019ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams\u2014but what will she have to do to win?<\/em><\/p>\n Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.<\/em> – Random House<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n They were never girls, they were witches . . . .<\/em><\/p>\n They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they\u2019re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.<\/em><\/p>\n Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, frightened, and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There\u2019s Rose, a hippie who insists she\u2019s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby\u2019s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.<\/em><\/p>\n Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they\u2019re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by the adults who claim they know what\u2019s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it\u2019s never given freely. There\u2019s always a price to be paid . . . and it\u2019s usually paid in blood.<\/em> – Berkley<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is it you think you\u2019re protecting in that brain of yours? The war is over. Holdfast is dead. The Eternal Flame extinguished. There\u2019s no one left for you to save.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner\u2014of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed.<\/em><\/p>\n In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia\u2019s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.<\/em><\/p>\n According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance\u2019s final gambit?<\/em><\/p>\n To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena\u2019s fight\u2014to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self\u2014is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.<\/em> – Del Rey<\/p>\n When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?<\/em><\/p>\n As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.<\/em><\/p>\n Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.<\/em><\/p>\n When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.<\/em> – Scholastic Press<\/p>\n Growing up, Dani couldn\u2019t help but follow around the adorable son of her mom\u2019s best friend. Funny, kind of nerdy, and a little soft, Alec was always down to hang with Dani when they were little. From play dates on the playground to sneaking into movie theaters, Dani and Alec were inseparable. Until Dani moved away. Alec promised they\u2019d stay in touch\u2014except, they didn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n Flash forward and Dani is back in Minnesota for her senior year, she and her mom living with her grandfather. Dealing with the fallout of her parents\u2019 devastating divorce, Dani wouldn\u2019t mind a nerd-out with the cozy and comforting Alec (and maybe a chance to confront him on his MIA status for all these years). But teenage Alec is nothing like the kid Dani remembers. He\u2019s a hockey star in a town where hockey players are worshiped as gods. Dani\u2019s place as his shadow has been taken up by drooling female fans\u2026and he loves it.<\/em><\/p>\n Dani is resolved to ice out her former best friend until an unlikely series of events brings them together\u2014and forces them to fake being a couple. Once forced together, the former childhood sweethearts begin to reconnect, unearth complicated family secrets, and face their true feelings towards each other\u2026including the real reason Alec has been pushing Dani away all these years.<\/em> – Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers<\/p>\n Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu\u00admanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be\u00adcame fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi\u00adties that allow this curable, preventable infec\u00adtious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.<\/em><\/p>\n In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry\u2019s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world\u2014and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.<\/em> – Crash Course Books<\/p>\n This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog\u2014now the subject of a new Hulu docuseries\u2014and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.<\/em><\/p>\n Shari Franke\u2019s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a fa\u00e7ade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface\u2014Ruby\u2019s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.<\/em><\/p>\n As the family\u2019s YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby\u2019s delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.<\/em><\/p>\n Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: \u201cFinally.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family\u2019s devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt\u2019s cultish life coaching program, \u201cConneXions.\u201d No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother\u2019s cruelty.<\/em> – Gallery Books<\/p>\n Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and witches were the greatest enemy of all.<\/em><\/p>\n Scotland, 1563: Crops failed. People starved. And the Devil’s influence was stronger than ever\u2014at least, that’s what everyone believed. If you were a woman living in Scotland during this turbulent time, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch.<\/em><\/p>\n During the chaos of the Reformation, violence against women was codified for the first time in the Witchcraft Act\u2014a tool of theocratic control with one chilling goal: to root out witches and rid the land of evil. What followed was a dark and misogynistic chapter in history that fanned the flames of witch hunts across the globe, including in the United States and beyond.<\/em><\/p>\n In How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the popular Witches of Scotland podcast, unravel the grim yet absurdly bureaucratic process of identifying, accusing, trying, and executing women as witches. With sharp wit and keen feminist insight, they reveal the inner workings of a patriarchal system designed to weaponize fear and oppress women.<\/em><\/p>\n This captivating (and often infuriating) account, which weaves a rich tapestry of trial transcripts, witness accounts, and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, exposes how this violent period of history mirrors today’s struggles for justice and equality. How to Kill a Witch is a powerful, darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of superstition, bias, and ignorance, and a warning to never forget the past\u2026 while raising the question of whether it could ever happen again.<\/em> – Sourcebooks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/atmosphere.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction:\u00a0Atmosphere: A Love Story<\/em><\/a> by Taylor Jenkins Reid<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/not-quite-dead-yet.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Mystery & Thriller:\u00a0Not Quite Dead Yet <\/em><\/a>by Holly Jackson<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/great-big-beautiful-life1.jpg?resize=200%2C303&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Romance:\u00a0Great Big Beautiful Life<\/em><\/a> by Emily Henry<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/onyx-storm.jpg?resize=200%2C301&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Romantasy (AND Readers’ Favorite Audiobook narrated by Rebecca Soler, Teddy Hamilton, Justis Bolding, and Jasmin Walker): Onyx<\/strong> Storm<\/em><\/a> by Rebecca Yarros<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/bury-our-bones-in-the-midnight-soil.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Fantasy:\u00a0Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil<\/em><\/a> by V.E. Schwab<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.<\/em>
\nA young girl grows up wild and wily\u2014her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But Mar\u00eda knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, Mar\u00eda makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n1827. London.<\/em>
\nA young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family\u2019s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte\u2019s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow\u2014but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n2019. Boston.<\/em>
\nCollege was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That\u2019s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/the-compound.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Science Fiction: The Compound<\/a><\/em> by Aisling Rawle<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/witchcraft-for-wayward-girls.jpg?resize=200%2C303&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Horror:\u00a0Witchcraft for Wayward Girls<\/em><\/a> by Grady Hendrix<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/alchemised.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Debut Novel:\u00a0Alchemised <\/em><\/a>by SenLinYu<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/sunrise-on-the-reaping.jpg?resize=200%2C299&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Young Adult Fantasy & Sci-Fi:\u00a0Sunrise on the Reaping<\/em><\/a> by Suzanne Collins<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/fake-skating.jpg?resize=200%2C303&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Young Adult Fiction:\u00a0Fake Skating<\/em><\/a> by Lynn Painter<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/everything-is-tuberculosis.jpg?resize=200%2C303&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Nonfiction:\u00a0Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection<\/em><\/a> by John Green<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/the-house-of-my-mother.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Readers’ Favorite Memoir:\u00a0The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom<\/em><\/a> by Shari Franke<\/strong><\/p>\n
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<\/a>Readers’ Favorite History & Biography:\u00a0How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi<\/strong><\/p>\n