Welcome to this month's Staff Picks page, where our librarians share some of the great books they've read recently. Discover hidden gems, popular titles, and diverse recommendations that will captivate your imagination and enrich your reading experience. Happy exploring!
Fiction
Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood
A funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink-who finally pushes back. Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled - the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she's really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away. Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she'll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them... and, most important, remind herself.
Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname "Boulder." When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can't bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn't know how to say no--and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien. With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love. Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her preeminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world--and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.
The Making of Her by Bernadette Jiwa
People were forever telling her how lucky she was. But what did people know?' Dublin 1965*.* When Joan Quinn, a factory girl from the Cranmore Estate, marries Martin Egan, it looks like her dreams have come true. But all is not as it seems. Joan lives in the shadow of a secret - the couple's decision to give up their first daughter for adoption only months before. For the next three decades, Joan's marriage and her relationship with her second child Carmel suffer as a consequence. Then one day in 1996, a letter arrives from their adopted daughter. Emma needs her birth parents' help; it's a matter of life and death. And the fragile fa?ade of Joan's life finally begins to crack.
No Hard Feelings by Genevieve Novak
Penny can't help but compare herself to her friends. Annie is about to be a senior associate at her law firm, Bec has just got engaged, Leo is dating everyone this side of the Yarra, and Penny is just... waiting. Waiting for Max, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, to allow her to spend the night, waiting for the promotion she was promised, waiting for her Valium to kick in. Waiting for her real life to start. Out of excuses and sick of falling behind, Penny challenges herself to turn things around. She's going to make it work with Max, impress her tyrannical boss, quit seeing her useless therapist, remember to water her plants, and stop having panic attacks in the work toilets. But soon she's back to doomscrolling on Instagram, necking bottles of Aldi's finest sauvignon blanc, and criticising herself with renewed vigour and loathing. When her goals seem further away than ever, she has to wonder: when bad habits feel so good, how do you trust what's good for you?
The Overlook Hotel claimed the most beautiful physical setting of any resort in the world; but Jack Torrance, the new winter caretaker, his wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny saw much more than its splendor. Jack saw the Overlook as an opportunity, a desperate way back from failure and despair; Wendy saw this lonely sanctuary as a frail chance to preserve their family; and Danny? Danny, who was blessed or cursed with a shinning, precognitive gift, saw visions hideously beyond the comprehension of a small boy. He sensed the evil coiled within the Overlook's one hundred and ten empty rooms; an evil that was waiting just for them.
Non-Fiction
Camilla : from outcast to Queen Consort by Angela Levin
For many years, Camilla was portrayed in a poor light, blamed by the public for the break-up of the marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Initially, the Queen refused to see or speak to her, but, since the death of Prince Philip, the Duchess has become one of the Queen's closest companions. Her confidence in Camilla and the transformation she has seen in Prince Charles since their wedding resulted in her choosing the first day of her Platinum Jubilee year to tell the world that she wants Camilla to be Queen Consort, not the demeaning Princess Consort suggested in 2005. Angela Levin uncovers Camilla's rocky journey to be accepted by the royal family and how she coped with the brutal portrayal of her in Netflix's The Crown. The public have witnessed her tremendous contribution to help those in need, especially during Covid. Levin has talked to many of the Duchess's long-term friends, her staff and executives from the numerous charities of which Camilla is patron. She reveals why the Duchess concentrates on previously taboo subjects, such as domestic violence and rape. Most of all, Levin tells the story of how the Duchess has changed from a fun-loving young woman to one of the senior royals' hardest workers. She has retained her mischievous sense of humour, becoming a role model for older women and an inspiration for younger ones. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall is both an extraordinary love story and a fascinating portrait of an increasingly confident Queen Consort in waiting. It is an essential read for anyone wanting a greater insight into the royal family.
Crossing the Congo: over land and water in a hard place by Mike Martin
Provides an intimate look at one of the least-developed and most fragile states on earth.
How the Pill Changes Everything: your brain on birth control by Sarah E. Hill
In this trailblazing book, expert psychologist Dr Hill reveals the latest science on the Pill, and how it's changing women and the world, for better and for worse. Did you know that the Pill not only creates a different version of yourself, but can change your brain, remove a key feature of your stress response, potentially increase your risk of depression and even have the ability to fundamentally change your mate selection? This is your Brain on Birth Control will open your eyes to all this and more, putting you in position of power so that you can understand the risks, weigh up the costs and make smarter, more informed choices about your health and hormones.
Invisible Child: Poverty, survival and hope in New York City by Andrea Elliott
Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tightknit family from shelter to shelter, her story reaches back to trace the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age in the twenty-first century, New York City's homeless crisis is exploding amid the growing chasm between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental addiction, violence, housing instability, pollution, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to "code-switch" between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?
Modern: New Zealand homes from 1938 to 1977 by Jeremy Hansen
In the middle of the twentieth century, modernism changed the way New Zealanders lived, enticing them out of Victorian villas and cottages and into a sleek, open-plan vision of the future. The twenty-four homes in this book tell the story of modernism's arrival in New Zealand and the ingenious ways in which local architects tailored this international style.
"The 24 projects, by architects including Ernst Plischke, Ivan Juriss, Henry Kulka, Jack Manning, Miles Warren, John Scott, Vlad Cacala, Cedric Firth and many more, are the sorts of houses that are increasingly sought-after and admired. As editor Jeremy Hansen writes in his introduction, 'I love these homes for their challenge to Victorian convention, for their optimistic embrace of new ideas, for the warmth of their material palettes, for their rigorous simplicity and dignified modesty. I love the way almost all of them are as liveable today as when they were first completed.' All the homes have their roots in the modernist movement, but the book hasn't attempted to present only the purest expositions of modernist form; it maps how modernism was forced to adapt to local conditions. It also reveals how modernism's revolutionary fervour was felt not only in New Zealand architecture but also in every creative field, resulting in fascinating cultural cross-pollination.