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
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote religious Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and raped, often repeatedly, by what many thought were ghosts or demons, as a punishment for their sins. As the women tentatively began to share the details of the attacks, waking up sore and bleeding and not understanding why, their stories were chalked up to 'wild female imagination.' Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. Eight women, all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their colony and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in, meet secretly in a hayloft with the intention of making a decision about how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. They have two days to make a plan, while the men of the colony are away in the city attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists (not ghosts as it turns out but local men) and bring them home.
The Aeronaut's Windlass: The Cinder Spire by Jim Butcher
Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity, towering for miles over the mist-shrouded surface of the world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses have ruled for generations, developing scientific marvels, fostering trade alliances, and building fleets of airships to keep the peace. Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship, Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy's shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is severely damaged in combat, leaving captain and crew grounded, Grimm is offered a proposition from the Spirearch of Albion--to join a team of agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring Predator to its fighting glory. And even as Grimm undertakes this dangerous task, he will learn that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity's ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake.
The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore
Summer, 1855. Sarah Brinton sets out from Rhode Island, leaving an abusive husband and child behind to head west across the country, looking for a refuge where nobody knows her history, or cares to discover it. Sarah's journey ends at a small frontier post in Minnesota Territory, on lands claimed both by white settlers and Native Americans. There she finds herself another husband, a Yale-educated doctor who serves the nearby Sioux reservation, and settles into a new life. Her days on the edge of the prairie are idyllic if tough, as Sarah befriends and works with the Sioux women. But trouble is brewing in the territories. The Sioux tribes are wary of the white settlers and resent the rampant theft of their land. When the tribes take their fate into their own hands, knowing that death will be the only outcome, Sarah's loyalties are split between the Sioux and her fellow white settlers. As the conflict rages, she finds herself lost to both worlds.
When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who's a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist - and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she's writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther's role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit - or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women's pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
Non-Fiction
How to Make It: 25 Makers Share the Secrets to Building a Creative Business by Erin Austen Abbott
Featuring 25 profiles of illustrators, jewelry designers, ceramicists, painters, clothing designers, and printmakers, [this book] provides a behind-the-scenes look at the daily rituals and best practices that keep these creative entrepreneurs on track. With Q&As, insider tips, and DIYs from each maker, these pages offer guidance and encouragement to artists just starting their careers and to professionals looking to take their creative business to the next level.
The Broken Estate: Journalism and democracy in a post-truth world
A lack of knowledge about the world can be a very dangerous thing. In the age of Trump, fake news and clickbait headlines, it is easy to despair about the future of journalism. The New Zealand and global media are in upheaval: the old economic models for print journalism are failing, public funding has been neglected for decades, and many major news organisations are shedding journalists. New Zealander Mel Bunce researches and teaches journalism at the acclaimed Department of Journalism at City, University of London. Drawing upon the latest international research, Bunce provides a fresh analysis that goes beyond the usual anecdote and conjecture. Insightful and impassioned, this short book provides a much-needed assessment of the future for New Zealand journalism in a troubled world.
Seen, Heard, and Paid: The new work rules for the marginalized
For over twenty years, Alan Henry has written about using technology and productivity techniques to work and live better for publications such as Lifehacker, The New York Times, and Wired. But he found that as a Black man he didn't have access to some of the more powerful ways to hack your job--like only checking email once a day or blocking out time on your calendar to do deep work. In fact, he found that even when he landed a prestigious title at the Times, there were moments when he was still overlooked and excluded from the most interesting and career-boosting work. This led him to first explore these struggles in a Times piece titled "Productivity Without Privilege." Now he goes even deeper, interviewing experts across multiple fields to come up with powerful tools to overcome the forces of marginalization. In Seen, Heard, and Paid, Henry shares the new work rules that may finally allow people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ folks to have the same access to career advancement and rewarding work as those with more privilege.
Why has Nobody Told Me this Before? by Julie Smith
Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, clinical psychologist and online sensation Dr. Julie Smith teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health. Dr. Smith's expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. Dr. Smith tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.
Desde su pequeño pueblo en El Salvador hasta llega a la frontera con Estados Unidos, la aventura de Javier Zamora es un viaje de tres mil millas. Va a reunirse con sus padres, una travesía que en su imaginación infantil durará solo dos semanas, pero que en realidad le tomará dos meses. Viajará solo y, como cualquier niño de nueve anos, será incapaz de preveer el peligro que acecha: los arriesgados viajes en bote, el implacable desierto, las armas y los arrestos, las decepciones que le esperan. Pero tampoco imaginará que, en el camino, encontrará a un grupo de emigrantes que lo protegerán como si fuesen su propia familia.