2023- Fall Staff Reads


Showing 1 - 20 of 38  There are a total of 38 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies"
Star rating for Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies
Description:
Anaïs Nin, the author of works such as Delta of Venus and House of Incest, is the patron saint of taboo-breaking pop culture sexual iconoclasts. Not only is she an inspiration for contemporary figures such as Madonna, but her oeuvre, which encompasses erotica, autobiography, essays, short fiction, novels, and much more, has been adapted into film (Henry and June), television (Little Birds), and other media. The cartoonist Léonie Bischoff traces...
Book cover for "Big Swiss"
Star rating for Big Swiss
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house, built in 1737, is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she's tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. Greta is fascinated by Big...
Book cover for "Breath"
Star rating for Breath
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how resilient your genes are, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Science journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure...
Book cover for "Calypso"
Star rating for Calypso
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, David Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. Sedaris sets his powers of observation toward middle age and mortality, that vertiginous...
Book cover for "Chenneville"
Star rating for Chenneville
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John's beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered. Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John...
Book cover for "The covenant of water"
Star rating for The covenant of water
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least...
Book cover for "Darkly she goes"
Star rating for Darkly she goes
Description:
"Once upon a time there was a fallen knight, who believed that saving a princess would allow him to atone for his crimes. Once upon a time there was a dark princess, who believed that it was up to her to atone for the crimes of her parents... Banished for a fault that forever taints his reputation, Arzhur wanders from tavern to field of battle in search of the next contract which will fill his purse. One night, three mysterious old women offer him...
Book cover for "Decodependence"
Star rating for Decodependence
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Description:
Author and New Yorker cartoonist Lila Ash's vulnerable and funny graphic memoir about her attempts to decode her life's relationships through the lens of her recovering codependency.
Book cover for "Dracula, motherf**ker!"
Star rating for Dracula, motherf**ker!
Description:
"Vienna, 1889: Dracula's brides nail him to the bottom of his coffin. Los Angeles, 1974: an aging starlet decides to raise the stakes. Crime scene photographer Quincy Harker is the only man who knows it happened, but will anyone believe him before he gets his own chalk outline? And are Dracula's three brides there to help him ... or use him as bait? A pulpy, pulse-pounding graphic novel of California psych-horror from acclaimed creators ALEX DE CAMPI...
Book cover for "The end of drum-time"
Star rating for The end of drum-time
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse's daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something...
Book cover for "The guest"
Star rating for The guest
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome. A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted...
Book cover for "Happy-go-lucky"
Star rating for Happy-go-lucky
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
David Sedaris returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling Calypso. Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask - or not - was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian...
Book cover for "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store"
Star rating for The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...
Book cover for "Hello beautiful"
Star rating for Hello beautiful
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it's a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three...
Book cover for "Holly"
Star rating for Holly
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Stephen King's HOLLY marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly's gradual transformation from a shy and reclusive (but also brave and ethical) homebody in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges's partner in Finders Keepers and End of Watch to a full-fledged, smart and occasionally tough private detective on her own in The Outsider and If It Bleeds. In this new novel, Holly once again claims the spotlight,...
Book cover for "The hormone shift"
Star rating for The hormone shift
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The Hormone Shift breaks down what is happening behind the scenes in a woman's body throughout her life, explains how to prepare for whatever is coming next, and offers plans to keep the body in balance and minimize unwanted symptoms. Dr. Taz uses the wisdom of eastern modalities like Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine and integrates modern medical treatments for specialized acute care. There's so much that women can do in the years leading...

17. Horse

Book cover for "Horse"
Star rating for Horse
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
"A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history. Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young...
Book cover for "The last devil to die"
Star rating for The last devil to die
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Shocking news reaches them--an old friend has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. The gang's search leads them into the antiques business, where the tricks of the trade are as old as the objects themselves. As they encounter drug dealers, art forgers, and online fraudsters--as well as heartache close to home--Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim have no idea whom to trust. With the body count rising, the clock ticking...
Book cover for "Let us descend"
Star rating for Let us descend
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Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
'Let us descend,' the poet now began, 'and enter this blind world.' -Inferno, Dante Alighieri. Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who...
Book cover for "The librarianist"
Star rating for The librarianist
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"Bob Comet is a retired librarian, isolated but not lonely, living out his quiet days in a mint-colored house in Oregon, surrounded by his books and small comforts. One morning, out on his daily walk, he performs an act of kindness that brings him into contact with a nearby senior center, where he soon begins volunteering. Here, as a community of peers and friends gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from...