2024 - Winter Staff Reads


Showing 1 - 20 of 80  There are a total of 80 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All fours"
Star rating for All fours
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey"--
Book cover for "The antidote"
Star rating for The antidote
Description:
"A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraska town"-- The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing--not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault...
Book cover for "Anxious people"
Star rating for Anxious people
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix their own marriage. There's a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about...
Book cover for "The author's guide to murder"
Star rating for The author's guide to murder
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"There's been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead--under bizarre circumstances--in the castle tower's book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in...or,...
Book cover for "Beautiful boy"
Star rating for Beautiful boy
Author:
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction. Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective...
Book cover for "Big Jim and the white boy"
Star rating for Big Jim and the white boy
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Commonly regarded as one of the great American novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers since 1884. But since its publication, critics have rightfully condemned Mark Twain's troubling portrayal of Black Americans as stereotypes and caricatures, with contemporary fans searching for a modern update to this iconic tale. Big Jim and the White Boy is a radical retelling of this American classic, centering...
Book cover for "The Bletchley riddle"
Star rating for The Bletchley riddle
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Remember, you are bound by the Official Secrets Act... Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister Lizzie share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they're living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amidst one of the greatest secrets of World War II -- Britain's eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley's top minds to crack the Nazi's Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old...
Book cover for "Blue sisters"
Star rating for Blue sisters
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family, from the acclaimed author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein. The three Blue sisters are exceptional--and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer...
Book cover for "By any other name"
Star rating for By any other name
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"A captivating novel about two women, centuries apart, fighting to be heard - one of whom may be the real author of Shakespeare's plays - from the New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were Here. As an undergraduate, Melina Green had a rare opportunity to have one of her first plays judged by famous theater critic Jasper Tolle, only to be publicly humiliated by a harsh and biased critique. Ten years later, her confidence as a playwright has...
Book cover for "Christmas with the queen"
Star rating for Christmas with the queen
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue the tradition of her late father's Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must evolve with the times, and the queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change. As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, old friends--Jack Devereux and Olive Carter--are unexpectedly reunited...
Book cover for "Clear"
Star rating for Clear
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland--Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff...
Book cover for "Cleopatra and Frankenstein"
Star rating for Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage. Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses...
Book cover for "Cold coast"
Star rating for Cold coast
Author:
Description:
"Inspired by the story of Svalbard's first female trapper, Gold Coast is a gripping portrayal of survival with the stark beauty and perilous wilderness of the high Arctic. In 1932, Wanny Woldstad, a young widow, travels to Svalbard, daring to enter the Norwegian trappers' fiercely guarded male domain. She must prove to Anders Saeterdal, her trapping partner who makes no secret of his disdain, that a woman is fit for the task. Over the course of a...
Book cover for "Colored television"
Star rating for Colored television
Author:
Description:
"A brilliant dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity-industrial complex Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend's luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane's sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel,...
Book cover for "Come to the window"
Star rating for Come to the window
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
In 1918, amid war and pandemic, a Nova Scotia murder ignites a reporter's pursuit of the truth as his wife, a war surgeon, becomes unexpectedly entangled.
Book cover for "A court of thorns and roses"
Star rating for A court of thorns and roses
Series:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. At least, he's not a beast all the time. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into...
Book cover for "Creation lake"
Star rating for Creation lake
Average Rating:
1 stars
Description:
"Creation Lake is a novel about a freelance agent, a 34-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and bold opinions and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. "Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. We never learn her real name. Sadie has met her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by "cold bump"-- making...
Book cover for "Crossings"
Star rating for Crossings
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"An eye-opening and witty account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from an award-winning author. Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, but we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. In Crossings, Ben Goldfarb delves into the new science of road ecology to explore how roads have transformed our world. Millions of animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone, and roads fragment...
Book cover for "Crow talk"
Star rating for Crow talk
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
"Nationally bestselling author of The Music of Bees Eileen Garvin returns with a moving story of hope, healing, and unexpected friendship set amidst the wild natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest"--
Book cover for "A dark and drowning tide"
Star rating for A dark and drowning tide
Description:
"A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic"--