Black History Month


  • Berry, Daina Ramey
    A black women’s history of the United States
    Summary:"A Black Women’s History of the United States is a critical survey of black women’s complicated legacy in America, as it takes into account their exploitation and victimization as well as their undeniable and substantial contributions to the country since its inception."


  • Black ink : literary legends on the peril, power, and pleasure of reading and writing
    Summary:"Spanning 250 years, this carefully-curated collection of 25 essays features the earliest Black authors who wrote as means of resistance in a time when their literacy was illegal and the brilliant writers who have continued their legacy–utilizing the power of the written word to create change, insert a diversity of experience into the "mainstream," and make a profound impact on our communities and the world."


  • Twitty, Michael
    The cooking gene : a journey through African-American culinary history in the Old South
    Summary:"First Amistad hardcover published 2017","A memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces the paths of the author’s ancestors (black and white) through the crucible of slavery to show its effects on our food today."


  • Four hundred souls : a community history of African America, 1619-2019
    Summary:"A "choral history" of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Last year marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas–and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain, editor of The North Star. They’ve gathered together eighty black writers from all disciplines — historians and artists, journalists and novelists–each of whom has contributed an entry about one five-year period to create a dynamic multivoiced single-volume history of black people in America."


  • Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha
    Beyoncé in formation : remixing black feminism
    Summary:Making headlines when it was launched in 2015, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley’s undergraduate course "Beyonce Feminism, Rihanna Womanism" has inspired students from all walks of life. In Beyonce in Formation, Tinsley now takes her rich observations beyond the classroom, using the blockbuster album and video Lemonade as a soundtrack for vital next-millennium narratives.0Woven with candid observations about her life as a feminist scholar of African studies and a cisgender femme married to a trans spouse, Tinsley’s "Femme-onade" mixtape explores myriad facets of black women’s sexuality and gender. Turning to Beyonce’s "Don’t Hurt Yourself," Tinsley assesses black feminist critiques of marriage and then considers the models of motherhood offered in "Daddy Lessons," interspersing these passages with memories from Tinsley’s multiracial family history. Her chapters on nontraditional bonds culminate in a discussion of contemporary LGBT politics through the lens of the internet-breaking video "Formation," underscoring why Beyonce’s black femme-inism isn’t only for ciswomen. From pleasure politics and the struggle for black women’s reproductive justice to the subtext of blues and country music traditions, the landscape in this tour is populated by activists and artists (including Loretta Lynn) and infused with vibrant interpretations of Queen Bey’s provocative, peerless imagery and lyrics.0In the tradition of Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist and Jill Lepore’s bestselling cultural histories, Beyonce in Formation is the work of a daring intellectual who is poised to spark a new conversation about freedom and identity in America.


  • Whitaker, Mark
    Smoketown : the untold story of the other great Black Renaissance
    Summary:Chronicles the African American renaissance in Pittsburgh from the 1920s through the 1950s, assessing how it rivaled Harlem and Chicago as a site of black culture and influence.


  • Blight, David W.
    Frederick Douglass : prophet of freedom
    Summary:"An acclaimed historian’s definitive biography of the most important African-American figure of the 19th century, Frederick Douglass, who was to his century what Martin Luther King, Jr. was to the 20th century."


  • Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan
    Driving while black : African American travel and the road to civil rights
    Summary:"How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life–the true history beyond the Best Picture-winning movie. The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe. At the heart of this story is Victor and Alma Green’s famous Green Book, begun in 1936, which made possible that most basic American right, the family vacation, and encouraged a new method of resisting oppression. Enlivened by Sorin’s personal history, Driving While Black opens an entirely new view onto the African American experience, and shows why travel was so central to the Civil Rights movement."


  • Rosenberg, Rosalind
    Jane Crow : the life of Pauli Murray
    Summary:"Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country. In this definitive biography, Rosalind Rosenberg offers a poignant portrait of a figure who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women’s movements. A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.
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    Coretta Scott King Award 2021


  • Woodson, Jacqueline
    Before the ever after
    Summary:ZJ’s friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career.


  • Weatherford, Carole Boston
    Respect : Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul
    Summary:"Aretha Franklin was born to sing. The daughter of a pastor and a gospel singer, her musical talent was clear from her earliest days in her father’s Detroit church. Aretha sang with a soaring voice that spanned more than three octaves. Her incredible talent and string of hit songs earned her the title "the Queen of Soul." This Queen was a multi-Grammy winner and the first female inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And there was even more to Aretha than being a singer, songwriter, and pianist: she was an activist, too. Her song "Respect" was an anthem for people fighting for civil rights and women’s rights. With words that sing and art that shines, this vibrant portrait of Aretha Franklin pays her the R-E-S-P-E-C-T this Queen of Soul deserves."


  • Taylor, Mildred D.
    All the days past, all the days to come
    Summary:"Cassie Logan, first met in Song of the Trees and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, is a young woman now, searching for her place in the world, a journey that takes her from Toledo to California, to law school in Boston, and, ultimately, in the 60s, home to Mississippi to participate in voter registration. She is witness to the now-historic events of the century: the Great Migration north, the rise of the civil rights movement, preceded and precipitated by the racist society of America, and the often violent confrontations that brought about change. Rich, compelling storytelling is Ms. Taylor’s hallmark, and she fulfills expectations as she brings to a close the stirring family story that has absorbed her for over forty years. It is a story she was born to tell."–Goodreads.com


  • Callender, Kacen
    King and the dragonflies
    Summary:"In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy’s grief takes him beyond the bayous of his backyard, to learn that there is no right way to be yourself."


  • Dionne, Evette
    Lifting as we climb : Black women’s battle for the ballot box
    Summary:"For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of Black women as a force in the suffrage movement–when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle."–Publisher’s description.,When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white. Dionne shows that the real story isn’t monochromatic. Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. Dionne draws an important historical line from abolition to suffrage to civil rights to contemporary young activists, and in doing so fills in the blanks of the American suffrage story. — adapted from jacket and Goodreads info


  • Doyon, Samara Cole
    Magnificent homespun brown : a celebration
    Summary:Joyful young narrators celebrate feeling at home in one’s own skin.


  • Slade, Suzanne
    Exquisite : the poetry and life of Gwendolyn Brooks
    Summary:Introduces the life and work of Gwendolyn Brooks, from her early love of poetry and her first published poems as a girl in Chicago through her financial struggles as an adult during the Depression to winning the Pulitzer Prize for her second book.


  • Cabrera, Cozbi A.
    Me & Mama
    Summary:For a little girl on a rainy day, the best place to be is with Mama.

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    Caldecott Medal 2021


  • Lindstrom, Carole
    We are water protectors
    Summary:"Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all… When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people’s water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth’s most sacred resource. Inspired by the many indigenous-led movements across North America, this bold and lyrical picture book issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption."–Jacket flap.

  • Elliott, Zetta
    A place inside of me : a poem to heal the heart
    Summary:From award-winning author Zetta Elliott and rising star illustrator Noa Denmon comes a beautiful #OwnVoices poetic picture book about a brown child discovering and accepting their emotional landscape.


  • Latham, Irene
    The cat man of Aleppo
    Summary:Alaa loves Aleppo, but when war comes his neighbors flee to safety, leaving their many pets behind. Alaa decides to stay — he can make a difference by driving an ambulance, carrying the sick and wounded to safety. One day he hears hungry cats calling out to him on his way home. They are lonely and scared, just like him. He feeds and pets them to let them know they are loved. The next day more cats come, and then even more! There are too many for Alaa to take care of on his own. Alaa has a big heart, but he will need help from others if he wants to keep all of his new friends safe. (The true story of Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel, founder of animal sanctuary Ernesto’s House in Aleppo.)


  • Cabrera, Cozbi A.
    Me & Mama
    Summary:For a little girl on a rainy day, the best place to be is with Mama.


  • Underwood, Deborah
    Outside in
    Summary:Illustrations and easy-to-read text reveal ways nature affects our everyday lives, such as providing food and clothing, and showing when to go to bed and when to get up.

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    Holocaust Remembrance Day : Young Adult Books


  • Leyson, Leon
    The boy on the wooden box : how the impossible became possible…on Schindler’s list
    Summary:The biography of Leon Leyson, the only memoir published by a former Schindler’s List child.


  • Freedman, Russell
    We will not be silent : the White Rose student resistance movement that defied Adolf Hitler
    Summary:"In his signature eloquent prose, backed up by thorough research, Russell Freedman tells the story of Austrian-born Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie. They belonged to Hitler Youth as young children, but began to doubt the Nazi regime. As older students, the Scholls and a few friends formed the White Rose, a campaign of active resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. Risking imprisonment or even execution, the White Rose members distributed leaflets urging Germans to defy the Nazi government. Their belief that freedom was worth dying for will inspire young readers to stand up for what they believe in. Archival photographs and prints, source notes, bibliography, index. "–,"The true story of the White Rose, a group of students in Nazi Germany who were active undercover agents of the resistance movement against Hitler and his regime."


  • Hoose, Phillip M.
    The boys who challenged Hitler : Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club
    Summary:"At the outset of World War II, Denmark did not resist German occupation. Deeply ashamed of his nation’s leaders, fifteen-year-old Knud Pedersen resolved with his brother and a handful of schoolmates to take action against the Nazis if the adults would not. Naming their secret club after the fiery British leader, the young patriots in the Churchill Club committed countless acts of sabotage, infuriating the Germans, who eventually had the boys tracked down and arrested. But their efforts were not in vain: the boys’ exploits and eventual imprisonment helped spark a full-blown Danish resistance. Interweaving his own narrative with the recollections of Knud himself, here is Phil Hoose’s inspiring story of these young war heroes."


  • Atwood, Kathryn J.
    Women heroes of World War II : 26 stories of espionage, sabotage, resistance, and rescue
    Summary:Overview: A 2012 VOYA Nonfiction Honor List selection. Noor Inayat Khan was the first female radio operator sent into occupied France and transferred crucial messages. Johtje Vos, a Dutch housewife, hid Jews in her home and repeatedly outsmarted the Gestapo. Law student Hannie Schaft became involved in the most dangerous resistance work–sabotage, weapons transference, and assassinations. In these pages, young readers will meet these and many other similarly courageous women and girls who risked their lives to help defeat the Nazis.

  • Savit, Gavriel
    Anna and the Swallow Man
    Summary:When her university professor father is sent by the Gestapo to a concentration camp, seven-year-old Anna travels the Polish countryside with the mysterious Swallow Man during World War II.


  • DeWoskin, Rachel
    Someday we will fly
    Summary:Lillia, fifteen, flees Warsaw with her father and baby sister in 1940 to try to make a new start in Shanghai, China, but the conflict grows more intense as America and Japan become involved.


  • Opdyke, Irene Gut
    In my hands : memories of a holocaust rescuer
    Summary:Recounts the experiences of the author who, as a young Polish girl, hid and saved Jews during the Holocaust.


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    Celebrating Virginia Woolf


  • Forrester, Viviane
    Virginia Woolf : a portrait
    Summary:Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt award for biography, this remarkable portrait sheds new light on Virginia Woolf’s relationships with her family and friends and how they shaped her work. Virginia Woolf: A Portrait blends recently unearthed documents, key primary sources, and personal interviews with Woolf’s relatives and other acquaintances to render in unmatched detail the author’s complicated relationship with her husband, Leonard; her father, Leslie Stephen; and her half-sister, Vanessa Bell. Forrester connects these figures to Woolf’s mental breakdown while introducing the concept of “Virginia seule,” or Virginia alone: an uncommon paragon of female strength and conviction. Forrester’s biography inhabits her characters and vivifies their perspective, weaving a colorful, intense drama that forces readers to rethink their understanding of Woolf, her writing, and her world.


  • Woolf, Virginia
    A room of one’s own
    Summary:Why is it that men, and not women, have always had power, wealth, and fame? Woolf cites the two keys to freedom: fixed income and one’s own room. Foreword by Mary Gordon.


  • Briggs, Julia.
    Virginia Woolf : an inner life
    Summary:A portrait of the influential twentieth-century writer steps away from traditional explorations of her Bloomsbury social circles to reveal how her life was centered on her writing; drawing on letters, diaries, and essays to explain how her written works reflect her formative experiences and creative philosophies.


  • Woolf, Virginia
    To the lighthouse
    Summary:A landmark of modern fiction, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse explores the subjective reality of everyday life in the Hebrides for the Ramsay family.

  • Cunningham, Michael
    The hours
    Summary:In 1929, Virginia Woolf is starting to write her novel, ‘Mrs. Dalloway, ‘ under the care of doctors and family. In 1951, Laura Brown is planning for her husband’s birthday, but is preoccupied with reading Woolf’s novel. In 2001, Clarrisa Vaughn is planning an award party for her friend, an author dying of AIDS. Taking place over one day, all three stories are interconnected with the novel: one is writing it, one is reading it, and one is living it.


  • Lee, Hermione.
    Virginia Woolf
    Summary:A richly detailed, monumental biography of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers traces Woolf’s life and career, detailing her personal relationships, her chronic illness, and the forces, factors, and ideas that shaped her life.


  • Woolf, Virginia
    Mrs. Dalloway
    Summary:A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman’s life.


  • Wade, Francesca
    Square haunting : five writers in London between the wars
    Summary:"In the early twentieth century, Mecklenburgh Square, a hidden architectural gem in the heart of London, was a radical address. On the outskirts of Bloomsbury known for the eponymous group who "lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles," the square was home to students, struggling artists, and revolutionaries. In the pivotal era between the two world wars, the lives of five remarkable women intertwined at this one address: modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf. In an era when women’s freedoms were fast expanding, they each sought a space where they could live, love, and above all work independently."–


  • Woolf, Virginia
    Orlando; a biography.
    Summary:Orlando doubles as first an Elizabethan nobleman and then as a Victorian heroine who undergoes all the transitions of history in this novel that examines sex roles and social mores.

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    NOBLE Libraries Most Popular Children’s Books 2020


  • Pilkey, Dav
    Dog Man : lord of the fleas
    Summary:When a new bunch of baddies bust up the town, Dog Man is called into action — and this time he isn’t alone. With a cute kitten and a remarkable robot by his side, our heroes must save the day by joining forces with an unlikely ally: Petey, the World’s Most Evil Cat. But can the villainous Petey avoid vengeance and venture into virtue?


  • Pilkey, Dav
    Dog Man : brawl of the wild
    Summary:When Dog Man is sent to the pound for a crime he did not commit, his friends work to prove his innocence.


  • Telgemeier, Raina
    Guts
    Summary:Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mom has one, too, so it’s probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she’s dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina’s tummy trouble isn’t going away… and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What’s going on?


  • Pilkey, Dav
    Dog Man : fetch-22
    Summary:Petey the Cat is out of jail, and he has a brand-new lease on life. While Petey’s reevaluated what matters most, Li’l Petey is struggling to find the good in the world. Can Petey and Dog Man stop fighting like cats and dogs long enough to put their paws together and work as a team? They need each other now more than ever — Li’l Petey (and the world) is counting on them!


  • Pilkey, Dav
    For whom the ball rolls
    Summary:Dog Man has been working hard to overcome his bad habits, but when his obsessions turn to fears, he finds himself the target of an all-new supervillain, while Petey the Cat, who was just released from jail, starts a new life with Li’l Petey.


  • Kinney, Jeff
    Diary of a wimpy kid. Wrecking ball
    Summary:When an unexpected inheritance gives Greg Heffley’s family a chance to make big changes to their house, they soon discover that renovations may not be worth the effort.


  • Pilkey, Dav
    Dog Man unleashed
    Summary:Dog Man, a crimefighter with the head of a police dog and the body of a policeman, faces off against his archnemesis Petey the cat.


  • Pilkey, Dav
    Dog Man and cat kid
    Summary:When a new sitter arrives and a movie star goes missing, Dog Man and Cat Kid investigate, but Petey, the world’s most evil cat, complicates their case.


  • Willems, Mo.
    My new friend is so fun!
    Summary:Gerald the elephant and Snake fear that Piggie and Brian Bat will have so much fun together they will no longer need their best friends.


  • Pilkey, Dav
    Dog Man
    Summary:Dog Man, a crimefighter with the head of a police dog and the body of a policeman, faces off against his archnemesis Petey the Cat.

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    NOBLE Libraries Most Popular Adult Nonfiction 2020


  • Westover, Tara
    Educated : a memoir
    Summary:Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. As a way out, Tara began to educate herself, learning enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University. Her quest for knowledge would transform her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.


  • Trump, Mary L
    Too much and never enough : how my family created the world’s most dangerous man
    Summary:In this portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man is.


  • Larson, Erik
    The splendid and the vile : a saga of Churchill, family, and defiance during the blitz
    Summary:"On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end. Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports, Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family and the close advisers who comprised Churchill’s "Secret Circle."


  • Obama, Michelle
    Becoming
    Summary:When she was a little girl, Michelle Robinson’s world was the South Side of Chicago, where she and her brother shared a bedroom in their family’s apartment and where her parents raised her to be outspoken and unafraid. But life soon took her much further afield, from the halls of Princeton, where she learned for the first time what if felt like to be the only Black woman in a room, to the office tower where she worked as a high-powered corporate lawyer, and where a law student named Barack Obama appeared in her office and upended all her carefully made plans. In this memoir she describes the early years of her marriage as she struggles to balance her work and family with her husband’s fast-moving political career and takes us inside their private debate over whether he should make a run for the presidency, and her subsequent role as a popular but oft-criticized figure during his campaign. Narrating with grace, good humor, and uncommon candor, she provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of her family’s launch into the global limelight as well as their life inside the White House over eight years, as she comes to know her country and her country comes to know her.


  • Noah, Trevor
    Born a crime : stories from a South African childhood
    Summary:Noah’s path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist, his mother is determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. With an incisive wit and unflinching honesty, Noah weaves together a moving yet funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time.


  • Gladwell, Malcolm
    Talking to strangers : what we should know about the people we don’t know
    Summary:In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers, to "analyze, critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them," in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety. He uses a variety of examples from history and recent headlines to illustrate that people size up the motivations, emotions, and trustworthiness of those they don’t know both wrongly and with misplaced confidence.


  • Bryson, Bill
    The body : a guide for occupants
    Summary:As compulsively readable as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner’s manual for everybody. Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body — how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Bryson-esque anecdotes, this book will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular.


  • Gottlieb, Lori
    Maybe you should talk to someone : a therapist, HER therapist, and our lives revealed
    Summary:Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice when a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives -— a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life if
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    NOBLE Libraries Most Popular Adult Fiction 2020


  • Owens, Delia
    Where the crawdads sing
    Summary:For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She’s barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world — until the unthinkable happens.


  • Patchett, Ann
    The Dutch house : a novel
    Summary:At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Cyril’s son Danny and his older sister Maeve are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another.


  • Moyes, Jojo
    The giver of stars
    Summary:Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. What happens to them, and to the men they love, becomes a classic drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. Though they face all kinds of dangers, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, sharing the gift of learning that will change their lives.


  • Ng, Celeste
    Little fires everywhere : a novel
    Summary:In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. No one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren, an enigmatic artist and single mother who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to Mia and Pearl. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past, but her obsession comes with unexpected and devastating costs.


  • Cummins, Jeanine
    American dirt : a novel
    Summary:"Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy-two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence."


  • Hilderbrand, Elin
    28 summers : a novel
    Summary:Once a year, Alice and Tom have met on Nantucket to rekindle the passionate love affair they began 28 years earlier. Each married to someone else, with busy lives and happy families, they’ve managed to keep their secret and to keep their love alive. But nothing is forever. Tom’s wife is in the national spotlight for her controversial and increasingly popular campaign for a Senate office. And Alice has received a diagnosis that puts her future in doubt. Could their 28th summer together also be their last?


  • Reid, Kiley.
    Such a fun age : a novel
    Summary:Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to
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    Korean American Day is January 13th


  • Choi, Susan
    Trust exercise : a novel
    Summary:In 1982 in a southern city, David and Sarah, two freshmen at a highly competitive performing arts high school, thrive alongside their school peers in a rarified bubble, ambitiously devoting themselves to their studies ;to music, to movement, to Shakespeare and, particularly, to classes taught by the magnetic acting teacher Mr. Kingsley. It is here in these halls that David and Sarah fall innocently and powerfully into first love. And also where, as this class of students rises through the ranks of high school, the outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and the future, does not affect them–until it does.


  • Cho, Nam-ju
    Kim Jiyoung, born 1982
    Summary:"In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul, Kim Jiyoung-a millennial "everywoman"-spends her days caring for her infant daughter. Her husband, however, worries over a strange symptom that has recently appeared: Jiyoung has begun to impersonate the voices of other women-dead and alive, both known and unknown to her. Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that very person. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, Jiyoung’s concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist, who listens to her narrate her own life story-from her birth to a family who expected a son, to elementary school teachers who policed girls’ outfits, to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women’s restrooms and posted the photos online. But can her doctor cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?"


  • Cha, Steph
    Your house will pay : a novel
    Summary:A powerful and taut novel about racial tensions following two Los Angeles families–one Korean-American, one African American–grappling with the effects of a decades-old crime.old crime.


  • Kim, Eugenia
    The kinship of secrets
    Summary:"From the author of The Calligrapher’s Daughter comes the riveting story of two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart."


  • Yun, Jung
    Shelter
    Summary:"Kyung Cho is a young father burdened by a house he can’t afford. Nearby in an exclusive neighborhood, an act of violence leaves his well-to-do parents unable to stay on their own. Living under the same roof, old feelings of guilt and anger surface. This masterful debut asks what it means to provide for one’s family and answers with a story as riveting as it is profound.


  • Lee, Min Jin.
    Free food for millionaires
    Summary:"Goodbye, Columbus meets the novels of Amy Tan in this American story of class, society and identity that marks the debut of a new voice in fiction"–Provided by the publisher.


  • Kwon, R. O.
    The incendiaries : a novel
    Summary:A young Korean-American woman at an elite American university is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea and then disappears, leading a fellow student into an obsessive search for her.


  • Lee, Chang-rae.
    On such a full sea
    Summary:From the author of Native Speaker and The Surrendered, this is a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman’s legendary quest to comprehend the life into which she has been born, in a shocking future America. Here the author takes his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. He brings us into a world created from scratch, a vividly imagined future America. In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor class-descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China, find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement. In return for their contributions, the workers are protected from the violence of the wild, crime -ridden, anarchic quasi-states that exist elsewhere. In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan’s journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that begins to call into question everything she knows about herself and her destiny, that will soon become legend to those she left behind. The novel explores the delicate balance between fate and free will, ignorance and knowledge, subjection and control, and how quickly the tide can change. It is a novel with contemporary relevance and insight into American anxieties about Chinese power and influence, and our own prospects and legacies. — Provided by publisher.


  • Chee, Alexander
    The queen of the night
    Summary:Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singers’ chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all. As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls her life as an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept up into the glitzy, gritty world of Second Empire Paris. In order to survive, she transformed herself from hippodrome rider to courtesan, from empress’s maid to debut singer, all the while weaving a complicated web of romance, obligation, and political intrigue.


  • Lee, Min Jin
    Pachinko
    Summary:"In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant-and that her lover is married-she refuses to be bought. Instead,
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    Coming This Winter: Ages 9-12






      • Giles, L. R.
        Last mirror on the left
        Summary:Otto and Sheed, The Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County, are ordered by Missus Nedraw to bring a fugitive to justice in a world that mirrors their own but has its own rules.





      • Alston, B. B.
        Amari and the night brothers
        Summary:Thirteen-year-old Amari, a poor Black girl from the projects, gets an invitation from her missing brother to join the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and join in the fight against an evil magician.







      • Schmidt, Gary D.
        Just Like That
        Summary:With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past.


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