Picked by Mary Anne on Monday, May 15
"Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with--of all...
Picked by Jen on Monday, May 15
In her highly anticipated memoir Tell Me Everything, Minka Kelly shares a story as powerful as it is page-turning.
Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in these pages, Minka Kelly's life has been anything but easy.
Raised by a single mother who...
Picked by Leslie on Monday, May 15
Nobel laureate Bob Dylan is known for his eclectic tastes as well as his deep, encyclopedic knowledge of popular music. He puts that expertise to the test in this widely entertaining romp through popular-music history. Even if readers aren't familiar with a song under discussion, they will still enjoy and appreciate his take on it. Starting with Bobby Bare’s “Detroit City” and ending with Dion...
Picked by Colleen on Monday, May 15
Reading like a conversational history lecture in book form, Stanford professor emeritus White's (California Exposures, 2020) mostly captivating book chronicles the deception around the death of Jane Stanford, cofounder of Stanford University. More than 100 years after Stanford's death from strychnine poisoning, White seeks to uncover why the university, citing Stanford’s death as “natural causes...
Picked by Jen on Monday, May 15
Beck sets up a camping trip for herself, twin sister Imogen, and their shared best friend, Tilda, having decided it’s time to address the Thing that has lived like a ghost among them for years. They set off into a remote part of the Grand Canyon, the sisters confident with years of trail experience, but Tilda not so much, upending the normal dynamic of their relationship, in which Tilda was the...
Picked by Mary Anne on Monday, May 15
Finlay Donovan, a single mother, mystery writer, and erstwhile contract killer (it was an accident!), thinks that things might finally be looking up. Sure, she's got writer's block again and a novel due, but her nanny and partner-in-crime, Vero, has invested the money from their last, uh, excursion outside the law, and Finlay has both a hot cop and a young lawyer vying for her affections. Then...
Picked by Jane on Wednesday, April 19
When Stephanie Plum arrives at Vinnie’s Bail Bonds office to find the doors locked and lights off on a Monday morning, she knows something is wrong. Office manager Connie Rosolli is never late and never is out. Her worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie’s abductor. He claims that Vinnie has something of his and he wants it back in return for Connie.
Eventually, they discover...
Picked by Jane on Wednesday, April 05
The story begins at a convent orphanage in Aubazine, France. Three sisters Antoinette, Gabrielle and Julia-Berthe have been taken in by the nuns after their young mother dies of consumption and their father abandons them. Their two brothers were sent to work on a farm. The nuns are very strict and critical of the girls and their stations in life, however they are well cared for and the nuns’...
Picked by Colleen on Wednesday, March 15
"Follows the extraordinary lives of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first as they forged their own dynasty in a deeply patriarchal family, giving voice to these complicated, privileged, and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history."-- (by Publisher)
Picked by Jules on Wednesday, March 15
"Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays, and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last twenty-five years. We see the Queens stoic resolve after the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and Prince Philip, her partner for seven decades, and how she triumphs in her Jubilee years even as family troubles rage around her....
Picked by Jen on Wednesday, March 15
"Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley's Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present. These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than...
Picked by Colleen on Wednesday, March 15
"Tucked into the mountains of North Wales, the village of Cwm Coed is bordered by a shimmering lake on one side and an army of pine trees on the other. But the tranquility is shattered when homegrown celebrity Rhys Lloyd returns to develop a luxury resort on the shore opposite the village. Old resentments begin to rise to the surface, and new tensions emerge between the locals and the outsiders....
Picked by Mary Anne on Wednesday, March 15
Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, either in her hometown or on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of college, but when her family is struck by tragedy she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile...
Picked by Leslie on Wednesday, March 15
"Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Another band...
Picked by Jane on Monday, March 13
Andy Borowitz is the author of the satirical news column The Borowitz Report in The New Yorker. He is the first-ever winner of the National Press Club award for humor. He has been praised by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times as one of the country’s finest satirists. In his book Profiles in Ignorance Borowitz suggests that in spite of excellent educations, many of the politicians of...
Picked by Colleen on Friday, February 17
"Author Erika Bolstad was shocked to learn she had inherited mineral rights in North Dakota in the throes of an oil bonanza. Determined to unearth the story behind her unexpected inheritance, she followed the trail to her great-grandmother, Anna, who her family had painted to be a courageous homesteader who paved her way in the unforgiving American West. But, Bolstad discovers a darker truth...
Picked by Colleen on Friday, February 17
A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith's intimate history of Black women's music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid...
Picked by Leslie on Friday, February 17
The actress, activist, and once infamous Playboy Playmate reclaims the narrative of her life in a memoir that defies expectation in both content and approach, blending searing prose with snippets of original poetry.
In this honest, layered and unforgettable book that alternates between storytelling and her own poetry, Pamela Anderson breaks the mold of the celebrity memoir while taking back the...
Picked by Mary Anne on Friday, February 17
"True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person...
Picked by Mary Anne on Friday, February 17
"It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. Already a bestseller in France and certain to be...