Staff Picks - January 2022
By Brandi Carlile
Recommended By Sharon Long, Assistant Library Director
The critically acclaimed singer–songwriter, producer, and six–time Grammy winner opens up about a life shaped by music in this candid, heartfelt, and intimate story.
By Jon Talton
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference
A former homicide detective makes a living searching for missing people during the Great Depression but is drawn back into police business when his brother investigates the discovery of a dismembered body found near the Phoenix railroad tracks.
By Julia Cooke
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Documents the high standards once required of Pan Am stewardesses, from second–language fluency and a college education to youth and a trim figure, sharing the stories of remarkable, high–achieving women who served during the jet age.
By Jonathan Franzen
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian
An intimate memoir by the award-winning author of The Corrections describes growing up in a family of all boys in Webster Groves, Missouri, reflecting on such topics as the dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship, the influence of Kafka's fiction on his quest to lose his virginity, his role as the school prankster, his marriage, global warming, and the life lessons he has learned from birds.”
By Libba Bray
Series Diviners Book #1
Recommended By Jody Ruggiero, Head of Teen Services
Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation.
By Nicola Yoon
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian
Experiencing visions of heartbreak and trying to understand why this is happening, Evie signs up for lessons at a dance studio, where she falls for her dance partner, forcing her to question all she thought she knew about life and love
By Debbie Macomber
Recommended By Marie McLaughlin, Head of Circulation
Embracing her new life after a messy divorce, former interior designer Julia Jones moves to a condominium complex where she finds unexpected friendship and then love with another new resident and fellow divorcé until a dramatic revelation threatens their happiness.
By Khaled Hosseini
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.
Became the movie: The Kite Runner.
By Elyssa Friedland
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Perfect for fans of Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, this funny, nostalgia–filled story follows the Goldman and Weingold families as they, amid drama and scandal, try to save the Golden Hotel – their beloved getaway in the Catskills.
By Sara Blaedel
Series Louise Rick/Camilla Lind Book #10
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference
While investigating the murder of a young woman, who was found strangled in a park, Detective Louise Rick must help her friend, journalist Camilla Lind, when she goes too far while trying to discover who killed a fellow journalist
By Joshua Henkin
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
When the health of her husband, a brilliant Shakespeare professor, starts declining, Pru, struggling on her own and feeling isolated, meets a man with whom the possibility of new romance blooms until her estranged stepson, a wealthy biotech investor, come back into their lives.
By Casey McQuiston
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference
Cynical August starts to believe in the impossible when meets Jane on the subway, a mysterious punk rocker she forms a crush on, who is literally displaced in time from the 1970s and is trying to find her way back.
By Brian Allen Carr
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
A recently orphaned teen in rural Indiana finds himself suspended from school and searching for both a job and his drug-addled uncle, now his legal guardian, to get the rent paid in five days.
By Zakiya Dalila Harris
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
Tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books, 26-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel is hired until she after a string uncomfortable events, is elevated to Office Darling, leaving Nella in the dust.
By Judith A. Jance
Series Joanna Brady Mysteries & J.P. Beaumont Mysteries
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
"Sent to Cochise County in Arizona by the Washington State attorney general to investigate the murder of a star witness, J.P. Beaumont teams up with Sheriff Joanna Brady and is surprised to find in her a savvy fellow detective (From the Publisher)."
By Bill Clinton
Recommended By Nathalie Levin, Children's Services Librarian
A one–time Navy SEAL and past president, Matthew Keating, after his daughter is kidnapped by a madman, embarks on a one–man special–ops mission that tests his strengths as a leader, a warrior, and a father.
By Amity Gaige
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
From the acclaimed author of Schroder comes a novel about a young family who escape suburbia for a year-long sailing trip that upends all of their lives.
By Talia Hibbert
Series Brown Sister, Book 2
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
A young woman who agrees to fake-date her friend after a video of him “rescuing” her from their office building goes viral.
By Jennifer Weiner
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian
While trying to pinpoint the root of her dissatisfaction with her life, Daisy Shoemaker begins receiving misdirected emails meant for another woman and starts living vicariously through her until she discovers that their connection was not completely accidental.