Thanksgiving Holiday Closings

All Rock Island Library buildings will close at 6pm Wednesday, Nov. 27, and remain closed Thursday and Friday, Nov. 28 & 29, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Library2Go routes are also cancelled. 

Stay in touch with our digital services and PrairieCat app! All locations reopen on Saturday, Nov. 20 with normal 10am to 2 pm hours. 

Recommended Reads Books (List)

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The Rediscovery of America

Ned Blackhawk

The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insisting that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.

In this volume, Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century.

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By the Fire We Carry

Rebecca Nagle

In the 1830s Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn't have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle's own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, this volume stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.

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Whiskey Tender

Deborah Taffa

Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents - citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe - were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the "American Dream."

This memoir traces how a mixed tribe native girl - born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico - comes to her own interpretation of identity. Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present - the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations - she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the "melting pot" of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.

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Food to Die for

Amy Bruni

Discover tantalizing recipes, spine-tingling stories, and historic photos from the most notoriously haunted locations across America in this fun and fascinating cookbook. Paranormal investigator and Kindred Spirits co-host Amy Bruni leads you through eerie hotels, haunted homes, hellish hospitals, and spooky ghost towns, giving you stories and a recipe from each place.

Whether you're in the mood for Lizzie Borden's meatloaf or want to serve up spooky prison stories along with sugar cookies from Alcatraz, Food to Die For is your guide to ghoulish gastronomy.

One of America's favorite ghost hunters, Amy Bruni takes you to mysterious hotels, eerie ghost towns, and possessed pubs in this delightfully sinister collection of stories and recipes. Each of the nearly 60 locations in Food to Die For includes vintage photographs and charmingly creepy stories rooted in history; a noteworthy recipe associated with the people or place; and full-color, captivating, and hauntingly styled food photos to inspire a killer kitchen experience. 

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Hot Sheet

Olga Massov

Transform everyday meals into extraordinary ones, with more than 100 recipes harnessing the power of your sheet pan, including breakfasts, starters, dinners, and desserts. Say goodbye to boring food and hello to flavor-packed dishes for weeknight dining as well as special occasions.

The sheet pan hardly needs an introduction - every kitchen should have one. The underappreciated cooking workhorse, sheet pans are versatile, practical, inexpensive, durable, stackable, and easy to clean - and you're probably already using them regularly for quick-and-easy chicken and veg or staple treats like chocolate chip cookies. But Hot Sheet offers a more creative approach with elevated yet accessible recipes spanning from breakfast to dinner to desserts - and every course in-between - that will take you from weeknight suppers to celebratory meals.

Cookbook authors and editors Olga Massov and Sanaë Lemoine lean into their respective backgrounds to showcase the sheet pan's full potential with more than 100 elegant and surprisingly achievable recipes!

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Freezer Door Cocktails

J. M. Hirsch

There is a time and place for meticulous home mixology. But more often, what we really want is a shortcut to our favorite cocktail that's at the ready any time we want it. Pour. Sip. Simple!

You build these drinks in batches right in the liquor bottle, then keep them on call in the freezer for whenever the mood strikes. That means a perfectly chilled Negroni or sweet and minty Mojito is always on hand, whether you're unwinding after a long day or hosting a few friends.

This creative collection of 75 ready-to-pour cocktails shows how to make freezer door versions of your favorites, from Margaritas and Manhattans to Cosmopolitans, Espresso Martinis, and beyond. Plus, every batch recipe includes an additional single-serving cocktail you can make with the liquor you have left over--so you can double the fun.

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The Witch's Cookbook

Deanna Huey

Conjure up enchanting recipes worthy of legendary witches! 

Gather ‘round your cauldron and summon your culinary senses! The Witch’s Cookbook brings you 75 recipes and gorgeous photographs inspired by literature, film, and television’s most adored witches. Start your magical journey with five charming chapters: Cast your best Bewitching Breakfasts and Beginnings; invoke Snacks, Starters, and Séances; captivate your coven with Enticing Entrees and Enchantments; reveal Desserts, Delights, and Divinations with a flick of your wand; and pour potions with Beldam, Brews and Beverages.

Get your cauldron crackling with dozens of recipes—from snacks and small bites, to treats and cakes, to warming drinks and cocktails—as you immerse yourself in your favorite stories worthy of Wiccans with recipes from The Witch’s Cookbook!

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Looking for Smoke

K. A. Cobell

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

In her powerful debut novel, Looking for Smoke, author K. A. Cobell (Blackfeet) weaves loss, betrayal, and complex characters into a thriller that will illuminate, surprise, and engage readers until the final word. A must-pick for readers who enjoy books by Angeline Boulley and Karen McManus!

When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren's missing sister, Mara thinks she'll finally make some friends on the Blackfeet reservation.

Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered.

Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them--Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli--have a complicated history with Samantha.

Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names. Even though one of them may be the murderer.

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Rez Ball

Byron Graves

This compelling debut novel by new talent Byron Graves tells the relatable, high-stakes story of a young athlete determined to play like the hero his Ojibwe community needs him to be.

These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team--even though he can't help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident.

When Jaxon's former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe rez all the way to their first state championship. This is the first step toward his dream of playing in the NBA, no matter how much the odds are stacked against him.

But stepping into his brother's shoes as a star player means that Tre can't mess up. Not on the court, not at school, and not with his new friend, gamer Khiana, who he is definitely not falling in love with.

After decades of rez teams almost making it, Tre needs to take his team to state. Because if he can live up to Jaxon's dreams, their story isn't over yet.

This book is published by Heartdrum, an imprint that publishes high-quality, contemporary stories about Indigenous young people in the United States and Canada.

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Storm: Dawn of a Goddess

Tiffany D. Jackson

 

Before she was the super hero Storm of Marvel's X-Men, she was Ororo of Cairo—a teenaged thief on the streets of Egypt, until her growing powers catch the eye of a villain who steals people's souls. An epic origin story that will blow you away, from the New York Times bestselling author of Monday's Not Coming.

The gorgeous first edition hardcover of Storm: Dawn of a Goddess will feature an electrifying dust jacket that glows in the dark!

"Tiffany D. Jackson has crafted the story of Storm that the world has been waiting for!" —Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Few can weather the storm.

As a thief on the streets of Cairo, Ororo Munroe is an expert at blending in—keeping her blue eyes low and her white hair beneath a scarf. Stealth is her specialty . . . especially since strange things happen when she loses control.

Lately, Ororo has been losing control more often, setting off sudden rainstorms and mysterious winds . . . and attracting dangerous attention. When she is forced to run from the Shadow King, a villain who steals people's souls, she has nowhere to turn to but herself. There is something inside her, calling her across Africa, and the hidden truth of her heritage is close enough to taste.

But as Ororo nears the secrets of her past, her powers grow stronger and the Shadow King veers closer and closer. Can she outrun the shadows that chase her? Or can she step into the spotlight and embrace the coming storm?

In her first speculative novel, New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson casts a breathtaking spell with one of Marvel's most beloved characters, and brings the superhero Storm to life as you've never seen her before.

 

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Twenty-Four Seconds from Now . . .

Jason Reynolds

A New York Times Bestseller

“Jason Reynolds has done it again!...Fresh from start to finish…This is what it could be, should be, if only we were all as lucky as Aria. Girls (and everyone) wait for your Neon!”Judy Blume, New York Times bestselling author of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. and Forever...

#1 New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds tackles it—you know…it—from the guy’s perspective in this unfiltered and undeniably sweet stream of consciousness story of a teen boy about to experience a huge first.

Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have loved to forget if it weren’t for the dog’s owner: Aria. Dressed in sweats, a t-shirt, hair in a ponytail. Aria. Way more than fine.

Twenty-four weeks ago: Neon’s dad insists on talking to him about tenderness and intimacy. Neon and Aria are definitely in love, and while they haven’t taken that next big step…yet, they’ve starting talking about…that.

Twenty-four days ago: Neon’s mom finds her—gulp—bra in his room. Hey! No judging! Those hook thingies are complicated! So he’d figured he’d better practice, what with the big day only a month away.

Twenty-four minutes ago: Neon leaves his shift at work at his dad’s bingo hall, making sure to bring some chicken tenders for Aria. They’re not candlelight and they definitely aren’t caviar, but they are her favorite.

And right this second? Neon is locked in Aria’s bathroom, completely freaking out because twenty-four seconds from now he and Aria are about to…about to… Well, they won’t do anything if he can’t get out of his own head (all the advice, insecurities, and what ifs) and out of this bathroom!

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The Unfinished

Cheryl Isaacs

In her stunning debut, Cheryl Isaacs (Mohawk) pulls the reader into an unsettling tale of monsters, mystery, and secrets that refuse to stay submerged.

When small-town athlete Avery's morning run leads her to a strange pond in the middle of the forest, she awakens a horror the townspeople of Crook's Falls have long forgotten.

The black water has been waiting. Watching. Hungry for the souls it needs to survive.

Avery can smell the water, see it flooding everywhere; she thinks she's losing her mind. And as the black water haunts Avery--taking a new form each time--people in town begin to go missing.

Though Avery had heard whispers of monsters from her Kanien'kéha:ka (Mohawk) relatives, she has never really connected to her Indigenous culture or understood the stories. But the Elders she has distanced herself from now may have the answers she needs.

When Key, her best friend and longtime crush, is the next to disappear, Avery is faced with a choice: listen to the Kanien'kéha:ka and save the town but lose her friend forever...or listen to her heart and risk everything to get Key back.

An unmissable horror novel for readers who devoured Trang Thanh Tran's She Is a Haunting or Claire Legrand's Sawkill Girls!

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Earthdivers, Vol. 1: Kill Columbus

Stephen Graham Jones

The New York Times-bestselling author of The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw makes his comics debut with this time-hopping horror thriller about far-future Indigenous outcasts on a mission to kill Christopher Columbus.

The year is 2112, and it's the apocalypse exactly as expected: rivers receding, oceans rising, civilization crumbling. Humanity has given up hope, except for a group of Indigenous outcasts who have discovered a time travel portal in a cave in the desert and figured out where everything took a turn for the worst: America.

Convinced that the only way to save the world is to rewrite its past, they send one of their own--a reluctant linguist named Tad--on a bloody, one-way mission to 1492 to kill Christopher Columbus before he reaches the so-called New World. But there are steep costs to disrupting the timeline, and taking down an icon isn't an easy task for an academic with no tactical training and only a wavering moral compass to guide him. As the horror of the task ahead unfolds and Tad's commitment is tested, his actions could trigger a devastating new fate for his friends and the future.

Join Stephen Graham Jones and artist Davide Gianfelice for Earthdivers, Vol. 1 (collecting Earthdivers issues #1-6), the beginning of an unforgettable ongoing sci-fi slasher spanning centuries of America's Colonial past to explore the staggering forces of history and the individual choices we make to survive it.

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Here

Richard McGuire

 

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • From one of the great comic innovators, the long-awaited fulfillment of a pioneering comic vision: the story of a corner of a room and of the events that have occurred in that space over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.

“A book like this comes along once a decade, if not a century…. I guarantee that you’ll remember exactly where you are, or were, when you first read it.” —Chris Ware, The Guardian

"In Here McGuire has introduced a third dimension to the flat page. He can poke holes in the space-time continuum simply by imposing frames that act as trans­temporal windows into the larger frame that stands for the provisional now. Here is the ­comic-book equivalent of a scientific breakthrough. It is also a lovely evocation of the spirit of place, a family drama under the gaze of eternity and a ghost story in which all of us are enlisted to haunt and be haunted in turn.” —The New York Times Book Review

With full-color illustrations throughout.

 

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Dandadan, Vol. 1

Yukinobu Tatsu

A nerd must fight powerful spirits and aliens all vying for the secret power of his “family jewel,” so who better to fight alongside him than his high school crush and a spirit granny?!

Momo Ayase and Okarun are on opposite sides of the paranormal spectrum regarding what they’ll believe in and what they won’t. Their quest to prove each other wrong leads them down a path of secret crushes and paranormal battles they’ll have to participate in to believe!

Momo Ayase strikes up an unusual friendship with her school’s UFO fanatic, whom she nicknames “Okarun” because he has a name that is not to be said aloud. While Momo believes in spirits, she thinks aliens are nothing but nonsense. Her new friend, meanwhile, thinks the exact opposite. To settle matters, the two set out to prove each other wrong—Momo to a UFO hotspot and Okarun to a haunted tunnel! What unfolds next is a beautiful story of young love…and oddly horny aliens and spirits?

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Kagurabachi, Vol. 1

Takeru Hokazono

Chihiro's cursed past sends him down a quest of bloody vengeance!

Chihiro Rokuhira’s father, Kunishige, is the most famous swordsmith in the land. Thanks to his six enchanted blades, the war that has been gripping the nation ends, and peaceful days follow. After the war, he retrieves all six blades and hides them in the cellar of his workshop—but sorcerers raid his home and leave Kunishige dead in front of Chihiro. Many years later, Chihiro wields Kunishige’s seventh and final enchanted blade on a mission to retrieve the stolen swords!

As a young boy, Chihiro trains every day under his father to become a swordsmith. Although different in temperament, the two spend peaceful days laughing and working together. But one day, tragedy strikes… Now Chihiro burns with hatred and sets out to exact revenge. Following clues left behind by a ruthless yakuza organization, Chihiro confronts the Hishaku, a deadly group of sorcerers that may be behind his father’s murder!

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Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons

Frank Tieri

In the 1500s, a ship of seafaring navigators run afoul of a lost world where there is only one king, the King of the Monsters!

Before humanity had successfully traveled the entire globe, it was believed that monsters ruled the oceans just beyond the horizon. "Here there be dragons..." was written on maps to denote the areas people dared not go.That is, until Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the seas, visiting foreign lands and collecting treasure. That's what history tells us, at least, but history does not have the full tale.

Monsters did lurk yonder, living on an island that still doesn't appear on any map, and among them was the king of them all...Godzilla! From Frank Tieri and Inaki Miranda, the incredible team behind Old Lady Harley, comes a Godzilla adventure like no other. Collects the five-issue series.

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Of Time and Turtles

Sy Montgomery

National Book Award finalist for The Soul of an Octopus and New York Times bestseller Sy Montgomery turns her journalistic curiosity to the wonder and wisdom of our long-lived cohabitants - turtles - and through their stories of hope and rescue, reveals to us astonishing new perspectives on time and healing. For fans of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year and An Immense World.

When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles - with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal - are given a second chance at life. The League's founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one motto: Never give up on a turtle. Sy and Matt then immerse themselves in the delicate work of protecting turtle nests, incubating eggs, rescuing sea turtles, and releasing hatchlings to their homes in the wild. We follow the snapping turtle Fire Chief on his astonishing journey as he battles against injuries incurred by a truck.

Elegantly blending science, memoir, and philosophy, and drawing on cultures from across the globe, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time.

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Alexander at the End of the World

Rachel Kousser

A riveting biography of Alexander the Great's final years, when the leader's insatiable desire to conquer the world set him off on an exhilarating, harrowing journey that would define his legacy.

By 330 B.C.E., Alexander the Great had reached the pinnacle of success. Or so it seemed. He had defeated the Persian ruler Darius III and seized the capital city of Persepolis. His exhausted and traumatized soldiers were ready to return home to Macedonia. Yet Alexander had other plans. He was determined to continue heading east to Afghanistan in search of his ultimate goal: to reach the end of the world.

In Alexander at the End of the World, renowned classicist and art history professor Rachel Kousser vividly brings to life Alexander's labyrinthine, treacherous final years, weaving together a brilliant series of epic battles, stunning landscapes, and nearly insurmountable obstacles. Meticulously researched and grippingly written, Kousser's narrative is an unforgettable tale of daring and adventure, an inspiring portrait of grit and ambition, and a powerful meditation on the ability to learn from failure.

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Book and Dagger

Elyse Graham

The untold story of the academics who became OSS spies, invented modern spycraft, and helped turn the tide of the war

At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today's CIA, was quickly formed--and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work--and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts.

In Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham draws on personal histories, letters, and declassified OSS files to tell the story of a small but connected group of humanities scholars turned spies. Among them are Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents; Sherman Kent, a smart-mouthed history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist who was sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents for the OSS. These unforgettable characters would ultimately help lay the foundations of modern intelligence and transform American higher education when they returned after the war.

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By the Fire We Carry

Rebecca Nagle

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests--in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn't have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle's own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.

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A Gentleman and a Thief

Dean Jobb

Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets the hit Netflix series Lupin in this captivating true-crime caper. A skilled con artist and perhaps one of the most charming, audacious burglars in history, Arthur Barry slipped in and out of the bedrooms of New York's wealthiest residents, even as his victims slept only inches away. He befriended luminaries such as the Prince of Wales and Harry Houdini and became a folk hero, touted in the press as "the greatest jewel thief who ever lived" and an "Aristocrat of Crime." In a span of seven years, Barry stole diamonds, pearls, and other gems worth almost $60 million today. Among his victims were a Rockefeller, an heiress to the Woolworth department store fortune, an oil magnate, Wall Street bigwigs, a top executive of automotive giant General Motors, and a famous polo player. Dean Jobb--hailed by Esquire magazine as "a master of narrative nonfiction"--once again delivers a stylishly told high-speed ride.

A Gentleman and a Thief is also a love story. Barry confessed to dozens of burglaries to protect his wife, Anna Blake (and was the prime suspect in scores of others). Sentenced to a twenty-five year term, he staged a dramatic prison break when Anna became seriously ill so they could be together for a few more years as fugitives. With dozens of historic images, A Gentleman and a Thief is page-turning, escapist, and sparkling with insight into our fascination with jewel heists and the suave, clever criminals who pull them off.

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The Rising

Larry Silverstein

The never-before-told inside story of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center - an epic tale of business, politics, and engineering by the man who spent two decades working to make it happen.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, New Yorkers and Americans faced a critical set of questions: What should be done with the site? Could the towers be replaced? And how best to memorialize those lost on that day? For Larry Silverstein, a lifelong New Yorker who had signed a lease for the properties just a few months before the attacks, the answer was clear: America had to rebuild as quickly as possible.

In The Rising, Silverstein recounts in vivid detail his long battle to construct a new World Trade Center complex and to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood while also memorializing the victims of the attacks. Silverstein made history in 2001 when he signed a 99-year lease on the 10.6-million-square-foot World Trade Center for $3.25 billion. For the next twenty years, he navigated warring political interests, byzantine city bureaucracies, and resistant insurance companies, as well as the many challenges of designing, engineering, and constructing several new towers in the heart of downtown Manhattan. More than once the entire project almost folded, but today the buildings are nearly complete and the neighborhood is once again a thriving hub that draws hundreds of thousands of people a day.

The Rising is a vibrant portrait of the inner workings of New York City in the wake of its most profound tragedy, but it is also a master class in how to succeed in business despite all odds. Full of outsize characters and relentless adversity, this is a riveting book about a remarkable feat of vision and determination.

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The Astrology Advantage

Ophira Edut

Did you know that astrology can unlock unprecedented professional and personal success? Most people are familiar with their zodiac sign, but few people understand how to interpret it - and even fewer have any clue how to take action on it. In The Astrology Advantage, renowned astrologers Ophira and Tali Edut, a.k.a. The AstroTwins, present a revolutionary system that distills zodiac wisdom into three distinct archetypes, providing actionable advice to maximize your potential. To help understand your entire horoscope and maximize its power, The AstroTwins created the "I*AM Method," a simple archetype that helps you use astrology to optimize the way you work, relate to others, and find your zone of thriving. 

Understanding your archetype empowers you in every aspect of life. The I*AM Method offers practical applications for everyday life, from improving relationships and optimizing time to making confident decisions and setting up a productive workspace. The I*AM Method helps you use astrology to figure out how to efficiently invest your energy amid competing demands of work, family, and relationships.

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Belly Full

Lesley Enston

A delectable exploration of Caribbean cuisine through 105 recipes based on eleven staple ingredients, featuring powerful insights into the shared history of the diaspora and gorgeous photography.

Across the English-speaking Caribbean, “me belly full” can mean more than just a satisfied stomach, but a heart and soul that’s full too. In Belly Full, food writer of Trinidadian descent Lesley Enston brings us into the overlapping histories of the Caribbean islands through their rich cultures and cuisines.

Eleven staple ingredients—beans, calabaza, cassava, chayote, coconut, cornmeal, okra, plantains, rice, salted cod, and scotch bonnet peppers—hold echoes of familiarity from one island to the next, and their widespread use comes in part from the harrowing impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade and colonialism. As Lesley delves into how history shaped each country and territory’s cuisine, she shows us what we can learn from each island (such as Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, and Cuba) and encourages us to celebrate the delicious differences.

Belly Full provides basic knowledge on choosing, storing, and preparing these ingredients as well as a mix of traditional and creative adaptations to dishes. Recipes are mostly gluten-free and plant-based.

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Strive

Venus Williams

An inspiring and innovative guide towards living your best life - made easy - from Venus Williams, one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

Throughout Venus Williams' incredible career in tennis, she's been asked almost every question imaginable. What she eats, how she trains, what she does to unwind, and most frequently, how does she manage to do it all?

Venus harnessed a rich blend of hard-won wisdom and core discipline to achieve her goals while keeping a simple promise to herself: to keep things fun. But after being diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disorder that affected her emotional and physical wellness, Venus's vow was put to the test. She came up with the STRIVE strategy - a winning combination of holistic and scientific approaches to wellness and performance that focuses on making self-improvements reachable and sustainable.

In STRIVE, readers will learn how eight tiny but essential tenets can help turn smart choices into habits. And once that happens, you'll forge a lifestyle you return to because you want to, not because you have to - and that's when you start winning.

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The Secret Lives of Numbers

Kate Kitagawa

A new history of mathematics focusing on the marginalized voices who propelled the discipline, spanning six continents and thousands of years of untold stories.

Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. But despite its reputation as the study of fundamental truths, the stories we have been told about it are wrong - warped like the sixteenth-century map that enlarged Europe at the expense of Africa, Asia and the Americas. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, renowned math historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell make the case that the history of math is infinitely deeper, broader, and richer than the narrative we think we know.

Covering thousands of years, six continents, and just about every mathematical discipline, The Secret Lives of Numbers is an immensely compelling narrative history.

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Connie

Connie Chung

In a sharp, witty, and definitive memoir, iconic trailblazer and legendary journalist Connie Chung delves into her storied career as the first Asian woman to break into an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated television news industry.

Connie Chung is a pioneer. In 1969 at the age of 23, this once-shy daughter of Chinese parents took her first job at a local TV station in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and soon thereafter began working at CBS news as a correspondent. Profoundly influenced by her family's cultural traditions, yet growing up completely Americanized in the United States, Chung describes her career as an Asian woman in a white male-centered world. Overt sexism was a way of life, but Chung was tenacious in her pursuit of stories - battling rival reporters to secure scoops that ranged from interviewing Magic Johnson to covering the Watergate scandal - and quickly became a household name. She made history when she achieved her dream of being the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News and the first Asian to anchor any news program in the U.S.

Chung pulls no punches as she provides a behind-the-scenes tour of her singular life. From showdowns with powerful men in and out of the newsroom to the stories behind some of her career-defining reporting and the unwavering support of her husband, Maury Povich, nothing is off-limits - good, bad, or ugly. So be sure to tune in for an irreverent and inspiring exclusive: this is Connie like you've never seen her before.

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The Devil at His Elbow

Valerie Bauerlein

Power, privilege, and blood - this is the true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.

Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator - the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers’ association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The Murdaugh name ignited respect - and fear - for a hundred miles. When he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at Moselle on a dark summer night, the fragile façade of Alex’s world could no longer hold. 

Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.

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The Siege

Ben Macintyre

A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time - from the true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor.

A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.

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In My Time of Dying

Sebastian Junger

A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death - and what might follow - by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.

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Traveling

Ann Powers

Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.

For decades, Joni Mitchell's life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians - from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile - and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing. At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as - with the other arm - she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.

Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.

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Writing on Empty

Natalie Goldberg

Bestselling author and teacher Natalie Goldberg shares her inspiring personal journey out of a devastating period of writer’s block and back into a life of growth, creativity, and healing.

In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page. When all of her tried and true methods – meditation, sitting still, writing practice – stopped working, she had to take drastic action. She got into her car and left New Mexico in search of a new inventive source. In her journey through the western states, she visited famous literary sites, searching for the spark that would reignite her ability to write.

For anyone struggling to reconnect with their own creative source, Writing on Empty is a gentle and instructive guidebook back to remembering what truly matters.

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Sacred Places of a Lifetime, Second Edition

National Geographic

Fully updated throughout and featuring all-new destinations, this inspirational guide highlights 500 of the world's most spiritual places - from the Sacred Valley of the Inca in Peru to Egypt's Mount Sinai - with unique histories and practical travel information.

In this second edition, find more than 50 new sacred places, from prehistoric holy mountains - such as Ireland's Croagh Patrick - to present-day monuments and marvels like Croatia's Dubrovnik Cathedral. With each bucket list-worthy entry, you'll discover each destinations history, legend, and lore, as well as how you can experience these significant locations yourself.

This beautiful coffee table book answers the call of the spiritual traveler and all those interested in sites of unique cultural heritage.

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The Mighty Red

Louise Erdrich

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter's and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

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Blood Sisters

Vanessa Lillie

As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own. While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling.

When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women. But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd.

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The Truth According to Ember

Danica Nava

Ember Lee Cardinal has not always been a liar—well, not for anything that counted at least. But her job search is not going well and when her resumé is rejected for the thirty-seventh time, she takes matters into her own hands. She gets “creative” listing her qualifications and answers the ethnicity question on applications with a lie—a half-lie, technically. No one wanted Native American Ember, but white Ember has just landed her dream accounting job on Park Avenue (Oklahoma City, that is).

Accountant Ember thrives in corporate life—and her love life seems to be looking up as well: Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native who caught her eye on her first day, seems to actually be interested in her too. Despite her unease over the no-dating policy at work, they start to see each other secretly, which somehow makes it even hotter? But when they're caught in a compromising position on a work trip, a scheming colleague blackmails Ember, threatening to expose their relationship. As the manipulation continues to grow, so do Ember’s lies. She must make the hard decision to either stay silent or finally tell the truth, which could cost her everything.

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Indian Burial Ground

Nick Medina

All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down.

But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands.

After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror, and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers...but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to wonder whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.

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The Volcano Daughters

Gina María Balibrera

El Salvador, 1923. Graciela, a young girl growing up on a volcano in a community of Indigenous women, is summoned to the capital, where she is claimed as an oracle for a rising dictator. There she meets Consuelo, the sister she has never known, who was stolen from their home before Graciela was born. The two spend years under the cruel El Gran Pendejo’s regime, unwillingly helping his reign of terror, until genocide strikes the community from which they hail. Each believing the other to be dead, they escape, fleeing across the globe, reinventing themselves until fate ultimately brings them back together in the most unlikely of ways…

Endlessly surprising, vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life, The Volcano Daughters charts a new history and mythology of El Salvador, fiercely bringing forth voices that have been calling out for generations.

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Oye

Melissa Mogollon

Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave. But the storm isn’t the only danger. Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, is given a crushing medical diagnosis. While she’d prefer to ignore it and focus on upholding her reputation and her looks instead, the news sets Abue on her own personal journey, with Luciana reluctantly along for the ride.

When Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond only intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from Luciana’s misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood—and rising to the occasion.

As Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.

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The Great Divide

Cristina Henriquez

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister's surgery. When she sees a young man - Omar - who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada's bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

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The Cemetery of Untold Stories

Julia Alvarez

Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn't want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories - literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.

Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

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Catalina

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed.

Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

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The Resemblance

Lauren Nossett

On a chilly November morning at the University of Georgia, a fraternity brother steps off a busy crosswalk and is struck dead by an oncoming car. More than a dozen witnesses all agree on two things: the driver looked identical to the victim, and he was smiling.

Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene. An Athens native and the daughter of a UGA professor, she knows all its shameful histories, from the skull discovered under the foundations of Baldwin Hall to the hushed-up murder-suicide in Waddel. But in the course of investigating this hit-and-run, she will uncover more chilling secrets as she explores the sprawling, interconnected Greek system that entertains and delights the university’s most elite and connected students.

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In the Shadow of the Mountain

Silvia Vasquez-Lavado

A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent—the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity—woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest.

In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience.

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My Side of the River

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family.

When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws.

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother’s dreams easier than it was for her.

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Universal Monsters: Dracula

James Tynion IV

THE BIGGEST NAMES IN COMICS RESSURECT THE MOST ICONIC MONSTERS

THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH creators, James Tynion IV (W0rldtr33, Something is Killing the Children)and Martin Simmonds, reteam to tell a new tale of the monster who started it all!

When Dr. John Seward admits a strange new patient named Renfield into his asylum, the madman tells stories of a demon who has taken residence next door. But as Dr. Seward attempts to apply logic to the impossible...his daughter falls under the spell of the twisted Count Dracula!

Collects UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: DRACULA #1-4.

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My Favorite Thing is Monsters

Emil Ferris

"Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late '60s Chicago, and narrated by 10-year-old Karen Reyes, Monsters is told is told through a fictional graphic diary employing the iconography of B-movie horror imagery and pulp monster magazines. As the precocious Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her beautiful and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, we watch the interconnected and fascinating stories of those around her unfold" -- Publisher.

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Monster Cats Vol. 1

Pandania

A full-color manga/comic about humans living with adorably monstrous cats, from the author of Yokai Cats and The Evil Secret Society of Cats.

Is it a banshee, a yeti, a gorgon, or...a cat? Monster Cats are a purrfect new breed of familiar furry friends crossed with freaky fun! If you think life with regular cats can get complicated, wait till you see what it's like for people who live with these charming supernatural pets.

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Venus in the Blind Spot

Junji Ito

A “best of” collection of creepy tales from Eisner award winner and legendary horror master Junji Ito.

This striking collection presents the most remarkable short works of Junji Ito’s career, featuring an adaptation of Rampo Edogawa’s classic horror story “Human Chair” and fan favorite “The Enigma of Amigara Fault.” With a deluxe presentation—including special color pages, and showcasing illustrations from his acclaimed long-form manga No Longer Human—each chilling tale invites readers to revel in a world of terror.

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Universal Monsters: Creature From the Black Lagoon Lives!

Dan Watters

Perfect for fans of THE MANY DEATHS OF LAILA STARR and UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: DRACULA – UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON LIVES! brings a new story about everyone’s favorite creature up from the watery depths.

A NEW HORROR DREAM TEAM RESURRECTS ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC MONSTERS

Acclaimed creators Dan Watters (Home Sick Pilots, Lucifer), Ram V (The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, Batman: Detective Comics), and Matthew Roberts (Manifest Destiny) rise from the depths for an all-new epic.

Years after the events of the original film, Journalist Kate Marsden hunts for a notorious serial killer in the heart of the Amazon. Hot on the trail of this madman, she soon encounters an unexpected new threat -- but is he friend or foe? Or is he simply...THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON?

Collects UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON LIVES! #1-4.

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White Smoke

Tiffany D. Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House meets Get Out in this chilling YA psychological thriller and modern take on the classic haunted house story from New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson!

Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty ten-year-old stepsister, Piper.

The renovated picture-perfect home on Maple Street, sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by wary neighbors has its . . . secrets. That's only half the problem: household items vanish, doors open on their own, lights turn off, shadows walk past rooms, voices can be heard in the walls, and there's a foul smell seeping through the vents only Mari seems to notice. Worse: Piper keeps talking about a friend who wants Mari gone.

But "running from ghosts" is just a metaphor, right?

As the house closes in, Mari learns that the danger isn't limited to Maple Street. Cedarville has its secrets, too. And secrets always find their way through the cracks.

* An Amazon Best Book of the Month * Parade's Best YA Books of the Year * Indigo Best Books of the Year * SLJ Best Books of the Year * Kirkus Best Books of the Year * A YALSA Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Book of the Year *

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Under the Surface

Diana Urban

An epic survival-thriller about four teens who get lost in the Paris catacombs for days—a gripping and propulsive story of love, danger, betrayal, and hope… even when all seems lost.

"Tense and fast-moving, with a unique setting and compelling characters, Under the Surface is Diana Urban’s best yet."—Karen M. McManus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying



Ruby is terrified to cave to her feelings for Sean and risk him crushing her heart.

Sean is pumped to spend a week with Ruby in Paris on their senior class trip, and he’ll wait however long until she’s ready to take things further.

But when Ruby’s best friend sneaks out the first night to meet a mysterious French boy, Ruby goes after her with two classmates, but caves to another temptation: attending mystery boy’s exclusive party in the Paris catacombs, the intricate web of tunnels beneath the city, home to six million long-dead Parisians. Only they never reach the party.

Underground, as something sinister chases them, they get lost in the endless maze of bones, uncovering dark secrets about the catacombs…..and each other. And if they can’t find a way out, they’ll die in the dark beneath the City of Light.

Aboveground, Sean races to find the girl he loves as a media frenzy over the four missing teens begins.

From award-winning author and rising YA star Diana Urban comes a twisty tale of four teens lost in the dark beneath the City of Light and the race to find them.

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Daughters Unto Devils

Amy Lukavics

"When sixteen-year-old Amanda Verner's family decides to move from their small mountain cabin to the vast prairie, she hopes it is her chance for a fresh start. She can leave behind the memory of the past winter; of her sickly ma giving birth to a baby sister who cries endlessly; of the terrifying visions she saw as her sanity began to slip, the victim of cabin fever; and most of all, the memories of the boy she has been secretly meeting with as a distraction from her pain. The boy whose baby she now carries. When the Verners arrive at their new home, a large cabin abandoned by its previous owners, they discover the inside covered in blood. And as the days pass, it is obvious to Amanda that something isn't right on the prairie. She's heard stories of lands being tainted by evil, of men losing their minds and killing their families, and there is something strange about the doctor and his son who live in the woods on the edge of the prairie. But with the guilt and shame of her sins weighing on her, Amanda can't be sure if the true evil lies in the land, or deep within her soul."--Provided by publisher.

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Salem's Lot

Stephen King

This repackaged edition of one of King's early classics revolves around the town of Jerusalem's Lot, a town that knows darkness--the heavy silence of terrifying images dancing in and out of the shadows; the stark white faces, huge empty eyes, and long gnarled hands that reach out with lustful insistence; and the paralyzing fear of a hideous peril more dreadful than death.

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The Scourge Between Stars

Ness Brown

Ness Brown's The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls.

“A perfect scare to swallow up in one sitting.” —Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights
A LibraryReads Pick! • Featured on the 2024 RUSA Reading List: Science Fiction

As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears’ failed colony on a distant planet.

Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn's crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion.

Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

“Highly recommended.” —Library Journal, STARRED review

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House of Cotton

Monica Brashears

One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home—where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones. She accepts. Despite earning more than she’s ever made, Magnolia finds that her problems are fattening along with her wallet. And when Cotton’s requests become increasingly strange, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.

Sharp as a belted knife, this sly social commentary cuts straight to the bone, revealing the aftermath of the American plantation and what it means to be poor, Black, and a woman in the God fearing south.

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Hell Bent

Leigh Bardugo

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory—even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.

This is the sequel to Bardugo's Ninth House

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If We Were Villains

M. L. Rio

On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.

A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras.

But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.

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Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. 

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

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Cackle

Rachel Harrison

All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She’s stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation.

Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That’s how Sophie lives. Annie can’t help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem…a little afraid of her. And like, okay. There are some things. Sophie’s appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power…but she couldn’t be…could she?

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The Angel of Indian Lake

Stephen Graham Jones

It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.

New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is a story of the American west written in blood.

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The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does--or does not--say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

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Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi

In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the coming-of-age story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.

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The Color Purple (Movie Tie-In)

Alice Walker

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women—their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, The Color Purple breaks the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, and carries readers on an epic and spirit-affirming journey toward transformation, redemption, and love.

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Batcat

Meggie Ramm

First in a full-color graphic novel series for emerging readers about accepting yourself and others from up-and-coming author-illustrator Meggie Ramm, creator of the comic strip The Littlest Dungeon Guard and cohost of the Pop! Whiz! Bang! comics podcast.

Batcat loves being all alone in their home on Spooky Island. Up in their tree house, they pass the time playing video games and watching TV. But when Batcat suddenly finds themself haunted by an annoying, ice cream–stealing ghost, they visit the local Island Witch for a spell to remove their ghastly guest permanently!

With their Ghost-B-Gone spell in hand, Batcat travels across Spooky Island to gather ingredients—to the Cavernous Caves where the bats tell them they’re too round to be a bat, and to the Whispering Cemetery where the cats will help only if they commit to being a true cat. But Batcat is neither and that’s what makes them special, right?

From up-and-coming author Meggie Ramm comes a sweet and fun story about accepting yourself when you’re perfectly in between here and there.

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The Used-to-be Best Friend

Dawn Quigley

"Jo Jo Makoons Azure is a spirited seven-year-old who moves through the world a little differently than anyone else on her Ojibwe reservation. It always seems like her mom, her kokum (grandma), and her teacher have a lot to learn--about how good Jo Jo is at cleaning up, what makes a good rhyme, and what it means to be friendly. Even though Jo Jo loves her #1 best friend Mimi (who is a cat), she's worried that she needs to figure out how to make more friends. Because Fern, her best friend at school, may not want to be friends anymore"--

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Our Migrant Souls

Héctor Tobar

In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now.

“Latino” is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as “Latino,” Our Migrant Souls is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity.

Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division—a story as old as this country itself.

Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents’ migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century.

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An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Paul Ortiz

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.

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Why Didn't You Tell Me?

Carmen Rita Wong

Carmen Rita Wong has always craved a sense of belonging: First as a toddler in a warm room full of Black and brown Latina women, like her mother, Lupe, cheering her dancing during her childhood in Harlem. And in Chinatown, where her immigrant father, “Papi” Wong, a hustler, would show her and her older brother off in opulent restaurants decorated in red and gold. Then came the almost exclusively white playgrounds of New Hampshire after her mother married her stepfather, Marty, who seemed to be the ideal of the white American dad.

As Carmen entered this new world with her new family—Lupe and Marty quickly had four more children—her relationship with her mother became fraught with tension, suspicion, and conflict, explained only years later by the secrets her mother had kept for so long.

And when those secrets were revealed, bringing clarity to so much of Carmen’s life, it was too late for answers. When her mother passed away, Carmen wanted to shake her soul by its shoulders and demand: Why didn’t you tell me? 

A former national television host, advice columnist, and professor, Carmen searches to understand who she really is as she discovers her mother’s hidden history, facing the revelations that seep out. Why Didn’t You Tell Me? is a riveting and poignant story of Carmen’s experience of race and culture in America and how they shape who we think we are.

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Neruda on the Park

Cleyvis Natera

The Guerreros have lived in Nothar Park, a predominantly Dominican part of New York City, for twenty years. When demolition begins on a neighboring tenement, Eusebia, an elder of the community, takes matters into her own hands by devising an increasingly dangerous series of schemes to stop construction of the luxury condos. Meanwhile, Eusebia’s daughter, Luz, a rising associate at a top Manhattan law firm who strives to live the bougie lifestyle her parents worked hard to give her, becomes distracted by a sweltering romance with the handsome white developer at the company her mother so vehemently opposes.

As Luz’s father, Vladimir, secretly designs their retirement home in the Dominican Republic, mother and daughter collide, ramping up tensions in Nothar Park, racing toward a near-fatal climax.

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The Grief Keeper

Alexandra Villasante

Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol's mother as a maid. When she pictured an American life for herself, she dreamed of a life like Aimee and Amber's, the title characters of her favorite American TV show. She never pictured fleeing her home in El Salvador under threat of death and stealing across the US border as "an illegal", but after her brother is murdered and her younger sister, Gabi's, life is also placed in equal jeopardy, she has no choice, especially because she knows everything is her fault. If she had never fallen for the charms of a beautiful girl named Liliana, Pablo might still be alive, her mother wouldn't be in hiding and she and Gabi wouldn't have been caught crossing the border.

But they have been caught and their asylum request will most certainly be denied. With truly no options remaining, Marisol jumps at an unusual opportunity to stay in the United States. She's asked to become a grief keeper, taking the grief of another into her own body to save a life. It's a risky, experimental study, but if it means Marisol can keep her sister safe, she will risk anything. She just never imagined one of the risks would be falling in love, a love that may even be powerful enough to finally help her face her own crushing grief.

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Catalina

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind.

Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed.

Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

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The Seventh Veil of Salome

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times.

So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.

Two actresses, both determined to make it to the top in Golden Age Hollywood—a city overflowing with gossip, scandal, and intrigue—make for a sizzling combination.

But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself, consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, Herod: a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart.

Before the curtain comes down, there will be tears and tragedy aplenty in this sexy Technicolor saga.

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Black River Orchard

Chuck Wendig

It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there.

Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black.

Take a bite of one of these apples, and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.

This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples . . . and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?

Even if something else is buried in the orchard besides the seeds of these extraordinary trees: a bloody history whose roots reach back to the very origins of the town.

But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. It’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.

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A Season of Harvest

Lauraine Snelling

Larkspur Nielsen is determined to keep her family homestead running and to fulfill their dream of starting a seed catalog, with or without her siblings' help. With Isaac McTavish back in town, Lark finds herself at odds with her own heart and her determination to shoulder the burden of carrying her responsibilities alone. But Isaac is set on convincing her that he's here to stay and she doesn't have to carry everything by herself.

As a new romance blossoms between Lilac and an old schoolmate and the other Nielsen sisters are busy caring for their families, Lark bears more and more responsibility on the farm. When a long-feared threat returns and Lark approaches the breaking point, the life she has always dreamed of is in danger of disappearing forever.

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Pumpkin Spice Puppy

Laurien Berenson

Between taking care of her family and assorted Standard Poodles, Melanie is also working as a special needs tutor for Howard Academy, a private school in Greenwich, where her younger son attends kindergarten. This year, the headmaster has come up with an idea for a school fundraiser. All students will participate in a town-wide treasure hunt, with grades competing against each other.

Tokens shaped like pumpkin spice muffins have been hidden in downtown stores. Students will scramble to collect as many as they can in exchange for prizes. At first all goes smoothly, and the uptick in foot traffic to the stores is a win-win. . . . . Until the pet supply shop owner lodges a complaint. When Melanie stops by to smooth things over, she instead finds the man dead, a knife in his back, and his loyal, ever-vigilant Chow Chow locked in the storeroom. Over the headmaster's objections, Melanie is once again drawn into an investigation. 

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Suffrage Song

Caitlin Cass

"She put in her work, but there's so much left to do." Begun in the Antebellum era, the song of suffrage was a rallying cry across the nation that would persist over a century. Capturing the spirit of this refrain, New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass pens a sweeping history of women's suffrage in the U.S. - a kaleidoscopic story akin to a triumphant and mournful protest song that spans decades and echoes into the present.

In Suffrage Song, Cass takes a critical, intersectional approach to the movement's history - celebrating the pivotal, hard-fought battles for voting rights while also laying bare the racist compromises suffrage leaders made along the way. She explores the multigenerational arc of the movement, humanizing key historical figures from the early days of the suffrage fight (Susan B. Anthony, Frances Watkins Harper), to the dawn of the "New Women" (Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell), to the Civil Rights era (Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker). Additionally, this book sheds light on less chronicled figures such as Zitkala-Sa and Mabel Ping Hua-Lee, whose stories reveal the complex racial dynamics that haunt this history.

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A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit

Noliwe Rooks

When Mary McLeod Bethune died, tributes in newspapers around the country said the same thing: she should be on the Mount Rushmore of Black American achievement. Indeed, Bethune is the only Black American whose statue stands in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, and yet for most, she remains a marble figure from the dim past. Now, seventy years later, Noliwe Rooks turns Bethune from stone to flesh, showing her to have been a visionary leader with lessons to still teach us as we continue on our journey toward a freer and more just nation.

Any serious effort to understand how the Black civil rights generation found role models, vision, and inspiration during their midcentury struggle for political power must place Bethune at its heart. Her success was unlikely: the fifteenth of seventeen children and the first born into freedom, Bethune survived brutal poverty and caste subordination to become the first in her family to learn how to read and to attend college. She gave that same gift to others when in 1904, at age twenty-nine, Bethune welcomed her first class of five girls to the Daytona, Florida, school she had founded and which would become the university that bears her name to this day. Bethune saw education as an essential dimension of the larger struggle for freedom, vitally connected to the vote and to economic self-sufficiency, and she enlisted Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and many other powerful leaders in her cause.

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Voting Rights and Voter ID Laws

M. M. Eboch

In 1965, the Voting Rights Act ensured that Americans would no longer be denied the right to vote because of their color. Fifty years later, debates over voting rights have re-emerged. Proponents of stricter laws say they are simply attempting to reduce incidents of voter fraud. Critics argue that the proposed restrictions are discriminatory against minority and low-income voters, and rig the contests in favor of one party. The viewpoints in this important resource address the accomplishments of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, whom voting laws hurt, and whether or not the United States needs voting ID laws.

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Give Us the Ballot

Ari Berman

In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.

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Run

John Lewis

To John Lewis, the civil rights movement came to an end with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But that was after more than five years as one of the preeminent figures of the movement, leading sit–in protests and fighting segregation on interstate busways as an original Freedom Rider. It was after becoming chairman of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and being the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. It was after helping organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the ensuing delegate challenge at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. And after coleading the march from Selma to Montgomery on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

All too often, the depiction of history ends with a great victory. But John Lewis knew that victories are just the beginning. In Run: Book One, John Lewis and longtime collaborator Andrew Aydin reteam with Nate Powell—the award–winning illustrator of the March trilogy—and are joined by L. Fury—making an astonishing graphic novel debut—to tell this often overlooked chapter of civil rights history.

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Our Unfinished March

Eric Holder

Voting is our most important right as Americans - “the right that protects all the others,” as Lyndon Johnson famously said when he signed the Voting Rights Act - but it’s also the one most violently contested throughout U.S. history. Since the gutting of the act in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, many states have passed laws restricting the vote. After the 2020 election, President Trump’s effort to overturn the vote has evolved into a slow-motion coup, with many Republicans launching an all-out assault on our democracy. The vote seems to be in unprecedented peril. 

But the peril is not at all unprecedented. America is a fragile democracy, Eric Holder argues, whose citizens have only had unfettered access to the ballot since the 1960s. He takes readers through three dramatic stories of how the vote was won: first by white men, through violence and insurrection; then by white women, through protests and mass imprisonments; and finally by African Americans, in the face of lynchings and terrorism. Next, he dives into how the vote has been stripped away since Shelby - a case in which Holder was one of the parties. He ends with visionary chapters on how we can reverse this tide of voter suppression and become a true democracy where every voice is heard and every vote is counted.

Full of surprising history, intensive analysis, and actionable plans for the future, this is a powerful primer on our most urgent political struggle from one of the country's leading advocates.

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New Women in the Old West

Winifred Gallagher

Between 1840 and 1910, hundreds of thousands of men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, lured by the prospect of adventure and opportunity, and galvanized by the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Alongside this rapid expansion of the United States, a second, overlapping social shift was taking place: survival in a settler society busy building itself from scratch required two equally hardworking partners, compelling women to compromise eastern sensibilities and take on some of the same responsibilities as their husbands. At a time when women had very few legal or economic - much less political - rights, these women soon proved they were just as essential as men to westward expansion. Their efforts to attain equality by acting as men's equals paid off, and well before the Nineteenth Amendment, they became the first American women to vote.

In New Women in the Old West, Winifred Gallagher brings to life the riveting history of the little-known women - the White, Black, and Asian settlers, and the Native Americans and Hispanics they displaced - who played monumental roles in one of America's most transformative periods. 

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Why They Marched

Susan Ware

For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the many women who worked tirelessly in communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.

Ware tells her story through the lives of nineteen activists, most of whom have long been overlooked. We meet Mary Church Terrell, a multilingual African American woman; Rose Schneiderman, a labor activist building coalitions on New York's Lower East Side; Claiborne Catlin, who toured the Massachusetts countryside on horseback to drum up support for the cause; Mary Johnston, an aristocratic novelist bucking the Southern ruling elite; Emmeline W. Wells, a Mormon woman in a polygamous marriage determined to make her voice heard; and others who helped harness a groundswell of popular support. We also see the many places where the suffrage movement unfolded - in church parlors, meeting rooms, and the halls of Congress, but also on college campuses and even at the top of Mount Rainier. Few corners of the United States were untouched by suffrage activism.

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John Lewis

Raymond Arsenault

For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940-2020) was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble."

In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."

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Suffrage

Ellen Carol DuBois

Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists.

Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. She introduces new champions Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul, who brought the fight into the 20th century, and she shows how African American women, led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, demanded voting rights even as white suffragists ignored them.

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The Woman's Hour

Elaine Weiss

Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have approved the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote; one last state - Tennessee - is needed for women's voting rights to be the law of the land. The suffragists face vicious opposition from politicians, clergy, corporations, and racists who don't want black women voting. And then there are the "Antis" - women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the nation's moral collapse. And in one hot summer, they all converge for a confrontation, replete with booze and blackmail, betrayal and courage. Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, The Woman's Hour is the gripping story of how America's women won their own freedom, and the opening campaign in the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.

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The Fight to Vote

Michael Waldman

Praised by the late John Lewis, this is the seminal book about the long and ongoing struggle to win voting rights for all citizens by the president of The Brennan Center, the leading organization on voter rights and election security, now newly revised to describe today’s intense fights over voting.

As Rep. Lewis said, and recent events in state legislatures across the country demonstrate, the struggle for the right to vote is not over. In this book, Michael Waldman describes the long struggle to extend the right to vote to all Americans. From the writing of the Constitution, and at every step along the way, as disenfranchised Americans sought this right, others have fought to stop them. Waldman traces this history from the Founders’ debates to today’s many restrictions: gerrymandering; voter ID laws; the flood of dark money released by conservative organizations; and the concerted effort in many state legislatures after the 2020 election to enact new limitations on voting.

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Votes for Women

Kate Clarke Lemay

Marking the centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Votes for Women is the first richly illustrated book to reveal the history and complexity of the national suffrage movement. For nearly a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, countless American women fought for the right to vote. While some of the leading figures of the suffrage movement have received deserved appreciation, the crusade for women’s enfranchisement involved many individuals, each with a unique story to be told. Weaving together a diverse collection of portraits and other visual materials - including photographs, drawings, paintings, prints, textiles, and mixed media - along with biographical narratives and trenchant essays, this comprehensive book presents fresh perspectives on the history of the movement.

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Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma

Karlyn Forner

In Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma, Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to explain why gaining the right to vote did not bring about economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Forner illustrates how voting rights failed to offset decades of systematic disfranchisement and unequal investment in African American communities. Forner contextualizes Selma as a place, not a moment within the civil rights movement - a place where black citizens' fight for full citizenship unfolded alongside an agricultural shift from cotton farming to cattle raising, the implementation of federal divestment policies, and economic globalization. At the end of the twentieth century, Selma's celebrated political legacy looked worlds apart from the dismal economic realities of the region. Forner demonstrates that voting rights are only part of the story in the black freedom struggle and that economic justice is central to achieving full citizenship.

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Victory for the Vote

Doris Weatherford

Women's history expert Doris Weatherford's Winning the Vote and Beyond: The Fight for Women's Suffrage and the Century that Followed offers readers an engaging and detailed narrative history of women's seven-decade fight for the vote and will bring those readers up to date on key achievements - and challenges - in women's equality since then. An expanded edition of a 1998 volume on the history of the American suffragist movement, this volume now puts the fight for suffrage into contemporary context by discussing key challenges for women in the decades that followed 1920, such as reproductive rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and political power. 

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Inside The Mind of Sherlock Holmes

Cyril Lieron

An award-winning, and Eisner nominated, original graphic novel starring the world’s greatest detective: Sherlock Holmes! See into Sherlock’s mind like never before as Cyril Lieron depicts an intricate visual representation of his mind palace!

Sherlock Holmes fans can sink their teeth into this brand new original tale, which uniquely portrays the inner workings of the greatest detective’s mind as he works to solve the case!

A visually stunning treat, every thought and clue that flows through Sherlock’s mind is thoroughly explored and displayed in the art for readers to latch onto. Put on your deerstalker and pull out your magnifying glass, there’s a mystery to be solved!

Set in the Victorian era, the discovery of a mysterious powder on some clothing and a very special show ticket leads Sherlock Holmes to believe a patient isn't the only victim of a grand conspiracy.
Indeed, it seems the strange disappearance of Londoners can be explained by the performances of a Chinese magician. When other tickets are found, the detective's suspicions are confirmed…

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Saving Sunshine

Saadia Faruqi

Eisner-nominated
A 2024 Bank Street Best Books of the Year

Nominated for the 2024 Jane Addams Children's Book Award
A Kirkus Best Book of 2023

A New York Public Library Best Book for Kids 2023
A YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens selection

A 2024 Texas Library Association Little Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List Selection

From Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan comes a relatable, funny, and heart-wrenchingly honest graphic novel about Muslim American siblings who must learn how to stop fighting and support each other in a world that is often unkind.

It's hard enough being a kid without being teased for a funny sounding name or wearing a hijab.

It's even harder when you're constantly fighting your sibling—and Zara and Zeeshan really can't stand each other. During a family trip to Florida, when the bickering, shoving, and insults reach new heights of chaos, their parents sentence them to the worst possible fate— each other’s company! But when the twins find an ailing turtle, it presents a rare opportunity for teamwork—if the two can put their differences aside at last.

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Groot: Uprooted

Dan Abnett

An all-new story starring everyone's favorite tree Groot, taking place during his childhood living on Planet X

Cosmic mastermind Dan Abnett returns to tell a new tale from the sapling days of everyone's favorite monosyllabic Guardian of the Galaxy: Groot! Years ago in the tranquil glades of Planet X, Baby Groot is enjoying a happy childhood with his friends. But his life is about to be thrown into terrifying turmoil by a band of intergalactic despoilers who are asset-stripping entire worlds and leaving them barren! Can the young Groot escape capture by these marauders? What is the origin of this deadly threat? Why have the trees of Planet X fallen silent? And which young legendary hero-in-the-making will come to Groot's aid?

COLLECTING: Groot (2023) 1-4

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Oksi

Mari Ahokoivu

Booklist Editors' Choice
Bulletin Blue Ribbons 2021


"It's a fairytale nightmare of the highest quality, a heartfelt history lesson written in flames, a poem."--Comics Beat

★ "At once beautiful and creepy...a fusion of fantasy and folklore that is more fine art than comic book. A must for libraries with folklore and world culture collections."--School Library Connection (starred)

★ "Fluidly rendered in inky b&w washes; accents of color leap off the page as the translation by Aronpuro flows smoothly."--Publishers Weekly (starred)

★ "Painful yet unforgettable. [this] Finnish fairy tale sees the damage that gods, mothers, and daughters are willing to inflict upon one another, all under the guise of love."--Booklist (starred)

★ "Rich. Radiant. Arresting. A breathtaking exploration of generational connection and the ways that damage can pass down from mother to daughter as easily as love."--BCCB (starred)

Where was the bear born?
Where delivered?
By the moon, next to the sun
Among the stars of the plough
Sent to Earth in a golden cradle
With silvery chains.

Poorling is a little bear. She's a bit different from her brothers.

Mother keeps their family safe. For the Forest is full of dangers. It is there that Mana lives, with her Shadow children.

And above them all, Emuu, the great Grandma in the Sky.

From the heart of Finnish folklore comes a breathtaking tale of mothers, daughters, stars and legends, and the old gods and the new.

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Scales & Scoundrels

Sebastian Girner

It's hard to make an honest living in a land brimmingwith magic and mystery, and treasure hunter Luvander is tired of being apenniless adventurer. Ever in search of gold and glory, she sets off for afabled dungeon "the Dragon's Maw", an ancient labyrinth, at the bottom of whichslumber endless wealth...or certain doom!

Aloner by trade, Luvander is forced to team up with a team of scragglyadventurers, each hoping to find a treasure of their own in the forbidden tomb.:there is Prince Aki, of the Scarlet Sands Empire, anxious for first taste ofadventure yet blind to the consequences. hHis royal Shadow and bodyguard, Koro,whose very honor hangs in the balance of her prince's success. And Dorma Iron, astocky young dwarf whose journey will take her deeper into the darkness than sheever wished to tread.

For these scruffyheroes, what starts out as a road to riches becomes the first step on an epicjourney to destiny, for Luvander holds a secret in her heart that will shatterthe chains of fate, and bring light to a world encroached upon by an ancientdarkness.

Writer SEBASTIAN GIRNER (SHIRTLESSBEAR-FIGHTER!) and artist GALAAD are proud to present SCALES & SCOUNDRELS,an exciting new fantasy adventure from Image Comics, for scoundrels of allages!

Collecting SCALES & SCOUNDRELS#1-5
 

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This Day Changes Everything

Edward Underhill

Dash & Lily meets Ferris Bueller's Day Off in Edward Underhill's new whirlwind rom-com about two queer teens who spend one life-changing day together in New York City.

Abby Akerman believes in the Universe. After all, her Midwest high school marching band is about to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City—if that’s not proof that magical things can happen, what is? New York also happens to be the setting of her favorite romance novel, making it the perfect place for Abby to finally tell her best friend Kat that she’s in love with her (and, um, gay). She’s carefully annotated a copy of the book as a gift for Kat, and she’s counting on the Universe to provide an Epic Scene worthy of her own rom-com.

Leo Brewer, on the other hand, just wants to get through this trip without falling apart. He doesn’t believe the Universe is magical at all, mostly because he’s about to be outed to his very Southern extended family on national TV as the trans boy he really is. He’s not excited for the parade, and he’s even less excited for an entire day of sightseeing with his band.

But the Universe has other ideas. When fate throws Abby and Leo together on the wrong subway train, they soon find themselves lost in the middle of Manhattan. Even worse, Leo accidentally causes Abby to lose her Epic Gift for Kat. So to salvage the day, they come up with a new mission: find a souvenir from every location mentioned in the book for Abby to give Kat instead. But as Leo and Abby traverse the city, from the streets of Chinatown to the halls of Grand Central Station and the top of the Empire State Building, their initial expectations for the trip—and of each other—begin to shift. Maybe, if they let it, this could be the day that changes everything, for both of them.

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Sunderworld, Vol. I: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry

Ransom Riggs

The much-anticipated new fantasy series from Ransom Riggs, his first since introducing the #1 global phenomenon Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series.
Seventeen-year-old Leopold Berry is seeing weird things around Los Angeles. A man who pops a tooth into a parking meter. A glowing trapdoor in a parking lot. A half-mechanical raccoon with its tail on fire that just won’t leave him alone. Every hallucinatory moment seems plucked from a cheesy 1990s fantasy TV show called Max's Adventures in Sunderworld—and that’s because they are. 

Not a good sign.

In the blurry weeks after his mother’s death, a young Leopold discovered VHS tapes of its one and only season in a box headed for the trash—and soon became obsessed. Losing himself in Sunder was the best way to avoid two things: grieving his mother and being a chronic disappointment to his overbearing father. But when the strange visions return—at the worst possible time on the worst possible day—Leopold turns to his best friend Emmet for help. Together they discover that Sunder is much more than just an old TV show, and that Los Angeles is far stranger than they ever imagined. And soon, he’ll realize that not only is Sunderworld real, but it’s in grave danger.

Certain he’s finally been chosen for greatness, Leopold risks everything to claim his destiny, save the world of his childhood dreams, and prove once and for all that he’s not the disappointment his father believes him to be. But when everything goes terribly, horribly, excruciatingly wrong, Leopold’s disappointments prove to be more extraordinary than he ever could have imagined.

How do you battle darkness when no one believes in you—not even yourself?

Visionary storyteller Ransom Riggs weaves the familiar with the peculiar in a stunning tale of loss, triumph, friendship and magic, reminding readers everywhere that true heroes are made, not born—and that when you’re never the chosen one, sometimes you have to choose yourself. 

Welcome to Sunderworld.

 

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Eighteen Roses

Shannon C. F. Rogers

From the author of I'd Rather Burn Than Bloom, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Youth Literature, comes a sharply observed YA novel about friendship, family, and self-discovery, amid a backdrop of a Filipino debut.

Lucia Cruz may be turning eighteen this year, but she is not the debutante type. Everything about a traditional Filipino debut feels all wrong for her. Besides, custom dictates that eighteen friends attend her for a special ceremony on her birthday, and Lucia only has one friend– Esmé Mares. They've stuck to each other's side all throughout high school, content to be friends with only each other. At least, Lucia thought they were content.

As it turns out, Esmé wants something different out of her senior year. And, on top of that, Lucia's mom has planned a debutante ball for her birthday behind her back. She'll be forced to cobble together a court of eighteen “friends” before her beloved lola arrives from the Philippines for this blessed occasion.

How far will Lucia stray from her comfort zone in order to play the role of dutiful daughter and granddaughter? Will she do the unthinkable– participating in a school sponsored activity? Will she discover that her sense of humor can be a way to connect with people, not just push them away?

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