Staff Picks Summer 2023

By Colleen Hoover

Charlie Wynwood and Silas Nash have been best friends since they could walk. They've been in love since the age of fourteen. But as of this morning...they are complete strangers. Their first kiss, their first fight, the moment they fell in love...every memory has vanished.

By Jimmy Craig

These colorful illustrated comics include the inner thoughts of creatures from across the animal kingdom--from misunderstood sharks and trouble-making bears to the often complicated relationship between you and your pet cat.

By Claire Legrand

The island of Sawkill Rock: where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight...until now.

By Ashley Flowers

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. When Margot returns home after years away, Wakarusa is exactly how she remembered. Then news breaks about five-year-old Natalie Clark from the next town over, who's gone missing under eerily similar circumstances.

By Kevin Wilson

Lillian and Madison were the unlikeliest of roommates at their elite boarding school. Years later, the two have lost touch, but Madison writes and begs Lillian for help. Her husband's twin stepkids are moving in with them and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins can spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a disturbing but beautiful way.

By John Atkinson

Atkinson, the creator of Wrong Hands cartoons, cleverly sums up these works in the least amount of words possible, enhanced by his delightfully deadpan illustrations. More than a hundred titles are included from Brave New World to Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet to The Great Gatsby.

By Abby Jimenez

Dr. Briana Ortiz's life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother's running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that's probably going to the new man-doctor. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game... by sending Briana a letter. And it's a really good letter.

By Trish Doller

Carla Black's been traveling the world on her own in her vintage Jeep Wrangler for nearly a decade, stopping only long enough to replenish her adventure fund. She doesn't do love and she doesn't ever go home. Eamon Sullivan is a modern-day cartographer who creates digital maps. His work helps people find their way, but he's the one who's lost his sense of direction. Fate throws them together when Carla arrives in Dublin for her best friend's wedding and Eamon is tasked with picking her up from the airport. But what should be a simple drive across Ireland quickly becomes complicated with chemistry-filled detours.

By Colleen Oakley

Piper Parrish's life on Frick Island--a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay--is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: her beloved husband, Tom, is dead. When Tom's crab boat capsized and his body wasn't recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her.

By Sarah Penner

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary's fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.

By Laura Tucker

SoHo, 1981. Twelve-year-old Olympia is an artist -- and in her neighborhood, that's normal. Her dad and his business partner Apollo bring antique paintings back to life, while her mother makes intricate sculptures in a corner of their loft, leaving Ollie to roam the streets of New York with her best friends Richard and Alex, drawing everything that catches her eye. Then everything falls apart. Ollie's dad disappears in the middle of the night, leaving her only a cryptic note and instructions to destroy it.

By Teava

The orphaned Blondina lives a tough life on the streets, left only with a memento from her late mother-one that proves she is the child of the emperor of Ates. From the streets, Blondina moves into the royal palace where she lives a lonely existence-that is until she befriends a brash and surly cat named Amon. Not only can Amon talk, but he also turns into a cute boy! The truth is, Amon is no mere cat but rather a member of the Divine Leopard Clan, a group of powerful demi-humans often at odds with humanity. Will the two be able to stay friends despite all the conflicts?

By Robinne Lee

Solène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old owner of an art gallery in Los Angeles, is reluctant to take her daughter, Isabelle, to meet her favorite boy band. But since her divorce, she's more eager than ever to be close to Isabelle. The last thing Solène expects is to make a connection with one of the members of the world-famous August Moon. But Hayes Campbell is clever, winning, confident, and posh, and the attraction is immediate. That he is all of twenty years old further complicates things.

By Peter Clines

The folks in Mike Erikson's small New England town would say he's just your average, everyday guy. That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to "fold" dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.

By Ernest Cline

It's just another day of high school for Zack Lightman. He's daydreaming through another boring math class, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom--if he can make it that long without getting suspended again. Then he glances out his classroom window and spots the flying saucer.

By Darcie Little Badger

Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries. And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.

By Jane Harper

At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her stroller, her mother vanishing into the crowds. A year on, Kim Gillespie's absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country to welcome a new addition to the family. Joining the celebrations is federal investigator Aaron Falk. But as he soaks up life in the lush valley, he begins to suspect this tight-knit group may be more fractured than it seems.

By Adrian Tchaicovsky

Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life - but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth. Then humanity's great empire fell, and the program's decisions were lost to time. Aeons later, humanity and its new spider allies detected fragmentary radio signals between the stars. They dispatched an exploration vessel, hoping to find cousins from old Earth. But those ancient terraformers woke something on Nod better left undisturbed. And it's been waiting for them.

By Sulari Gentill

The beautifully ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is completely silent one weekday morning, until a woman's terrified scream echoes through the room. Security guards immediately appear and instruct everyone inside to stay put until they determine there is no threat. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers who had been sitting in the reading room get to chatting and quickly become friendly. Harriet, Marigold, Whit, and Caine each have their own reasons for being in the reading room that morning--and it just happens that one of them may turn out to be a murderer.

By Stacy Willingham

One year ago, Isabelle Drake's life changed forever: her toddler son, Mason, was taken out of his crib in the middle of the night while she and her husband were asleep in the next room. With little evidence and few leads for the police to chase, the case quickly went cold. However, Isabelle cannot rest until Mason is returned to her--literally. Except for the occasional catnap or small blackout where she loses track of time, she hasn't slept in a year. Isabelle's entire existence now revolves around finding him.

By Louise Kennedy

Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment - Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married - Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.

By Tom Segura

Tom Segura is known for his twisted takes and irreverent comedic voice. But after a few years of crazy tours and churning out podcasts weekly, all while parenting two young children, he desperately needs a second to himself. It’s not that he hates his friends and family — he’s not a monster — he’s just beat, which is why his son’s (ruthless) first full sentence, “I’d like to play alone, please,” has since become his mantra.

By Katy Hays

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.

By Ed Yong

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension-the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

By Graham Moore

It's the most sensational case of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a twenty-five-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. The subsequent trial taps straight into America's most pressing preoccupations: race, class, sex, law enforcement, and the lurid sins of the rich and famous. It's an open-and-shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed--until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, convinced of Nock's innocence, persuades the rest of the jurors to return the verdict of not guilty, a controversial decision that will change all their lives forever.

By Jill Childs

When Sophie arrives at the home of her childhood friend, she finds her friend much changed. Caroline-- who used to be so warm and confident--is secretive and on-edge, spending long, unexplained hours away from her family. And then there's Caroline's little daughter Lucy, who stopped speaking soon after they moved in. Caroline assures Sophie that it's only a phase, but Sophie thinks Lucy looks a little uncared for, a little afraid.

By Megan Miranda

Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later

By Rhett Bruno

In the West, there are worse things to fear than bandits and outlaws. Demons. Monsters. Witches. James Crowley's sacred duty as a Black Badge is to hunt them down and send them packing, banish them from the mortal realm for good. He didn't choose this life. No. He didn't choose life at all. Shot dead in a gunfight many years ago, now he's stuck in purgatory, serving the whims of the White Throne to avoid falling to Hell. Not quite undead, though not alive either, the best he can hope for is to work off his penance and fade away.

By SJ Whitby

We saved the world. We found a home. But our problems aren't close to over. The English countryside is hallucinating, we're harbouring a literal alien, and now there's a killer on the loose wearing my face. And as the trail of my murderous doppelgänger leads deeper into darkness, we'll need to dig up secrets from mutant history in order to fight back. I've never been the best at being a hero, and as things spiral out of control, I'm about to come face to face with my worst nightmare: myself.

By Yahtzee Croshaw

With magic declassified in the UK, the fake psychics and fraudulent healers are running amok, and it's up to the Department of Extradimensional Affairs' newly appointed Skepticism Officers to crack down. But when they set their sights on Modern Miracle, a highly suspicious and fast-growing faith healing cult with remarkably good social media presence, even their skepticism is put to the test.

By Colleen Oakley

Twenty-three-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. So when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it. One slip on the rug. That's all it took for Louise Wilt's daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Tanner wants nothing to do with the uptight old woman until she starts to notice things-weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on an international jewelry thief that looks eerily like Louise?

By Brandon Sanderson

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?

By Erin Duffy

The Devil Wears Prada meets Wall Street in Bond Girl--a hilarious, fast-paced race through the jungle of high finance in four-inch heels. An author who spent ten years working on Wall Street, Erin Duffy has parlayed her stock market savvy into a fresh, hip, funny, and sexy novel about a bright, young, newly minted B-school graduate's rise at one of the Street's most prestigious brokerage firms--only to confront the possible destruction of her dreams in the infamous 2008 financial bust.

By Mike Chen

The Clone Wars have begun. Battle lines are being drawn throughout the galaxy. With every world that joins the Separatists, the peace guarded by the Jedi Order is slipping through their fingers.

By Marc Schonbrun

Once guitar players learn the basics, they need to take the next step in their musical education. Scales are the musical grammar they're looking for, and this book is a one-stop shop for every scale guitar lovers could ever imagine!

By Will Thomas

In 1893, a volunteer at the British Museum makes a startling discovery. When examining a mummy in the museum's collection, he discovers there is a giant ruby in the shape of a heart buried in the chest of the mummy. Even more startling, the mummy might well be Cleopatra. The following morning, the volunteer is found floating in the Thames and the ruby has gone missing. Hired by the victim's wife to learn the truth behind his death, Barker and Llewelyn find themselves in the crosshairs

By Philip Plait

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel the universe? How would Saturn's rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what's the last thing you'd see before getting spaghettified? While traveling in person to most of these amazing worlds may not be possible-yet-the would-be space traveler need not despair: you can still take the scenic route through the galaxy.

By Jason Vuic

Florida has long beckoned retirees seeking to spend their golden years in the sun, but, for many, the American dream of owning a home there was financially impossible. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called 'installment land sales industry' appeared out of nowhere to hawk billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners.

By Charles Frazier

While on assignment to create a mural for the Dawes, Wyoming Post Office, painter Val Welch finds himself entranced by his hosts, John and Eve Long, but when Eve flees with a valuable painting, John recruits Val to track her down.

By Martha Hall Kelly

Two former female spies, bound by their past, risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi doctor in the aftermath of World War II-an extraordinary, propulsive historical novel inspired by true events.

By Barbara Kingsolver

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.

By Blake Crouch

Logan Ramsay can feel his brain...changing. And his body too. He's becoming something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human. As he sets out to discover who did this to him, and why, his transformation threatens everything-his family, his job, even his freedom. Because the truth of what's happened to him is more disturbing than he could possibly imagine.

By Nelson Demille

NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey is on a dangerous hunt for an apparent serial killer who has murdered nine--and maybe more--sex workers and hidden their bodies in the thick undergrowth on a lonely stretch of beach. As Corey digs deeper into this case, he comes to suspect that the failure of the local police to solve this sensational mystery may not be a result of their incompetence--it may be something else. Something more sinister.

By Nikki Erlick

Today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they'll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

By Harry Turtledove

It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancée. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him to join a top-secret "Project Azorian" in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean-and they really don't take "no" for an answer.

By Nicki Pau Preto

In a world ruled by fierce warrior queens, a grand empire was built upon the backs of Phoenix Riders--legendary heroes who soared through the sky on wings of fire--until a war between two sisters ripped it all apart. Sixteen years later, Veronyka is a war orphan who dreams of becoming a Phoenix Rider from the stories of old. After a shocking betrayal from her controlling sister, Veronyka strikes out alone to find the Riders--even if that means disguising herself as a boy to join their ranks.

By Ariel Lawhon, Kristina McMorris, and Susan Meissner

From three bestselling authors comes an interwoven tale about a trio of World War II nurses stationed in the South Pacific who wage their own battle for freedom and survival. Caught in the crosshairs of a fight between the U.S. military and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of the Philippine Islands, the nurses are forced to serve under combat conditions and, ultimately, endure captivity as the first female prisoners of the Second World War. As their resiliency is tested in the face of squalid living arrangements, food shortages, and the enemy's blatant disregard for the articles of the Geneva Convention, the women strive to keep their hope-- and their fellow inmates--alive, though not without great cost.

By Amor Towles

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

By JoJo Moyes

Nisha Cantor and Sam Kemp are two very different women. Nisha, 45, lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband inexplicably cuts her off entirely. She doesn't even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That's because Sam - 47, middle-aged, struggling to keep herself and her family afloat - has accidentally taken Nisha's gym bag. Now Nisha's got nothing. And Sam's walking tall with shoes that catch eyes.

By Stephen Amidon

On the surface, Emerson, Massachusetts, is just like any other affluent New England suburb. But when a young woman is found dead in the nicest part of town, the powerful neighbors close ranks to keep their families safe. In this searing novel, Eden Perry's death kicks off an investigation into the three teenagers who were partying with her that night, each a suspect.

By Allison Brennan

For three years, women have been disappearing--and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care. But in a town where everyone knows everyone, talking gets you killed and secrets stay buried, it's going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth. Especially when they discover that the deep-seated corruption and the deadly drug-trafficking ring at the center of it all extends far beyond the small-town borders.

By Rebecca Makkai

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past--especially the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. Is the real killer still out there?

By William Landay

Jane Larkin disappeared without a trace in November 1976. In the absence of other leads, detectives quickly turn their suspicions toward Jane's husband, Daniel. A criminal defense attorney, Dan would know a thing or two about how to stay one step ahead of investigators. Indeed, no evidence is ever found. And so Miranda and her two older brothers are left in limbo, to be raised by the man who may or may not have murdered their mother.

By Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.