This list is features 125 librarian-recommended titles for teens and adults to read. You will find 25 titles per category: Young Adult, Mystery, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Comics and General Fiction. Enjoy and don't forget to sign up for the Summer Reading Program!
The hate u give
Angie Thomas
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Thomas Angie
Young Adult
After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.
Legend
Marie Lu
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Lu Marie
Young Adult
In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June, the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common enemy.
Anne of Green Gables.
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
jFICTION Montgomery, L. M.
Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her.
I am not your perfect Mexican daughter
Erika L. Sánchez
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Sanchez Erika
Young Adult
Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter.
The hobbit : or, There and back again
J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien
SCIENCE FICTION Tolkien, J. R. R.
The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish.
The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Sherman Alexie
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Alexie, Sherman
Young Adult
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
The book thief
Markus Zusak
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Zusak, Markus
Young Adult
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.
Judy Blume
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Blume, Judy
Young Adult
Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.
The crossover
Kwame Alexander
jFICTION Alexander, Kwame
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
Patron saints of nothing
Randy Ribay
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Ribay Randy
Young Adult
When seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero learns his Filipino cousin and former best friend, Jun, was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, he flies to the Philippines to learn more.
The hunger games
Suzanne Collins
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Collins, Suzanne
Young Adult
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
The poet X
Elizabeth Acevedo
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Acevedo, Elizabeth
Young Adult
Harlem. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers...
The maze runner
James Dashner
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Dashner, James
Young Adult
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Rowell Rainbow
Young Adult
"Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try"--
Punching the air
Ibi Aanu Zoboi
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Zoboi Ibi
Young Adult
At just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.
Holes
Louis Sachar
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Sachar, Louis
Young Adult
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone
J. K Rowling
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Rowling, J. K.
Young Adult
Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches. This is the first Hary Potter book.
The fault in our stars
John Green
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Green, John
Young Adult
Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.
Looking for Alaska
John Green
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Green, John
Young Adult
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.
Hatchet
Gary Paulsen
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Paulsen Gary
Young Adult
Headed for Canada to visit his father for the first time since his parents' divorce, thirteen-year-old Brian is the sole survivor of a plane crash, with only the clothes he has on and a hatchet to help him live in the wilderness.
Thirteen reasons why
Jay Asher
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Asher, Jay
Young Adult
When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.
Brown girl dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
jBIOGRAPHY Woodson, Jacqueline
"The author shares her childhood memories and reveals the first sparks that ignited her writing career in free-verse poems about growing up in the North and South"--
Love is a revolution
Renée Watson
ON ORDER BOOK
Young Adult
Harlem teenager Nala is looking forward to a summer of movies and ice cream until she falls in love with the very woke Tye and pretends to be a social activist.
The big sleep
Raymond Chandler
MYSTERY Chandler, Raymond
Here is the start of the 25 mystery titles recommended by staff!
- Becky
The mysterious affair at Styles
Agatha Christie
MYSTERY Christie, Agatha
Set in the summer of 1917, the story follows the war-wounded Hastings to the Styles St. Mary estate of his friend John Cavendish. The Cavendish household is wrought with tension due to the marriage of John's widowed mother to a suspicious younger man. In the village, Hastings runs into his old friend Hercule Poirot and, when the estate's trouble turns deadly, the friends unite to solve a most baffling case.
Still life
Louise Penny
MYSTERY Penny, Louise
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal.
The sweetness at the bottom of the pie
C. Alan Bradley
MYSTERY Bradley, C. Alan
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, must exonerate her father of murder. Armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together and examine new suspects, she begins a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself.
The Maltese falcon
Dashiell Hammett
MYSTERY Hammett, Dashiell
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime.
In the woods
Tana French
MYSTERY French, Tana
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
The hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle
MYSTERY Doyle Arthur
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes.
Mystic river
Dennis Lehane
MYSTERY Lehane, Dennis
When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.
An unsuitable job for a woman
P. D James
MYSTERY James, P. D.
Left alone by her partner's suicide, Cordelia Gray struggles to manage the private detective agency they once shared.
Killing floor
Lee Child
MYSTERY Child, Lee
Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone.
Dust and shadow : an account of the Ripper killings by Dr. John H. Watson
Lyndsay Faye
MYSTERY Faye, Lyndsay
Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive 19th-century London.
Devil in a blue dress
Walter Mosley
MYSTERY Mosley, Walter
Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.
Gaudy night : A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery with Harriet Vane
Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh) Sayers
MYSTERY Sayers, Dorothy L.
A coffin for Dimitrios
Eric Ambler
MYSTERY Ambler Eric
An early classic of espionage fiction. Through the cafés, trains, and nighttime cities of Europe, Charles Latimer follows a twisting trail of drug-smugglers, thieves and assassins that will lead him to Dimitrios.
The man in the queue
Josephine Tey
MYSTERY Tey, Josephine
Inspector Grant of the CID travels deep into the theatrical world in his efforts to build up a picture of the nameless stranger found stabbed to death in the queue outside the theatre.
The talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith
MYSTERY Highsmith, Patricia
In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal, but he grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante.
The black dahlia
James Ellroy
MYSTERY Ellroy, James
On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history. In this fictionalized treatment of a real case, Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard, both LA cops obsessed with the Black Dahlia, journey through the seamy underside of Hollywood to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.
The snowman
Jo Nesbø
MYSTERY Nesbo, Jo
"In Oslo, after the first snow of the season has fallen, a woman disappears, and a sinister snowman is left in her wake. As irascible detective Harry Hole realizes that this is only one of multiple disappearances, he begins to think a serial killer may be at work--and may be drawing in Hole personally and intentionally"--
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY McCall Smith, Alexander
Mma “Precious” Ramotswe sets up a detective agency in Botswana on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, making her the only female detective in the country. At first, cases are hard to come by. But eventually, troubled people come to Precious with a variety of concerns.
The bone collector
Jeffery Deaver
MYSTERY Deaver, Jeffery
Lincoln Rhyme was once a brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics - until an accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a diabolical killer is challenging Rhyme to a terrifying and ingenious duel of wits.
Who fears death
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
SCIENCE FICTION Okorafor-Mbachu, Nnedi
Born into post-apocalyptic Africa to a mother who was raped after the slaughter of her entire tribe, Onyesonwu is tutored by a shaman and discovers that her magical destiny is to end the genocide of her people.
This is the start of our list for 25 recommended science fiction/fantasy titles!
- Becky
The golden compass
Philip Pullman
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Pullman, Philip
Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.
Good omens : the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch
Neil Gaiman
SCIENCE FICTION Gaiman, Neil
Snow crash
Neal Stephenson
SCIENCE FICTION Stephenson, Neal
A part-time hacker, information-scrounge, and delivery boy for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Pizzerias, and full-time Metaverse (virtual reality) samurai named Hiro Protagonist (one of the best names since Billy Pilgrim!), is slowly drawn into a mystery involving a virus program called Snow Crash, which is claiming not only the computers but the minds of hackers the world over, including Hiro's best friend. Who is behind all this, and what it has to do with Sumerian mythology and the hard-wiring of the human language centers is what Hiro must find out, while at the same time he attempts to prevent the further spread of the Snow Crash virus. Along the way he falls in with a skateboard punk named Y.T., who is more instrumental to the story than might first be suggested, and who is the novel's most intriguing character, if only because her investigations are almost more revealing than Hiro's are -- in fact, Hiro comes off as a bit of a cypher compared to her.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller
SCIENCE FICTION Miller, Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz opens 600 years after 20th century civilization has been destroyed by a global nuclear war, known as the "Flame Deluge." As a result of the war, there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons.
The last unicorn
Peter S Beagle
SCIENCE FICTION Beagle, Peter S.
Recounts the quest of the last unicorn, who leaves the protection of the enchanted forest to search for her own kind, and who is joined by Schmedrick the Magician and Molly Grue in her search.
Uprooted
Naomi Novik
SCIENCE FICTION Novik Naomi
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.
Blankets : an illustrated novel
Craig Thompson
GRAPHIC NOVEL Thompson
Here is the start of the list of 25 recommended Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga.
- Becky
Nimona
Noelle Stevenson
GRAPHIC NOVEL Stevenson
"Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are. But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit"--
Watchmen
Alan Moore
COMIC Watchmen
As former members of a disbanded group of superheroes called the Crimebusters start turning up dead, the remaining members of the group try to discover the identity of the murderer before they, too, are killed.
Saga
Brian K. Vaughan
COMIC Saga
"The sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the universe. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old world"--Page [4] of cover.
My favorite thing is monsters
Emil Ferris
GRAPHIC NOVEL Ferris My
"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.
The Sandman
Neil Gaiman
COMIC Sandman
An attempt to summon and imprison Death, instead results in the capture of her brother, Morpheus, the Sandman, who after making his escape must regain the tools of his powers. Follow the King of Dreams, brother of the Endless, as he travels through a myriad of landscapes to meet with the gods, demons, and others who inhabit both Earth and the other realms.
Daytripper : the Deluxe Edition
Fábio Moon
COMIC Daytripper
DAYTRIPPER follows the life of one man, Bras de Olivias Dominguez. Every chapter features an important period in Bras' life in exotic Brazil, and each story ends the same way: with his death. And then, the following story starts up at a different point in his life, oblivious to his death in the previous story-and then also ends with him dying again. In every chapter, Bras dies at different moments in his life, as the story follows him through his entire existence-one filled with possibilities of happiness and sorrow, good and bad, love and loneliness.
Through the woods
Emily Carroll
GRAPHIC NOVEL Carroll
"A collection of five spine-tingling short stories"--
Here
Richard McGuire
GRAPHIC NOVEL McGuire
Richard McGuire's Here is the story of a corner of a room and the events that happened in that space while moving forward and backward in time. The book experiments with formal properties of comics, using multiple panels to convey the different moments in time. Hundreds of thousands of years become interwoven.
Doom Patrol
Grant Morrison
COMIC Doom 1989
"Shunned as freaks and outcasts, and tempered by loss and insanity, this band of misfits faces threats so mystifying in nature and so corrupted in motive that reality itself threatens to fall apart around them--but it's still all in a day's work for the Doom Patrol"--Page [4] of cover, volume 1.
Locke & key
Joe Hill
COMIC Locke
The story of the Keyhouse, a New England mansion, with doors that transform all who walk through them... and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it opens the most terrible door of all.
The Vision
Tom King
COMIC Vision 2015
One of the most celebrated comic books of the century, collected in full at last! Vision wants to be human, and what's more human than family? So he heads back to the beginning - to the laboratory where Ultron created him as a weapon. The place where he first rebelled against his given destiny and imagined that he could be more - that he could be a man. There, he builds them. A wife, Virginia. Teenage twins, Viv and Vin. They look like him. They have his powers. They share his grandest ambition - or is that obsession? - the unrelenting need to be ordinary. Behold the Visions! Theirs is a story of togetherness and tragedy - one that will send the Android Avenger into a devastating confrontation with Earth's Mightiest Heroes. -- Amazon.com
Akira
Katsuhiro Ōtomo
MANGA Otomo Akira
In Neo-Tokyo, built on the former site of Tokyo after World War III, two teenagers are targeted by agencies after they develop paranormal abilities.
Batman : the killing joke
Alan Moore
COMIC Batman
One bad day. According to the grinning engine of madness and mayhem known as The Joker, that's all that separates the sane from the psychotic. Freed once again from the confines of Arkham Asylum, he's out to prove his deranged point.
Captain America. Winter soldier
Ed Brubaker
COMIC Captain 2004
The instant-classic saga that brought Bucky Barnes back from the dead - and introduced the world to the Winter Soldier! The shocking murder of the Red Skull leaves an un-finished Cosmic Cube at large. Adding to the imminent danger, a cadre of the Skull's followers sets in motion a plan to ignite bombs in the hearts of Paris, London and Manhattan!
All-star Superman
Grant Morrison
COMIC Superman
The Underverse ruled by Bizarros. The time-eating Chronovore. Jimmy Olsen, superhero? Nothing is impossible in ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. Except for the fact that Superman... is dying. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's masterpiece is now released as a part of DC's prestigious new imprint of standalone graphic novels, DC Black Label.
American born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang
GRAPHIC NOVEL Yang
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.
An American marriage
Tayari Jones
FICTION Jones Tayari
"Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound and separated by forces beyond their control"--
This book marks the start of our final category, General Fiction.
- Becky
Circe : a novel
Madeline Miller
FICTION Miller Madeline
Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.
The Nickel boys : a novel
Colson Whitehead
FICTION Whitehead, Colson
Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future.
Such a fun age : a novel
Kiley Reid
FICTION Reid Kiley
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
Where the crawdads sing
Delia Owens
FICTION Owens Delia
Fans of Barbara Kingsolver will love this stunning debut novel from a New York Times bestselling nature writer, about an unforgettable young woman determined to make her way in the wilds of North Carolina, and the two men that will break her isolation open. For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say.
A gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
FICTION Towles Amor
A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count 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.
Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
Kurt Vonnegut
FICTION Vonnegut, Kurt
Billy Pilgrim returns home from the Second World War only to be kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who teach him that time is an eternal present.
IQ
Joe Ide
FICTION Ide Joe
A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores. East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can't or won't touch. They call him IQ.
A man called Ove : a novel
Fredrik Backman
FICTION Backman, Fredrik
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon; the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
FICTION Adichie Chimamanda
"A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected"--
All the light we cannot see : a novel
Anthony Doerr
FICTION Doerr Anthony
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Transcendent kingdom
Yaa Gyasi
FICTION Gyasi Yaa
"A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice"--
The pull of the stars : a novel
Emma Donoghue
FICTION Donoghue Emma
"In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have fallen sick are quarantined into a separate ward to keep the plague at bay. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders, a woman doctor who is a rumored Rebel, and a teenage girl, Bridie, procured by the nuns from their orphanage as an extra set of hands. At first, this Bridie seems unschooled in life, she makes up a bed with only the rubber mat and savors the weak tea and barely edible porridge from the hospital kitchen. But in the intensity of this ward, over three brutal days, Julia and the women come together in unexpected ways."--Publisher.
Starting the list off with 25 highly recommended YA titles.
- Becky