Author: Sisson, Gretchen E., author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 362.734 Format: Books Summary: "A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real. Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. The stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace an individual, private solution to a large-scale, social problem. With the recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization revoking abortion protections and the upcoming decision in Brackeen v. Haaland likely to revoke the Indian Child Welfare Act, we are in a political moment in which adoption is, increasingly, being revealed as an institution devoted to separating families and policing parenthood under the guise of feel-good family-building. Rooted in a long-term study, Relinquished is an analysis of hundreds of in-depth interviews with American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption. The voices of these women are powerful and heartrending; they deserve to be heard as a response to this moment"--
Author: Randall, Christen, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y RANDALL Format: Books Summary: When her boyfriend excludes her from participating in a roleplaying game, high school senior Hollie joins an all-girls group where an in-game romance has the potential to be more than just pretend.
Author: Cohen, Rhaina, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 177.62 Format: Books Summary: "Why do we assume romantic relationships are more important than friendships? What do we lose when we expect a spouse to meet all our needs? And what can we learn about commitment, love, and family from people who put deep friendship at the center of their lives? In The Other Significant Others, NPR's Rhaina Cohen invites us into the lives of people who have defied convention by choosing a friend as a life partner--these are friends who are home co-owners, co-parents or each other's caregivers. Their riveting stories unsettle widespread assumptions about relationships, including the idea that sex is a defining feature of partnership and that people who raise kids together should be in a romantic relationship. Platonic partners from different walks of life--spanning age and religion, gender and sexuality and more--reveal how freeing and challenging it can be to embrace a relationship model that society doesn't recognize..."--
Author: Young, Erin, 1975- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F YOUNG Format: Books Summary: "A brilliant and addictive thriller for fans of Tana French and Liz Moore, FBI rookie Riley Fisher must navigate a brutal serial killer as well as a kidnapping plot against the governor. It's a brutal winter in Des Moines, Iowa, and the city is gripped by fear. A serial attacker known as the Sin Eater is stalking women and has just struck again. It's a tough time and a tough place for Riley Fisher, a former small-town sergeant, to be reporting for duty as an FBI agent on her first assignment. Teamed with a man she's not sure she can trust and struggling to prove herself--while fighting the pull of her old life and family dramas--Riley is tasked with investigating a vicious death threat against the newly elected female state governor. Gradually, she traces a disturbing connection between this case and the hunt for the Sin Eater. Through snow, ice, violence and lies, Riley Fisher is drawn towards a terrifying revelation. Erin Young follows up her acclaimed crime debut, The Fields, which has drawn comparisons with Mare of Easttown, Silence of the Lambs, and True Detective, with another stunning thriller full of dark menace, surprise and suspense"--
Author: Bruen, Ken, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F BRUEN Format: Books Summary: Irish detective Jack Taylor awakens from a coma to discover that his sleuthing services are needed after two local nuns are found bludgeoned by a hammer. "Jack Taylor wakes up from a coma to discover that much of the world has changed since he last walked the streets of Galway. The pandemic had hit while he was under, devastating the lives of many in his beloved city and beyond. Now, as Jack tries to recover from the attack that put him in the hospital and absorb the incredible changes in the world around him, a woman approaches him with a distressing case: two local nuns have been bludgeoned by a mysterious man wielding a hammer, and more are sure to follow. As the police fail to act while the violence against the Sisters escalates, Jack seems like their only hope..." --Amazon.com
Author: McGinnis, Mindy, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y MCGINNIS Format: Books Summary: "Neely’s monsters don’t always follow her rules, so when the little girl under her bed, the man in her closet, and the disembodied voice that shadows her every move become louder, she knows she’s in trouble. With a history of mental illness in her family, and the suicide of her older brother heavy on her mind, Neely takes a job as a tour guide in the one place her monsters can’t follow—the caverns. There she can find peace. There she can pretend to be normal. There . . . she meets Mila. Mila is everything Neely isn’t—beautiful, strong, and confident. As the two become closer, Neely’s innocent crush grows into something more. When a midnight staff party exposes Neely to drugs, she follows Mila’s lead . . . only to have her hallucinations escalate. When Mila is found brutally murdered in the caverns, Neely has to admit that her memories of that night are vague at best. With her monsters now out in the open, and her grip on reality slipping, Neely must figure out who killed Mila . . . and face the possibility that it might have been her." --
Author: Hodge, Rosamund, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y HODGE Format: Books Summary: "After killing Ruven, a heretic sorcerer, and waking the royal family from an enchanted sleep, Lia, born with a miraculous gift, must marry Prince Araunn and forge a pact with a god--or die, discovering the boy she killed may be her only hope of survival"--
Author: Waldman, Adelle, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F WALDMAN Format: Books Summary: "Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day's truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn't schedule them for enough hours--most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility of advancement. The members of Team Movement--including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her "cool kid" status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path--band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion."
Author: Michaels, Fern, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F MICHAELS Format: Books Summary: Called back to the Office of Special Investigations for a highly specialized assignment, school guidance counselor Melanie Drake must pose as an escort to infiltrate a dangerous international group of billionaires during a decadent dinner to collect information vital to national security. "For Melanie Drake, school guidance counselor in a small Virginia town, the day?s challenges typically involve a playground scuffle or a student skipping school. It?s worlds away from her previous career as a vital part of the Office of Special Investigations. There, she devoted herself heart and soul to covert operations, the riskier the better. Since leaving, Melanie has cherished her peaceful, calm existence, with her two beloved retired service dogs for company. Then a call comes from her former supervisor, Rich Patterson. He needs her back for a highly specialized assignment. An international group of billionaires is known to meet regularly for decadent dinners, and they always hire high-class escorts for the occasion. Only the most elegant, well-educated, and sophisticated women will do. Infiltrating those meetings could yield information vital to national security..." --Amazon.com
Author: Obreht, Téa, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F OBREHT Format: Books Summary: "When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia's aunt, Ena, has been serving as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about the family's past. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give a young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland in the Old World, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's new home. As Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities, she becomes obsessed with the mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside, with three massive Rottweilers who may or may not be more than they appear. Silvia's mission to unravel the truth about this woman's life, and her own haunted past, will transform her own life in the most unexpected of ways"--
Author: McCammon, Sarah, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 306 Format: Books Summary: Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the '80s and '90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and--most of the time--a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the "alternative facts" of their childhood. Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact. --
Author: Watters, Jesse, 1978- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 320.973 WATTERS Format: Books Summary: "A series of interviews with people from various backgrounds, showing how people's personal experiences influences their politics"--
Author: Davis, Patti, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: B DAVIS Format: Books Summary: "A remarkably poignant writer for our troubled times, Patti Davis writes about love, loss, and the power of redemption in this poetic letter to her long-gone parents"-- "Written with dignity and grace in the form of a letter to her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Dear Mom and Dad is that surprisingly poignant work that succeeds not only as a memoir but as a moving account that will inspire readers to recall their own childhoods in a totally new light. Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Just as she re-examines her own role in an increasingly dysfunctional family drama, Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents?on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth..." --Amazon.com
Author: Ko, Lisa, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F KO Format: Books Summary: "Three Asian American teenagers meet in the New York suburbs in the 1980s. Drawn together by their shared sense of alienation from their conventionally domestic immigrant families, each wants to live a meaningful life. They envision a future defined by freedom and creativity, but on the brink of adulthood in New York City, their fortunes quickly diverge. Giselle Chin is a performance artist, pushing the boundaries of the form while socializing with the city's artistic and financial elite. Jackie Ong works at tech start-ups during the early dotcom era, as the internet's egalitarian promise is tested against its rampant monetization. Ellen Ng, a community activist, fights against gentrification overwhelming the city's neighborhoods. Their chosen paths separate them, but their friendship sustains and challenges them across huge divides of class, status, and worldview. Decades later, their sense of what is possible has changed, mutating against the hardscrabble realities of work and love. Moving from the 1980s to the 2040s, spanning multiple eras of a changing New York City, Memory Piece explores the roles of art, friendship, and creativity in self-preservation, chronicling three women as they strive to find value in a radically different world than the one they were promised. Ambitious, visionary, and intellectually playful, Memory Piece asks how we define a good life, individually and collectively, and understanding what we do about the direction our society is headed-where do we go from here?"--
Author: Peterson, Tracie, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F PETERSON Format: Books Summary: "The heart finds its way when one least expects it--even in the most unforgiving frontiers. Invited by a friend to trek west and help establish the newly formed town of Cheyenne, Edward Vogel is prepared to leave the haunting memories of his wife and son's deaths behind him. The only problem is the corrupt new railroad town wants family men who can establish law and order, and desperation leads Edward to his friend Marybeth with a proposition of marriage. After her father's death leaves her with no means of support, Marybeth Kruger is in danger of having her two-year-old half sister taken from her. So when Edward Vogel, the widower husband of her late best friend, offers her a marriage of convenience to escape both their troubles, she has no choice but to accept. Life in Cheyenne is fraught with danger, but will this arrangement be enough to save Edward and Marybeth from the pasts they tried to escape? Or will life with each other put them--and their hearts--in more danger than ever?"--
Author: Cavanagh, Steve, author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F CAVANAGH Format: Books Summary: "One dark evening on New York City's Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect plan: if you kill for me, I'll kill for you. In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She's attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?"
Author: Everett, Percival, author. Based on (work): Twain, Mark, 1835-1910. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Published: 2024 Call Number: F EVERETT Format: Books Summary: "From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature"--
Author: Bunting, Josiah, III, 1939- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: B MARSHALL Format: Books Summary: "A portrait of one of the greatest leaders of modern history, George Catlett Marshall, and a distillation of the essential lessons his formation offers to the leaders of today and tomorrow. George Marshall was a soldier--statesman who guided the Allies to victory during World War II and set Europe on the postwar path to recovery with the plan that bears his name, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. But how did he become such an effective leader? By eschewing the years and accomplishments for which Marshall is most often remembered and focusing instead on the decisive moments that led up to them, Making a Leader provides the most detailed look yet at the mettle of Marshall's character, guiding us from his arrival as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute and his Fort Leavenworth days--where he 'learned how to learn'--to his instructive time as John J. Pershing's aide-de-camp and his critical experiences during World War I..."--
Author: Gottfried, Sara, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 616.978 GOTTFRIE Format: Books Summary: Reveals how trauma can rewire your body to trigger autoimmune diseases--and provides a comprehensive plan for readers to reset their immune system and finally heal.
Author: Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 908.9 Format: Books Summary: "A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country's history. Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison--these writers used words to create a livable world--a "home"--for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society. It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a community formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal sub-human bondage, transformed itself through the word into a community whose foundational definition was based on overcoming one of history's most pernicious lies. This collective act of resistance and transcendence is at the heart of its self-definition as a "community."..."--
