Author: West, Kasie, author. Published: 2014 Call Number: Y WEST Format: Books Summary: "Sixteen-year-old Charlie has always been a tomboy, but when she accidentally becomes a makeup model, her newfound femininity draws her into an unknown social world, complete with guy troubles she's never had before"--
Author: Catton, Eleanor, 1985- author. Published: 2013 Call Number: F CATTON Format: Books Summary: Arriving in New Zealand in 1866 to seek his fortune in the goldfields, Walter Moody finds himself drawn into a series of unsolved crimes and complex mysteries.
Author: Mbue, Imbolo, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F MBUE Format: Books Summary: "'We should have known the end was near.' So begins Imbolo Mbue's exquisite and devastating novel How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by a large and powerful American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean up and financial reparations to the villagers are made--and ignored. The country's government, led by a corrupt, brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight the American corporation. Doing so will come at a steep price. Told through multiple perspectives and centered around a fierce young girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, Joy of the Oppressed is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghosts of colonialism, comes up against one village's quest for justice--and a young woman's willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people's freedom"--
Author: Morgan, Wesley, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: 958.104 Format: Books Summary: "When we think of the war in Afghanistan, chances are we're thinking of a small, remote corner of the country where American military action has been concentrated: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan provinces. The rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made the region a natural hiding spot for targets in the American war on terror, from Osama bin Laden to the Islamic State, and it has been the site of constant U.S. military activity for nearly two decades. Even as the U.S. presence in Afghanistan transitions to a drone war, the Pech has remained at the center of it, a testbed for a new method of remote warfare. Wesley Morgan, who grew up with the war, observing it closely, first visited the Pech in 2010, while he was still a college student embedding with military units as a freelancer. By then, the Pech and its infamous tributary the Korengal had become emblematic of the war, but Morgan found that few of the troops fighting there could explain how or when their remote outposts had been built. In The Hardest Place, he unravels the history those troops didn't know, captures the culture and reality of the war through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing American missteps that made each unit's job harder than the last as storied outfits like Marines, paratroopers, Rangers, Green Berets, and SEALs all took their turn... As the war drags on through its third presidential administration, Morgan concludes that we've created a status quo that could last forever in the Pech, always in search of the next target"--
Author: Rogin, Josh, 1978- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: 327.73 Format: Books Summary: Examines the U.S. rivalry with China during Donald Trump's presidency, discussing the trade war between the two countries and how the love-hate relationship between Trump and Xi Jinping forced the U.S. to reckon with China's foreign influence operations and human rights abuses. "The behind-the-scenes story of America's chaotic, high-stakes confrontation with Beijing, from an award-winning Washington Post columnist and peerless observer of the U.S.-China relationship. The war began as soon as Donald Trump won the presidency. In an attempt to shape the president-elect's stance toward China, Henry Kissinger began arranging secret meetings between incoming officials and Chinese leaders. Soon, factions in the new administration were battling to shape the U.S. strategy toward China, and with it the future of the most important relationship of the 21st century. The resulting chaos would not only lead Washington and Beijing into a trade war that would reshape international economics and push the two countries to the brink of a Cold War. It also would bring to a boil the long-simmering rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and force a reckoning over China's audacious influence operations within the United States's competition between superpowers that risks a confrontation of inconceivable peril."--
Author: Willig, Lauren, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F WILLIG Format: Large print Summary: "A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smiths Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her former best friend Emmeline Van Alden reaches out and begs her to take the place of a girl who had to drop out, Kate reluctantly agrees to join the new Smith College Relief Unit.Four months later, Kate and seventeen other Smithies, including two trailblazing female doctors, set sail for France. The volunteers are armed with money, supplies, and good intentions all of which immediately go astray. The chateau that was to be their headquarters is a half-burnt ruin. The villagers they meet are in desperate straits: women and children huddling in damp cellars, their crops destroyed and their wells poisoned. Despite constant shelling from the Germans, French bureaucracy, and the threat of being ousted by the British army, the Smith volunteers bring welcome aid and hope to the region. But can they survive their own differences? As they cope with the hardships and terrors of the war, Kate and her colleagues find themselves navigating old rivalries and new betrayals which threaten the very existence of the Unit.With the Germans threatening to break through the lines, can the Smith Unit pull together and be truly a band of sisters?"
Author: Quinn, Kate, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F QUINN Format: Large print Summary: Joining the elite Bletchley Park codebreaking team during World War II, three women from very different walks of life uncover a spy's dangerous agenda years later against the backdrop of the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip. 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Osla puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Mab works the legendary codebreaking machines and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Beth's shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and she becomes one of the Park's few female cryptanalysts. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, the three women are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter-- the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Quinn, Kate, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F QUINN Format: Books Summary: Joining the elite Bletchley Park codebreaking team during World War II, three women from very different walks of life uncover a spy's dangerous agenda years later against the backdrop of the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip. 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Osla puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Mab works the legendary codebreaking machines and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Beth's shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and she becomes one of the Park's few female cryptanalysts. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, the three women are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter-- the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. -- adapted from jacket
Author: West, Kathleen, 1978- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F WEST Format: Books Summary: "Alice Sullivan, a high-achieving architect and mom of two, is used to being in control. Until life rips the blueprints right out of her hands. While she's always strived for a picture perfect life, Alice's foundation is rocked when she discovers her daughter is failing reading at school, and worse, her son is a bully, having humiliated a classmate on stage in front of 500 of their peers. Alice feels desperate to make things right, but when she turns to her friends for support, she discovers her own social standing has eroded now that she's one of "those moms" who can't control her kids. As she tries to figure out where she went wrong, her curated life unravels further. She faces setbacks with a key client, her husband travels incessantly for business, and her mother decides to unload a family secret she's kept for more than thirty years--one that shifts Alice's entire perception of herself. Despite her attempts to have things under control, Alice can no longer rely on an inventive mudroom design and keeping her clients happy to make her feel better. She's been trying to beat the competition, measuring her success and happiness by everyone else's standards. Alice finds help, comfort, and strength from unexpected places, once she realizes that no one's got it all together, and that maybe that's okay"--
Author: Reed, Amy Lynn, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: Y REED Format: Books Summary: Eighteen-year-old Fern's life spirals out of control after troubled former child star Ivy Avila arrives on Commodore Island, ultimately forcing Fern to take agency over her own existence. On wealthy Commodore Island, Fern is watching and waiting--for summer, for college, for her childhood best friend to decide he loves her. Then Ivy Avila lands on the island like a falling star. When Ivy shines on her, Fern feels seen. When they're together, Fern has purpose. She glimpses the secrets Ivy hides behind her fame, her fortune, the lavish parties she throws at her great glass house, and understands that Ivy hurts in ways Fern can't fathom. And soon, it's clear Ivy wants someone Fern can help her get. But as the two pull closer, Fern's cozy life on Commodore unravels: drought descends, fires burn, and a reckless night spins out of control. Everything Fern thought she understood--about her home, herself, the boy she loved, about Ivy Avila--twists and bends into something new. And Fern won't emerge the same person she was. An enthralling, mind-altering fever dream, Tell Me My Name is about the cost of being a girl in a world that takes so much, and the enormity of what is regained when we take it back.