Author: Bellows, Amanda Brickell, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 910.922 Format: Books Summary: "A fascinating new history of America, told through the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary-and often overlooked-adventurers, from Sacagawea to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny"--
Author: Zhao, Amélie Wen, author. Sequel to: Zhao, Amélie Wen. Song of silver, flame like night. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y ZHAO Format: Books Summary: Determined to finish her mother's mission, Lan seeks to destroy the legendary four Demon Gods, while Zen, who made a perilous pact with one of these demons, seeks to use their power to save his kingdom and the girl he loves. "The epic sequel to the book Song of Silver, Flame Like Night, is a fast-paced, riveting YA fantasy inspired by the mythology and folklore of ancient China. The Demon Gods have risen. Skies' End has fallen to the colonizers. And Lan and Zen have chosen sides. But they will not fight together. Though Lan inherited the power of the Silver Dragon, she understands the path she must take. She believes the Demon Gods to be the cause of war, conflict, and turmoil, and that the future of the Last Kingdom depends on their being eliminated forever. Worse, she knows that if the Elantians manage to bind one of the legendary beings, their army will be unstoppable. To save her kingdom and her people, Lan will need to find the only mythical weapon capable of destroying the Demon Gods: the Godslayer. Zen is sure that the only way to free the Last Kingdom is to use the power of the Demon Gods. When he bound the Black Tortoise, he paid the ultimate price: to inherit its strength, he will forfeit his body, his mind, and his soul. Yet one Demon God is not enough against the might of the colonizers. In the ruins of the northern Mansorian lands slumbers a magical army of demonic practitioners capable of facing off against the Elantians--but Zen must find the Seal to awaken them to fight by his side. At the center of both Lan's and Zen's journeys is one city: Shaklahira, a former stronghold of the Imperial Court that vanished without a trace when the Elantians invaded. Its location is a mystery, and both are sure that it holds the answers they need, but the past it hides might be more dangerous than anything they've faced yet. The battle for the Last Kingdom rages on. But to win the war, Lan will have to decide: Can she face the boy she loves again? And when she does, can she kill him to free her people?" --
Author: Goudeau, Jessica, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 976.4 Format: Books Summary: "An award-winning author's deep exploration of pivotal moments in Texas history through multiple generations of her own family, and a ruthless reexamination of our national and personal myths-- Over seven generations, Jessica Goudeau's family members were church elders, preachers, Sunday school teachers and potluck organizers. Her great-grandfather helped establish a Christian university in Abilene, Texas, which she attended along with her grandparents, parents, siblings, and cousins. Her family's legacy--a word she heard often growing up--was rooted in faithfulness, righteousness, and the hard work that built the great state of Texas. It wasn't until she began to dig more deeply into the story of the land she lives on today in suburban Austin, that she discovered her family's far more complicated role in Texas history, from early illegal settlements on Mexican land, bringing slavery to the state, up through the redlining policies her great-grandfather signed into place that have ramifications even now. Tracking her ancestors' involvement in pivotal moments from before the Texas Revolution to the Civil War to the rise of the Texas Rangers, up through today, We Were Illegal is at once an intimate and character-driven narrative and an insider's revisionist look at a state that prides itself on its history..."--
Author: Upholt, Boyce, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 508 Format: Books Summary: In this landmark work of natural history, a journalist tells the epic story of the Mississippi River and the centuries of efforts to control it, which have damaged its once-vibrant ecosystems, carrying readers along the river's last remaining backchannels and exploring how scientists hope to restore what has been lost. "The Mississippi River lies at the heart of America, an undeniable life force that is intertwined with the nation's culture and history. Its watershed spans almost half the country, Mark Twain's travels on the river inspired our first national literature, and jazz and blues were born in its floodplains and carried upstream. In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of this wild and unruly river, and the centuries of efforts to control it. Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded "the great river" with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. The river was ever-changing, and Indigenous tribes embraced and even depended on its regular flooding. But the expanse of the watershed and the rich soils of its floodplain lured European settlers and American pioneers, who had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer..." --Amazon.com
Author: Whippman, Ruth, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 305.23 Format: Books Summary: "An illuminating deep dive into the complexities of raising boys within the confines of harmful cultural norms--and how mothers can challenge those social pressures to support their sons and guide them to become connected, emotionally nuanced humans"-- "As the culture wars rage, and masculinity has been politicized from all sides, feminist writer and mother of three boys Ruth Whippman finds herself conflicted and scared. While the right pushes a dangerous vision of fantasy manhood, her feminist peers often dismiss boys as little more than entitled predators-in-waiting. Meanwhile her home life feels like a daily confrontation with the triumph of nature over nurture. With young men in the grip of a loneliness epidemic and dying by suicide at a rate of nearly four times their female peers, Whippman asks: How do we raise our sons to have a healthy sense of self without turning them into privileged assholes? How can we find a feminism that holds boys to a higher standard but still treats them with empathy? And what do we do when our boys won't cooperate with our plans?" --Amazon.com
Author: Vedder, Leslie, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y VEDDER Format: Books Summary: Trapped in a tower with Briar Rose, Fi faces the Spindle Witch's threat and the imminent discovery of Siphoning Spells, while Shane seeks a weapon to save Andar and contends with the danger of Red's betrayal and the ruthless Spindle Witch's executioner, leading them to unravel the secrets of the Tomb of Queen Aurora.
Author: Dias, Elizabeth, author. Lerer, Lisa, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 342.73 Format: Books Summary: With expertise across politics and religion, two award-winning New York Times journalists show how the battle over Roe, no matter your view on abortion, symbolizes a miscarriage of the ideals America promised: democracy, morality and freedom, while inadvertently laying out a roadmap for how we might make our way forward in this new America. "In June 2022, Americans watched in shock as the Supreme Court reversed one of the nation's landmark rulings. For nearly a half century, Roe was synonymous with women's rights and freedoms. Then, suddenly, it was gone. In their groundbreaking book The Fall of Roe, Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer reveal the explosive inside story of how it happened. Their investigation charts the shocking political and religious campaign to take down abortion rights and remake American families, womanhood, and the nation itself. In doing so, Dias and Lerer go beyond the traditional political narrative into the most personal reaches of American life..." --Amazon.com
Author: Graff, Garrett M., 1981- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 940.5421 Format: Books Summary: The New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist for Watergate turns his attention to D-Day, one of history's greatest and most unbelievable military and human triumphs, exploring the full impact of this world-changing event and offering a fitting tribute to the people of the Greatest Generation.
Author: Gonzales, Sophie, 1992- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y GONZALES Format: Books Summary: When sixteen-year-old Ivy Winslow, a fanfic writer, accidentally brings Weston her favorite TV character to life, she enlists the help of her new best friend Henry and her ex-best friend Mack to deal with her creation.
Author: Porter, Evan S., author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F PORTER Format: Books Summary: "A heartwarming novel about a dad who whisks his 11-year-old daughter away to a week-long father-daughter camp to bond before he loses her to teenage girlhood entirely, and ends up reconnecting with the person he gave up to become a Super Dad"-- "After his daughter, Avery, was born, John gave it all up--hobbies, friends, a dream job--to be something more: a super dad. Since then, he's spent nearly every waking second with Avery, who's his absolute best bud. Or, at least, she was. When now eleven-year-old Avery begins transforming into an eye-rolling zombie of a preteen who dreads spending time with him, a desperate John whisks her away for a weeklong father-daughter retreat to get their relationship back on track before she starts middle school..." --Amazon.com
Author: Ronson, Suzi. author. Published: 2024 Call Number: B RONSON Format: Books Summary: "From the stylist behind David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust look, an electrifying peek behind the curtains during a legendary chapter of pop culture history. Having crafted his iconic Ziggy Stardust hairstyle, Suzi becomes the only working woman in David's touring party and joins The Spiders from Mars as they perform around the globe. Amid the costume blunders, parties, and groupies she meets her husband-to-be, Mick Ronson, and together they traverse the absurdities of life in rock & roll, falling in with the likes of Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed along the way"--Dust jacket.
Author: Kingdon, Amorina, 1985- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 591.77 Format: Books Summary: "For centuries, humans ignored sound in the "silent world" of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn't perceive, didn't exist. But we couldn't have been more wrong. Marine scientists now have the technology to record and study the complex interplay of the myriad sounds in the sea. Finally, we can trace how sounds travel with the currents, bounce from the seafloor and surface, bend with the temperature and even saltiness; how sounds help marine life survive; and how human noise can transform entire marine ecosystems. In Sing Like Fish, award-winning science journalist Amorina Kingdon synthesizes historical discoveries with the latest scientific research in a clear and compelling portrait of this sonic undersea world. From plainfin midshipman fish, whose swim-bladder drumming is loud enough to keep houseboat-dwellers awake, to the syntax of whalesong; from the deafening crackle of snapping shrimp, to the seismic resonance of underwater earthquakes and volcanoes; sound plays a vital role in feeding, mating, parenting, navigating, and warning-even in animals that we never suspected of acoustic ability..."--
Author: Rocca, Mo, author. Greenberg, Jonathan, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 305.26 Format: Books Summary: "Eighty has been the new sixty for about twenty years now. In fact, there have always been late-in-life achievers, those who declined to go into decline just because they were eligible for social security. Journalist, humorist, and history buff Mo Rocca and coauthor Jonathan Greenberg introduce us to the people past and present who peaked when they could have been puttering--breaking out as writers, selling out concert halls, attempting to set land-speed records--and in the case of one ninety-year-old tortoise, be coming a first-time father ... In the vein of Mobituaries, Roctogenarians is a collection of entertaining and unexpected profiles of these unretired titans--some long gone (a cancer-stricken Henri Matisse, who began work on his celebrated cut-outs when he could no longer paint), some [until recently] still living (the original EGOT, Rita Moreno). The amazing cast of characters also includes Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-six helped lead sit-ins at segregated Washington, DC, lunch counters in the 1950s, and John Goodenough, who was more than good enough to score a Nobel Prize at ninety-seven for inventing the lithium-ion battery. Then there's Peter Mark Roget, who began working on his thesaurus in his twenties but completed it at ninety years old"--
Author: Karmel, Ian, author. Karmel, Alisa, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 306.4613 Format: Books Summary: "Part memoir, part support group, comedian Ian Karmel with help from his sister Alisa, a clinical psychologist, opens up about the daily humiliations of being fat and traces the way that fat--gaining it, losing it, worrying about it, trying to hide it--dictates the way so many of us live"-- "Ian Karmel has weighed eight pounds and he has weighed 420 pounds and right now he's almost exactly in between the two, but this book is not a weight-loss book. It's about being a fat person in a skinny world. It's about gym class and football practice, about chicken wings and juice cleanses, about airplane seats and roller coasters, about fat jokes and Jabba the Hutt, about crying in the Big and Tall section and the joys of being a sneakerhead, about prediabetes and gout, and about realizing that you actually don't want to eat yourself to death and hoping it's not too late..." --Amazon.com
Author: Sain, Ginny Myers, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: Y SAIN Format: Books Summary: Haunted by the death of her sister and the decades-old cold case of best friends Bailey and Celeste, eighteen-year-old Tru becomes entangled with a mysterious girl named Rio, as their pursuit of the truth unveils an otherworldly connection to the victims and puts them in the crosshairs of a potentially resurfaced killer.
Author: KB (Brookins), author. Published: 2024 Call Number: B KB Format: Books Summary: "By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race. Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspectiv---the tropes, the presumptions--Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change. "I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body," Brookins writes. "Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I'm perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can't change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says 'female,' and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean--to be a girl-turned-man when you're something else entirely?"...--
Author: Thayne, RaeAnne, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F THAYNE Format: Books Summary: Ava Howell's husband leaves her after she publishes a best-selling memoir that describes what happened to her and her sister and must rebuild her life with her sibling, who is in love with a man whose dad died protecting her. "Ava Howell seemed to have it all. She moved away from Emerald Creek, Idaho, married the love of her life and published a bestselling memoir. But she never expected that her husband would feel so betrayed by a secret from her past--the truth of what happened to her and her sister all those years ago--that he?d walk away. Now Ava is back home and trying to move on with the only person who can truly understand? Following years of healing, Madison Howell is finally happy. After college she built a no-kill shelter where she works with animals every day, and she's in love with the town veterinarian, Dr. Luke Gentry. But she can't ever bring herself to tell him. Years ago, his dad died protecting Madi and her sister, so how could he ever love her back? " --Amazon.com
Author: Leadbeater, Cory, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 813.6 LEADBEAT Format: Books Summary: "A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer--struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction--and his life-changing decade working for Joan Didion"-- "As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion. In the nine years that followed, Cory shared Joan's rarefied world, transformed not only by her blazing intellect but by her generous friendship and mentorship. Together they recited poetry in the mornings, dined with Supreme Court justices, attended art openings, smoked a single cigarette before bed. But secretly, Cory was spiraling. He reeled from the death of a close friend. He spent his weekends at a federal prison, visiting his father as he served time for fraud. He struggled day after day to write the novel that would validate him as a real writer. And meanwhile, the forces of addiction and depression loomed large..." --Amazon.com
Author: Carr, Jack (Joint pseudonym), author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F CARR Format: Books Summary: When three seemingly disconnected events are about to ignite a power grab unlike anything the world has seen, Navy SEAL sniper James Reece, to save America, must reconnect to a quantum computer called "Alice" who is positioned to act as either the county's greatest savior or its worst enemy. "You think you know James Reece. Think again. A storm is on the horizon. America?s days are numbered. A Chinese submarine has gone rogue and is navigating towards the continental United States, putting its nuclear missiles within striking distance of the West Coast. A rising Silicon Valley tech mogul with unknown allegiances is at the forefront of a revolution in quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence. A politician controlled by a foreign power is a breath away from the Oval Office. Three seemingly disconnected events are on a collision course to ignite a power grab unlike anything the world has ever seen..." --Amazon.com
Author: Wood, Monica, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F WOOD Format: Books Summary: "Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn't yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed. When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland-Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman-their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways. How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living"--
