Author: Lahiri, Jhumpa, author, translator. Portnowitz, Todd, 1986- translator. Published: 2023 2022 Call Number: F LAHIRI Format: Books Summary: "Nine mesmerizing stories saturated in the details of Roman life that showcase Jhumpa Lahiri's extraordinary range and virtuosity"-- Rome--metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical--is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories: the first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth. In "The Boundary," one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker's daughter, who nurses a wound from her family's immigrant past. In "P's Parties," a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friend's yearly birthday gathering--until the husband crosses a line. And in "The Steps," on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see Italy's capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.
Author: Christo, Alexandra, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: Y CHRISTO Format: Books Summary: When Atia, a monster hunted by the Gods, and mortal Silas join forces to avenge her family and break his curse and restore his humanity, they discover that only together can they finally rewrite their destinies. Atia is a monster who feeds on fear. As the last of her kind, she hides in the shadows of the world to escape the wrath of the unpredictable Gods. Silas is a Herald, carrying messages and ferrying the dead as punishment for a past he can't remember. Stripped of his true name, he yearns to recover his identity. Atia would never dream of allying with someone like him, but when she breaks a sacred law and the Gods send monsters to hunt her, Silas offers an irresistible deal: he'll help avenge her family and take on the Gods who now hunt her, if she helps him break his curse and restore his humanity. All they need to do is kill three powerful creatures: a vampire, a banshee, and one of the very Gods who destroyed both their lives. Only together can they finally rewrite their destinies.
Author: Kinsella, Sophie, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F KINSELLA Format: Books Summary: "Sasha has had it. She cannot bring herself to respond to another inane, "urgent" (but obviously not at all urgent) email or participate in the corporate employee joyfulness program. She hasn't seen her friends in months. Sex? Seems like a lot of effort. Even cooking dinner takes far too much planning. Sasha has hit a wall. Armed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga, and find peace, she heads to the seaside resort she loved as a child. But it's the off season, the hotel is in a dilapidated shambles, and she has to share the beach with the only other occupant: a grumpy guy named Finn, who seems as stressed as Sasha. How can she commune with nature when he's sitting on her favorite rock, watching her? Nor can they agree on how best to alleviate their burnout (Sasha: manifesting, wild swimming; Finn: drinking whiskey, getting pizza delivered to the beach). When curious messages, seemingly addressed to Sasha and Finn, begin to appear on the beach, the two are forced to talk--about everything. How did they get so burned out? Can either of them remember something they used to love? (Answer: surfing!) And the question they try and fail to ignore: what does the energy between them--flaring even in the face of their bone-deep exhaustion--signify?"--
Author: Brook, Allison, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F BROOK Format: Books Summary: Carrie Singleton has more than her fair share on her plate: her job at the Clover Ridge Library, preparing for her wedding to Dylan Avery, and hoping that the local art gallery doesn't steal away one of her part-time employees. Her fiancé Dylan accompanies her to the beautiful home of Victor Zalinka art collector and successful businessman to select paintings for an art show at the library. While Carrie muses that Victor's home would be the perfect wedding venue, Dylan spots a forgery among the paintings in Victor's collection. Then Martha Mallory is found murdered in her art gallery. With the assistance of Evelyn, the library ghost; the resident cat, Smoky Joe; and the office manager of Dylan s private investigation company, Carrie comes up with a suspect list long enough to rival the size of an encyclopedia. During her investigation, Carrie stumbles across a terrible truth: Martha's murder was part of something far bigger and more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. And it all leads back to the art gallery. How far will Carrie go to find the killer and uncover the truth? If the killer finds her first will Carrie finally be taken out of circulation?
Author: Callender, Kacen, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F CALLENDE Format: Books Summary: "Logan Gray is the stereotypical bad boy of Hollywood--a talented but troubled actor who the public loves to hate. Mattie Cole is an up and coming golden boy, adored by all but plagued by insecurities. When Mattie is cast as the love interest in Logan's newest film, the two are persuaded into a fake dating scheme to bring positive publicity to the project. But as the two actors get to know their new characters, real feelings start to develop. And while both need the movie to be a success for their own reasons, neither thought opposites would really attract. But as the public scrutiny intensifies and old wounds resurface, will they have the courage to chase their own happily ever after?"--
Author: Groff, Lauren, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: LP F GROFF Format: Large print Summary: "A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her. Lauren Groff's new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how--and if--we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves" --
Author: Napier, Erin, author. Davis-Jefcoat, Brooke, photographer. Published: 2023 Call Number: 747 Format: Books Summary: "Our homes are more than an assemblage of bricks and glass, wood and nails. They are the keepers of our childhood memories, our milestones, and heartaches. They evolve as we do. As a family grows and eventually retracts, a home can change hands and begin again. We are the chapters in the book of a house. They carry on after we are gone, setting the stage for another story, a new life, new memories. From Erin Napier, coauthor with her husband, Ben, of their memoir Make Something Good Today, comes a collection of essays walking us through every room in her home, telling the story of a family's life, of the days that made their home the place she longs for when she's away. We learn about when they became the new owners of Erin's dream house from childhood in downtown Laurel, Mississippi, and explore the beautiful homes of family, friends, and projects past in photographs. With essays that evoke her Southern home, photos of the beautifully imperfect, lived-in spaces of her family and friends, and prompts for us to document our own homemade memories, Heirloom Rooms feels like walking through the front door of the collected and loved-in houses Erin and Ben are known for revitalizing in HGTV's #1 hit series, Home Town."--
Author: Stevens, Stuart, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 324.2734 Format: Books Summary: A former chief Republican strategist and best-selling author examines the five driving forces on the Right-financers, propagandists, party support, legal theories to legitimize and shock troops-and makes clear how they are working in concert to end our democracy as we know it.
Author: Miller, Linda Lael, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F MILLER Format: Books Summary: "Tessa Stafford will do anything for her daughter, Isabel...even stay on the run to protect Isabel from her narcissistic grandmother. But when her car breaks down in Painted Pony Creek, Tessa gets caught up in the warm embrace of the town and feels safe enough to build a home--and a life--for them both. Love is the last thing on her mind until rugged cowboy and lawyer Jesse McKettrick's sexy smile and easy way tempt her into imagining more. But can she trust this handsome stranger with her heart? When Tessa and her adorable daughter blow into town, Jesse McKettrick is smitten--by both the little girl and her beautiful mother. He's always wanted a family of his own. Maybe this Christmas, his wish will finally come true. But the walls around Tessa are impenetrable, and when Tessa's past threatens their newfound future--and the family he's come to love--Jesse won't let them go without a fight"--
Author: Illies, Florian, 1971- author. Pare, Simon, translator. Published: 2023 2021 Call Number: 940.5 Format: Books Summary: "A brilliantly constructed popular history of the world careening toward the Second World War, as told through the love lives of some of the most famous and fascinating figures of the era. As the Roaring Twenties wind down, the great minds of the time have their minds on other concerns besides art and war. Jean-Paul Sartre waits anxiously in a Parisian café for his first date with Simone de Beauvoir, who stands him up. Marlene Dietrich slips from a loveless marriage into the dive bars of Berlin. Thomas and Klaus Mann clash over the father's repressed homosexuality, the son's open embrace of his own. The fledgling writer Vladimir Nabokov places a freshly netted butterfly at the end of Vera's bed. Little do they know, the book-burning will soon begin, and they, along with millions of others, will be forced to contemplate flight--or fight--in the face of impending doom. In this ingeniously orchestrated chronicle, cultural historian Florian Illies brings to life the most pivotal decade of the century through the romantic and erotic lives of some of its most influential figures--artists and actors and activists and thinkers. As they bed, wed, betray, and fall in love, their personal dramas parallel political and cultural tensions approaching the breaking point, and the shadow of global war eclipses them all"--
Author: Basu, Samit, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F BASU Format: Books Summary: "Shantiport was supposed to be a gateway to the stars. But the city is sinking, and its colonist rulers aren't helping anyone but themselves. Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born. Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance to leave this dead-end planet and explore the universe on his own terms. But that would mean abandoning the family he loves--even if they do take him for granted. When Shantiport's resident tech billionaire coerces Lina into retrieving a powerful artifact rumored to be able to reshape reality, forces from before their time begin coalescing around the siblings. And when you throw in a piece of sentient, off-world tech with the ability to grant three wishes into the mix... None of the city's powers will know what hit them."--
Author: Matsumoto, Naoya author, artist. Evelyn, David translator. Bovia, Brandon letterer. VIZ Media, publisher. Published: 2023 2022 2021 Call Number: Y GN MATSUMOT V.1 Format: Books Summary: "With the highest kaiju-emergence rates in the world, Japanese is no stranger to attack by deadly monsters. Enter the Japan Defense Force, a military organization tasked with the neutralization of kaiju. Kafka Hibino, a kaiju-corpse cleanup man, has always dreamed of joining the force. But when he gets another shot at achieving his childhood dream, he undergoes an unexpected transformation. How can he fight kaiju now that he's become one himself?!"
Author: Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976, author. Green, Michael (Screenwriter), writer of foreword, writer of screenplay. Published: 2023 1969 Call Number: F CHRISTIE Format: Books Summary: "At a Halloween party, Joyce--a surly thirteen-year-old--boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. Famed detective Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate. Set against a night of trickery and the occult, it's up to Poirot to uncover the real evil presence responsible for this ghastly deed."--Amazon.
Author: Woods, Kell, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F WOODS Format: Books Summary: "After the Forest is a dark and enchanting fantasy debut from Kell Woods that explores the repercussions of a childhood filled with magic and a young woman contending with the truth of "happily ever after." Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour. Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta's ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you've ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her mysteriously addictive gingerbread, not to mention the rumors about her childhood misadventures, is a source of gossip and suspicion. And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta's magic--magic she is still trying to understand--may be the only thing that can save her. If it doesn't kill her first"--
Author: Suleyman, Mustafa, author. Bhaskar, Michael, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 303.483 Format: Books Summary: "We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes 'the containment problem' -- the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies--as the essential challenge of our age"--
Author: Swanson, Peter, 1968- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F SWANSON Format: Books Summary: When a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall for the holidays, Ashley Smith, an American art student in London, discovers this seemingly charming English village's grim history when a local girl is brutally murdered and Emma's brother is linked to the crime.
Author: Morelli, Laura, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F MORELLI Format: Books Summary: Called to Nazi-occupied Italy in 1943, a German photographer and an American stenographer hunt for priceless masterpieces before they are destroyed by Hitler, in this pulse-pounding adventure inspired by the incredible true story of the Monuments Women, the Fifth Army WACs and the looted Florentine art collections during World War II. Summer, 1943. Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans works as a typist at the Yale Art Gallery. When both women are called to Italy, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world's greatest masterpieces torn from the Uffizi Galleries and other Florentine art collections in her hands. As Italy turns from ally to enemy, and Hitler's plan to destroy irreplaceable monuments and works of art becomes frighteningly clear, Eva and Josephine race against the clock-- and each other-- to save the collection. But at what cost? -- adapted from back cover.
Author: Atkinson, Kate, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: LP F ATKINSON Format: Large print Summary: "A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that readers love about her novels--the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop. In this brilliant volume, nothing is quite as it seems. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a lost man who bets on a horse that may--or may not--have spoken to him. Witty and wise, with subtle connections between the stories, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a startling and funny feast for the imagination, stories with the depth and bite to create their own fully-formed worlds" --
Author: Awad, Mona, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F AWAD Format: Books Summary: "For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother's considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother's demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother's) obsession with the mirror--and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass. Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry--as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath"--
Author: Kelly, Sofie, 1958- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F KELLY Format: Books Summary: "When a water leak repair results in a body being found behind the walls of the store run by the artists' co-op that Kathleen's friend Maggie is part of, everyone is completely mystified as to whose body it is and who hid it there. But as the dust settles, Kathleen's boyfriend, Detective Marcus Gordon, begins to suspect that the body could belong to a young woman who disappeared more than thirty years ago. When a friend with a connection to the young woman asks Kathleen to look into the circumstances around the disappearance, she and her cats--who have a special feline talent for catching felons--find themselves digging up secrets that at least one person in Mayville Heights would much prefer stay buried" --
