Author: Rock, Bretman, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: B ROCK Format: Books Summary: Celebrating self, identity, queerness, and his Filipino heritage, the original superstar influencer and Internet darling presents a funny and fabulous collection of essays, drawings, recipes, how-tos, and never-before-seen photos that go beyond what is known of him from social media.
Author: Berman, Ella, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F BERMAN Format: Books Summary: "A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home in this new novel from Ella Berman. . . . Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline's death. But that didn't stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures. While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn't risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . . Except now Joni is tangled up in a crime eerily similar to that one fateful night in Greece. And when she asks Bess to come back to LA to support her, Bess has a decision to make. Is it finally time to face up to what happened that night, exposing herself as the young woman she once was and maybe still is? And what happens if she doesn't like what she finds?"--
Author: Potts, Monica, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: B POTTS Format: Books Summary: "Growing up gifted and poor in small-town Arkansas, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives--broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica got out, but Darci, along with the rest of their circle of friends, did not. Years later, working as a journalist covering poverty, Monica discovered what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas: Their life expectancy had steeply declined--the sharpest such fall in a century. Most painfully, her once talented and ambitious best friend was now a single mother of two, addicted to meth and prescription drugs, jobless and nearly homeless. What had happened in the years since Monica had left? Why had she escaped while Darci hurtled toward what Monica fears will be a tragic end? What was killing poor white women--and would Darci survive her own life"--
Author: Spear, Terry, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: PB SPEAR Format: Books Summary: "Billionaire wolf Derek Spencer may have a rocky history with she-wolves, but there's no one better to take as his date to the latest gala than the wolf he's had his eye on ever since she applied to be his bodyguard--the remarkable Kate Hanover. Kate checks all the boxes for his perfect mate: she's smart, sexy, and business savvy, not to mention one of the best bodyguards around. But ever since Derek gave his bodyguard position to another wolf, Kate has been avoiding him. It's only when she reluctantly agrees to be his date to the gala that she realizes why: the attraction between the two alpha wolves is undeniable, but Kate doesn't want to end up as one of the billionaire's many flings. The more time Kate and Derek spend together, the more they are in danger...of falling deeply in love"--
Author: Smith, Sally Bedell, 1948- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 941.084 Format: Books Summary: "When the Duke of Windsor abdicated the throne in 1936, his shy, uncertain, unprepared younger brother became King. Sally Bedell Smith was granted by Queen Elizabeth II special access to the letters and diaries of George VI and Elizabeth, to tell the story of how their love, devotion, and strong marriage led George VI to overcome insecurities and difficulty speaking and to become an exceptional leader. His wife Elizabeth, a pretty, confident, and outgoing woman, who became known later in life as "the Queen Mum," simultaneously strengthened and advised her temperamental husband, while raising the future Queen Elizabeth II (who at an early age was educated to lead, and fell in love at 15 with Prince Philip) and Princess Margaret. Sally Bedell Smith explores how this loving and devoted marriage helped the king and queen meet the challenges of leading the country through war, London during the blitz, their relationship with Winston Churchill, their visit with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington and Hyde Park, and more"--
Author: Simon, Steven, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 327.73 Format: Books Summary: "A longtime American foreign policy insider's biting and definitive reckoning with the high cost of this country's ambitious meddling in the Middle East--and its bitter end. The culmination of almost 40 years of expertise and insider policy access, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon's tour de force, offering a comprehensive yet analytical tour of U.S. involvement in the Middle East... Grand Delusion explores the motivations, approach, and legacy of each administration up to today, showing us a complex spiderweb of intertwined events--from Lebanese civil conflict to shifting Iranian domestic politics, to Saudi Arabia's quest for security--through the lens of a Washington policy process frequently ruled by cognitive bias, wishful thinking, and outright malfeasance. Simon's sharp sense of humor and incisive analytical powers bring a complex history to life. Despite an impressive DC resume--he rose to become the National Security Council senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs--Simon never fails to tell the truth as he sees it. He challenges the nature of American commitment to Israel; disputes the popular narrative of Desert Storm as a "good war"; and calls out the enormous consequences of our mistakes, particularly for victims of American military action. As Grand Delusion shows, this story is only occasionally impressive, and frequently disgraceful. But it's a story with deep and enduring resonance for the future of both the U.S. and the Middle East"--
Author: Novak, Brenda, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F NOVAK Format: Books Summary: Mariners Island is barely ten miles long, but when Ivy, Ariana and Cam were teenagers, it was their whole world. Beyond the pristine beaches and iconic lighthouse lies the beautiful old library that belongs to Ivy's family. While that bound Ivy to the island as an adult, Ariana could not leave Mariners behind fast enough. The town holds too many memories. Not only her unrequited feelings for Cam, but the tragedy that left a scar on the community. When a young girl went missing, a teenaged Cam was unthinkably the prime suspect. Ariana and Ivy knew he couldn't have hurt anyone, and they promised to protect him--even if it meant lying on his behalf. Now, twenty years later, Ariana returns to Mariners just as new evidence emerges on the case, calling into question everything the three friends thought they knew--and everyone they thought they could trust. What really happened that night? Over the course of one eventful summer, Ariana, Ivy and Cam will learn the truth--about their pasts, their futures and the ties that still bind them as closely as the pages of a book.
Author: Luna, Rachel, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 155.25 Format: Books Summary: "From renowned life coach Rachel Luna, Permission to Offend is an empowering guide to teach readers how to unapologetically set their own boundaries and stop trying to live up to others"-- Whenever Luna faced a challenging experience, she noticed herself becoming a more watered-down version of her true self: questioning every thought, decision, and action. Here she delivers actionable steps for ending validation addiction, recognizing your values and anchoring your life in them, defining your beliefs, accepting rejection, and activating your truth. If you want to live unfettered by the opinions and judgments of others, Luna shows you the way to step out of the corner and into the light. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Sterling, Michelle Min, 1982- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F STERLING Format: Books Summary: "In a near-future northern settlement, the fate of a young woman intertwines with those of a college professor and a collective of women soldiers in this mesmerizing and transportive novel in the vein of Station Eleven and The Power. In the far north of Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is building a project called Camp Zero. With its fresh, clean air and cold climate, it's intended to be the beginning of a new community and a new way of life. A brilliant and determined young woman employed as a sex worker to the elite is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group meant to service the men in camp-but her mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself. Upon arrival at Camp Zero, she is named Rose. Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, but in the camp, everyone has an agenda, and her alliances begin to shift. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military brigade struggling for survival at a climate research station, the fate of Camp Zero and its inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo. An electrifying page-turner where nothing is as it seems, Camp Zero cleverly explores how the intersection of gender, class, and migration will impact who and what will survive in a warming world"--
Author: Coss Aquino, Melissa, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F COSSAQUI Format: Books Summary: "Carmen and Grace have been inseparable since they were little girls--more like sisters than cousins, survivors of a childhood marked by neglect and addiction and a system that never valued them. For too long, all they had was each other. That is, until Doña Durka swept into their lives and changed everything, taking Grace into her home, providing stability and support, and playing an outsize role in Carmen's upbringing too. Durka is more than a beneficent force in their Bronx neighborhood, though. She's also the leader of an underground drug empire, a larger-than-life matriarch who understands the vital importance of taking what power she can in a world too often ruled by violent men. So, when Durka dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, Carmen and Grace's lives are thrown into chaos. Grace has been primed to take over and has grand plans to expand the business. While Carmen is ready to move on--from the shadow of Durka and her high expectations and, most of all, from always looking over her shoulder in fear. She's also harboring a secret: she's pregnant and starting to show, and desperate to build a new life before the baby arrives..." --
Author: Winslow, Don, 1953-, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F WINSLOW Format: Books Summary: After fleeing to California to start a new life, Danny Ryan must decide whether he is going to do the FBI a favor that may make him a fortune or kill him. "On the losing side of a bloody East Coast crime war, Danny Ryan is now on the run. The mafia, the cops, the FBI all want him dead or in prison. With his little boy, his elderly father and the tattered remnants of his loyal crew of soldiers, he makes the classic American migration to California to start a new life. A quiet, peaceful existence." --Front jacket flap
Author: Allen, Jayne, 1978- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F ALLEN Format: Books Summary: "Throwing herself into her work to maintain her position as the news station's weekend anchor, new mother Tabitha Walker, when her husband issues her an ultimatum, turns to her friends for support as she comes to terms with her new life and faces her biggest challenge yet--choosing herself"--
Author: Mullen, Thomas, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F MULLEN Format: Books Summary: "Blind Spots is a riveting crime novel with a speculative edge about what we really see with our own eyes. Seven years ago, a mysterious virus blinded everyone in the world in a matter of months. Technology helped people adjust to the new normal, creating a device that approximates vision, downloading visual data directly to people's brains. But what happens when someone finds a way to manipulate it and change what people see? Homicide detective Mark Owens has been on the force since before The Blinding. When a scientist is murdered, and the only witness insists the killer was blacked out of her vision, Owens doesn't believe her--until a similar murder happens in front of him..."--
Author: Chung, Nicole, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: B CHUNG Format: Books Summary: "From the bestselling author of All You Can Ever Know comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief-a daughter's search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she's lost. In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them. When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee--and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in - where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations--looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his premature death. And then the unthinkable happens--less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID descends upon the world. Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another--and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society"--
Author: Biskupic, Joan, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 347.73 Format: Books Summary: "Nine Black Robes displays the inner maneuverings among the Supreme Court justices that led to the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade and a half century of women's abortion rights. Biskupic details how rights are stripped away or, alternatively as in the case of gun owners, how rights are expanded. Today's bench--with its conservative majority--is desperately ideological. The Court has been headed rightward and ensnared by its own intrigues for years, but the Trump appointments hastened the modern transformation. With unparalleled access to key players, Biskupic shows the tactics of each justice and reveals switched votes and internal pacts that typically never make the light of day, yet will have repercussions for generations to come."--
Author: Jones, Gayl, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F JONES Format: Books Summary: "A wide-ranging collection, including two novellas and ten stories exploring complex identities, from the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing, and Palmares"-- This new collection of short fiction is only the second in the author's rich career and one that displays her strengths in the genre in many facets. Opening with two novella-length works, "Butter" and "Sophia," this collection features Jones's legendary talents in a range of settings and styles, from the hyper-realist to the mystical, in intricate multipart stories, in more traditional forms, and even in short fragments. Her narrators are women and men, Black, Brown, Indigenous; her settings are historical and contemporary, in South America, Mexico, and the US; her themes center on complex identities, unorthodox longings and aspirations. She writes about spies, photographers, playground designers, cartoonists, and baristas; about workers and revolutionaries, about environmentalism, feminism, poetry, film, and love, but above all about our multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial society.
Author: Williams, Chad Louis, 1976- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 940.3089 Format: Books Summary: "The dramatic story of W. E. B. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I-and a new understanding of one of the great twentieth-century writers"--
Author: Smith, Maggie, 1977- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: B SMITH Format: Books Summary: "Life, like a poem, is a series of choices." In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she's known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself... With a poet's attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful."--Amazon
Author: Shelton, Paige, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F SHELTON Format: Books Summary: "In Fateful Words, the eighth Scottish Bookshop Mystery from beloved author Paige Shelton, bookseller Delaney Nichols stakes her reputation-and her life-when a literary tour turns deadly... When Edwin, Delaney's boss at the Cracked Spine bookstore, leaves town on secret business, Delaney is called upon to guide his yearly literary tour around Edinburgh. But on the first night of the tour, at the inn where the tour group is staying, the inn manager falls-or is pushed-off the roof of the inn, and killed. Then, one of the tour members disappears, leaving a trail of puzzles in her wake. In a race against the clock, Delaney sets out on the expedition of her life, following clues around Edinburgh to get to the bottom of this mystery. Exploring sights from Greyfriars Bobby to the Royal Mile to the Sir Walter Scott Monument, she'll have to put the pieces together quickly, or the bookstore's survival could be on the line...as well as her own"--
