As we move into the last weeks of the semester and a nice, well-deserved, two-week holiday, we find ways to release stress. Maybe you like to shop for gifts (if you do, more power to you). Maybe you take time out of your busy day to meditate or take walks. Maybe you grant yourself the gift of an escape into the pages of a book. If you fall into this final category, please feel free to borrow books from the LHS library! Whether you just want something to pass a few moments here and there or something to transport you to another place, another time, check out the books we've purchased since August! Note #1: Links will take you to Goodreads reviews. Book descriptions come from Goodreads, and I may have a few additional comments if I've read the book. If you're not familiar with Goodreads, it's a great place to find recommendations. If you're a bibliophile like me and want to keep track of what you read, sign up for a free account and start your collection. Did you know that several LHS staff members are Goodreads friends? Note #2: I've pulled titles we've gotten this semester that I think adults will find interesting; I've left off most YA titles. Note #3: Interested in a particular genre? Use CTRL + F and type it in! |
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| Simu Liu. We were Dreamers: an immigrant superhero origin story Marvel's newest recruit shares his own inspiring and unexpected origin story, from China to the bright lights of Hollywood. An immigrant who battles everything from parental expectations to cultural stereotypes, Simu Liu struggles to forge a path for himself, rising from the ashes of a failed accounting career (yes, you read that right) to become Shang-Chi. GENRES: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, Asian Literature, Canada, Family, Adult |
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| Doreen Cunningham. Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales In this lyrical memoir of motherhood, love, and resilience that "captures rarely observed natural places" (San Francisco Chronicle) a woman and her toddler son follow the grey whale migration from Mexico to northernmost Alaska. GENRES: Nonfiction, Memoir, Animals, Nature, Travel, Environment, Climate Change, Biography Memoir, Biography, Science |
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| Ellyn Gaydos. Pig Years This captivating memoir is a "startling testimony to the glories and sorrows of raising and harvesting plants and animals" (Anthony Doerr, best-selling author of All the Light We Cannot See), as an itinerant farmhand chronicles the wonders hidden within the ever-blooming seasons of life, death, and rebirth. GENRES: Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature, Animals, Biography, Memoir, Biography, Food, Contemporary |
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| Mike Sielski. The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality This is more than a basketball book. This is an exploration of the identity and making of an icon and the effect of his development on those around him—the essence of the man before he truly became a man. GENRES: Sports, Biography, Basketball, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, History |
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| Cory McCarthy. Man o' War An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans swimmer fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town. GENRES: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Sports, Transgender, Romance, Mental Health, Young Adult Contemporary |
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| | Daniel Nieh. Take No Names A riveting thriller about a fugitive in search of a quick payday in Mexico City who finds himself in the crosshairs of a dangerous international scheme GENRES: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Mystery, Suspense |
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| Ingrid Rojas Contreras. The Man Who Could Move Clouds From the author of the "original, politically daring and passionately written" (Vogue) novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy. GENRES: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography, Magical Realism, History, Magic, Historical, Autobiography |
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| | Sally Denton. The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities—fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the Latter-day Saints Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the U.S. Army. In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. GENRES: Nonfiction, True Crime, History, Religion, Crime, Mormonism, American History, Mystery |
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| | Corban Addison. Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial The once idyllic coastal plain of North Carolina is home to a close-knit, rural community that for more than a generation has battled the polluting practices of large-scale farming taking place in its own backyard. After years of frustration and futility, an impassioned cadre of local residents, led by a team of intrepid and dedicated lawyers, filed a lawsuit against one of the world's most powerful companies--and, miraculously, they won. As vivid and fast-paced as a thriller, Wastelands takes us into the heart of a legal battle over the future of America's farmland and into the lives of the people who found the courage to fight. GENRES: Nonfiction, True Crime, History, Politics, Environment, Economics, Law ,Science, Food, Agriculture
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| Kirstin Chen. Counterfeit For fans of Hustlers and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise--an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime, and friendship from the author of Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners. GENRES: Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery, Adult, Thriller, Crime, Chick Lit, Mystery Thriller, Adult Fiction |
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| | Betty G. Yee. Gold Mountain Growing up in 1860s China, Tam Ling Fan has lived a life of comfort. Her father is wealthy enough to provide for his family but unconventional enough to spare Ling Fan from the debilitating foot-binding required of most well-off girls. But Ling Fan's life is upended when her brother dies of influenza and their father is imprisoned under false accusations. Hoping to earn the money that will secure her father's release, Ling Fan disguises herself as a boy and takes her brother's contract to work for the Central Pacific Railroad Company in America. GENRES: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction, Historical, Asian Literature, China, Family |
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| Emi Nietfeld. Acceptance: A Memoir A luminous, generation-defining memoir of foster care and homelessness, Harvard and Big Tech, examining society's fixation on resilience--and its cost GENRES: Memoir, Nonfiction. Mental Health, Biography, Biography Memoir, LGBT, Book Club, Fostering |
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| Casey Parks. Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life. GENRES: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Biography, Biography Memoir, Queer, Southern, Journalism, Religion, Cultural |
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| Julia Armfield. Our Wives Under the Sea Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home. GENRES: Horror, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Lesbian, Contemporary, Adult, Literary Fiction, Gothic |
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| Isabel Cañas. The Hacienda Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches... GENRES: Horror, Historical Fiction, Gothic, Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Historical, Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal |
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| Sunyi Dean. The Book Eaters Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries. GENRES: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, LGBT, Adult, Books About Books, Queer, Gothic, Lesbian |
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| Zoulfa Katouh. As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager's life. Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe… GENRES: Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Historical ,Fantasy, War, Magical Realism, Young Adult Contemporary |
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| Erika Hayasaki. Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family Identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other's existence, until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds. GENRES: Nonfiction, Adoption, Biography Memoir, Biography, Memoir, History |
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| Sara Manning Peskin. A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: the very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are gripping accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake. GENRES: Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Medicine, Medical, Mental Health, Health, Neuroscience, Biology, History |
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| | Briana Scurry, Wayne Coffey, Robin Roberts (Foreword). My Greatest Save: The Brave, Barrier-Breaking Journey of a World Champion Goalkeeper A deeply moving and painfully honest memoir from the trailblazing, World Cup–winning, Olympic gold medalist, and US Women's soccer goalie Briana Scurry GENRES: Nonfiction, Sports, Biography, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Queer, LGBT, Soccer |
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| Tracey Lien. All That's Left Unsaid For fans of Everything I Never Told You and The Mothers, a deeply moving and unflinching debut following a young Vietnamese-Australian woman who returns home to her family in the wake of her brother's shocking murder, determined to discover what happened--a dramatic exploration of the intricate bonds and obligations of friendship, family, and community. GENRES: Fiction, Mystery, Australia, Contemporary, Mystery Thriller, Crime, Literary Fiction, Family, Adult Fiction |
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| Gabrielle Zevin. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. I read this one – If you know nothing about gaming, you'll still appreciate the cultural references and the work/love themes. GENRES: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Literary Fiction, Adult, Historical Fiction, Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Coming Of Age |
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| Siddhartha Mukherjee. The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, an exploration of medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells. Rich with Mukherjee's revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer's exploration of what it means to be human. GENRES: Science, Nonfiction, Medicine, Biology, History, Health, Medical, Science Nature, Popular Science, Nature |
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| Hua Hsu. Stay True: A Memoir From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. GENRES: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Biography, Asian Literature, Music, Race, Coming Of Age, True Crime |
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| Rita Cameron. The House Party Maja Jensen is smart, stylish, and careful, the type of woman who considers every detail when building her dream home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The perfect house that would compensate for her failure to have a child, the house that was going to save her marriage. But when a group of reckless teenagers trash the newly built home just weeks before she moves in, her plans are shattered. GENRES: Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Mystery, Adult, Drama, Suspense, Crime |
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| Nina Jankowicz. How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News and the Future of Conflict How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics—all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself. GENRES: Nonfiction, Politics, Russia, Technology, History, Social Issues, Ukraine, Sociology, War, Poland |
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