Featured Books
June 8
Staff Picks – Michelle
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
The daughter of devout immigrants discovers the power of slam poetry and begins participating in a school club as part of her effort to understand her mother’s strict religious beliefs and her own developing relationship to the world.
The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
A talented baker running a business out of her nursing home reconnects with her master brewer sister at the same time her pregnant granddaughter launches an IPA brewpub.
Adequate Yearly Progress by Roxanna Elden
An idealistic second-year history teacher anonymously catalogs and blogs the personal challenges and dramas of the teachers and the classroom at a struggling high school in a large Texas city in this humorous and satirical novel.
June 1
Staff Picks – Doug’s TBR
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
Each chapter in Stradal’s startlingly original debut tells the story of a single dish and character, at once capturing the zeitgeist of the Midwest, the rise of foodie culture, and delving into the ways food creates community and a sense of identity.
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson examines closely the events and personalities of the summer of 1927 when America’s story was one of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. He captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor.
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are – the beautiful and the flawed – and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny’s mom says, “Maybe ‘crazy’ isn’t so bad after all.” Sometimes crazy is just right.
May 25
Staff Picks – Isaac R
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
This epic retelling of the legend of Achilles follows Patroclus and Achilles, the golden son of King Peleus, as they, skilled in the arts of war and medicine, lay siege to Troy after Helen of Sparta is kidnapped–a cause that tests their friendship and forces them to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
A debut story collection about female relationships and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands features Latina protagonists of indigenous descent who cautiously navigate the violence and changes in a Denver, Colorado community.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother’s addictions and his grandmother’s cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip of danger and hope.
May 18
Little Gods by Meng Jin
This novel explores the complex web of grief, memory, time, physics, history and selfhood in the immigrant experience, and the complicated bond between daughters and mothers.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T. Kira Madden
An acclaimed literary essayist presents this raw and redemptive debut memoir about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager in Boca Raton, Florida, where she, the only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, found loving friendships with fatherless girls.
How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang
Two orphaned Chinese immigrant siblings flee the threats of their gold rush mining town across an unforgiving landscape where their survival is tested by family secrets, sibling rivalry, and disparate goals.
