Featured Staff Pick

Erin

This American Life

This American Life is a weekly public radio program and podcast. Each week we chose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme.

Staff Picks

Find your new favorite reads with this collection of top titles curated by our expert librarians.

Alice

The Power of One

Bryce Courtenay

Peekay embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one.

Joanna

Mowat is dropped alone onto the frozen tundra, where he begins his mission to live among the howling wolf packs and study their ways.

Matt

The Yiddish Policeman's Union

In a world in which Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, Detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko investigate the death of a hero

Gloria

Tilted: A Lean In Podcast

Tilted explores topics at the intersection of gender and culture – and brings you conversations with people pushing for change.

Gloria

Brenda and Ana Sheila

A Latinx empowerment program with discussions on politics, culture, and how to keep your calma with well-being practices and self-love.

Laura

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

This is a history of white male America and a scathing indictment of what it has cost us socially, economically, and politically.

Teresa

Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive

Marc A Brackett

Too many children and adults are ashamed of their feelings, and feel emotionally unskilled. This is a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions.

Alison

Vivid and enchanting, with a can’t-miss-it foray into the Salem Witch Trials. Maria invokes a curse that will haunt her family for generations. And she learns that love is the only thing that matters.

Rachael

Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no one in the world has slept the night before, or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they all shared the same golden dream.

Amy

When no one can find a pink, fluffy rabbit to give to Tallulah for her birthday, her grandmother knits her a pink, fluffy "thing" that they name Milo Armadillo, which proves to be a great present.

Amy

Sad Animal Facts

A delightful and quirky compendium of the animal kingdom's more unfortunate truths, with over 150 hand-drawn illustrations.

Tiffany

An epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras, the Great Depression.

Historical Fiction

Jill and Joanna

The Book of Delights

A genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. A powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

- Jill and Joanna

Jeanne

You're Missing It

A hilarious cautionary tale about what happens when you are glued to your phone. This timely story, brought to life with beautiful bold art, is a great reminder to slow down and savor time together.

Jeanne

Sticks and Stones

Patricia Polacco

When Patricia starts at a new school she quickly becomes fast friends with fellow outcasts Thom and Ravanne and together they find a way to silence the school bully and his toadies.

Jeanne

The Turtle Walk

A family of turtles goes for a long, long walk that has an unexpected and very fun ending.

Jeanne

The Book of Longings

While this novel contains the historical rather than theological Jesus as a character, it is really the story of his fictional wife, Ana.

Historical Fiction

Jeanne

The Book of Two Ways

Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. What does a life well-lived look like? Do we make choices...or do our choices make us?

Alice

The Signature of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert

A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge. This wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.

Sarah

Perestroika in Paris: A Novel

A captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals,and a young boy, whose lives intersect in Paris Paras. It is anadventure that celebrates curiosity and ingenuity.

Laura

To Hold Up the Sky

Presents a collection of speculative science fiction tales that envision the future and reimagine the past in settings ranging from the coal mines of China to the edges of frontier space.

Laura and Teresa

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

- Laura and Teresa

Jill

The Vanishing Half

Identical twin sisters lives are very different as adults. This is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.

Carli

The Neverending Story

Only a human can save this enchanted place by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name. The journey to her tower leads through lands of dragons, giants, monsters, and magic.

Carli

DUNE is a Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire.

Gloria

Roz the robot discovers that she is alone on a remote island, and her only hope of survival is to try to learn about her new environment from the island's hostile inhabitants.

Gloria

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican Gothic is a 2020 Gothic horror novel. A young woman investigated her cousin's claims that her husband is trying to murder her. It injects fresh blood into a classic genre.

Joanna

Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone: Harry Potter Series, Book 1

The first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come.

Alison

Fredrik Backman

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, this an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope.

Dawn

Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West

This is about an Apache family struggling to protect sacred land from a multinational mining corporation.