Staff Picks

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

Categories

Little fires everywhere
Celeste Ng
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Olive, again
Elizabeth Strout
"Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever, this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--some welcome, some not--in her life.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
A long petal of the sea
Isabel Allende
In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. Roser, a pregnant young widow, finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Anxious people
Fredrik Backman
Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers discover their unexpected common traits.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
The midnight library
Matt Haig
While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Follow me to ground
Sue Rainsford
Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals by cracking open their damaged bodies or burying them in the Ground nearby.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
How much of these hills is gold
C Pam Zhang
Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
The gargoyle
Andrew Davidson
An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Such a fun age
Kiley Reid
Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Barkskins
Annie Proulx
Proulx tells the stories of descendants as they travel back to Europe, China, and New England, always in quest of a livelihood or fleeing stunningly brutal conditions--war, pestilence, Indian attacks.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
The Orphan Collector
Ellen Marie Wiseman
Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Fiction
Freedom is a constant struggle
Angela Y Davis
Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "Freedom is a constant struggle."
Non-Fiction
The anarchy
William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
Coffeland
Augustine Sedgewick
The epic story of the rise of coffee in the Americas, and how it connected and divided the modern world.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
The order of time
Carlo Rovelli
Written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
The Unsettlers
Mark Sundeen
The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of three families of new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for--or create--a better existence.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
How to be an antiracist
Ibram X Kendi
In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
White Fragility
Robin DiAngelo
In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo explores how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
Breath
James Nestor
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.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
One Long River of Song
Brian Doyle
A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
Jeanne
Deep Creek
Pam Houston
In linked essays as lucid and invigorating as mountain air, Deep Creek delivers Houston's most profound meditations yet on how 'to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief'.
- Jeanne
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
Caste
Isabel Wilkerson
Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores how America today and through has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Top Picks 2020 - Adult Nonfiction
Matt
The Bone Clocks
David Mitchell
At once the kaleidoscopic story of an unusual women’s life, a metaphysical thriller and a profound meditation on mortality and survival. This is a surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world.
- Matt
Fiction
Erin
This American Life
TAL
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.
- Erin
Podcasts
Alice
Armchair Expert
Dax Shepard
We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. People are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings.
- Alice
Podcasts
Maggie
Nice White Parents
Chana Joffe-Walt.
If you want to understand what’s wrong with our public schools, you have to look at what is arguably the most powerful force in shaping them: white parents.
- Maggie
Podcasts
Maggie
OH NO Ross and Carrie
Ross Blocher; Carrie Poppy
The hosts personally investigate claims about spirituality, fringe science, religion, and the paranormal, then discuss their findings on the show.
- Maggie
Podcasts
Maggie
American Scandal
Wondery
Every scandal begins with a lie. But the truth will come out. And then comes the fallout and the outrage.
- Maggie
Podcasts
Maggie
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
- Maggie
Podcasts