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.

Rachael

Honey and Sulphur

Joseph Bouthiette Jr.

Beautiful prose and poetry in (ir)reverence to The Garden of Earthly Delights. It's bizarre and gorgeous both inside and out. Anyone who loves weird or dark fiction should read this anthology.

Amy

The gorgeous story of two friends separated by everything in the world—except love. Readers and animal lovers of every age will want to relive this journey over and over again.

Amy

Shuggie Bain: A Novel

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love. This an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction.

Alison

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

Charlotte Brontë,

Follows the journey of a poor orphan girl who overcomes cruelty, loneliness, starvation and heartbreak on her quest for independence. Her romance forces her to choose between love and self-respect.

Laura

Barbara Kingsolver

This novel interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.

Tracy

How to Break Up With Your Phone

Catherine Price

Packed with tested strategies and practical tips, this book is the essential, life-changing guide for everyone who owns a smartphone.

Matt

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature this is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. A brilliant murder mystery.

Joanna

Mountain States Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 100 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness

A practical guide to using medicinal herbs as well as a powerful reminder of our reciprocal relationship with the natural world.

Joanna

This is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us from one of our most insightful nature writers.

Joanna

A Diné History of Navajoland

Klara B. Kelley and Harris Francis

A sweeping history of the Diné that is foregrounded in oral tradition from pre-Columbian time to the present, using ethnographic interviews in which Navajo people reveal their history about key events

Andy

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Autobiographical essays, key moments and relationships explore such issues as trust, loss, and desire, in a volume that focuses on a central theme of losing oneself in the pleasures of experiences

Andy

Stamped From the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

This book sheds much–needed light on the murky history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning offers tools to expose them—and in the process, reason to hope.

Andy

We Germans: A Novel

Alexander Starritt

A thrilling story of adventure and a questing rumination on the moral ambiguity of war. An exploration of the moral contradictions inherent in saving one's own life at the cost of the lives of others

Historical Fiction

Andy

Then She Was Gone: A Novel

Gripping psychological thriller. It’s more about the how and the why Ellie disappeared, as well as the after-effects of her disappearance on her family.

Andy

The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir

She learns to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present in this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book.

Andy

Some of Your Blood

Theodore Sturgeon

With a masterful touch that earned him the Hugo and Nebula awards, Theodore Sturgeon creates a character capable both of unsettling violence and irresistible humanity.

Andy

Christine Falls: a Novel

A thrilling, atmospheric crime story Quirke,the hero, is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero. This is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black's debut marks him as a true master of the form.

Rodd

The End of Everything: (astrophysically speaking)

This book explores major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, in a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of everything we know.

Laura

Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

This book gives voice to the thousands of women and men from different backgrounds, races, and religions whose local passion and protest resounded throughout the land fighting for equal rights to vote

Dennis

The Adventurer's Son: A Memoir

Part detective story set in the most beautiful yet dangerous reaches of the planet, this book emerges as a far deeper tale of discovery—a journey to understand the truth about those we love.

Dennis

Color: a Natural History of the Palette

Victoria Finlay

Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors. It is a very charming and anecdotal book, in which Victoria Finlay racks up the air-miles trying to research the history of colors.

Joanna

Travels With Charley: In Search of America

A timely read, a nostalgic reminder of a vintage America that struggled with its own political division & controversy. A warm ode to gentle curiosity & the worth of a journey.

Jeanne

How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

What separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging.

Jeanne

Erosion: Essays of Undoing

Terry Tempest Williams

This is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment.

Alice

All the Way to the Tiger

All the Way to the Tigers offers an elegiac, wry, and wise look at a woman on the road and the glorious, elusive creature she seeks.

Alice

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Mark T Sullivan

Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, this is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.

Historical Fiction

Sarah

All the Devils Are Here

A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.

Sarah

Irreverent, ingenious, and highly entertaining, Squeeze Me perfectly captures the absurdity of our times.

Amy

Lynn Steger Strong

This explores the subtle violences enacted on a certain type of woman when she dares to want things―and all the various violences in which she implicates herself as she tries to survive.

Amy

This book offers a sweet and hilarious look at a distant world not all that unlike our own.