Staff Picks
December 2025

Adult Fiction
The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill
The Crane Husband
by Kelly Barnhill

Award-winning author Kelly Barnhill brings her singular talents to The Crane Husband, a raw, powerful story of love, sacrifice, and family. Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters. A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mother, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it's been just the three of them-her mother has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed. Yet when her mother brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children's lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mother abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands. In this stunning contemporary retelling of The Crane Wife by the Newbery Award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family-and change the story--
Ghost Month by Ed Lin
Ghost Month
by Ed Lin

Welcome to Unknown Pleasures, a food stand in Taipei's night market named after a Joy Division album, and also the location for a big-hearted new mystery set in the often undocumented Taiwan. August is Ghost Month in Taiwan a time to pay respects to the dead and avoid unlucky omens. Jing-nan, who runs a food stand in a bustling Taipei night market, isn t superstitious, but this August will haunt him. He learns that his high school sweetheart has been murdered found scantily clad near a highway where she was selling betel nuts. Betel nut beauties are typically women in desperate circumstances, but Julia Huang was high school valedictorian, and the last time Jing-nan spoke to her, she was far away, happily enrolled in NYU s honor program. The facts don t add up. Julia s parents don t think so, either, but the police seem to have closed the case without asking any questions. The Huangs beg Jing-nan to do some investigating, but nothing can prepare him for what he is about to learn, or how it will change his life.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson

The story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a haunting'; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers--and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati
Into the Wilderness
by Sara Donati

Weaving a tapestry of fact and fiction, Sara Donati's epic novel sweeps us into another time and place . . . and into a breathtaking story of love and survival in a land of savage beauty. It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered--a white man dressed like a Native American: Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, Elizabeth soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as with her own family. Interweaving the fate of the Mohawk Nation with the destiny of two lovers, Sara Donati's compelling novel creates a complex, profound, passionate portait of an emerging America. Praise for Into the Wilderness My favorite kind of book is the sort you live in, rather than read. Into the Wilderness is one of those rare stories that let you breathe the air of another time, and leave your footprints on the snow of a wild, strange place. I can think of no better adventure than to explore the wilderness in the company of such engaging and independent lovers as Elizabeth and her Nathaniel.--Diana Gabaldon Each time you open a book you hope to discover a story that will make your spirit of adventure and romance sing. This book delivers on that promise.--Amanda Quick A beautiful tale of both romance and survival...Here is the beauty as well as the savagery of the wilderness and, at the core of it all, the compelling story of the love of a man and a woman, both for the untamed land and for one another.--Allan W. Eckert Lushly written . . . Exemplary historical fiction.--Kirkus Reviews Epic in scope, emotionally intense.--BookPage
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
The Once and Future Witches
by Alix E. Harrow

In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in Alix E. Harrow's powerful novel of magic and the suffragette movement. In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters -- James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna -- join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote -- and perhaps not even to live -- the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive. There's no such thing as witches. But there will be--
Silvercloak by L. K. Steven
Silvercloak
by L. K. Steven

Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron Killoran's parents, destroying her idyllic childhood. Hell-bent on revenge, she lies her way into Silvercloak Academy--the training ground for her city's elite order of detectives--with a single goal: to bring the Bloodmoons to justice. But when Saff's deception is exposed, rather than being cast out, she's given a rare opportunity: to go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside. Descending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover--and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, but there's also her growing feelings for the kingpin's tortured son, with his vicious pet fallowwolf, his dark past, and the curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saffron's hand. With each day testing her loyalties further, Saff finds her web of lies becoming harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she's ever loved--the detective who's dedicated her life to vengeance just might die for it--
A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
A Single Thread
by Tracy Chevalier

A buoyant tale about the path to acceptance and joy--beginning, like all journeys, with one brave step.--People The best-selling novelist has done a masterful job of depicting the circumstances of a generation of women we seldom think about: the mothers, sisters, wives and fiances of men lost in World War I, whose job it was to remember those lost but not forgotten.--Associated Press A BEST BOOK OF 2019 with The New York Public Library USA TODAY Real Simple Good Housekeeping Chicago Sun Time TIME PopSugar The New York Post Parade 1932. After the Great War took both her beloved brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell has become a surplus woman, one of a generation doomed to a life of spinsterhood after the war killed so many young men. Yet Violet cannot reconcile herself to a life spent caring for her grieving, embittered mother. After countless meals of boiled eggs and dry toast, she saves enough to move out of her mother's place and into the town of Winchester, home to one of England's grandest cathedrals. There, Violet is drawn into a society of broderers--women who embroider kneelers for the Cathedral, carrying on a centuries-long tradition of bringing comfort to worshippers. Violet finds support and community in the group, fulfillment in the work they create, and even a growing friendship with the vivacious Gilda. But when forces threaten her new independence and another war appears on the horizon, Violet must fight to put down roots in a place where women aren't expected to grow. Told in Chevalier's glorious prose, A Single Thread is a timeless story of friendship, love, and a woman crafting her own life.
The Unbroken by C. L. Clark
The Unbroken
by C. L. Clark

"Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought. Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet's edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne. Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren't for sale"-- Provided by publisher.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
What We Can Know
by Ian McEwan

What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.--
Adult Nonfiction
Free: My Search for Meaning by Amanda Knox
Free: My Search for Meaning
by Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn't commit--and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it's taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free. Free recounts how Knox survived prison, the mistakes she made and misadventures she had reintegrating into society, and culminates in the untold story of her return to Italy and the extraordinary relationship she's built with the man who sent her to prison. It is the ... saga of what happens when you become the definition of notorious but have quietly returned to the matters of a normal life--seeking a life partner, finding a job, or even just going out in public--
Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball by Luke Epplin
Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball
by Luke Epplin

The riveting story of four men--Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige--whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond. In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in his footsteps on the Cleveland Indians. Though Doby, as the second Black player in the majors, would struggle during his first summer in Cleveland, his subsequent turnaround in 1948 from benchwarmer to superstar sparked one of the wildest and most meaningful seasons in baseball history. In intimate, absorbing detail, Luke Epplin's Our Team traces the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy. Together, as the backbone of a team that epitomized the postwar American spirit in all its hopes and contradictions, these four men would captivate the nation by storming to the World Series--all the while rewriting the rules of what was possible in sports.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
by John Steinbeck

With his dog Charley, John Steinbeck set out in his truck to explore and experience America in the 1960s. As he talked with all kinds of people, he sadly noted the passing of region speech, fell in love with Montana, and was appalled by racism in New Orleans.
Adult Graphic Novels
Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel
by Kurt Vonnegut

An American classic and one of the world's seminal antiwar books, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is faithfully presented in graphic novel form for the first time from Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North (How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler) and Eisner Award-nominated artist Albert Monteys (Universe!)--Provided by publisher.
Young Adult Fiction
Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman
Among Ghosts
by Rachel Hartman

On the run from a mercenary dragon--among other dangers-- thirteen-year-old Charl seeks refuge in an abandoned abbey haunted by an assemblage of ghosts.
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
by Axie Oh

A girl travels to the Spirit World to break a curse that threatens the lives of her people in this feminist YA retelling of the popular Korean legend The Tale of Shim Cheong.
Juvenile Fiction
Gooseberry by Robin Gow
Gooseberry
by Robin Gow

Twelve-year-old nonbinary B forms a connection with an anxious stray dog, Gooseberry, prompting them to pursue their dream of becoming a dog trainer while navigating the complexities of trust and building a family in their newest foster home--
The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze by Derrick Barnes
The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze
by Derrick Barnes

Thirteen-year-old Henson Blayze strives to be seen as more than just a football player in his predominantly white small town of Great Mountain, Mississippi, but when a horrific incident compels him to speak out, he must choose between playing football and seeking justice.

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