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Staff Picks September 2026 |
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Bromantasy
by Máire Roche
Two heroes. One brain cell. BROMANTASY is a cozy, queer fantasy about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your totally platonic best friend and the epic quest that might force you to confront the truth. This deluxe limited first run edition will feature beautifully designed colored edges--while supplies last Fellas, is it gay to kiss your bff while on a quest through the forest you're unqualified for? Juniper O'Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else--taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor--falls to Juniper's best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn. But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he's finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there's no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn't hate? How good Mo's thighs look in his questing pants--he doesn't have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line. But monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realize that the terrifying beast they've sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from her family, they're off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.
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The Calamity Club
by Kathryn Stockett
So immersive, exciting, and downright fabulous, you never want it to end.--Oprah DailyINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The multimillion-copy-selling author of The Help returns with a bold, big-hearted novel about a group of unbreakable women, fighting for what's rightfully theirs--and the power of friendship to change everything.Pure, hell-raising entertainment.--The New York Times Book ReviewOxford, Mississippi, 1933.Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable big girls at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister's seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates--and Meg's--converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan for them to take control of their lives. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women's freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences. The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer--an epic testament to underestimated women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious--the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.
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Distant Trails: Under Carico's Moons: Book One
by Nan C. Ballard
The planet Carico is short on technology and long on wide-open spaces. When Seth Reilly returns home to Under Rim, it isn't the peaceful village he remembers. Trouble is in the wind, and the new girl in town, Anni, is at the heart of it. Seth and Anni cross Jerdix, an outlaw who tortures Seth with a device prohibited throughout the Interstellar Coalition. Unable to cope, Seth flees to a lonely camp where he becomes obsessed with taming a horse as damaged as he is. Anni follows, determined to help him. But Jerdix is still out there. Can Seth and Anni survive Jerdix' threat and find the help they both need to heal?
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Girl in the Creek
by Wendy N. Wagner
Erin's brother Bryan has been missing for five years. It was as if he simply walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Determined to uncover the truth, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood where Bryan was last seen alive. He isn't the first hiker to go missing in this area, and their cases go unsolved. When she discovers the corpse of a local woman in a creek, Erin unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of very powerful forces--from this world and beyond--hell-bent on keeping their secrets buried--Provided by publisher.
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Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
by Cho Nam-Joo
THE BOOK THAT LAUNCHED THE 4B MOVEMENT --Arya James, Fourth Wave Longlisted - National Book Award (Translated Literature) A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and Editors' Choice Selection Best Books of 2020 -- NPR, TIME Magazine, Chicago Public LibraryVulture - Best Books of the Year (So Far) A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea's new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.
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The Knight and the Moth
by Rachel Gillig
Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum's windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams. Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil's visions. But when Sybil's fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them--for the world outside the cathedral's cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she'd rather avoid Rodrick's dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god--
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The Road of Bones: The Ashen Series, Book One
by Demi Winters
In this epic and immersive Viking-inspired romantic fantasy, a woman fleeing a ruthless assassin accidentally joins forces with a group of mercenaries and must use all her cunning to escape with her life--and heart--intact. Silla Nordvig is running for her life. The Queen of Íseldur has sent warriors to bring Silla to Sunnavík, where death awaits her. When her father is killed, his last words set Silla on a perilous quest: travel the treacherous Road of Bones--a thousand-mile stretch haunted by warbands, creatures of darkness, and a mysterious murderer--and go to Kopa, where a shield-house awaits her. After barely surviving the first stretch of road, a desperate Silla sneaks into a supply wagon belonging to the notorious Bloodaxe Crew. To make it to Kopa, she must win over Axe Eyes, the brooding leader of the Crew, while avoiding the Wolf, his distractingly handsome right-hand man. All the while, the queen's ruthless assassin hunts Silla obsessively. Will Silla make it safely to Kopa? Or will she fall prey to the perils of the Road of Bones?
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The Salt Grows Heavy
by Cassandra Khaw
You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three 'saints' who control them. The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive--
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Seascraper
by Benjamin Wood
Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa's trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and sea-scum, pining for his neighbor, Joan Wyeth, and playing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but this remains a private dream. Then a mysterious American arrives in town and enlists Thomas's help in finding a perfect location for his next movie. Though skeptical at first, Thomas learns to trust the stranger, Edgar, and, shaken from the drudgery of his days by the promise of Hollywood glamour, begins to see a different future for himself. But how much of what Edgar claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?--
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Station Eleven
by Emily St John Mandel
An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, from the author of three highly acclaimed previous novels. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it--
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This Is Not about Us: Fiction
by Allegra Goodman
Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubenstein family, it could go either way. When their beloved older sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into decades of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives-divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals-their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible. With This is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman--whose prior collection was heralded as one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life (The Boston Globe)--returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters. A big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations-- Provided by publisher.
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Whistler
by Ann Patchett
A Katie Couric Book Club Pick / One of President Obama's '26 Summer Reading List Picks / A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick / A GoodReads Most Anticipated Book of SummerAnn Patchett's new novel is a rare phenomenon in contemporary fiction: a novel both majestic and intimate, original and masterful in its structure, crystalline in its prose, revelatory in its insights, utterly devastating yet ultimately uplifting in its emotional impact. . . . I think it is her best novel yet. --The Boston GlobeThe acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time.When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn't seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It's a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.
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The Look
by Michelle Obama
An illustrated book about fashion by former First Lady Michelle Obama--
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Vagabond: A Memoir
by Tim Curry
There are few stars in Hollywood today that can boast the kind of resume Emmy award-winning actor Tim Curry has built over the past five decades. From his breakout role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' to his iconic depiction as the sadistic clown Pennywise in It to his critically acclaimed role as the original King Arthur in both the Broadway and West End versions of Spamalot, Curry redefined what it meant to be a 'character actor,' portraying heroes and villains alike with complexity, nuance, and a genuine understanding of human darkness. He's had dozens of roles across movies, TV shows, and musicals; lent his instantly recognizable voice to dozens of voice roles, audiobooks, and videogames; and he's changed the lives of countless fans in the process. Now, in his memoir, Curry takes readers behind-the-scenes of his rise to fame from his early beginnings as a military brat with difficult family dynamics, to his formative years in boarding school and university, to the moment when he hit the stage for the first time
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Wild in the Willamette: Exploring the Mid-Valley's Parks, Trails, and Natural Areas
by Book Author
Located between the population centers of Portland and Eugene, Oregon's Willamette Valley boasts rich opportunities for outdoor recreation that are too often overlooked. Wild in the Willamette is a guidebook to the natural treasures of the mid-Willamette Valley, extending far beyond the familiar I-5 corridor. Sprinkled with natural history sidebars and infused with essays by notable local authors, it aims to connect residents and visitors with the best hiking, biking, and paddling opportunities the mid-Valley offers.
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Skipshock: (A YA Time-Travel Fantasy Romance Across Parallel Worlds)
by Caroline O'Donoghue
Margo is a troubled schoolgirl. After the death of her father, she's on her way to a new boarding school in a new city. They never should have met. But when Margo suddenly appears one day on Moon's train, their fates become inextricably linked. If Margo wants to survive, she has to pass as a traveling salesman, too--except it's not that easy. Move north on the train line and time speeds up, a day passing in mere hours. Move south and time slows down--a day can last several weeks. Slow worlds are the richest ones: you live longer, your youth lasting decades. Fast worlds are sharp, cruel, and don't have time for pleasantries. Death is frequent. Salesmen die young of skipshock. That is, if they're not shot down by the Southern Guard first. As Margo moves between worlds and her attachment to Moon intensifies, she feels her youth start to slip between her fingers. But is Moon everything he seems? Is Margo?--Provided by publisher.
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