New Releases: July 29, 2020
Adult Fiction
The 20th Victim (Women’s Murder Club #20) - James Patterson
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
The shooters' aim is as fearsomely precise as their target selection. When Lindsay realizes that the fallen men and women excel in a lucrative, criminal activity, she leads the charge in the manhunt for the killers. As the casualty list expands, fear and fascination with this suspicious shooting gallery galvanizes the country. The victims were no angels, but are the shooters villains . . . or heroes?
All Adults Here - Emma Straub
Genres: Fiction
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days, decades years earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid's 13-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
The Andromeda Strain (Andromeda #1) - Michael Crichton
Genres: Fiction, Science fiction, Suspense
A military space probe, sent to collect extraterrestrial organisms from the upper atmosphere, is knocked out of orbit and falls to Earth. Twelve miles from the crash site, an inexplicable and deadly phenomenon terrorizes the residents of a sleepy desert town in Arizona, leaving only two survivors: an elderly addict and a newborn infant. The United States government is forced to mobilize Project Wildfire, a top-secret emergency response protocol. Four of the nation's most elite biophysicists are summoned to a clandestine underground laboratory located five stories beneath the desert and fitted with an automated atomic self-destruction mechanism for cases of irremediable contamination. Under conditions of total news blackout and the utmost urgency, the scientists race to understand and contain the crisis.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton
Daughter of the Reich - Louise Fein
Genres: Fiction, Romance
Leipzig, 1930's Germany. Hetty Herta is a young girl growing up under Nazi rule. With an SS officer father, a brother in the Luftwaffe and a member of the BDM Hetty is the epitome of a perfect German child. But Walter changes everything. Blond haired, blue-eyed, perfect in every way Walter. The boy who saved her life when she was a young child. Her brother's childhood best friend. A Jew. As she falls more and more in love with a man who is against all she has been taught, Hetty begins to question everything. Will the steady march of dark forces destroy their world, or can love ultimately triumph?
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Daughter of the Reich” by Louise Fein
Dragonfire (Alex Hawke #11) - Ted Bell
Genres: Fiction, Action, Suspense, Thriller
The dashing playboy heir to the British throne has gone missing in the Bahamas. The young prince's devoted grandmother, the Queen, knows only one man who can be trusted to find him before his kidnappers make good on their deadly threats. Lord Alexander Hawke, dashing British gentleman spy and MI6 legend, will risk all to save the young royal in this breathtaking new adventure from New York Times bestselling novelist Ted Bell. December 8, 1941, Washington, D.C. The new Chinese ambassador to the United States, Tiger Tang, meets with beleaguered President Roosevelt one day after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. China and the U.S. are wartime allies-but the charming, sophisticated Chinese ambassador may be playing his own treacherous game, including a wicked assassination plot that could well change the course of history. Present Day, the Bahamas Alex Hawke is recovering from horrific injuries suffered after a battle royale with a malevolent enemy. Suddenly, Hawke's recuperation is interrupted by a desperate call from the Queen. Her favorite grandson has disappeared in the Bahamas and Lord Hawke is the only man she trusts with a mission this time-sensitive. All she knows is that the young prince was last seen at the ultra-exclusive Dragonfire Resort, owned by Tiger's twin grandsons, the nefarious Tang brothers, evil heads of the Tang Dynasty's worldwide criminal enterprise. Time inexorably ticks down as Hawke, in the epic fight of his life, battles to unravel a shadowy conspiracy that may be centuries old.
Grown Ups - Marian Keyes
Genres: Fiction
A brand-new book from the #1 bestselling author of The Break and The Woman Who Stole My Life. They're a glamorous family, the Caseys. Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together--birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they're a happy family. Johnny's wife, Jessie--who has the most money--insists on it. Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, other people like each other far too much . . . Still, everything manages to stay under control--that is, until Ed's wife, Cara, gets a concussion and can't keep her thoughts or opinions to herself. One careless remark at Johnny's birthday party, with the entire family present, and Cara starts spilling all their secrets. As everything unravels, each of the adults finds themselves wondering if it's--finally--the time to grow up.
Little Family - Ishmael Beah
Genres: Fiction
Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country's tumultuous past. Elimane, the bookworm, is as street-smart as he is wise. Clever Khoudiemata manuevers to keep the younger kids--athletic, pragmatic Ndevui, thoughtful Kpindi, and especially their newest member, Namsa--safe and fed. When Elimane makes himself of service to the shadowy William Handkerchief, it seems as if the little family may be able to keep the world at bay and their household intact. But when Khoudi comes under the spell of the 'beautiful people'--the fortunate sons and daughters of the elite--the desire to resume an interrupted coming-of-age and follow her own destiny proves impossible to resist. A profound and tender portrayal of the connections we forge to survive the fate we're dealt, Little Family marks the further blossoming of a unique global voice.
Lockdown - Peter May
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Written over fifteen years ago, this prescient, suspenseful thriller is set against a backdrop of a capital city in quarantine, and explores human experience in the grip of a killer virus. They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eighty percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren't good.' A city in quarantine. London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed. A murdered child. At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. A powerful conspiracy. D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first - the virus or the killers?
Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30) - John Sandford
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Lucas Davenport investigates a vitriolic blog that seems to be targeting the children of U.S. politicians in the latest thriller by #1 New York Times-bestselling author John Sandford. The daughter of a U.S. Senator is monitoring her social media presence when she finds a picture of herself on a strange blog. And there are other pictures . . . of the children of other influential Washington politicians, walking or standing outside their schools, each identified by name. Surrounding the photos are texts of vicious political rants from a motley variety of radical groups. It's obviously alarming--is there an unstable extremist tracking the loved ones of powerful politicians with deadly intent? But when the FBI is called in, there isn't much the feds can do. The anonymous photographer can't be pinned down to one location or IP address, and more importantly, at least to the paper-processing bureaucrats, no crime has actually been committed. With nowhere else to turn, influential Senators decide to call in someone who can operate outside the FBI's constraints: Lucas Davenport.
Master Class - Christina Dalcher
Genres: Fiction, Science fiction
From the critically acclaimed author of Vox comes a suspenseful new novel that explores a disturbing alternate reality where the government has legalized eugenics. Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state's new elite schools, where children undergo routine tests for their quotient (Q). Those who don't measure up are placed in the many state boarding schools that have cropped up under a new government mandate--Elena's daughter, Freddie, is one of them. In order to be with Freddie, Elena immediately requests to transfer to the state school. To her horror, she learns that the children are receiving the bare minimum of instruction. Instead, they spend their days making handcrafted goods--valuable commodities in the age of machine-made products. What began as a shock quickly becomes a nightmare as Elena discovers the terrifying atrocities inflicted upon the students. Not only have their test scores been tampered with, but they're also unwitting subjects of experiments, one of which tests a new method of chemical sterilization. The plan? To render all adolescents with undesirable quotients infertile...and Freddie may be next in line.
The Mercies - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves.
Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil.
As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “The Mercies” by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The Numbers Game - Danielle Steel
Genres: Fiction, Romance
Eileen Jackson was happy to set aside her own dreams to raise a family with her husband, Paul. Together they built an ordinary life in a Connecticut town, the perfect place for their kids to grow up. But when Eileen discovers that Paul’s late nights in the city are hiding an affair with a younger woman, she begins to question all those years of sacrifice and compromise. On the brink of forty and wondering what she’s going to do with the rest of her life, is it too late for her to start over?
Meanwhile, as Paul is thrust back into the role of suburban fatherhood, his girlfriend, Olivia, is in Manhattan, struggling to find herself in the shadow of her mother, a famous actress, and her grandmother, a fiercely independent ninety-two-year-old artist. With their unique brands of advice ringing in her head, Olivia takes a major step, expanding her art gallery business internationally. Seeing her mother pursue old dreams and even find new love, Olivia realizes that there is so much she must learn about herself before committing her life to someone else.
Ultimately, Eileen decides to chase her own dreams as well. She’s off to Paris to attend Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. What awaits is an adventure that reinvents her life and redefines her.
Pretty Things - Janelle Brown
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.
Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.
Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.
Seeing (Blindness #1) - Jose Saramago
Genres: Fiction, Science fiction
On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has bothered to come out to vote. The politicians are growing jittery. What's going on? Should they reschedule the elections for another day? Around three o'clock, the rain finally stops. Promptly at four, voters rush to the polling stations, as if they had been ordered to appear.
But when the ballots are counted, more than 70 percent are blank. The citizens are rebellious. A state of emergency is declared. The president proposes that a wall be built around the city to contain the revolution. But are the authorities acting too precipitously? Or even blindly? The word evokes terrible memories of the plague of blindness that had hit the city four years before, and of the one woman who kept her sight. Could she be behind the blank ballots? Is she the organizer of a conspiracy against the state? A police superintendent is put on the case.
What begins as a satire on governments and the sometimes dubious efficacy of the democratic system turns into something far more sinister.
A Silent Death - Peter May
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Spain, 2020. When ex-pat fugitive Jack Cleland watches his girlfriend die, gunned down in a pursuit involving officer Cristina Sanchez Pradell, he promises to exact his revenge by destroying the policewoman Cristina's aunt Ana has been deaf-blind for the entirety of her adult life: the victim of a rare condition named Usher Syndrome. Ana is the centre of Cristina's world, and of Cleland's cruel plan. John Mackenzie, an ingenious yet irascible Glaswegian investigator, is seconded to aid the Spanish authorities in their manhunt. He alone can silence Cleland before the fugitive has the last, bloody, word.
The Water Keeper - Charles Martin
Genres: Fiction
Murphy Shepherd lives alone, doing maintenance work for a church that no one attends and trying to heal from scars gained rescuing others who dwell in the margins. His specialty is finding young girls bought and sold in the flesh trade, and leading them from brokenness to freedom, but Shepherd thinks he has given everything he has and it may be time to retire. His hermetic healing process is interrupted when he rescues a woman named Summer in Florida's Intercoastal Waterway and gets drawn into a hunt after a gang of international human traffickers.
When You See Me (Detective D D Warren #11) - Lisa Gardner
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy and Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren have built a task force to follow the digital bread crumbs left behind by deceased serial kidnapper Jacob Ness. When a disturbing piece of evidence is discovered in the hills of Georgia, they bring Flora Dane and true-crime savant Keith Edgar to a small town where something seems to be deeply wrong. What at first looks like a Gothic eeriness soon hardens into something much more sinister ... and they discover that for all the evil Jacob committed while alive, his worst secret is still to be revealed. Quincy and DD must summon their considerable skills and experience to crack the most disturbing case of their careers - and Flora must face her own past directly in the hope of saving others.
Adult Non-Fiction
American Poison - Eduardo Porter
Genres: Non-fiction, History, Politics, Race
Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is losing ground across nearly every indicator of social health. Its race problem, argues Eduardo Porter, is largely to blame.
In American Poison, the New York Times veteran shows how racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net. The consequences are profound and are only growing graver with time. Leading us through history and across America--from FDR's New Deal through Bill Clinton's welfare reform to Donald Trump's retrograde and divisive policies--Porter pieces together how racial hostility has blocked American social cohesion at every turn, producing a nation that fails not only its black and brown citizens but white Americans as well.
American Poison is at once a broad, rigorous argument, and a profound cri de coeur. Even as it uncovers our most tenacious national pathology, it points the way toward hope, illuminating the ways in which, as the nation becomes increasingly diverse, it may well be possible to construct a new understanding of racial identity--and a more cohesive society on top of it.
Biography of Resistance - Muhammad H Zaman
Genres: Non-fiction, Health, Medical, Science
In September 2016, a woman in Nevada became the first known case in the U.S. of a person who died of an infection resistant to every antibiotic available. Her death is the worst nightmare of infectious disease doctors and public health professionals. While bacteria live within us and are essential for our health, some strains can kill us. As bacteria continue to mutate, becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, we are likely to face a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions. “It will be like the great plague of the middle ages, the influenza pandemic of 1918, the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, and the Ebola epidemic of 2014 all combined into a single threat,” Muhammad H. Zaman warns.
The Biography of Resistance is Zaman’s riveting and timely look at why and how microbes are becoming superbugs. It is a story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. Following the trail of resistant bacteria from previously uncontacted tribes in the Amazon to the isolated islands in the Arctic, from the urban slums of Karachi to the wilderness of the Australian outback, Zaman examines the myriad factors contributing to this unfolding health crisis—including war, greed, natural disasters, and germophobia—to the culprits driving it: pharmaceutical companies, farmers, industrialists, doctors, governments, and ordinary people, all whose choices are pushing us closer to catastrophe.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Biography of Resistance” by Muhammad H Zaman
Dark Mirror - Barton Hellman
Genres: Non-fiction, History, Politics
Dark Mirror is the ultimate inside account of the vast global surveillance network that now pervades all our lives.
Barton Gellman’s informant called himself ‘Verax’ - the truth-teller. It was only later that Verax unmasked himself as Edward Snowden. But Gellman’s primary role in bringing Snowden’s revelations to light, for which he shared the Pulitzer Prize, is only the beginning of this gripping real-life spy story. Snowden unlocked the door: here Gellman describes what he found on the other side over the course of a years-long journey of investigation. It is also the story of his own escalating battle against unknown digital adversaries after he discovered his own name on a file in the leaked document trove and realised that he himself was under attack.
Through a gripping narrative of paranoia, clandestine operations and jaw-dropping revelations, Dark Mirror delineates in full for the first time the hidden superstructure that connects government espionage with Silicon Valley. Who is spying on us and why? Here are the answers.
The Future of Feeling - Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
Genres: Non-fiction, Psychology, Science
There’s no argument that technology has made it easier to communicate. It’s also easier to shut someone out when we are confronted with online discourse. Why bother to understand strangers—or even acquaintances—when you can troll them, block them, or just click “Unfriend” and never look back? However briefly satisfying that might be, it’s also potentially eroding one of our most human traits: empathy.
So what does the future look like when something so vital to a peaceful, healthy, and productive society is fading away? The cautionary, yet hopeful, answer is in this champion for an endangered emotion.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “The Future of Feeling” by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
Happy Fat - Sofie Hagen
Genres: Non-fiction, Feminism
In Happy Fat, comedian Sofie Hagen shares how she removed fatphobic influences from her daily life and found self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife.
From shame and sex to airplane seats, love and getting stuck in public toilets, Sofie provides practical tips for readers – drawing wisdom from other Fat Liberation champions along the way.
Part memoir, part social commentary, Happy Fat is a funny, angry and impassioned look at how taking up space in a culture that is desperate to reduce you can be radical, emboldening and life-changing.
How Not to be a Hot Mess - Craig Hase & Devon Hase
Genres: Non-fiction, Self-help
The dumpster fire of life rages on, but you got this. Practice six rules to keep you grounded, weather the storm, and actually be a decent person.
It may seem like the world is going to hell in a hand basket right now. Whether it's big stuff like politics and climate change, or just the daily spin of paying your bills, getting to work on time, and fending off social media trolls, we can all admit, modern life ain't easy. Here are six really good guiding principles, inspired from the ancient wisdom of Buddhism and mindfulness practice, to keep you anchored and steady amidst the chaos.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “How Not to Be a Hot Mess” by Craig Hase and Devon Hase
The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness - Sarah Ramey
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography, Feminism, Health
Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological.
The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission, to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.
Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness is a medical mystery that she says reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connection to the state of our microbiomes.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness” by Sarah Ramey
Looks Can Kill - Riam Shammaa
Genres: Non-fiction, Health, Science
From fitspiration vlogs touting "fit" as the new skinny to magazines imploring men to get "shredded" and "massive" in the gym, fitness stars and elevated body-image standards are driving a burgeoning industry meant, ostensibly, to make us all more healthy. But are those images of rippling abs, bulging shoulders and tiny waists truly inspiring good health? In this book, leading sports doctor (and former champion powerlifter) Riam Shammaa exposes the dirty secret of online fitness culture: rampant steroid and drug use, not only amongst its Instagram stars and wellness gurus, but eagerly enjoined by millions seeking to emulate a new beauty ideal (and its myth, of being all-natural).
Never mind the high-profile cases of athletes Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong. Steroids and other pharmaceuticals are being sold and consumed in life-threatening quantities online and through the backrooms of gyms and fitness centres, and the people buying them range from teen girls trying to look good on Instagram to middle-aged men who can't say good-bye to their youthful physiques.
This is a vivid, eye-opening and compassionate journey alongside a young doctor as he discovers an underworld of misinformation and misdirected ambition, drug abuse and lives cut short for the glory of competition, pageantry or the mistaken belief that we need to be fantastically beautiful in order to be fit.
The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander
Genres: Non-fiction, Race
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander
Recollections of My Nonexistence - Rebecca Solnit
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography, Feminism
In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy.
Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women’s rights.
She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer—books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Recollections of My Nonexistence” by Rebecca Solnit
The Skin We’re In - Desmond Cole
Genres: Non-fiction, Race
In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.
Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In. Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, Indigenous land and water protectors resisting the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, police across the country rallying around an officer accused of murder, and more.
The year also witnessed the profound personal and professional ramifications of Desmond Cole’s unwavering determination to combat injustice. In April, Cole disrupted a Toronto police board meeting by calling for the destruction of all data collected through carding. Following the protest, Cole, a columnist with the Toronto Star, was summoned to a meeting with the paper’s opinions editor and informed that his activism violated company policy. Rather than limit his efforts defending Black lives, Cole chose to sever his relationship with the publication. Then in July, at another police board meeting, Cole challenged the board to respond to accusations of a police cover-up in the brutal beating of Dafonte Miller by an off-duty police officer and his brother. When Cole refused to leave the meeting until the question was publicly addressed, he was arrested. The image of Cole walking out of the meeting, handcuffed and flanked by officers, fortified the distrust between the city’s Black community and its police force.
Month-by-month, Cole creates a comprehensive picture of entrenched, systemic inequality. Urgent, controversial, and unsparingly honest, The Skin We’re In is destined to become a vital text for anti-racist and social justice movements in Canada, as well as a potent antidote to the all-too-present complacency of many white Canadians.
Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L Trump
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography, History, Politics
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A first-hand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for re-gifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Too Much and Never Enough” by Mary L Trump
The Velvet Rope Economy - Nelson D Schwartz
Genres: Non-fiction, Economics, Politics
In nearly every realm of daily life--from health care to education, highways to home security--there is an invisible velvet rope that divides how Americans live. On one side of the rope, for a price, red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened. On the other side, middle- and working-class Americans fight to find an empty seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college acceptance, or a hospital bed.
We are all aware of the gap between the rich and everyone else, but when we weren't looking, business innovators stepped in to exploit it, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to profit by serving the privileged. And as decision-makers and corporate leaders increasingly live on the friction-free side of the velvet rope, they are less inclined to change--or even notice--the obstacles everyone else must contend with. Schwartz's "must read" book takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of this new reality and shows the toll the velvet rope divide takes on society.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “The Velvet Rope Economy” by Nelson D Schwartz
Young Adult Fiction
Boys of Alabama - Genevieve Hudson
Genres: Young adult fiction, Paranormal fiction
A queer coming-of-age told with magical realism, Boys of Alabama guides us through 16-year-old Max's first year in America. Conflicted about leaving Germany, Max is in awe of his new "home" - here, the heat is thick, the food is grossly delicious, and football and religion-seemingly intertwined-permeate everything. While his parents don't know what to make of an American South pining for the "good ol' days," or the people who live there, shy Max thrives-he makes the football team, goes to church for the first time, and even makes friends. When Max meets Pan in Chemistry class, they embark on a quixotic, strange, and consuming relationship. They tell each other their secrets; Max tells Pan about his witchy powers, Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of a local church. But the boys aren't sure whose secrets are darker, or what is more frightening - their true selves, or staying true in an intolerant Alabama. Written in atmospheric, propulsive prose, Boys of Alabama is an evocative and urgent novel of young love, identity, faith, and the dangers of each.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Boys of Alabama” by Genevieve Hudson
Junior Fiction
Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes (Pandava #3) -Roshani Chokshi
Genres: Junior fiction, Fantasy
After fourteen-year-old Aru Shah and her friends fail to keep a prophecy from the Sleeper, they undergo a rebranding campaign to prove the Pandavas's trustworthiness, but Aru believes they need to focus on finding the Tree of Wishes before the Sleeper and stopping war between the devas and the demons.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes” by Roshani Chokshi
Junior Non-Fiction
A For Anonymous - David Kushner
Genres: Junior non-fiction, Graphic novels, History, Science
A for Anonymous shows how a leaderless band of volunteers successfully used hacktivism to fight for the underdog, embarrass their rich and powerful targets--from Sony and Paypal to the Church of Scientology and Ferguson Police Department--all in the name of freedom of speech and information. Their exploits blurred the distinction between "online" and "reality," and help shape our contemporary world.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “A For Anonymous” by David Kushner
