A biweekly selection from our shelves, as curated by your favorite SPL librarians!
For the week of February 1, 2022: Fiction | Nonfiction | Graphic Novels | Movies/TV, Music & More
Fiction
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The After Party by A.C. Arthur
Three women form an unbreakable bond in a sexy, suspenseful, and adventurous novel about empowerment and sisterhood through thick and thin. |
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Dark Tarot by Christine Feehan
Light and dark combine as the cards reveal hidden truths in this intoxicating installment in Christine Feehan's #1 New York Times bestselling Carpathian series. |
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Getaway with Murder by Diane Kelly
Getaway With Murder is the first in a cozy series from Diane Kelly set in a lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where secrets hide behind every hill. |
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In Every Mirror She's Black by Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström
A timely and arresting debut for anyone looking for insight into what it means to be a Black woman in the world. Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm as they build their new lives in the most open society run by the most private people. Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She's Black is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society. |
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Look for Me and I'll Be Gone by John Edgar Wideman
Forty years after John Edgar Wideman's first collection of stories was published, he continues to produce new stories of the highest caliber and relevancy. Here, in his sixth story collection, he revisits themes that have infused his work for the duration of his career: family, loss, the penal system, Pittsburgh, physical and emotional life, art, and memory. |
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A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin
From the universally admired, National Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Waiting-a timely novel that follows a famous Chinese singer severed from his country, as he works to find his way in the United States. |
Nonfiction
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But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits by Kimberly Harrington
In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life. |
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The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Bostone by Cristina Viviana Groeger
Education is thought to be the route out of poverty, but history disagrees. Cristina Groeger explores the Gilded Age origins of this idea and shows how schooling actually bolstered economic inequality in the twentieth century. If we want a more equitable society, she argues, we should look not just to education, but also to workers and the workplace. |
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Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang
A lively and bold blueprint for moving beyond the "era of institutional failure" by transforming our outmoded political and economic systems to be resilient to twenty-first-century problems, from the popular entrepreneur, bestselling author, and political truth-teller. |
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A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
On discovering her murdered husband's body, an eighteenth-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. What follows is an adventure in which Doireann Ní Ghríofa sets out to discover Eibhlín Dubh's erased life--and in doing so, discovers her own. |
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Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me about Caring for the Living by Robert A. Jensen with James Hider
The owner of the world's leading disaster management company chronicles the unseen world behind the yellow tape, and explores what it means to be human after a lifetime of caring for the dead. The chronicle of an almost impossible and grim job, Personal Effects also tells Jensen's own story, how he came to this line of work, how he manages the chaos that is his life, and the personal toll the repeated exposure to mass death brings. |
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She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright
A powerful collection of stories about women who murdered--for revenge, for love, and even for pleasure--rife with historical details that will have any true crime junkie on the edge of their seat. |
Graphic Novels
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COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson
A collection of short comics about the COVID-19 pandemic. Diverse artists address disruptions in work, school, and family life as well as failures in public policy, racial biases, and systemic inequalities revealed by the pandemic. |
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The Day the Klan Came to Town by Bill Campbell
Strength in solidarity is the prevailing theme of this galvanizing graphic dramatization by Campbell of a real-life clash between residents of Carnegie, Penn., and the KKK in 1923. |
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Destroy All Monsters: A Reckless Book by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
It's 1988 and Ethan has been hired for his strangest case yet: finding the secrets of a Los Angeles real estate mogul. How hard could that be, right? Only what starts as a deep dive into the life of a stranger will soon take a deadly turn, and find Ethan risking everything that still matters to him. |
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Everything. Volume 1, Collected and Uncollected Comics from Around 1978-1982 by Lynda Barry
Reflective of the early 1980s before the appearance of Barry's well-known characters Marlys and Arna, the comics in "Everything, Vol. 1" cover the more adult subjects of bad love, bad perms, being single, Prince, and miserable break-ups--resulting in one of the most oft-quoted Barry sayings: Love is an exploding cigar which we all willingly smoke. |
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Far Sector by N. K. Jemisin
For the past six months, newly chosen Green Lantern Sojourner "Jo" Mullein has been protecting the City Enduring, a massive metropolis of 20 billion people. The city has maintained peace for over 500 years by stripping its citizens of their ability to feel. As a result, violent crime is virtually unheard of, and murder is nonexistent. But that's all about to change in this new graphic novel that gives a DC's Young Animal spin to the legacy of the Green Lanterns |
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Onion Skin by Edgar Camacho
Discover a bright new star of Mexican comics in this romantic and thrilling tale, stuffed with adventure and delicious food. |
Movies/TV, Music & More
Movies/TV
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The Eyes of Tammy Faye by Michael Showalter Format: DVD An intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall, and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. In the 1970s and '80s, Tammy Faye and her husband, Jim Bakker, rose from humble beginnings to create the world's largest religious broadcasting network and theme park, and were revered for their message of love, acceptance, and prosperity. Tammy Faye was legendary for her indelible eyelashes, her idiosyncratic singing, and her eagerness to embrace people from all walks of life. However, it wasn't long before financial improprieties, scheming rivals, and scandal toppled their carefully constructed empire. |
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The Sparks Brothers by Edgar Wright Format: Blu-Ray A musical odyssey exploring five weird and wonderful decades with brothers Ron and Russell Mael, celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks. Features commentary from celebrity fans Flea, Jane Wiedlin, Beck, Jack Antonoff, Jason Schwartzman, Neil Gaiman and more. |
Music
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The Color Purple: New Broadway Cast Recording Format: CD One of Broadway's most unforgettable musicals comes back to the stage in a production featuring Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson, breakout London theater star Cynthia Erivo, and Orange Is the New Black's Danielle Brooks. |
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Homage to Rostropovich by Steven Honigberg Format: CD As a member of the National Symphony Orchestra under Rostropovich, Steven Honigberg considered the maestro a great mentor, and he and Albany Records are proud to present this tribute featuring works composed for this great musician, activist and humanitarian. |
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Last of the Better Days Ahead by Charlie Parr Format: CD Charlie Parr's newest album, Last of the Better Days Ahead, is a collection of powerful new songs about how one looks back on a life lived, as well as forward on what's still to come. It's spare production foregrounds Parr's poetic lyricism, his expressive, gritty voice ringing clear over deft acoustic guitar playing that references folk and blues motifs in Parr's own exploratory, idiosyncratic style. |
& More
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All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner Format: Spoken CD The true story of the extraordinary life and brutal death of Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany, who was executed on Hitler's direct order--uncovered by her great-great-niece in this riveting, deeply researched account. |