A biweekly selection from our shelves, as curated by your favorite SPL librarians!
For the week of November 8, 2022: Fiction | Nonfiction | Graphic Novels | Movies/TV, Music & More
Fiction
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Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love by Carlos Allende
Last November, I found a dead body inside the freezer that my roommate keeps inside the garage. My first thought was to call the police, but Jignesh hadn’t paid his share of the rent just yet. It wasn’t due until the thirtieth, and you know how difficult it is to find people who pay on time. You’ll understand, therefore, that I desperately need to sell this novel. Just enough copies to help me survive until I find a job . . . what could I do that doesn’t demand too much effort? |
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Delphi by Clare Pollard
A captivating debut novel about a classics professor immersed in research for a new book on a prophecy in the ancient world who confronts chilling questions about her own life just as the pandemic descends--for readers of Jenny Offill, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Sally Rooney. |
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A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times: Stories by Meron Hadero
Set across the U.S. and abroad, Meron Hadero stories feature immigrants, refugees, and those on the brink of dispossession, all struggling to begin again, all fighting to belong. |
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Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry
Set in Jaffa in 1947-51, this fable-like novel is a heartbreaking tale of young love during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and displacement of its people. At times darkly humorous and ironic but also profoundly moving, this novel based on a true story follows the lives of a 15 year old engineer, Subhi, and the 13 year old girl, Shams, he hopes one day to marry. |
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Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth
A darkly funny take on mothers and daughters, about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law. |
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Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer
From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars is the final book of the Hugo Award-shortlisted Terra Ignota series. |
Nonfiction
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The Month-By-Month Gardening Guide: Daily Advice for Growing Flowers, Vegetables, Herbs, and Houseplants by Franz Böhmig
To be a successful gardener, you need to know two things: how to do something and when to do it. Both concepts are thoroughly tackled in The Month-By-Month Gardening Guide. This comprehensive approach to gardening guides home gardeners--whether you are growing vegetables, flowers, or houseplants--through a year of growing. |
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Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings by Chrysta Bilton
In this unputdownable story of nature, nurture, and coming to terms with one's true inheritance, the author, introducing her deeply dysfunctional yet fiercely loving family that is anything but "normal," reveals how a colorful cast of characters were thrown together by chance and DNA. |
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Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi
The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood. |
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The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet
A riveting historical drama that tells the story of the first rape trial on record in American history and the fault lines of class privilege and gender bias that it exposed, showing how much has changed over two centuries and how much has not. |
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Taming the Potted Beast: The Strange and Sensational History of the Not-So-Humble Houseplant by Molly Williams
The colourful, peculiar history of the houseplant - from ancient Rome to Victorian England to Instagram - a botanical adventure full of histrionic highs, devastating lows, and sensational turning points along the way. |
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The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen
An entertaining and illuminating collection of weird, wonderful, and downright baffling words from the origins of English--and what they reveal about the lives of the earliest English speakers. |
Graphic Novels
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Black Paradox by Junji Ito
Four people intent on killing themselves meet through the suicide website Black Paradox: Maruso, a nurse who despairs about the future; Taburo, a man who is tortured by his doppelganger; Pii-tan, an engineer with his own robot clone; and Baracchi, a woman who agonizes about the birthmark on her face. They wander together in search of the perfect death, fatefully opening a door that leads them to a rather bizarre destiny... |
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Blood-Stained Teeth, Volume 1: Bite Me by Christian Ward
Meet Atticus Sloane; misanthropic criminal, avid vinyl collector and member of the aristocratic Vampire cabal The First Borns, and for the right price he'll turn you into a Vampire. After all immortality isn't cheap. |
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The Joy of Quitting by Keiler Roberts
From toddler antics to doctor appointments, Keiler Roberts breathes humour and life into the fleeting present. |
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The Man Who Fell to Earth: The Official Movie Adaptation by Dan Watters
An all-new, fully-authorised graphic novel adaptation of the cult 1976 movie starring David Bowie and directed by Nicholas Roeg. |
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Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld
Confront the spectre of failure, the wraith of social media, and other supernatural enemies of the author. |
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Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis by Tom Humberstone
With stunning art and an astute eye, 'Suzanne' explores how a figure both enormously influential and too-often overlooked battled her father's ambition, bias in sporting journalism, and her own divisive personality, to forge a new path -- and to change sport forever. |
Movies/TV, Music & More
Movies/TV
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Hive directed by Blerta Basholli Format: DVD Sundance's triple award-winning film is a searing drama based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. To provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility |
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Successtion. The Complete Third Season Format: DVD Ambushed by his rebellious son Kendall at the end of Season two, Logan Roy begins Season Three in a perilous position, scrambling to secure familial, political, and financial alliances. Tensions rise as a bitter corporate battle threatens to turn into a family civil war. |
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Tina directed by Dan Lindsay & T.J. Martin Format: DVD Profiles the life and career of Tina Turner, featuring her personal reflections, archival interviews, and contributions from others. |
Music
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Narrow Sea by Caroline Shaw Format: CD Narrow Sea was written for SÅ Percussion, Dawn Upshaw, and Gil Kalish in 2017. The piece combines her previous explorations of folk song with a sonic universe that includes ceramic bowls, humming, a piano played like a dulcimer by five people at once, and flower pots (which are the central focus of taxidermy- her first piece for SÅ Percussion, written in 2012). |
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Book by They Might Be Giants Format: CD Book is the 23rd studio album by They Might Be Giants. The album was released alongside a book wich includes lyrics from the album and other recent albums. |
& More
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The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand Format: Spoken CD After a tragic fire in 1922 that killed 19-year-old chambermaid, Grace Hadley, The Hotel Nantucket descended from a gilded age gem to a mediocre budget-friendly lodge to inevitably an abandoned eyesore — until it's purchased and renovated top to bottom by London billionaire, Xavier Darling. Xavier hires Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton as his general manager, and Lizbet, in turn, pulls together a charismatic, if inexperienced, staff who share the vision of turning the fate of the hotel around. |