A biweekly selection from our shelves, as curated by your favorite SPL librarians!
For the week of September 28, 2021: Fiction | Nonfiction | Graphic Novels | Movies/TV, Music & More
Fiction
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Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last page. |
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The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell
They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book--a discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt's social secretary. Their aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington--generation after generation. But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question in this unputdownable novel. |
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The Dating Playbook by Farrah Rochon
When it comes to personal training, Taylor Powell kicks serious butt. Unfortunately, her bills are piling up, rent is due, and the money situation is dire. She needs a miracle, and Jamar Dixon might just be it. The oh-so-fine former footballer wants back into the NFL, and he wants Taylor to train him. There's just one catch--no one can know what they're doing. But when they're accidentally outed as a couple, Taylor's game plan is turned completely upside down. |
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Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez
An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing. |
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Version Zero by David Yoon
From the brilliant mind of New York Times bestselling author David Yoon comes a lightning-fast and scorchingly observant thriller about how we can save ourselves from the very real perils of a virtual world. |
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What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
From the widely acclaimed, best-selling author of American War, a new novel--beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving--that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child. |
Nonfiction
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Did I Say That Out Loud?: Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them by Kristin van Ogtrop
Featuring stories from her own life, as well as anecdotes from her unwitting friends and family, van Ogtrop encourages you to laugh at the small irritations of midlife, but also to acknowledge the things you may have lost. Like an intimate chat with your best friend, this mostly funny, sometimes sad, always affirming volume from longtime magazine journalist van Ogtrop is a celebration of that period of life when mild humiliations are significantly outweighed by a self-actualized triumph of the spirit. |
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Easy Crafts for the Insane: A Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things by Kelly Williams Brown
In Easy Crafts for the Insane, crafting tutorials serve as the backdrop of a life dissolved, then glued back together. Surprising, humane, and utterly unforgettable, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the unexpected, messy coping mechanisms we use to find ourselves again. |
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Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters by Andrew Morton
Perfect for fans of The Crown, this captivating biography from a New York Times bestselling author follows Queen Elizabeth II and her sister Margaret as they navigate life in the royal spotlight. |
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Footnotes: The Black Artists who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way by Caseen Gaines
Gaines provides an in-depth look into the rise of the 1921 Broadway hit, Shuffle Along, the first all-Black musical to succeed on Broadway. No one was sure if America was ready for a show featuring nuanced, thoughtful portrayals of Black characters-- and the potential fallout was terrifying. But from the first jazzy, syncopated beats of composers Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, New York audiences fell head over heels. |
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Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance by Mallory Weggemann
The Paralympic gold-medalist, world champion swimmer, ESPY winner, and NBC Sports commentator uses her extraordinary story to equip others to meet whatever challenges they face in life. |
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The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch
Tracing Poe's hard and brilliant journey, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is an essential new portrait of a writer whose life is synonymous with mystery and imagination--and an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own. |
Graphic Novels
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Black Star by Eric Glover
Stranded on an alien planet, two astronauts must battle deadly elements and each other to recover a reserve shuttle built for one. |
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Djeliya: A West African Fantasy Epic by Juni Ba
Inspired by West African folklore and stories handed over centuries, this unique graphic novel follows the adventures of Mansour Keita, last prince of a dying kingdom, and Awa Kouyaté, his loyal Djeli, or 'royal storyteller' as they journey to meet the great wizard who destroyed their world and then withdrew into his tower, never to be seen again. |
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Invisible Kingdom. Volume Three, In Other Worlds by G. Willow Wilson
Just when the crew of the Sundog thought they'd made it through the most dangerous edge of space-- they are taken by a faction of mysterious new Nones to an even further and more deadly place: The Point of No Return. |
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The Montague Twins. The Witch’s Hand by Nathan Page & Drew Shannon
Orphaned teens Pete and Al Montague and their adopted sister, Charlie, already known for solving mysteries in their small New England town, begin studying magic as they investigate a disappearance connected to a seventeenth-century witch. |
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Run. Book One by John Lewis & Andrew Aydin
The sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel series March--the continuation of the life story of John Lewis and the struggles seen across the United States after the Selma voting rights campaign. |
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Slaughterhouse-Five: Or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death story by Kurt Vonnegut; written by Ryan North
The first-ever graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great anti-war books. |
Movies/TV, Music & More
Movies/TV
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Catherine the Great by Philip Martin Format: DVD Charts Catherine the Great's tumultuous reign as the cunning and ambitious empress as she fights off threats to her crown, wages war with the Ottoman Empire and expands Russia's borders as far as the Black Sea and Crimea. |
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Finding You by Ken Carpenter Format: DVD Talented aspiring violinist Finley meets Beckett, a famous young movie star, on the way to her college semester abroad program in a small village in Ireland. An unexpected romance develops as the heartthrob Beckett leads the uptight Finley on an adventurous revival, and she inspires him to take charge of his future until the pressures of his stardom get in the way. |
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The Wolf House by Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña Format: DVD Maria is a young girl who hides in a mysterious abandoned house in southern Chile after escaping from a colony run by German religious fanatics. She's greeted by two pigs sheltering there, and the house begins to react to Maria's feelings, eventually transforming the animals into humans in a phantasmagoria of beauty and horror. |
Music
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The Bitter Truth by Evanescence Format: CD The Bitter Truth is the fifth studio album by American rock band Evanescence. The album is the band's first in more than three years, following 2017's Synthesis, as well as their first full album of new material since their self-titled third album (2011). |
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Without People by Donovan Woods Format: CD For his latest album, Donovan Woods not only looked to current events for inspiration, but he also looked at how those events are taking a toll on the natural world. |
& More
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Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes Format: Playaway Based on a true story rooted in America's past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic--a richly rewarding novel of women's friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond. |