National Network for Equitable Library Service

Teenage brothers Hombre and Transformer spend their days locked up in their suburban Montreal bedroom, writing songs and dreaming of stardom. Hombre, the younger one, is quiet, contemplative, and talented, a poet in the making. His older brother Transformer is stubborn, domineering, and secretly struggling with mental health issues. Their sequestered world is broken open one summer when their mother hires Spit, a girl from the local guitar shop, to help the boys improve their modest skills. But these good intentions set off a chain reaction with tragic consequences.

Solitary Mathilda has long been enamored with the 'Bright Young Things' of the 20s, and throughout her life, her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things that she adores, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists' residency in Dun, a small European town Hermia was known to have lived in during the 30s.

From lost siblings to the horrors of war to tales of selkie wives, Wait Softly Brother is filled with questions about memory, reality and the truths hidden in family lore. After twenty years of looping frustrations Kathryn walks out of her marriage and washes up in her childhood home determined to write her way to a new life. There she is put to work by her aging parents sorting generations of memories and mementos as biblical rains fall steadily and the house is slowly cut off from the rest of the world.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest's maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.

A New York Times Notable Book. "You're in for a treat. The Reformatory is one of those books you can't put down. Tananarive Due hit it out of the park." - Stephen King. A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he's sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead. Gracetown, Florida June 1950.

Oprah's Book Club Pick. Instant New York Times bestseller - Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more. "Nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving." - Vogue. "A novel of triumph." - The Washington Post. "Harrowing, immersive, and other-worldly." - People.

New York Times bestseller. From "one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot" (The New York Times Book Review), an immersive historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China—perfect for fans of Lisa See's classics Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane. According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use.

The latest New York Times bestseller from beloved author Alice Hoffman celebrates the enduring magic of books and is a "wonderful story of love and growth" (Stephen King). One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia's mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be?

"A rollicking tale." - The Washington Post. "Propulsive." - Associated Press. "Wild, smart, energetic." - Los Angeles Times. "Brilliant and effervescent." - NPR. From the #1 bestselling author of The Glass Castle, the instant New York Times bestseller a "rip-roaring, action-packed" (The New York Times) novel about an indomitable young woman in prohibition-era Virginia. Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid.

Set in late 16th-century Africa, India, Portugal, and Japan, The African Samurai is a powerful historical novel based on the true story of Yasuke, Japan's first foreign-born samurai and the only samurai of African descent—for readers of Esi Edugyan and Lawrence Hill. In 1579, a Portuguese trade ship sails into port at Kuchinotsu, Japan, loaded with European wares and weapons. On board is Father Alessandro Valignano, an Italian priest and Jesuit missionary whose authority in central and east Asia is second only to the pope's.