National Network for Equitable Library Service

Experience earth from the big bang to the dinosaurs and beyond in this beautifully written, vibrant overview of our home planet's journey from creation to our time today.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1953: An impoverished Cherokee named Buster Youngwolfe confesses to brutally raping and murdering his eleven-year-old female relative. When Youngwolfe recants his confession, saying he was forced to confess by the authorities, his city condemns him, except for one man-public defender and Creek Indian Elliott Howe. Recognizing in Youngwolfe the life that could have been his if not for a few lucky breaks, Howe risks his career to defend Youngwolfe against the powerful county attorney's office.

Why does Rome continue to exert a hold on our imagination? How did the Caput Mundi come to play such a critical role in the development of Western civilization?

During his campaign for the presidency, one of Donald Trump's signature promises was that he would build a "great great wall" on the border between the United States and Mexico, and Mexico was going to pay for it. A year and a half into his term, with only a few prototype segments erected, the wall is the 2,000-mile multibillion-dollar elephant in the room of contemporary American life. In The Great Great Wall, architectural historian and critic Ian Volner takes a deep dive into the story of Trump's wall.

One glorious autumn day in 1894, a drifter attacked thirteen-year-old Jessie Keith so violently that people thought Jack the Ripper must be loose in rural Ontario. To solve the crime, the government called in Detective John Wilson Murray, the true-life model for Detective William Murdoch of the popular TV series Murdoch Mysteries. His prime clue was a black valise. The Man with the Black Valise traces the killer's trajectory through three counties-a route that today connects travelers to poignant reminders of nineteenth-century life.

An extraordinary story of survival and alliance during World War II: the icy journey of four Allied ships crossing the Arctic to deliver much needed supplies to the Soviet war effort. On the fourth of July, 1942, four Allied ships traversing the Arctic separated from their decimated convoy to head further north into the ice field of the North Pole, seeking safety from Nazi bombers and U-boats in the perilous white maze of ice floes, growlers, and giant bergs.

A revelatory history of the trafficking of young Asian girls that flourished in San Francisco during the first hundred years of Chinese immigration (1848-1943) and an in-depth look at the "safe house" that became a refuge for those seeking their freedom Beginning in 1874, the Occidental Mission Home on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown served as a gateway to freedom for thousands of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and girls.

The unbelievable true story of the Cold War’s strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall.
Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the East Berlin zoo was spacious and lush, a socialist utopia where everything was perfectly planned...and then rarely successfully finished.

Wallis Simpson is known as the woman at the center of the most scandalous love affair of the 20th century, but in this surprising new biography, bestselling author Anna Pasternak redeems a women wronged by history with new information revealed by those who were close to the couple-presenting Wallis as a convenient scapegoat to rid England of a king deemed unworthy to rule. The story that has been told repeatedly is this: The handsome, charismatic, and popular Prince Edward was expected to marry a well-bred virgin who would one day become Queen of England when he ascended the throne.

"Extraordinary. A nonfiction literary masterpieceI can't remember the last time a book affected me as profoundly as Three Women." -Elizabeth Gilbert "Beautifully written. This is one of the most riveting, assured, and scorchingly original debuts I've ever read." -Dave Eggers "[An] instant feminist classic...Utterly engrossing...Game-changing" -O, The Oprah Magazine. Desire as you've never seen it before: a riveting account of the sex lives of three ordinary American women, based on nearly a decade of reporting.