December 2018 Staff PicksLike this list

17 items

• American Prison

  a Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment

  Bauer, Shane,

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  Investigative journalist Bauer goes undercover as a corrections officer in Winnfield, Louisiana to learn in depth about the business of private prisons. Chapters alternate between Bauer's eye-opening account of life inside the prison and the history…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bitter Orange

  Fuller, Claire,

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  As elderly Frances lays on her deathbed, an unnamed vicar seems to be eliciting a confession from her. She recalls the summer of 1969, when, on the cusp of turning forty and after burying her overbearing mother, she takes residence in a dilapidated…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Dopesick

  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

  Macy, Beth,

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  America is in the midst of a decades-long Opioid crisis. Prescient doctors sounded the alarm way back in the 90s, when Purdue Pharma introduced Oxy-Contin and started encouraging doctors to prescribe it with abandon. When their warnings went…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Flights

  Tokarczuk, Olga, 1962-

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  Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk's book is unconventional in many ways. It is a series of brief, disconnected essays about the experience of travel interspersed with a few longer narratives, but Tokarczuk herself describes its structure as a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Frederick Douglass

  Prophet of Freedom

  Blight, David W.,

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  Frederick Douglass has been written about extensively. He even penned three biographies about himself that remain historically relevant texts. So to write a biography shedding new light on Douglass's life would be a remarkable achievement, but…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Friday Black

  Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame,

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  This debut collection of short stories introduces a bold new voice to be reckoned with. Adjei-Brenyah amps up the violence to reveal the absurdity and injustice of modern life, such as contemporary controversies like school shootings ("Light…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Heavy

  An American Memoir

  Laymon, Kiese,

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  Kiese Laymon's debut is a harrowing memoir, written to his mother, is about finding his truth in overcoming the addictions caused by childhood mental, physical and sexual abuse. Laymon explores his struggle with anorexia, obesity, and sex while…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Ladder to the Sky

  a Novel

  Boyne, John, 1971-

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  In this wickedly delicious story of literary suspense, reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels, Maurice Swift is an unusually handsome young, ambitious writer on the make who will do whatever it takes to realize his dreams of becoming a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Lake on Fire

  Brown, Rosellen,

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  Set against the backdrop of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, The Lake on Fire contrasts two Chicagos, one sparkling with Gilded Age excesses and the other just scraping by. Siblings Chaya and Asher, who fled anti-Semitism in Russia, navigate…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• My Sister, the Serial Killer

  a Novel

  Braithwaite, Oyinkan,

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  This spare, sharp thriller tells the story of the harried Korede and her entitled sister Ayoola, who live in their family compound in Lagos, Nigeria with their widowed mother. From the first paragraph, the reader becomes aware of the sisters' uneven…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Rising Out of Hatred

  the Awakening of a Former White Nationalist

  Saslow, Eli,

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  Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow presents a candid page-turner about the transformation of prominent white nationalist Derek Black. The son of Don Black, founder of the website Stormfront, and godson of David Duke, Derek…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Rosewater

  Thompson, Tade,

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  Like Deckard in Blade Runner, Kaaro is a melancholy detective blackmailed into working for sinister forces in a dark future society: Rosewater, a shanty town built around a massive alien entity with the power to heal and mutate human life that…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Scarface and the Untouchable

  Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago

  Collins, Max Allan,

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  Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition, Dick Tracy) and A. Brad Schwartz present the most meticulously researched biography of Al Capone (and, to a lesser extent, Eliot Ness) to date. Capone, who was originally from Brooklyn, came to embody the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Snap

  Bauer, Belinda, 1962-

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  Bauer’s Booker-nominated crime novel is a gripping tale that merges intriguing story lines. Jack and his young sisters, Joy and Merry, were instructed to stay by their broken-down car while their mother set off to find a telephone to get help. She…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Spy and the Traitor

  the Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

  Macintyre, Ben, 1963-

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  Oleg Gordievsky's privileged upbringing brought him to Moscow's Institute of International Relations, and his KGB training eventually landed him a position as KGB Bureau Chief in their London office. Privy to sensitive documents of vital interest to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Virgil Wander

  Enger, Leif,

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  Virgil Wander, owner of the Empress movie theater in small-town Greenstone, Minnesota, is recovering from a bad accident in which his car took a dive into Lake Superior. Words don't always come to him, and his past life feels a little remote. A…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Winter Soldier

  Mason, Daniel (Daniel Philippe),

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  When World War I breaks out, Lucius Krzelewski is an idealistic 22-year-old medical student who enlists in the Austro-Hungarian army and is assigned to a field station near the front, although he has never held a scalpel or done anything more…Read moreRead more of this annotation