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August 2021 Staff Picks

Check out this month's recommendations from Chicago Public Library. Visit our Books page for previous lists of recommendations.

User from Chicago Public Library

16 items

  • Each story in this debut collection of short stories from Anthony Veasna So is like a song that effortlessly shifts from major to minor keys, expressing both the melancholy of generational trauma and immigrant life as well as richly comedic…
    Book, 2021New York, NY, Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2021] — FIC SO
  • Journalist Taddeo's splashy debut work of fiction (after her nonfiction hit Three Women) tells the story of Joan, a 37-year-old woman whose traumatic past weighs heavily on her present. When Joan witnesses a violent act in a New York City…
    Book, 2021New York : Avid Reader Press, 2021. — FIC TADDEO
  • If you're looking for something to fill the Madeline Miller-shaped hole in your heart, look no further than this lyrical, feminist retelling of the Iliad. Everyone claimed that the war was fought for Helen, that her face launched a thousand ships,…
    Paperback, 2021[New York, NY] : Dutton, [2021] — FIC HEYWOOD
  • Satire is not dead! Riviere skewers the indie publishing scene in this hilarious novel. Solomon Wiese, a twice-accused plagiarist spews his guts to the unnamed narrator. In one conversation, the reader learns some cold truths about literature and…
    Book, 2021New York : Catapult, [2021] — FIC RIVIERE
  • Galchen's humorous and shrewd novel, which revolves around a witch hunt in 17th-century Germany, is a timely tale of group hysteria and collective aggression. The protagonist, Katharina Kepler, is an old illiterate widow leading an unremarkable life…
    Book, 2021New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. — FIC GALCHEN
  • Facing the Mountain

    a True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

    Brown, Daniel James, 1951-
    After the attack on Pearl Harbor at the start of America's entry into World War II, while thousands of Japanese Americans were shamefully removed to camps, soldiers from some of these very families served the US war effort with remarkable…
    Book, 2021[New York, NY] : Viking, [2021] — D769.31442nd.B76 2021
  • Hendrix (My Best Friend's Exorcism, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires) often mixes campy horror with characters attempting to cope with its psychological affects. The Final Girl Support Group is no different. Lynnette Tarkington is…
    Book, 2021New York : Berkley, [2021] — FIC HENDRIX
  • Gambling With Armageddon

    Nuclear Roulette From Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962

    Sherwin, Martin J.,
    For 13 days during the autumn of 1962, the world crept terrifyingly and almost helplessly toward nuclear war. This period, now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, was both a continuing chapter of the Cold War and the culmination of a near-tragedy of…
    Book, 2020New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. — E841.S468 2020
  • Halfway Home

    Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration

    Miller, Reuben Jonathan,
    Studying the impact of incarceration on the lives of those with a criminal record, University of Chicago sociologist and Cook County Jail chaplain Miller shares his findings in this thoughtful examination of the carceral system. Blending interviews,…
    Book, 2021New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. — HV9275.M55 2021
  • How the Word Is Passed

    a Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America

    Smith, Clint,
    In his new book, Atlantic journalist Smith explores the history of slavery by visiting a number of historical sites. At Jefferson's Monticello, he talks to tourists who were unaware that Jefferson owned slaves. He wanders Whitney Plantation, the…
    Book, 2021New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. — E185.S58123 2021
  • When Nick Law, newly-appointed Master of an Oxford College, meets nanny Dee by chance, he thinks he's found the solution to the problem of his eight-year-old daughter, Felicity. With a new high-pressure job and second wife, Mariah, expecting a baby,…
    Book, 2020London : Quercus, 2020. — FICTION
  • At the core of this book are two complex emotions: the crushing disappointment that comes from realizing the life you have been living is entirely too small and confining, and the overwhelming joy of exploring beyond those boundaries for the first…
    Book, 2021New York, NY : Custom House, [2021] — FIC BLAU
  • Nothin' but a Good Time

    the Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion

    Fans of 80s glam rock will enjoy this jam-packed oral history that explores the scene in all its excesses. With stories from stars like Sebastian Bach and Nikki Sixx, it covers the musicianship, the touring, the friendships, the hairdos, the trashed…
    Book, 2021New York : St. Martin's Press, 2021. — ML3534.N67 2021
  • This fast-reading historical novel about Belle da Costa Greene is a fascinating portrait of a woman who was the librarian to the Pierpont Morgan library for 43 years. She was born Marion Greener to a prominent Washington, D.C. family. Her father was…
    Book, 2021New York : Berkley, [2021] — FICTION
  • In their debut graphic novel Stone Fruit, illustrator and author Lee Lai explores queer love, growth, and the complexity of relationships through expressive illustrations and deep dialogue. Beginning with a wild jaunt in the woods shared between…
    Book, 2021Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics, 2021. — PN6733.L34S76 2021
  • Stranger Care

    a Memoir of Loving What Isn't Ours

    Sentilles, Sarah,
    Writer Sarah Sentilles describes with remarkable intimacy her experience of becoming a foster parent to a baby named Coco. She captures every aspect of the fraught and heart-breaking journey, from her husband's reservations about bringing more…
    Book, 2021New York : Random House, [2021] — HV875.55.S47 2021