September 2022 Staff PicksLike this list

17 items

• Chivalry

  Gaiman, Neil,

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  Eisner Award winners Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran (Snow, Glass, Apples) have created another captivating graphic novel full of wit and heart. In setting out to illustrate the story, Doran pieced together research and inspiration from illuminated…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Corrections in Ink

  a Memoir

  Blakinger, Keri,

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  In this gripping memoir Blakinger details how the anxious perfectionism that yielded straight As and a promising figure-skating career in her youth landed her with an addiction to heroin and a prison sentence as a young adult. By the time she's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Displacements

  Holsinger, Bruce

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  Holsinger's latest is a thrilling entry into the growing cli-fi genre that ratchets the tension up early and doesn't let up. Affluent sculptor Daphne Larsen-Hall is living in Miami with family when Luna, the world's first Category 6 hurricane, hits…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Either/or

  Batuman, Elif, 1977-

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  Batuman's sequel to The Idiot (which is required reading in order to fully enjoy this follow-up) picks up where The Idiot left off. Summer is over and Selin is back at Harvard for her sophomore year. Her former love interest Ivan remains on the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Fellowship Point

  a Novel

  Dark, Alice Elliott,

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  Agnes and Polly, two women in their later years, couldn't be more different from each other, but their friendship has stood the test of time. Everything from personal secrets to life-altering events has intertwined their lives. As decades unravel…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Half Life of Valery K

  a Novel

  Pulley, Natasha,

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  The nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima are relatively well-known, but in this well-plotted historical thriller, Pulley creates a story inspired by the Kyshtym nuclear incident that occurred in Russia in the 1950s. After serving a term in a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• How to Read Now

  Essays

  Castillo, Elaine,

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  With an angry and acerbic edge but sometimes funny in tone, these essays by Filipinx novelist Castillo challenge the way Americans are trained to read books and history and the world itself. She points out the ways we're biased towards views that…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Killers of a Certain Age

  Raybourn, Deanna,

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  Billie, Mary Alice, Helen and Natalie were recruited by The Museum, a clandestine network of assassins, while they were still in college. Now, after 40 years of ridding the world of Nazis, drug/gun/human traffickers and all manner of bad guys, they…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Latecomer

  Korelitz, Jean Hanff, 1961-

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  Korelitz's latest novel explores how each member of the privileged Jewish-American Oppenheimer family, buffeted by fate and culture, is unhappy in their own way. Salo and Joanna, both students at Cornell in the 1970s, meet after a fatal car accident…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Marriage Portrait

  O'Farrell, Maggie, 1972-

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  O'Farrell's accomplished new novel is inspired by the life of Lucrezia de' Medici, known vaguely to many as the young woman reference in Robert Browning's classic poem "My Last Duchess." The story alternates between two timelines and deftly builds a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Mercury Pictures Presents

  a Novel

  Marra, Anthony,

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  Marra's long-awaited sophomore novel (after the dazzling Constellation of Vital Phenomena) interweaves tales of the Golden Age of Hollywood and Mussolini's Italy. This intricately plotted historical novel opens in Los Angeles with Maria Lagana, an…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Night of the Living Rez

  Talty, Morgan, 1991-

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  This debut collection of twelve short stories manages to be hilarious and brutal at the same time. The Penobscot Indian Nation Reservation is a place where a dead porcupine accelerates a fistfight, and a quest for a bag of marijuana leads to a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Nuclear Family

  a Novel

  Han, Joseph,

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  Han's imaginative debut is a family saga centering on a Korean American family in Hawaii. The Chos run a popular deli in Honolulu. Their closeted son, Jacob, relocates to South Korea to teach English and explore his Korean roots, while his sister,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Our Colors

  Tagame, Gengoroh, 1964-

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  In this heartwarming manga by the author of My Brother's Husband, 16-year-old Sora knows he's gay but hasn't told anyone yet. Some of his classmates and even his mom assume that he's dating his childhood friend Nao, but he really has a crush on his…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Tasha

  a Son's Memoir

  Morton, Brian, 1955-

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  After his eighty-five-year-old mother drives solo into a storm and nearly drowns on a flooded road, Morton grapples with how to care for his stubbornly independent mother in this slender, deeply moving memoir. Tasha, the name she chose for herself,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Violin Conspiracy

  Slocumb, Brendan,

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  Brendan Slocumb has crafted an engaging debut that mixes both music and mystery. Ray McMillan's deep love of music and his talent have carried him past the limits of a second-class instrument, the disinterest of his family, and racism; but when his…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• What My Bones Know

  a Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma

  Foo, Stephanie,

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  It's difficult to do justice to the emotional depth of Stephanie Foo's personal journey through Complex PTSD. If you are a survivor of any kind of trauma, especially childhood trauma, What My Bones Know may be achingly relatable and will percolate…Read moreRead more of this annotation