February 2023

In an unnamed British city, the virus is spreading, and like everyone else, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness retreats inside. She isolates herself in her immense studio, Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat, Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well.

Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, brilliant travel writer Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations in search of “paradise.”

A wildly entertaining, feel-good memoir of an Irish-American New Yorker and former U.S. marine who embarked on a courageous, hare-brained scheme to deliver beer to his pals serving Vietnam in the late 1960s. Not shocking that Hollywood had to make this amazing true story into a movie.

Haunting novel set in Japan that follows a murder’s chief suspect, Lucy Fly – a young, vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator. As Lucy is interrogated by the police, she reveals her past to the reader, and it is a past which is dangerously ambiguous and compromising. My teenage girls especially loved this one.

Set in the near future, Johnson tells the stories of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.

An expansive, moving poetry anthology, celebrating 20 years of poetry from students and alumni of Chicago's Oak Park River Forest High School Spoken Word Club.

Haunting novel about a group of five terminally ill teenagers whose midnight stories become their reality. Perhaps your teens have watched the Netflix series?

The start of a thrilling, highly illustrated series about a boy who finds a portal to a legendary world in his local barbershop – and learns he’s the hero they’ve been waiting for. Great for younger fans of Black Panther and Last Gate of the Emperor!

Learn the funny and fascinating story of Charles Darwin and the groundbreaking discoveries that resulted from his love of the humble worm in this hilarious children’s book with illustrations by Gwen Millward.

Bella watches her mother Mia get ready to cook an Italian feast of pasta and meatballs in this book about helping out (my teens need to read this one!).