FICTION
When We Let Go by Rochelle B. Weinstein
When Avery Beckett is proposed to by Jude Masters, a widowed father and the man she loves, it should be a time of great joy. Instead, Avery is on edge. She’s wary of the idea of family, doubtful of happy endings, and too afraid to take the leap. It’s the kind of fear that comes from having secrets. Before Avery commits to a new life, she must reconcile with the one she left behind.
Don’t Get Close by Matt Miksa
Special Agent Vera Taggart walked away from a promising career as an artist to join the FBI. Her first assignment is a cold case centered on a cult of suicide bombers known as the Sons of Elijah who believe they’ve been reborn hundreds of times, going back centuries. It seems like a low-risk assignment until a bomb tears apart a crowded Chicago restaurant. The Sons of Elijah have returned — and now it’s up to Taggart to stop their modern-day reign of terror.
CRISPR’d by Judy Foreman
Boston geneticist Dr. Saul Kramer is on the cutting edge of genetic disease research. Revered among clients at his IVF clinic, he harbors a dark secret. In addition to helping infertile couples conceive healthy babies, Dr. Kramer is obsessed, for his own dark reasons, with an alternate mission as well. In certain patients, he uses the gene editing technology CRISPR to tamper with embryos, not to improve the health of the embryos, but to replace a healthy gene with a deadly mutation.
Sweet Life by Suzanne Woods Fisher
Dawn Dixon can hardly believe she’s on a groom-less honeymoon on beautiful Cape Cod … with her mother. Sure, Marnie Dixon is good company, but Dawn was supposed to be here with Kevin, the love of her life (or so she thought). Marnie Dixon needs some time away from the absolute realness of life as much as her jilted daughter does. Given the circumstances, maybe it was inevitable that Marnie would do something as rash as buy a run-down ice-cream shop in the town’s tightly regulated historic district. After all, everything’s better with ice cream.
NONFICTION
The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of 18th-Century Britain by Penelope J. Corfield
The Georgian era is often seen as a time of innovations. It saw the end of monarchical absolutism, global exploration and settlements overseas, the world’s first industrial revolution, deep transformations in religious and cultural life, and Britain’s role in the international trade in enslaved Africans. But how were these changes perceived by people at the time? And how do their viewpoints compare with attitudes today?
Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova by Leo Damrosch
The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story.
Born to Be Hanged: The Epic Story of the Gentlemen Pirates Who Raided the South Seas, Rescued a Princess, and Stole a Fortune by Keith Thomson
The year is 1680, in the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy, and more than 300 daring, hardened pirates — a potent mix of low-life scallywags and a rare breed of gentlemen buccaneers — gather on a remote Caribbean island. The plan: to wreak havoc on the Pacific coastline, raiding cities, mines, and merchant ships. The booty: the bright gleam of Spanish gold and the chance to become legends. So begins one of the greatest piratical adventures of the era — a story not given its full due until now.
After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport
Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Époque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. It was a place of artistic experimentation, such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving with only the clothes on their backs.
CHILDREN’S
Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Singer
George Washington Carver was born in 1864 to an enslaved mother. From a very early age, it was clear that George was special. He was too frail and sickly to do hard farm work, so his foster mother taught him how to cook, sew, do laundry and tend the kitchen garden, where he became fascinated with the healing properties of plants. After two decades of struggle to get an education, he became the first African American to earn a Master’s Degree and was invited by Dr. Booker T. Washington to join the faculty at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, which would be his home for more than 50 years. This book, illustrated with historical photographs and personal documents of Dr. Carver’s, is a poetical journey through nearly 8 decades of an extraordinary life. The author’s father was one of the Tuskegee Airmen who met Dr. Carver personally, making this book a tribute to two American legends.
Ages: 10 and up
