what should we read next?⤴

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

library? yes (physical + digital)

urban fantasy · magical realism · science fiction | 400-500 pages

The City We Became takes place in New York City, in a version of the world in which great cities become sentient through human avatars. After the avatar of New York falls into a supernatural coma and vanishes, a group of five new avatars representing the five boroughs come together to fight their common Enemy.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

library? yes (physical + digital)

feminism · contemporary · LGBTQ+ | 400-500 pages

The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.

Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

library? yes (physical + digital)

literary · LGBTQ+ | 200-300 pages

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

library? yes (physical + digital)

travel · adventure · family drama | 300-400 pages

This book will transport you not only through time, but to the colorful and lively streets of Cuba. Alternating between Havana in 1958 and 2017, this novel delves into Cuba's tumultuous history and enduring culture. In present-day Miami, Marisol has promised to spread her recently departed grandmother's ashes. So Marisol heads to Havana, where her grandmother's childhood stories come to life, and she discovers more about her own culture than she could have imagined.

The River at Night by Erica Ferencik

library? yes (physical only)

adventure · thriller · suspense | 300-400 pages

A high-stakes drama set against the harsh beauty of the Maine wilderness, charting the journey of four friends as they fight to survive the aftermath of a white water rafting accident, The River at Night is a nonstop and unforgettable thriller.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

library? yes (physical + digital)

adventure | 200-300 pages

The Call of the Wild is a short adventure novel by Jack London, published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The central character of the novel is a dog named Buck.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

library? yes (physical + digital)

science fiction | <200 pages

In this science-fiction novel by H.G. Wells, published in 1897, the story concerns the life and death of a scientist named Griffin who has gone mad. Having learned how to make himself invisible, Griffin begins to use his invisibility for nefarious purposes, including murder.

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay

library? yes (physical only)

coming-of-age · young adult · Asian stories · Filipinx stories | 300-400 pages

TW: Death, Drug addiction, Sex trafficking (brief discussion)

Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte’s war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story.

Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth — and the part he played in it.

As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.

What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

library? yes (physical + digital)

LGBTQ+ · young adult · romance · coming-of-age | 300-400 pages

Told in two voices, when Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, meet it seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

library? yes (physical + digital)

steampunk · young adult · alternate history | 300-400 pages

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt's always wanted; convinced he's lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist's granddaughter that he realizes that the man's ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious.

In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies.

The Birth House by Ami McKay

library? yes (physical + digital) | 300-400 pages

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes Miss Bs apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives. Filled with details as compelling as they are surprising The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

library? yes (physical + digital)

classic · adventure | <200 pages

Embark on an imaginative adventure with Mowgli, a young orphaned boy raised by animals in the jungles of India. In a collection of stories about courage and survival, Mowgli must learn the laws of the jungle to defeat the tiger Shere-Khan. Lively characters and a captivating journey of self-discovery make The Jungle Book an ideal gift for young readers that will be treasured for years.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

library? yes (physical + digital)

historical fiction · romance · comedy | 300-400 pages

Set in the 1960s, the novel centres around a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved cooking show.

15 Dogs by Andre Alexis

library? yes (physical + digital)

fantasy · satire · animals | <200 pages

And so it begins: a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change.

The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

library? yes (physical + digital)

fantasy · comedy · adventure | 200-300 pages

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried through space on the back of a giant turtle.

It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.

Unfortunately, the person charged with maintaining that survival in the face of robbers, mercenaries and, well, Death, is a spectacularly inept wizard…

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

library? yes (physical)

literary · Swedish · emotional | 300-400 pages

At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.

But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so?

In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible...

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

library? yes (physical)

coming-of-age · disability· friendship · romance | 400-500 pages

In this exhilarating novel, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

library? yes (physical + digital)

memoir · grief · identity · Asian stories | 200-300 pages

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.