Staff Picks
LibraryReads for July 2021
- Sarah C.
- Tuesday, July 06, 2021
Collection
Each month, LibraryReads lists the top upcoming titles recommended by librarians across the country. All these books will be published in July 2021, so stay ahead of the curve and get on the holds list now!
A Psalm for the Wild-built
Published in 2021
"In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go backuntil the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?"-- Provided by publisher.
The Forest of Vanishing Stars
Published in 2021
"The New York Times bestselling author of the "heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism" (People) The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis-until a secret from her past threatens everything"-- Provided by publisher.
Devil in Disguise
The Ravenels Meet the Wallflowers
Published in 2021
A strong-willed young widow running her late husband's shipping company, Lady Merritt Sterling avoids scandal until she meets a rough-and-tumble Scottish whisky distiller on the run from a very determined killer.
The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives
A Novel
Published in 2021
"Meet the trophy wives of Presidio Terrace, San Francisco's most exclusive--and most deadly--neighborhood in this shrewd, darkly compelling novel from the New York Times bestselling author of In Her Shadow."-- Provided by publisher.
Such a Quiet Place
A Novel
Published in 2021
We had no warning that she'd come back. Hollow's Edge used to be a quiet place. A private and idyllic neighborhood where neighbors dropped in on neighbors, celebrated graduation and holiday parties together, and looked out for one another. But then came the murder of Brandon and Fiona Truett. A year and a half later, Hollow's Edge is simmering. The residents are trapped, unable to sell their homes, confronted daily by the empty Truett house, and suffocated by their trial testimonies that implicated one oftheir own. Ruby Fletcher. And now, Ruby's back. With her conviction overturned, Ruby waltzes right back to Hollow's Edge, and into the home she once shared with Harper Nash. Harper, five years older, has always treated Ruby like a wayward younger sister.But now she's terrified. What possible good could come of Ruby returning to the scene of the crime? And how can she possibly turn her away, when she knows Ruby has nowhere to go? Within days, suspicion spreads like a virus across Hollow's Edge. It's increasingly clear that not everyone told the truth about the night of the Truett's murders. And when Harper begins receiving threatening notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else becomes the killer's next victim. Pulsating with suspense and with the shocking twists that are Megan Miranda's trademark, Such a Quiet Place is Megan Miranda's best novel yet--a twisty locked-box thriller that will keep you turning pages late into the night.
Falling
A Novel
Published in 2021
Thirty minutes before a flight to New York, the family of the pilot is kidnapped and in order for them to live, all 143 passengers onboard must die in the first novel by a former flight attendant.
She Who Became the Sun
Published in 2021
"Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything "I refuse to be nothing..." In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness... In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family's eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received bythe family's clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses herbrother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyedfor supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness"-- Provided by publisher.
The Bone Code
Published in 2021
"#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with her twentieth gripping novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose examinations, fifteen years apart, of unidentified bodies ignite a terrifying series of events. On theway to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheetingand bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to Montreal to gather evidence. Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become increasingly alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads. So focused is Tempe on identifying the container victims that, initially, she doesn't register how their murders and the pestilence may be related. But she does recognize one unsettling fact. Someone is protecting a dark secret-and willing to do anything to keep it hidden. An absorbing look at the sinister uses to which genetics can be put, and featuring a cascade of ever-more-shocking revelations, The Bone Code isTemperance Brennan's most astonishing case yet-one that gives new meaning to today's headlines"-- Provided by publisher.
All the Little Hopes
Published in 2021
"A Southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of World War II. Deep in the tobacco land of North Carolina, nothing's the same since the boys shipped off to war and worry took their place. Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is curious and clever, but she can't make sense of it all. Then Allie Bert Tucker comes to town, an outcast with a complicated past, and Lucy believes that together they can solve crimes. Just like her hero, Nancy Drew. That chance comes when a man goes missing, a woman stops speaking, and an eccentric gives the girls a mystery that takes them beyond the ordinary. Their quiet town, seasoned with honeybees and sweet tea, becomes home to a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp-andmore men go missing. The pair set out to answer the big question: do we ever really know who the enemy is? Lush with Southern atmosphere, All The Little Hopes, is the story of two girls growing up while war creeps closer, blurring the difference between what's right, what's wrong, and what we know to be true"-- Provided by publisher.