New for Children
The Nature Journal
by Savannah Allen
Tim has always loved nature. His dad always taught him to explore and adventure through their own backyard. One day when Dad is too busy to look at Tim’s findings, Tim takes it upon himself to show Dad all his adventures. And after looking through his dad’s old nature journals, Tim gets sleepy and goes on some dreamy adventures of his own.
The Last Plastic Straw
by Dee Romito
From reeds used by ancient Sumerians to bendy straws in World War II hospitals, people have changed the straw to fit their needs for 5000 years. Today, however, this useful tool is contributing to the plastic problem polluting our oceans. Once again, the simple straw needs a reinvention. With bright illustrations and well-researched text, children can read about the inventors behind the straw’s technological advancements.
Once Upon a Fairy Tale House
by Mary Lyn Ray
Mildred, Harriet, Brenda, and Wilma Moody grew up reading classic fairy tales and inventing their own. They imagined storybook houses for themselves and slept there in their dreams. As adults, the sisters followed separate career paths until Mildred, an artist, needed a place to paint. Harriet, an architect, sketched plans for a studio that looked like the abodes from their childhood dreams. When people saw the enchanting studio, they began to want fairy-tale houses of their own. So, Harriet drew more plans, and Mildred decorated the insides, and Brenda and Wilma joined them to do the banking and business.
New for Teens
As Long As Lemon Trees Grow
by Zoulfa Katouh
Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her brother; she still had her home and a normal teenager’s life. Now Salama volunteers at a hospital, helping the wounded who flood through the doors. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country … so desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.
Kindling
by Traci Chee
This is a fantasy set against a war-ravaged world where kindling warfare—the use of elite, magic-wielding teenage soldiers—has been outlawed. Seven kindlings search for purpose and identity as they prepare for one final battle. Now the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs.
New for Adults
By Any Other Name
by Jodi Picoult
In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how words can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
Burn
by Peter Heller
Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania, Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators. But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and abandoned bombed-out cars.
Drenched in the natural world’s beauty and attuned to male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, “Burn” is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.