Sage Singer is a baker who likes to keep to herself, even more so since the accident that left her face severely scarred. In a grief support group she meets Josef, a man in his nineties who recently lost his wife. On the surface Sage and Josef have nothing in common, yet they become friends. When Josef reveals a secret about his past to Sage and asks for her help he puts her in the middle of a moral dilemma. As Sage struggles with Josef’s secret, she must also confront her own secrets and past. The Storyteller is an incredibly written novel that explores the issue of good and evil. What makes someone good or bad? Is it a choice or are we born one way or the other?

Reviewed by Jessica B., University City Regional

Read the Author Interview with Jodi Picoult

See more titles featured in Historical Fiction

Add your comments about this book

Gabrielle Reece is best known as a professional volleyball player. In the 1990’s she appeared in Nike ads and was known for both her athletic skill and her beauty. These days she is first and foremost and wife and mother. She is married to extreme surfer Laird Hamilton and they live with their three girls in Hawaii. While her life might seem idyllic, a few years after her marriage she was already contemplating divorce. In My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper, Reece talks about marriage, family, parenting, health, exercise, sex, and everything in between. While she never claims that her ways are perfect, she offers lots of great advice. This is a unique, inside look at how a not-so-perfect family makes their life work.

Reviewed by Jessica B., University City Regional

See more titles featured in Biographies and Memoirs

Add your comments about this book

Steven Wolf always had back issues, but never thought much of it until the day he fell and couldn’t get up. He found that he has a degenerative spinal condition and his days as a hard-driving attorney are over. Also, because of the harsh winters in Nebraska, Wolf must live in Arizona apart from his family each winter. It is in Arizona where he is introduced to rescued greyhounds. Wolf misses his dogs while in Arizona so he impulsively adopts Comet. As his spinal condition worsens, Wolf decides to train Comet as a service dog. No one thinks he can do it, but he does and his bond with Comet is incredible to see. This is a moving story of the powerful bond between a dog and his owner.

Reviewed by Jessica B., University City Regional

See more titles featured in Animals

See more titles featured in Animal Stories

Add your comments about this book

As usual Kimberla Lawson Roby has given us a real read on everyday life. I read this book quickly and enjoyed it; it’s a real page turner. The plot is engaging and each character has enough flaws and skeletons to keep the story interesting. Denise and Derrek have what appears to be the perfect marriage with everything good going for them. However looks can be deceiving. Once they start doing drugs and hiding it from each other their problems spiral out of control. They almost lost everything until Mackenzie, their daughter, gets involved. Can Denise and Derrick save their perfect marriage? I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a great story!

Reviewed by Tina C., Beatties Ford Road Branch

Add your comments about this book

Oates’ dark novel opens with a religious fanatic pushing her youngest daughter into a riverside mud flat in the Adirondacks--leaving her there to die. The abused, malnourished 3-year-old is rescued and placed in a foster home where she is rescued again by a Quaker couple seeking a replacement for their deceased daughter. “Mudgirl” Jedina becomes Meredith Ruth Neukirchen, thrives in Carthage, NY, and achieves academic success culminating in her appointment as the first woman president of an Ivy League University. But, her haunting childhood, professional concerns, and toxic relationships take their toll. M.R. Neukirchen lapses into instability and the line between the real and the surreal becomes “muddy.” A challenging yet mesmerizing read.

Reviewed by Susanne W., Steele Creek Branch

See more titles featured in Academia

See more titles featured in What is Literary Fiction?

See more titles featured in Books for Book Clubs

Add your comments about this book

Readers of this incredible, beautifully-written first novel are faced from the outset with happily conflicting responses: whether to devour avidly, turning pages rapidly, or to slow down and savor the glory of its unforgettably poetic language and vision. Set in Washington State at the start of the 20th Century, it is about what is and what can be the true meaning of family. A single isolated orchardist provides shelter and protection for two runaway girls, changing his own life profoundly in often stumbling but always sweetly well-meaning attempts to give them a chance at a life free from tragedy and violence.

Reviewed by Jim B., Main Library

Add your comments about this book

Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan is trying to track down the serial killer who is attacking and burning young women as they walk home late at night in London. Though Maeve is a capable and competent detective, she is constantly harassed by her male colleagues for being female and Irish. This creates a very rocky working environment and she is constantly struggling to prove herself. Her personal life is really no better because she’s moved in with her banker boyfriend, Ian, and the relationship is clearly not working. Despite all of this negativity, Maeve remains professional and vigorously investigates each murder even when the fifth murder has her investigating family, friends and ex-colleagues. This is a great crime fiction read!

Reviewed by Barbara C., Morrison Regional

See more titles featured in Beach Reading

See more titles featured in Series Fiction

Add your comments about this book

Five teens are chosen to be models for a new technology (Disney Host Interactive (DHI) aka a hologram) that Disney is creating. What seems like a dream job soon has complications that none of the teens could have ever imagined. When they go to sleep they are able to enter the Magic Kingdom as their DHIs. It seems that Disney is not the happiest place on earth as the Disney Villains, aka the Overtakers, try to take over. Finn, Willa, Philby, Maybeck and Charlene are given a quest by the mysterious Wayne that will allow them to save the Magic Kingdom. Will good triumph over evil? Find out in this, book one of the Kingdom Keepers series.

Reviewed by Angela A., Cornelius Branch

Add your comments about this book

Disney at Dawn, book two in the Kingdom Keepers series, finds our favorite DHIs (Disney Host Interactive) back at the park to solve another mystery. It appears that the Overtakers have acquired the ability to produce DHIs and control the current DHIs. What this means is that if Finn, Willa, Philby, Maybeck or Charlene fall asleep they will never wake up. As the teens race around the Animal Kingdom trying to save their friend Jez they follow the clues she has left behind. Each teen uses their own strengths to help find Jez and get one step closer to stopping the Overtakers.

Reviewed by Angela A., Cornelius Branch

Add your comments about this book

Turse’s Kill Everything That Moves left your reviewer in no mood for anything that hinted at glorification of war; though he’s been known to enjoy a good Marine combat tale – true or fiction. This, however, is a great Marine action novel. It has everything such a work requires – and so very much more. It is set in Vietnam and pits a company of Marines against the regular North Vietnamese Army in merciless jungle terrain. It is as brutally real as the grueling struggle it describes. That the struggle is an ineptly-led, extremely costly exercise in futility is the tragedy at the book’s core.

Reviewed by Jim B., Main Library

See more titles featured in War is Hell

Add your comments about this book