New for Children
Away
by Megan E. Freeman
After an imminent, unnamed danger forces people across Colorado to leave their homes, a group of kids including an aspiring filmmaker and a budding journalist find themselves in the same evacuation camp. They grow curious about the mysterious threat and begin to investigate. Can they get to the root of the conspiracy, expose the bad actors, and bring an end to the upheaval before it’s too late?
The First State of Being
by Erin Entrada Kelly
It’s 1999 and for twelve-year-old Michael, life is ordinary—except for the looming Y2K crisis and his crush on his sixteen-year-old babysitter. But when a disoriented teenage boy named Ridge appears out of nowhere, Michael discovers there is more to life. It turns out that Ridge is the world’s first time traveler, and Michael discovers that Ridge has a book that outlines the events of the next twenty years.
In Praise of Mystery
by Ada Limon
Published here as poet laureate Ada Limon’s debut picture book, this luminous poem celebrates humankind’s endless curiosity, asks us what it means to explore beyond our known world, and shows how the unknown can reflect us back to ourselves.
New for Teens
After Life
by Gayle Forman
One afternoon after school, Amber arrives home on her bike. It’s just another normal day, but when Amber’s mom sees her, she screams … because Amber died seven years ago, hit by a car while on the very same bicycle she’s riding now.
Amber’s sister Melissa, her estranged parents, her friends, boyfriend, and even people she met only once have been deeply affected by her life and death. And in the midst of everyone’s turmoil, Amber is struggling with herself. What kind of person was she? How and why was she given this second chance?
Brownstone
by Samuel Teer
Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met. Now, with her white mother on a trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father Xavier. Xavier seems happy to see her, but expects her to live in, and help fix up, his old, broken-down brownstone. And she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish … which she doesn’t speak.
As Almudena tries to adjust, she gets to know the residents of Xavier’s Latin American neighborhood. Each has their own strong opinions on how this young Latina should talk, dress, and behave. Some can’t understand why she doesn’t know where she comes from. Others think she’s “not brown enough” to fit in.
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New for Adults
Famous Last Words
by Gillian McAllister
It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at day care for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. But when she wakes up, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place he has left a cryptic note.
Then it starts. Breaking news: There’s a hostage situation in London. The police arrive at Camilla’s home and tell her that Luke is involved. But he isn’t a hostage; he’s the gunman. What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says.
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Broken Fields
by Marcie R. Rendon
It’s spring in the Red River Valley of Minnesota, and Cash Blackbear is doing summer field work for a local farmer … until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of his rented farmhouse. The only possible witness to the murder is the young daughter of a Native field laborer who was renting the house. The girl, Shawnee, is too terrified to speak, and her parents seem to have vanished. In the wake of the murder, Cash is suspicious of the dead man’s grieving widow, who offers to take in Shawnee temporarily. When another body turns up, Cash races against the clock to find the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.
