Staff Picks
Stay in touch with the personal favorites of the KDL Staff. Each title is handpicked.

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The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A collection of twelve stories includes the tale of a medical student in hiding with a poor Muslim woman, and a woman who discovers a devastating secret about her brother’s death.


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Garden Spells
Sarah Addison Allen

A successful caterer in Bascomb, North Carolina, Claire has always remained tied to the legacy of the Waverly family, until her peaceful life is transformed by Tyler Hughes, an art teacher and new next-door neighbor, and by the return of her prodigal sister, Sydney.


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The Last Summer (of You and Me)
Ann Brashares

A first adult novel by the best-selling author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series finds a trio of summer friends, including a pair of sisters and a young man entering an early adulthood, marked by budding love, sexual curiosity, a sudden serious illness, and a deep secret.


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Befriend and Betray: Infiltrating the Hells Angels, Bandidos and Other Criminal Brotherhoods
Alex Caine

A Vietnam vet, ex-con, and undercover agent describes his twenty-five year career infiltrating dangerous criminal organizations, in an account that chronicles his experiences with Hells Angels, the Russian mafia, and corrupt police.


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K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist
Peter Carlson

Recounts Khrushchev’s 1959 trip across America against the backdrop of the Cold War and a capitalist America living under the shadow of the hydrogen bomb.


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City of Ashes (Mortal Instruments)
Cassandra Clare

After finding out that Jace is her brother and the Inquisitor is hunting for him, Clary Fray’s hopes for a quiet life are put on hold as she finds herself back in battle against warlocks, vampires, werewolves, and her own father, Valentine—the mastermind behind all demon attacks.


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The Associate
John Grisham

Promising law school graduate Kyle McAvoy harbors a secret that falls into the hands of some unscrupulous characters who blackmail him into taking a job with a prestigious law firm, where he participates in a scheme that can land him in prison or get himkilled.


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True Colors
Kristin Hannah

Despairing of receiving their critical father’s love, Winona occupies herself in books and dreams, while Vivi Ann makes a fateful decision to follow her heart instead of dutifully fulfilling their father’s ambitions.


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Newes from the Dead
Mary Hooper

In 1650, while Robert, a young medical student, steels himself to assist with her dissection, housemaid Anne Green recalls her life as she lies in her coffin, presumed dead after being hanged for supposedly murdering her child.


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The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Katherine Howe

Forced to set aside her Ph.D. research in order to help the settling of her late grandmother’s abandoned home, Connie Goodwin discovers a hidden key among her grandmother’s possessions that is linked to a darker chapter in Salem witch trial history.


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Galway Bay
Mary Pat Kelly

Fleeing Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine and her beloved husband’s death, Honora, her gutsy sister, and their eight children resettle in Chicago and witness its transformation from a frontier town to a thriving city.


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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)
Stieg Larsson

Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate.


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Darling Jim: A Novel
Christian Moerk

A reclusive aunt and her two nieces turn up dead and a young postal worker finds a diary in the dead letter office which offers clues about Jim Quick, a mysterious Irish storyteller, who had become obssessed with the aunt.


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Short Girls: A Novel
Bich Minh Nguyen

Two estranged Vietnamese sisters, each wrestling with their own lives, careers, and romances, are reunited at their father’s American citizenship party, and forge a new relationship in this novel from the PEN/Jerard Fund Award-winning author.


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Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously
Julie Powell

The author recounts how she escaped the doldrums of an unpromising career by cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a year-long endeavor that transformed her life.


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Miss Julia Delivers the Goods: A Novel
Ann B. Ross

Learning that Hazel Marie is pregnant with twins and that the father, private investigator J. D. Pickens, has left town, Miss Julia summons the wayward man to solve a local theft in the hopes of reuniting the couple. By the author of Miss Julia Paints the Town.


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Blue Boy
Rakesh Satyal

Kiran, a young Indian American boy who finds it impossible to get the knack of “normalcy,” makes a startling revelation about himself that leads him on a remarkably strange and highly entertaining journey of self-discovery.


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Shiver
Maggie Stiefvater

In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf who, in his turn, has been watching her with increasing intensity.


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The Help
Kathryn Stockett

Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project against a backdrop of the budding civil rights era.


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The Must-Have Mom Manual: Two Mothers, Two Perspectives, One Book That Tells You Everything You Need to Know
Sara Ellington,Stephanie Triplett

Whether it is bottle- or breast-feeding, cribs or co-sleeping, getting back to the office or staying home with the kids, best friends Sara Ellington and Stephanie Triplett, the team behind the popular book and radio show The Mommy Chronicles, rarely choose the same option. Lucky for us, in The Must-Have Mom Manual, they discuss the pros and cons of every aspect of child raising, from pacifiers to potty training, bedtimes to birthday parties, day care to Disney World.


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The Hummingbird's Daughter: A Novel
Luis Alberto Urrea

When sixteen-year-old Teresita, the illegitimate and beloved daughter of a powerful late-nineteenth-century rancher, arises from death possessing the power to heal, she is declared a saint and finds her family and faith tested by the impending Mexican civil war. By the author of The Devil’s Highway.


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A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table
Molly Wizenberg

A creator of the award-winning Orangette blog presents a memoir about the life lessons she learned in the kitchens of her youth, in a recipe-complemented account that describes experiences of loss and love while enjoying her father’s French toast, her husband’s pickles, and her chocolate wedding cakes.


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