Staff Picks
Stay in touch with the personal favorites of the KDL Staff. Each title is handpicked.
Margaret Atwood
When a natural disaster predicted by God’s Gardeners leader Adam One obliterates most human life, two survivors trapped inside respective establishments that metaphorically represent paradise and hell wonder if any of their loved ones have survived.
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Gail Carriger
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
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Chris Cleave
Presents a tale of a precarious friendship between an illegal Nigerian refugee and a recent widow from suburban London, a story told from the alternating and disparate perspectives of both women.
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Alice Eve Cohen
A playwright and theatre artist examines the complex family relationships in her life and the bombardment of advice she received when she unexpectedly found herself six months into a high-risk pregnancy with no insurance coverage and no prenatal care.
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Timothy Egan
Offers an account of the largest-ever forest fire in America, which cemented Teddy Roosevelt’s legacy because the heroism shown by the forest rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, which Roosevelt wanted to conserve.
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Craig Ferguson
The host of “The Late, Late Show” traces his journey from working-class Glasgow to the comedic limelight of Hollywood, revealing his personal story of becoming an American citizen.
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Charlaine Harris
Love blossoms between Sookie Stackhouse, a cocktail waitress who keeps to herself because of her ability to read minds, and Bill, a vampire with ties to a crowd that may be responsible for the death of one of Sookie’s coworkers.
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Sue Ann Jaffarian
SUPERANNO Sue Ann Jaffarian’s spirited new mystery series features the amateur sleuth team of modern-day divorced mom Emma Whitecastle and the spirit of her pie-baking great-great-great grandmother, Granny Apples. Granny was famous for her award-winning apple pies and notorious for supposedly murdering her husband in the orchard. Together, Emma and Granny Apples solve mysteries of the past, starting with Granny’s own unjust murder rap in the final days of the Gold Rush.
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Deborah Copaken Kogan
The author discusses parenting as the greatest challenge of her life in a series of essays that describes her haphazard encounters with overprotective, competitive, and interfering fellow parents.
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Kirby Larson,Mary Nethery
Having been left behind by their owners and forced to ride out the deadly storm, Bobbi the dog breaks free from his chain and goes in search of food on his own, followed by a frightened, blind cat whose survival depends on his new best friend.
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Kate Maloy
A seventy-five-year old widow, Sarah finds new meaning brought to her life after her home becomes a kind of refuge for her restless granddaughter, an Israeli pacifist, a homeless mother and son, and a victim of domestic violence.
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Alexander Mccall Smith
Encountering high-flying financier Minty Auchterlonie while attending a birthday party, Isabel learns of Minty’s complicated monetary troubles and wonders if the ambitious woman is perpetuating a fraud.
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Kate Morton
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she is an adult that she is not their child, leading Nell to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter.
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Laurie Notaro
A compilation of essays shares the author’s humorous reflections on turning forty, laser hair removal, how her cat broke her nose, and the discovery of how her image as a badass suffered from driving a Prius.
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Crystal Renn
One of the world’s top plus-size models relates her former life as a Size 00 model and her battles with eating disorders and delivers a universal message about body image, beauty, and self-confidence.
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Tom Robbins
The story of an adventurous kindergartner named Gracie, her distracted parents, and a magical alien from another world relates how each one is affected by beer.
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Douglas Rogers
A journalist traces the story of his family’s game farm in war-torn Zimbabwe, where his parents were forced to take increasingly extreme measures to stay alive against the forces of the Mugabe regime and their land-reclamation efforts.
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Jon Ronson
A humorous and cautionary account of the U.S. military’s use of psychic tactics in the War on Terror and other political agendas discusses the methods employed by the First Earth Battalion, questioning its soldiers’ abilities to perform such feats as invisibility, walking through walls, and killing goats with their minds.
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Carrie Ryan
Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead.
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David Small
The author recounts in graphic novel format his troubled childhood with a radiologist father who subjected him to repeated x-rays and a withholding and tormented mother, an environment he fled at the age of sixteen in the hopes of becoming an artist.
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Scott Westerfeld
In an alternate 1914 Europe, Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from forces who are attempting to take over the globe with mechanical machinery, forms an alliance with Deryn, who is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.
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Cindy Woodsmall
Struggling against poverty and a relentless stalker, Cara Moore, a widowed mother, is led out of New York City toward an Amish community in Dry Lake, Pennsylvania, where she quickly discovers long-held secrets about her family.
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