Staff Picks
Stay in touch with the personal favorites of the KDL Staff. Each title is handpicked.
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South of Superior by Ellen Airgood Moving to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to care for an aging family friend, Madeline Stone becomes involved in the lives of the small community and two octogenarian sisters who teach her valuable lessons about love and goodwill. Catalog Link |
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Bitter End by Jennifer Brown When seventeen-year-old Alex starts dating Cole, a new boy at her high school, her two closest friends increasingly mistrust him as the relationship grows more serious. Catalog Link |
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American Salvage (Made in Michigan Writers Series) by Bonnie Jo Campbell These short stories approach their subjects from an array of perspectives, but what they share is freshness, surprise, and a compulsion to plumb some absolute extremes of American existence. Catalog Link |
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Survive!: My Fight for Life in the High Sierras by Peter DeLeo A plane crash survivor recounts how he was the only member of his three-person team able to walk away from the crash of their single-engine plane in the Sierra Nevadas in 1994 and how he hiked for two weeks through the wilderness with sixteen broken bones and no emergency supplies before he was able to find help. Catalog Link |
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The Sisters Brothers: A Novel by Patrick Dewitt Set against the back-drop of the great California Gold Rush, this darkly comic novel follows the misadventures of the fabled Sisters brothers, two hired guns, who, under the order of the mysterious Commodore, try to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, a man who gives them a run for their money. Catalog Link |
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The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels--A Love Story by Ree Drummond American blogger and food writer Ree Drummond relates the real life story of how she met and married her “Marlboro Man.” Her stories about her husband, family, and country living paint a warm and touching picture of life on an Oklahoma ranch. Catalog Link |
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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A Novel by Tom Franklin African-American Constable Silas Jones must confront his white former friend Larry Ott, who has lived under suspicion for 20 years since a girl disappeared while on a date with him, after another girl disappears and Larry is blamed once again. By the Edgar Award-winning author of Hell at the Breech. Catalog Link |
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The Keepsake: A Novel by Tess Gerritsen Invited to witness the X-ray scanning of a mummy, medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles is shocked to discover that the mummy is not centuries old, but rather is a recent murder victim, and joins forces with Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli in an investigation that uncovers other similar crimes tied to a diabolical predator who has already targeted his next victim. Catalog Link |
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Ruby Red (Ruby Red - Trilogy) by Kerstin Gier Gwyneth discovers that she, rather than her well-prepared cousin, carries a time-travel gene, and soon she is journeying with Gideon, who shares the gift, through historical London trying to discover whom they can trust. Catalog Link |
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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne Describes in sometimes brutal detail the actions of both whites and Comanches during a 40-year war over territory, in a story that begins with the Comanche kidnapping of a white 9-year-old girl, who grew up to love her captors, marry a Comanche chief and have a son, Quanah, who became a great warrior. Catalog Link |
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Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton The chef of New York’s East Village Prune restaurant presents an account of her search for meaning and purpose in the central rural New Jersey home of her youth, marked by a first chicken kill, an international backpacking tour, and the opening of a first restaurant. Catalog Link |
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This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks In 13 darkly comic stories, women isolated by geography, emotion, or circumstance cut imperfect paths to peace. Catalog Link |
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The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys Contains forty fiction vignettes based on events that actually took place each time the historic River Thames froze solid. Spanning more than seven centuries, from 1142 to 1895, and illustrated with stunning full-color period art. Catalog Link |
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Russian Winter: A Novel by Daphne Kalotay Former Bolshoi ballerina Nina Revskaya auctions off her jewelry collection and becomes overwhelmed by memories of her homeland, the friends she left behind amidst Stalinist aggression, and the dark secret that brought her to a new life in Boston. Catalog Link |
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Locked Rooms (Mary Russell Novels) by Laurie R. King Returning to her former home of San Francisco in 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, eminent detective Sherlock Holmes, are confronted by dark secrets of the past that continue to haunt Mary’s dreams and by a mysterious stranger who could hold the key to unraveling the puzzle that has been tormenting her. Catalog Link |
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The Butterfly's Daughter by Mary Alice Monroe Follows the transformational stories of four women inspired by the annual migration of monarch butterflies, including Luz, who returns to her late grandmother’s Mexican village and unexpectedly encounters the mother she had believed dead. Catalog Link |
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The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer Profiles everyday life in 14th-century England, covering everything from period beliefs and styles to hygiene and medical practices, in a history that also discusses the influence of warfare. By the prize-winning author of The Great Traitor. Catalog Link |
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Redeeming Liberty by Diane/David Munson Parole officer Dawn Ahern is shocked to witness her friend Liberty, the chosen bride of Wally (former “lost boy” from Sudan) being kidnapped by modern-day African slave traders. Catalog Link |
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Life by Keith Richards The lead guitarist for The Rolling Stones offers a no-holds-barred account of his life, from a youth obsessed with Chuck Berry to his formation of the Stones and their subsequent stardom, in a book where the author frankly discusses his problems with drugs, his relationships, his estrangement from Mick Jagger, bandmate Brian Jones’ death and more. Catalog Link |
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Mindblind by Jennifer Roy Fourteen-year-old Nathaniel Clark, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, tries to prove that he is a genius by writing songs for his rock band, so that he can become a member of the prestigious Aldus Institute, the premier organization for the profoundly gifted. Catalog Link |
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Dreams of Joy: A Novel by Lisa See A continuation of “Shanghai Girls” finds a devastated Joy fleeing to China to search for her real father while her mother, Pearl, desperately pursues her, a dual quest marked by their encounters with the nation’s intolerant Communist culture. Catalog Link |
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Behind Sad Eyes: The Life of George Harrison by Marc Shapiro The best-selling New York Times biographer serves up a stirring portrait of the Beatle’s late lead guitarist, shedding light on Harrison’s life, spirituality, and guitar technique. Catalog Link |
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No Surrender: A World War II Memoir by James Sheeran A World War II paratrooper describes landing in Normandy on D-Day, being captured by the Germans, escaping a POW train, traveling behind enemy lines in France, and hooking up to fight with Patton’s army. Catalog Link |
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The Restorer (The Graveyard Queen) by Amanda Stevens Discovering a young woman’s brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard, Amelia Gray, a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts, places her own life in danger as she tries to help a haunted police detective who draws her to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next. Catalog Link |
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The Watcher: Jane Goodall's Life with the Chimps by Jeanette Winter Describes the life of Jane Goodall, from her childhood in London watching a robin on her windowsill, to her years in the African forests of Gombe, Tanzania. Catalog Link |