Staff Picks
Stay in touch with the personal favorites of the KDL Staff. Each title is handpicked.
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When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel by Kate Atkinson Presents a tale involving the unexpected intersection of three lives, including a woman whose life had been shattered thirty years earlier, an ex-detective on a crowded train, and a teenage girl who is called upon to test her preparedness. Catalog Link |
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Chicken Cheeks by Michael Ian Black Illustrations and simple text describe the back ends of various animals. Catalog Link |
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Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by C.J. Box Delighted when they finally achieve their dream of adopting a baby, Jack and Melissa are devastated when their daughter Angelina’s teenage birth father and her grandfather, a powerful Denver judge, set out to put aside the adoption and, realizing that there is something sinister about their motivations, risk everything to protect their child. Catalog Link |
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A Stronger Kinship: One Town's Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith by Anna-Lisa Cox Presents the story of the nineteenth-century community of Covert, Michigan, describing how its mixed-race citizens lived in harmony and enjoyed completely integrated schools and churches and shared power and wealth between races. Catalog Link |
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The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson Awakening in a burn ward after being horribly burned in a terrible car accident, the cynical narrator is visited by a beautiful and enigmatic sculptress of gargoyles who tells him that they had once been lovers in medieval Germany. Catalog Link |
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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow Having mastered the cutting-edge technologies of the networked world, seventeen-year-old Marcus and his friends cut school in search of high adventure and find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco and wrongfully incarcerated in a secret prison by a totalitarian Department of Homeland Security. Catalog Link |
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Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life by Tony Dungy A biography of the coach of the Indianapolis Colts and the first African American football coach to lead his team to a Superbowl victory concentrates on his religious life as well as his career in football. Catalog Link |
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Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table by Linda Ellerbee The author presents a culinary and travel memoir in which she recalls the people she met in numerous other cultures, describes the foods she ate, and shares several recipes. Catalog Link |
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The Other Queen: A Novel by Philippa Gregory Presents a tale inspired by the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, in a work that follows the doomed monarch’s long imprisonment in the household of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his spying wife, Bess. Catalog Link |
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North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley Terra, a sensitive, artistic high school senior born with a facial port-wine stain, struggles with issues of inner and outer beauty with the help of her Goth classmate Jacob. Catalog Link |
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The Third Angel: A Novel by Alice Hoffman llows the lives of three women in love with the wrong men—Madeleine Heller, attracted to her sister’s fiancâe; Frieda Lewis, the muse to an ill-fated rock star; and Bryn Evans, engaged to be married but secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. Catalog Link |
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Even Now (Lost Love Series #1) by Karen Kingsbury When Emily Baker—a college freshman raised by her grandparents—takes her first internship as a journalist, she discovers a love story whose tragic ending came with her birth, drawing her to search for the mother she has never met. Catalog Link |
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Headlong by Kathe Koja Content with following all the rules at the Vaughn School and living what would be considered by most to be a perfect life, Lily Noble’s straightforward existence gets thrown for a loop when unconventional Hazel Tobias suddenly arrives and begins to show her everything that she’s been missing in the world. Catalog Link |
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The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Janice Y. K. Lee Hired by the wealthy Chen family as a piano instructor, Claire Pendleton is seduced by the social life of Hong Kong’s expatriate community and begins an affair with Will Truesdale, an enigmatic Englishman with a devastating past. Catalog Link |
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Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia. Catalog Link |
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Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis Sold to be the eighth wife of a rich and cruel merchant, Safia, also called Raka, tries to escape her fate by telling stories of Farhad the thief, his companion Nitish the white tiger, and their travels across India to retrieve a famous jewel that will save a kidnapped princess from becoming the bride of a demon king.Safia tries to escape her fate as the wife of a cruel merchant by telling stories of Farhad the thief, his companion Nitish the white tiger, and their efforts to save a kidnapped princess from becoming the bride of a demon king. Catalog Link |
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Princess Ben by Catherine Murdock A girl is transformed, through instruction in life at court, determination, and magic, from sullen, pudgy, graceless Ben into Crown Princess Benevolence, a fit ruler of the kindgom of Montagne as it faces war with neighboring Drachensbett. Catalog Link |
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Heart of Stone (The Negotiator Trilogy, Book 1) by C.E. Murphy While jogging through Central Park after midnight, lawyer Margrit Knight stumbles upon a dark new world filled with magical beings, including a gargoyle named Alban who, suspected of murder, needs her help in proving his innocence. Catalog Link |
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The Bitch Posse by Martha O'Connor Inseparable friends in high school, a dysfunctional writer, a struggling family woman, and a mental hospital patient remember the 1988 confrontation that marked their lives and bound them together with a secret that never came to light. Catalog Link |
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The Velveteen Principles for Women: How to Shatter the Myth of Perfection and Embrace All That You Really Are by Toni Raiten-D'Antonio Helping women free themselves from sources of unhappiness, the author of The Velveteen Principles teaches women how to become genuinely real and live as the unique, valuable women they are meant to be. Catalog Link |
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The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Caldecott Honor Book) by Peter Sis Annotated illustrations, journals, maps, and dreamscapes take readers on an extraordinary journey of how the artist-author’s life was shaped while growing up in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, as well as the influence of western culture through the influx of banned books, music, and news, in a powerful graphic memoir. Catalog Link |
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The Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig Returning to his English estate to avenge his mentor’s murder during the 1803 Battle of Assaye, the Duke of Dovedale infiltrates a secretive club where he encounters Lady Charlotte, who has loved him since childhood. Catalog Link |
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Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich Recounting her own journey toward self-reliance, the author describes her escape from consumer-driven culture by moving from the city to a farmhouse in northern Idaho and offers practical suggestions for readers in any setting or of any experience on how to achieve one’s own self-reliance through the development of simple skills ranging from knitting to window-box gardens. Catalog Link |