Carnival of Reading Challenge
Great River Regional Library's Carnival of Reading Challenge for ALL AGES will run from August 10 to September 30, 2025.
These are great reads to check out if you need ideas!
The night circus : a novel
Author(s):
Description:
Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Mor
Crazy heart
Author(s):
Description:
Singer and guitarist Bad Blake was once a first-rate country-and-western star, but now he's 57, an alcoholic, a failure at four marriages, and playing in third-rate clubs. The biggest gig he can get is opening for Tommy Sweet, the kid Bad got started and whose career has now eclipsed Bad's. Bad meets Jean Craddock when she comes to interview him and they fall in love. Her little boy, Buddy, inspires Bad to search for his own long-lost son, but there's no happy ending there. And when Bad, hungry for a drink, loses Jean's son, things take a further downturn.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Cob
Slumpbuster
Author(s):
Markey, Kevin
Fitzgerald, Royce,
Description:
Eleven-year-old slugger Banjo "The Great Walloper" Bishbash is overcome by a nasty hitting slump as he tries to lead the Rambletown Rounders to the division baseball championship.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J FIC Mar
Cat + gamer. Volume 1
Author(s):
Description:
"Riko, a twenty-nine-year-old office worker with an obsession for video games, finds her quiet life upended when she takes in a stray cat! Having no experience with pets, Riko uses lessons drawn from video games to guide her in cat care, while her cute companion tries to understand her behavior through a cat's worldview" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Nad
The love hypothesis : a novel
Author(s):
Description:
"When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos. As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope."--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
LP FIC Haz
Kris Longknife : Mutineer
Author(s):
Description:
Kris Longknife is a daughter of privilege, born to money and power. Her father is the Prime Minister of her home planet. Her mother the consummate politician's wife. She's been raised only to be beautiful and marry well. But the heritage of the military Longknifes courses through Kris's blood-and, against her parents' objections, she enlists in the marines.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC She
Night driving : a story of faith in the dark
Author(s):
Description:
How do you know God is real? Zierman explores the gap between our sunny, faith fictions and a God who often seems hidden and silent. She had grown up with a fire-filled faith, but by age 30 there was just a buzzing silence where God's voice used to be. She loaded her two small children into the minivan and headed south in a last-ditch effort to find the Light. Against the backdrop of gas station coffee and screaming children, Zierman learned that sometimes you have to run away to find your way home.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
B Zie
Once upon a tome : the misadventures of a rare bookseller...
Author(s):
Description:
Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd (est. 1761) to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store's resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram). This is the colorful story of life in one of the world's oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
381.45 Dar
Do not open
Author(s):
Description:
Presents a collection of unusual facts, secrets, and unsolved mysteries from around the world, from Paris' hidden tunnels, to the mystery of the the Roswell crash site in New Mexico, and to secret documents contained in the Vatican library.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA 031.02 Far
Pink is for boys
Author(s):
Pearlman, Robb
Kaban, Eda,
Description:
A celebration of how colors are for everyone depicts characters engaging in their favorite activities.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Pea
When I see you
Author(s):
Barnes, Brynne, 1983-
McCarthy, Brianna,
Description:
Rhyming text describes all the out-of-this-world things a mother dreams of doing with her child once they are born.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Whe
The wedding people : a novel
Author(s):
Description:
"It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn't here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she's dreamed of coming for years--she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan--which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can't stop confiding in each other" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Esp
A monster calls
Author(s):
Description:
Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Nes
The last wish
Author(s):
Sapkowski, Andrzej
Stok, Danusia,
Description:
"Geralt is a Witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good...and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth." --amazon.com.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Sap
Gifted & talented
Author(s):
Description:
Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne. Or at least, so they like to think. Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You're welcome! If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud. Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father's approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around. Eilidh, once the world's most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father's company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth--by confirming she'd been his favorite all along. On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins--but which Wren will come out on top?
Format:
Book
Call Number:
LP FIC Bla
How beautiful
Author(s):
Capetti, Antonella
Castrillón, Melissa,
Description:
"When a caterpillar is called "beautiful" one day, he wonders, what could that mean? No one has the same answer. A bear declares that honeycomb is beautiful, the squirrels find dry leaves are beautiful, and a mole loves his beautiful burrow. All the while, the blackbird disagrees with each answer! Will the caterpillar ever find out what beautiful means?"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Cap
In the palm of my hand
Author(s):
Raudenbush, Jennifer
Conti, Isabella,
Description:
On a walk through the forest, a child celebrates the potential of an acorn, a caterpillar, and other things he can hold in the palm of his hand--which he knows will turn into some wonderful.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Rau
Rakesfall
Author(s):
Description:
"Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story. Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Cha
Behind the badge
Author(s):
Description:
"A collection of stories from first responders, police officers, EMTs, firefighters, and other brave men and women facing danger on the home front"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
363.347 Jon
Neurotribes : the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity
Author(s):
Description:
A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently. What is autism: a devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more--and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. Reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years. Going back to the earliest days of autism research and chronicling the brave and lonely journey of autistic people and their families through the decades, Silberman provides long-sought solutions to the autism puzzle, while mapping out a path for our society toward a more humane world in which people with learning differences and those who love them have access to the resources they need to live happier, healthier, more secure, and more meaningful lives. Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger's syndrome, whose "little professors" were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences--From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
616.8588 Sil
The disordered cosmos : a journey into dark matter, spacetime, and dreams deferred
Author(s):
Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda
Description:
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a leading physicist at work on the origins of spacetime at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics. She is also one of the fewer than one hundred Black women to earn a PhD in physics. Here she shares with readers her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter--all with a new spin and rhythm informed by pop culture, hip hop, politics, and Star Trek. Prescod-Weinstein's vision of the cosmos is vibrant, inclusive and buoyantly non-traditional. As she makes clear, what we know about the universe won't be complete until we learn to think beyond the limitations of white-dominated science. Science, like most fields, is set up for men to succeed, and is rife with racism, sexism, and shortsightedness as a result. But as Prescod-Weinstein makes clear, we all have a right to know the night sky. By welcoming the insights of those who have been left out for too long, we expand our understanding of the universe and our place in it. This book is a vision for a world without prejudice that allows everyone to view the wonders of the universe through the same starry eyes.--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
523.01 Pre
