Newly arrived at the library!
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"Retired nurse, avid gardener, and renowned cake maker Miss Hortense has lived in Bigglesweigh, a quiet suburb of Birmingham, England, since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. She takes great pride in her home, starching her lace curtains bright white, and she can tell if she's being shortchanged on turmeric before she's taken her first bite of a beef patty. A career in nursing has also left her afraid of nobody, whether an interfering priest or a local drug dealer, and she's an expert in deciphering other people's secrets with just a glance. Miss Hortense once used her skills to benefit the Pardner network--a local group of Black investors that she helped found. Until, that is, she was unceremoniously ousted from its ranks, severing her ties to the majority of her friends and community. That was thirty years ago. Now, as a new millennium dawns, an unidentified man has been found dead in the home of one of the Pardner members, a Bible quote written on a note beside his body. Suddenly, Miss Hortense finds her long-buried past rushing back, bringing memories of the worst moment of her life--and secrets behind an unsolved crime that has haunted her for decades. It is finally time for Miss Hortense to solve a mystery that will see her and the community she loves pushed to their limits" 7/21
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Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Pen
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"From America's favorite government teacher, a heartfelt, inspiring portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country. In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn't make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history's unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time. You'll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.This is a book about what really made America - and Americans - great. McMahon's cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free" 7/21
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP 920.02 McM
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"Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls into the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight. Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job, an incredible family, and a smart, if slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life--or lack thereof--she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing. Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after, or the man in the headphones next to her" 7/21
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Bor
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Class clown : the memoirs of a professional wiseass : how I went 77 years without growing up
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Class Clown is Dave Barry's hilarious memoir tracing his journey from mischievous minister's son to Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist. With wit and warmth, Barry recounts his rock-filled childhood, quirky journalism career, and offbeat adventures in writing, music, and satire--offering a joyful reminder to never take life too seriously. 7/21
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP 814.54 Bar
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The man made of smoke : a novel
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"Dan Garvie's life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child--narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years? With his signature shock and suspense, Alex North brings us The Man Made of Smoke. In turn emotional, introspective, and utterly terrifying, this is a story of fathers and sons, shadows and secrets, and the fight we all face to escape the trauma of the past" 7/7
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Nor
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"Avery Jensen is almost thirty, fresh off a breakup, and she's tired of always being so uptight and well-behaved. She wants to get a hobby, date around (especially other women), flirt with everyone she sees, wear something not from the business casual section of her closet--all the fun stuff normal people do in their twenties. One problem: Avery doesn't know where to start. She doesn't have a lot of dating experience, with men or women, and despite being self-assured at work, she doesn't have a lot of confidence when it comes to romance. Enter Taylor Cameron, Napa Valley's biggest flirt and champion heartbreaker. Taylor just broke up with her most recent girlfriend, and her best friend bet her that she can't make it until Labor Day without sleeping with someone. (Two whole months? Without sex? Taylor?!?!) So, she offers to give Avery flirting lessons. It should keep her busy and stop her from texting people she shouldn't. And it might take her mind off how inadequate she feels compared to her friends, who all seem much more settled and adult than Taylor. At first, Avery is stiff and nervous, but Taylor is patient and encouraging, and soon, Avery looks forward to their weekly lessons. With Taylor's help, Avery finally has the life she always wanted. The only issue is: now she wants Taylor. Their attraction becomes impossible to ignore, despite them both insisting to themselves and everyone else that it isn't serious. When Taylor is forced to confront her feelings for Avery, she doesn't know what to do--and most importantly, if she's already ruined the best thing she's ever had" 7/7
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Gui
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"Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758. To Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of a wealthy French shipowner, the high walls of Saint-Malo are more hindrance than haven. While her sisters are busy trying to secure advantageous marriages, Luce spends her days secretly being taught to sail by Samuel, her best friend--and an English smuggler. Only he understands how the waves call to her. Then one stormy morning, Luce rescues a drowning man from the sea. Immediately drawn in by the stranger's charm, Luce is plunged into a world of glittering balls and faerie magic, seduction and brutality. Secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface, but as Luce wrestles with warring desires, she finds that her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper--or the scales of a sea-maid's tail" 7/7
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Woo
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Ariel is afraid of her own mind. She already feels like she is too big, too queer, too rough to live up to her parents' exacting expectations, or to fit into what the world expects of a “good girl.” And as violent fantasies she can’t control take over every aspect of her life, she is convinced something much deeper is wrong with her. Ever since her older sister escaped to college, Ariel isn't sure if her careful rituals and practiced distance will be enough to keep those around her safe anymore. Then a summer job at a carnival brings new friends into Ariel’s fractured world, and she finds herself questioning her desire to keep everyone out--of her head and her heart. But if they knew what she was really thinking, they would run in the other direction--right? Instead, with help and support, Ariel discovers a future where she can be at home in her mind and body, and for the first time learns there’s a name for what she struggles with--Obsessive Compulsive Disorder--and that she’s not broken, and not alone. 7/7
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
YALP FIC Col
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Harlem, 2019: Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper... Natchez, 1865: Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war's end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen's Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who's determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her. Meanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at the Freedmen's School, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her. Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins's novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny. When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family's history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart? 6/30
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Jer
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"Born into poverty in rural Alabama, Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Freedom Rider who helped to integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he made into one of the major civil rights organizations. He may be best remembered as the victim of a vicious beating by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he nearly died. Greenberg's biography traces Lewis's life through the post-Civil Rights years, when he headed the Voter Education Project, which enrolled millions of African American voters across the South. The book reveals the little-known story of his political ascent first locally in Atlanta, and then as a member of Congress. Tapped to be a part of the Democratic leadership in Congress, he earned respect on both sides of the aisle for the sacrifices he had made on behalf of nonviolent integration in the South and came to be known as the "conscience of the Congress." Thoroughly researched and dramatically told, Greenberg's biography captures John Lewis's influential career through documents from dozens of archives, interviews with hundreds of people who knew Lewis, and long-lost footage of Lewis himself speaking to reporters from his hospital bed following his severe beating on "Bloody Sunday" in Selma. With new details about his personal and professional relationships, John Lewis: A Life is the definitive biography of a man whose heroism during the Civil Rights movement helped to bring America a new birth of freedom" 6/30
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP B Lew
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This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance--one last time--to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern of memories." We meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents. Sorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way. 6/30
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Hii
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"It's 1943 in El Paso, Texas, and 18-year-old Nena spends her days caring for the infant children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of adventure and purpose. She also has a secret: her vivid premonitions are what's causing her to faint, and she fears she'll end up like the scary old curandera who lives down the street. When the mysterious and stern Sister Benedicta arrives late one evening, Nena is taken across borders of space and time for a life-changing experience in colonial Mexico. In the present-day, Nena's grand-niece Marta is balancing motherhood and a struggling legal aid practice, just as her own supernatural powers are emerging. When the 93-year-old Nena's care is added to Marta's already full plate, the two women's destinies become irrevocably intertwined, as they both struggle to find fulfillment and escape through La Vista, or "the hum," a mysterious, inherited magical ability that allows its recipients to tap into the subconscious hunger for destruction, rebirth, the natural world, lust, and the call to heed our darkest desires and brightest truths" 6/30
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Jar
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Super agers : an evidence-based approach to longevity
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Description:
"One of the most respected, celebrated, and influential medical researchers in the world gives a guided tour of the revolution in longevity science that is exploding now. This is an evidence-based approach to longevity in a market drenched in snake oil-Eric Topol doesn't promise a silver bullet to magically stop the aging process, he shows how preventing the development of killer chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, cancer and neurodegeneration is completely changing what "old age" can be. And we can start long before middle age--or long after. Dr. Topol shows how and why you can deal with chronic problems now instead of waiting until it is too late. Breakthrough treatments have been developed from new tools, new understanding of how our personal genomes work, and what AI can see in our health data. We can now engineer cells, build proteins and find drugs that make us live longer, better. Many of these treatments are on the shelf now--or soon will be--and improving fast. Our author is the ultimate guide because he participated in developing and testing many of them. The first part of the book "The New Age of Healthspan" describes inspiring patients aged 90+, sets out the dimensions of the new advances in the treatments of age related diseases, and details an expanded definition of what a healthy lifestyle means now--good sleep, diet, exercise, sure, but much beyond. He calls it Lifestyle+. He then turns to the "Chronic Killers"--Obesity/Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, and Neurodegeneration. Parts on the "Big Collateral Implications" and "Thinking Ahead" follow and include ways we might eventually come to reverse the aging process itself" 6/16
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP 612.68 Top
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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? 6/16
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Bla
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"Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of the world beyond. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood. That life's journey-through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts-is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It's one brilliant woman's intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America--and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations" 6/16
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP 782.42164 Kno
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The emperor of gladness : a novel
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Description:
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai's relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink. 6/16
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Vuo
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Description:
"When a catatonic woman shows up at the psychiatric unit, social worker Thea swears she knows her from somewhere. She's shocked to discover the patient holds a link to a traumatic time in her past. Upon regaining lucidity, the patient claims she can't remember the horrific recent events that caused her brain to shut down. Thea's at a loss--especially when the patient is ripped away from her as suddenly as she appeared. Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote center in Southwestern New Mexico, where a charismatic couple holds a controversial monthly retreat to uncover attendees' romantic and sexual issues. Forced to participate in increasingly intimate exercises, Thea finds herself inching closer not only to her missing patient, but also to tantalizing answers about her harrowing past. However, time is running out, and if she stays for the last session, she too might lose her mind... or worse" 6/9
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Bar
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Description:
"Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc's Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn't want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia--within a year. But if the first-born (and only) son, Jude, gets married first, everything will go to him. Each daughter is stuck in a new city, battling gentrification, declining ethnic enclaves, and messy love lives, while struggling to modernize their father's American dream. Jude wonders if he wants to marry for love or for money--or neither. As Duc's children scramble to win their inheritance, they begin to learn the real intention behind the inheritance scheme--and the secret their mother kept tucked away in the fireplace, all along" 6/9
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Huy