Staff Picks - Page 5 of 9

Say what you want about me, but I like learning about dead people. I loved Mary Roach's book “Stiff” and the HBO television series “Six Feet Under” is my favorite show of all time. I’m fascinated by what happens to us when we die, as morbid as a topic as that might be. That being… Read More

According to, well, herself, Willowdean Dickson is about the last person predicted to compete in a pageant show, and it isn’t because she’s a (self-proclaimed) “fat girl.” It’s because pageants are an old fashioned diatribe of materialistic desires, full of shallow competitors. Unfortunately, Willow’s former beauty queen mother happens to be a judge of the… Read More

Do you ever think about where you would live if you didn’t live here? Would you ever consider moving to a foreign country? (I usually play this game every winter when the cold and snow get to be too much.)   I often read about these studies rating the happiest countries in the world or the… Read More

Now is the perfect time to get hooked on S.E. Grove’s The Mapmakers Trilogy, a fantasy series, starting with “The Glass Sentence.” If you’re anything like me and enjoy binge reading entire series, now is the perfect time to get started as the final book will be released this July. While “The Glass Sentence” is… Read More

Since I was a kid I’ve always loved watching the game of football.  Like millions of Americans, I watched the Super Bowl this past Sunday. But I watched it with a different perspective, all because I had read “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth” by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru.… Read More

Confession:  if there’s a nonfiction book about a manmade disaster, especially a shipwreck, I am going to read it. The fact that this one was written by Erik Larson, who also wrote the amazing “Devil in the White City”, was just a bonus. “Dead Wake” follows the final crossing of the Lusitania, a civilian ship… Read More

At the opening of Sarah Prineas’ “Ash & Bramble,” Pin wakes up in a fortress, dirty, cold, and with no memory of her past. She’s immediately thrust into hard labor as a seamstress and days pass in a blur as she and other women sew stitch after stitch after stitch. But there’s a spark in… Read More

With the dreariness of winter setting in, it can be easy to fall into a reading rut. To reach for the remote control before you reach for a book. To do pretty much anything that requires little to no brain power. Greer Macallister’s debut, “The Magician’s Lie”, is the book that will snap you out… Read More

Area X is a black zone where human civilization has been reclaimed by nature and the normal rules of physics are bent and broken. The unnamed protagonist (no names are used throughout the entire book) is a part of the twelfth expedition sent in to explore and report back on the unique conditions of Area… Read More

Debut author Nicola Yoon delivers a knockout hit sure to please fans of YA contemporaries with her book, “Everything, Everything.” Maddy suffers from SCID, a disease that renders her allergic to nearly everything. She cannot leave her house and everything around her must be extremely sanitized. Her life consists of reading books, doing homework for… Read More