2023 ONGOING: BOOKS WE LOVE!

"Lissa, is a nurse in a gritty, hectic London neighborhood. Always terribly competent and good at keeping it all together, she's been suffering quietly with PTSD after helping to save the victim of a shocking crime. Her supervisor quietly arranges for Lissa to spend a few months doing a much less demanding job in the little town of Kirrinfeif in the Scottish Highlands, hoping that the change of scenery will help her heal. Lissa will be swapping places...

Shadow is a man with a past and wants nothing more now than to live a quiet life with his wife. When his wife is killed in a terrible accident, Shadow flies home for the funeral. As a raging storm rocks the plane, the strange man in the seat next to Shadow introduces himself as Mr. Wednesday. He knows more about Shadow than is possible--and he warns Shadow an even bigger storm is coming. Just released from prison, Shadow encounters Mr. Wednesday,...

Having lived in a monastery since childhood, away from the violent upheavals of the outside world, Raz becomes one of a group of formerly cloistered scholars who are appointed by a fear-driven higher power to avert an impending catastrophe.

The author describes his experiences and impressions during a journey to the Arctic.

"From the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to be both: a breathtakingly inventive new novel--about aging, time, love, and stories themselves--that launches an extraordinary quartet of books called Seasonal. Readers love Ali Smith's novels for their peerless innovation and their joyful celebration of language and life. Her newest, Autumn, has all of these qualities in spades, and--good news for fans!--is the first installment...

"With detailed information and illustrations covering each phase of a tree's lifecycle, this indispensible guidebook explains how to identify trees by their bark alone. Chapters on the structure and ecology of tree bark, descriptions of the bark appearance, an easy-to-use identification key, and supplemental information on non-bark characteristics -- all enhanced by over 450 photographs, illustrations, and maps -- will show you how to distinguish...

Tucked away in a remote stream valley in Vermont, a dynasty of beavers has nearly completed the restoration of the meadows and ponds that adorned this stream in the days before the beavers of a continent were turned into top hats. Willow, Popple, and their progeny begin the night's work of dam repair, scent marking, tree felling until a soft call alerts them to the arrival of the strange honorary member of their clan, this book's author, Patti Smith....

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

"Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book." —Washington Post Book World

New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett's spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis

Somewhere

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"The University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the nine boys, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what beating the odds really meant. They defeated elite rivals from California and eastern schools to earn the right to compete against the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic Games in Berlin....