Melissa's Staff Picks

I'm a librarian at Southeast Regional Library, and these are some of my favorite reads! Feel free to email me at melissa.schultz@wakegov.com if you enjoyed one of these books!

Showing 1 - 20 of 81  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "After the funeral"
Star rating for After the funeral
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"When Cora Lansquenet is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard's funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard's will, Cora was clearly heard to say, 'It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it....But he was murdered, wasn't he?' In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery"--Page 4 of cover.
Book cover for "All my knotted-up life"
Star rating for All my knotted-up life
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Author, speaker, visionary, and founder of Living Proof Ministries Beth Moore has devoted her whole life to helping women across the globe come to know the transforming power of Jesus. An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development, Beth now unveils her own story"--
Book cover for "All the beauty in the world"
Star rating for All the beauty in the world
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard"--
Book cover for "The almost legendary Morris sisters"
Star rating for The almost legendary Morris sisters
Author:
Description:
"Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the 20th century the sisters' parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage...
Book cover for "The appeal"
Star rating for The appeal
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Welcome to Lockwood, proud home of The Fairway Players, who, under the creative control of Martin Hayward, the owner of the local country club, are putting on a production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons." The star, as always: Martin's wife, Helen, the only person in the troupe with any real acting talent. But this is not a production like any other: just as rehearsals get under way, tragedy strikes: Poppy Reswick, Martin and Helen's beloved granddaughter,...
Book cover for "Apples never fall"
Star rating for Apples never fall
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A novel that looks at marriage, sibling rivalry, and the lies we tell others and ourselves"-- "After fifty years of marriage, Stan and Joy Delaney are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy's door. She says she chose their house because it looked the friendliest. And since Savannah is bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend, the Delaneys are more than happy to give...
Book cover for "At home"
Star rating for At home
Author:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, showing how each room has figured in the evolution of private life. Bryson takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, showing how each room has figured in changes in private life.
Book cover for "The au pair"
Star rating for The au pair
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"An addictive, highly commercial suspense novel featuring a grand estate, terrible secrets, and a young woman who bears witness to it all. If V.C. Andrews, Kate Morton, and Lexie Elliot had a love child, Emma Rous and THE AU PAIR would be it. Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother Danny were born in the middle of summer at their family's estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair...
Book cover for "Babel"
Star rating for Babel
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious...
Book cover for "Between the world and me"
Star rating for Between the world and me
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary...
Book cover for "Bleeding Heart Yard"
Star rating for Bleeding Heart Yard
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 1990s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job--as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory. One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park School--among them two politicians,...
Book cover for "The bookish life of Nina Hill"
Star rating for The bookish life of Nina Hill
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"Nina Hill's life may not seem like much, but for a person battling anxiety, it's more than enough. She enjoys her job at a bookstore and her small circle of friends. Until a visit from a lawyer changes everything...The father that Nina never knew existed has died, leaving behind an enormous extended family. Nina now has innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and cousins all living within a twenty-mile radius--some welcoming and some not...
Book cover for "Brideshead revisited"
Star rating for Brideshead revisited
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Captain Charles Ryder, stationed at Brideshead, recalls his boyhood associations with the odd but charming members of an English noble family.
Book cover for "The cartographers"
Star rating for The cartographers
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"What is the purpose of a map? Nell Young's whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell's personal hero. But she hasn't seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map. But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless...
Book cover for "Caste"
Star rating for Caste
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"In this ... Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate....
Book cover for "Celine"
Star rating for Celine
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, spine-tingling novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past"--
Book cover for "Comfort me with apples"
Star rating for Comfort me with apples
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Book cover for "Commonwealth"
Star rating for Commonwealth
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"The acclaimed, bestselling author--winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize--tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families' lives. One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining...
Book cover for "Counterfeit"
Star rating for Counterfeit
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home, she's built the perfect life. But beneath this facade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point. Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from...
Book cover for "The cousins"
Star rating for The cousins
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
After receiving an invitation to spend the summer with their estranged grandmother, the Story cousins arrive at her house only to discover that she is not there, and the longer they stay on the island, the more they realize their mysterious family history has some deadly secrets.