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 21 - 40 of 45  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The lies I tell"
Star rating for The lies I tell
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Meg Williams. Maggie Littleton. Melody Wilde. Different names for the same person, depending on the town, depending on the job. She's a con artist who erases herself to become whoever you need her to be. A college student. A life coach. A real estate agent. But nothing about her is real. She slides alongside you and tells you exactly what you want to hear, and by the time she's done, you've likely lost everything. Kat Roberts has been waiting ten...
Book cover for "The love of my life"
Star rating for The love of my life
Author:
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
"From the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted comes a love story wrapped in a mystery: an up-all-night page-turner with a dark secret at its core I have held you at night for ten years and I didn't even know your name. We have a child together. A dog, a house. Who are you? Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she'd do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie. And she might just have...
Book cover for "Marple"
Star rating for Marple
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Book cover for "The nickel boys"
Star rating for The nickel boys
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Follows the experiences of two African-American teenagers at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
Book cover for "The plot"
Star rating for The plot
Series:
Book (Korelitz) volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written-let alone published-anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as...
Book cover for "The river"
Star rating for The river
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"A novel about two college friends on a summer wilderness canoe trip"--
Book cover for "The road back to you"
Star rating for The road back to you
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:

The Book That Started a Million Enneagram Journeys!

What you don't know about yourself can hurt you and your relationships—and even keep you in the shallows with God. Do you want help figuring out who you are and why you're stuck in the same ruts?

The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system with an uncanny accuracy in describing how human beings are wired, both positively and negatively. In The Road Back to

...
Book cover for "Save me the plums"
Star rating for Save me the plums
Author:
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America's oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone's boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became...
Book cover for "Sea of Tranquility"
Star rating for Sea of Tranquility
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
The "author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from an island off Vancouver in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and planets"--
Book cover for "The searcher"
Star rating for The searcher
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small...
Book cover for "Searching for Sylvie Lee"
Star rating for Searching for Sylvie Lee
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, vanishes. Terrified yet determined, Amy, the sheltered baby of the family, retraces her movements, but instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth.

32. Spare

Book cover for "Spare"
Star rating for Spare
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling, and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. With its raw, unflinching honesty, Prince Harry shares a landmark publication...
Book cover for "A spindle splintered"
Star rating for A spindle splintered
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks...
Book cover for "Stiff"
Star rating for Stiff
Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:

Beloved, best-selling science writer Mary Roach’s “acutely entertaining, morbidly fascinating” (Susan Adams, Forbes) classic, now with a new epilogue.

For two thousand years, cadavers – some willingly, some unwittingly – have been involved in science’s boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They’ve tested France’s first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified

...
Book cover for "The stranger diaries"
Star rating for The stranger diaries
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R.M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare's colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R.M. Holland's most famous story, 'The stranger,' left by her body. Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favorite literature. To make matters worse, the police suspect the killer...
Book cover for "Such a fun age"
Star rating for Such a fun age
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar....
Book cover for "Tell me everything"
Star rating for Tell me everything
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open. Erika Krouse has one of those faces. "I don't know why I'm telling you this," people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes...
Book cover for "These precious days"
Star rating for These precious days
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
A literary alchemist, Ann Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer's eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be.
Book cover for "The turn of the key"
Star rating for The turn of the key
Author:
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
The bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway delivers her highly anticipated fifth novel. "When she stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss--a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten--by the luxurious "smart" home...
Book cover for "The twist of a knife"
Star rating for The twist of a knife
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"When the critic who gave his new play scathing reviews is murdered, stabbed in the heart with his ornamental dagger, author Anthony Horowitz is arrested by an old enemy out for revenge and the only man who can help him is his estranged partner in solving crime, Daniel Hawthorne."