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 88  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "Brain on fire"
Star rating for Brain on fire
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
An account of the author's struggle with a rare brain-attacking autoimmune disease traces how she woke up in a hospital room with no memory of baffling psychotic symptoms, describing the last-minute intervention by a doctor who identified the source of her illness.
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 "Catch and kill"
Star rating for Catch and kill
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Now an HBO documentary series streaming on HBO Max. 
One of the Best Books of the Year
 Time * NPR * Washington Post * Bloomberg News * Chicago Tribune * Chicago Public Library * Fortune * Los Angeles Times * E! News * The Telegraph * Apple * Library Journal  In...
Book cover for "The Chilbury Ladies' Choir"
Star rating for The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Through letters and journals, [this novel] unfolds the struggles, affairs, deceptions, and triumphs of a village choir during World War II [in England]"--Dust jacket flap.
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 "Cozy minimalist home"
Star rating for Cozy minimalist home
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Book cover for "A deadly education"
Star rating for A deadly education
Author:
Series:
Scholomance volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"In the start of an all-new series, the bestselling author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver introduces you to a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death--until one girl begins to unlock its many secrets. Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered: There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won't allow its students...
Book cover for "Death Comes to Pemberley"
Star rating for Death Comes to Pemberley
Author:
Average Rating:
2.8 stars
Description:
A rare meeting of literary genius: P. D. James, long among the most admired mystery writers of our time, draws the characters of Jane Austens beloved novel Pride and Prejudice into a tale of murder and emotional mayhem. It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcys magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the...
Book cover for "The devil and the dark water"
Star rating for The devil and the dark water
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Samuel Pipps is the greatest detective of his day--but now he's a prisoner, accused of an unknown crime by one of the world's most powerful men. Along with his faithful sidekick Arent Hayes, they're sailing back to Amsterdam from the East Indies, where he'll stand trial. But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage"--

18. The dry

Book cover for "The dry"
Star rating for The dry
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A small town hides big secrets in The Dry. After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke's steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the...
Book cover for "The Dutch house"
Star rating for The Dutch house
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older...
Book cover for "Educated"
Star rating for Educated
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University"--Amazon.com.