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 29  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
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 "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 book woman of Troublesome Creek"
Star rating for The book woman of Troublesome Creek
Series:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Cussy Mary Carter is the last of her kind, her skin the color of a blue damselfly in these dusty hills. But that doesn't mean she's got nothing to offer. As a member of the Pack Horse Library Project, Cussy delivers books to the hill folk of Troublesome, hoping to spread learning in these desperate times. But not everyone is so keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and the hardscrabble Kentuckians are quick to blame a Blue for any trouble...
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 "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 "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...

8. Exiles

Book cover for "Exiles"
Star rating for Exiles
Series:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her stroller, her mother vanishing into the crowds. A year on, Kim Gillespie's absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country to welcome a new addition to the family. Joining the celebrations is federal investigator Aaron Falk. But as he soaks up life in the lush valley, he begins to suspect this tight-knit group...
Book cover for "Furious hours"
Star rating for Furious hours
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"The stunning true story of an Alabama serial killer, and the trial that obsessed the author of To Kill a Mockingbird in the years after the publication of her classic novel--a complicated and difficult time in her life that, until now, has been very little examined. Willie Maxwell was a Baptist reverend in Alabama; he also happened to be a serial killer. Between 1970 and 1977, his two wives and brother all died under suspicious circumstances -- each...
Book cover for "I'm still here"
Star rating for I'm still here
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
An "account of growing up Black, Christian, and female in middle-class white America ... [that looks] at how white, middle-class, evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God's ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness--if we let it--can save us all"--Amazon.com.
Book cover for "The it girl"
Star rating for The it girl
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends--Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily--during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing...
Book cover for "The last flight"
Star rating for The last flight
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"[This novel focuses] on two women who meet in an airport, both alone, both scared, and both urgently needing an escape from their lives. Claire Cook has a husband whose temper burns as bright as his promising political career, and she has worked for months on a plan to get out. A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a stranger equally as desperate. Together they hatch a plan to switch tickets--Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland,...
Book cover for "The last thing he told me"
Star rating for The last thing he told me
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally- her husband's teenage daughter, who hates her"--
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 "Nine perfect strangers"
Star rating for Nine perfect strangers
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can't even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be. Frances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic novelist,...
Book cover for "Pachinko"
Star rating for Pachinko
Author:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"PACHINKO follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate...
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 "Prairie fires"
Star rating for Prairie fires
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Book cover for "Prayer in the night"
Star rating for Prayer in the night
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"How can we trust God in the dark? Framed around the nighttime prayer of Compline, Tish Harrison Warren explores human vulnerability, suffering, and God's seeming absence as she recalls her own experience navigating a time of doubt and loss. This book offers a prayerful and frank approach to the difficulties in our ordinary lives at work, at home, and in a world filled with uncertainty"--
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...