Melissa's Staff Picks

3.7 stars

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...

4.1 stars

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.

4 stars

A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood--where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with...

4.1 stars

Three generations of Palestinian-American women in contemporary Brooklyn are torn by individual desire, educational ambitions, a devastating tragedy, and the strict mores of traditional Arab culture.

4.3 stars

Estranged friends Ivy, Mateo, and Cal witness a murder while skipping school, and the only way they can solve it is by revealing what they have been hiding from one another--and themselves.