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 - 16 of 16  There are a total of 209 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Babel"
Star rating for Babel
Average Rating:
4.3 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 "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 "A darker shade of magic"
Star rating for A darker shade of magic
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"From V.E. Schwab, the critically acclaimed author of Vicious, comes a new universe of daring adventure, thrilling power, and parallel Londons, beginning with A Darker Shade of Magic. Kell is one of the last Travelers--magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes--as such, he can choose where he lands. There's Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, ruled by a mad King George. Then there's Red London, where...
Book cover for "A deadly education"
Star rating for A deadly education
Author:
Series:
Scholomance volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.3 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 "A discovery of witches"
Star rating for A discovery of witches
Series:
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Book one of the New York Times bestselling All Souls series, from the author of The Black Bird Oracle.
Look for the hit series “A Discovery of Witches,” now streaming on Netflix
“A wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy with all the magic of Harry Potter and Twilight” (People).

Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her...
Book cover for "Every heart a doorway"
Star rating for Every heart a doorway
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:

Winner of the Hugo Award, Hugo Award for Best Series, Alex Award, Locus Award, and Nebula Award
Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, and Tiptree Honor List
"A mini-masterpiece of portal fantasy — a jewel of a book that deserves to be shelved with Lewis Carroll's and C. S. Lewis' classics" —NPR
New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire

...
Book cover for "The eye of the world"
Star rating for The eye of the world
Series:
Wheel of time volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Relates a tale of the bestial Trollocs, the witch Moiraine, and three boys, one of whom is fated to become the Dragon--the World's only hope and the sure means of its destruction
Book cover for "The fifth season"
Star rating for The fifth season
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy....
Book cover for "The handmaid's tale"
Star rating for The handmaid's tale
Series:
Handmaid's tale volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"This visionary novel. in which God and Government are joined, and America is run as a Puritanical Theoracy, can be read as a companion volume to Orwell's 1984-its verso, in fact. It gives you the same degree of chill, even as it suggests the varieties of tyrannical experience; it evokes the same kind of horror even as its mordant wit makes you smile." --E.L.Doctorow.
Book cover for "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell"
Star rating for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two very different magicians who, as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.
Book cover for "Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore"
Star rating for Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.
Book cover for "The Name of the Wind : Day One"
Star rating for The Name of the Wind : Day One
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"The tale of Kvothe, from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages, you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But this book is so much more, for the story it tells reveals the truth behind...
Book cover for "The queen of the Tearling"
Star rating for The queen of the Tearling
Series:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"On her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense...
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 "Spinning silver"
Star rating for Spinning silver
Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father is not a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem intercedes. Hardening her heart, she sets out to retrieve what is owed, and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. But when an ill-advised boast brings her to the attention of the cold creatures who haunt the wood, nothing will...
Book cover for "Uprooted"
Star rating for Uprooted
Author:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Naomi Novik, author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels, introduces a bold new world rooted in folk stories and legends, as elemental as a Grimm fairy tale. Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon...