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 101 - 120 of 131  There are a total of 208 valid entries on the list.
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 "She said"
Star rating for She said
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
From the reporters who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment and abuse comes the untold story of their investigation and their involvement in reporting on the Christine Blasey Ford allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, and their consequences for the #MeToo movement.
Book cover for "Small things like these"
Star rating for Small things like these
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church"--Provided by publisher.
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 "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 "The stranger in the woods"
Star rating for The stranger in the woods
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In 1986, twenty-year-old Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the woods. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even in winter, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store food and water to avoid freezing to death ... Based on extensive interviews with Knight...
Book cover for "The survivors"
Star rating for The survivors
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets ... Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held...
Book cover for "Taste"
Star rating for Taste
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate ... memoir of life in and out of the kitchen"--
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 thirteenth tale"
Star rating for The thirteenth tale
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.
Book cover for "This is the story of a happy marriage"
Star rating for This is the story of a happy marriage
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:

A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick

"I had been so engaged by Ann Patchett's multifaceted story, so lured in by her confiding voice, that I forgot I was on the job. [...] As the best personal essays often do, Patchett's is a two-way mirror, reflecting both the author and her readers." — New York Times Book Review

Blending literature and memoir, New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett,

...
Book cover for "This must be the place"
Star rating for This must be the place
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Daniel Sullivan, a young American professor reeling from a failed marriage and a brutal custody battle, is on holiday in Ireland when he falls in love with Claudette, a world famous sexual icon and actress who fled fame for a reclusive life in a rural village. Together, they make an idyllic life in the country, raising two more children in blissful seclusion until a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and...
Book cover for "The Thursday murder club"
Star rating for The Thursday murder club
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club."-- "In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club"--
Book cover for "A tree grows in Brooklyn"
Star rating for A tree grows in Brooklyn
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
An autobiographical novel concerning a young daughter of German immigrants growing up in the slums of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the early 20th century.
Book cover for "Truly devious"
Star rating for Truly devious
Series:
Truly Devious volume 1.
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
When Stevie Bell, an amateur detective, begins her first year at a famous private school in Vermont, she plans to solve the cold case involving the kidnapping of the founder's wife and daughter shortly after the school opened.
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."