Daniel's Staff Picks

Here are some books that staff member Daniel enjoyed reading. Maybe you will too!

Showing 1 - 20 of 64  There are a total of 106 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "13 ways of looking at a fat girl"
Star rating for 13 ways of looking at a fat girl
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Follows Lizzie, a young woman growing up in Mississauga, as she fights her way from fat to thin, but who still, even as a married adult woman, sees herself as a fat girl.
Book cover for "The actual star"
Star rating for The actual star
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
Through the epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this book takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents where it demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate.
Book cover for "An American marriage"
Star rating for An American marriage
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound and separated by forces beyond their control"--
Book cover for "The animals in that country"
Star rating for The animals in that country
Average Rating:
1 stars
Description:
"Jean is not your usual grandma. She's never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom...
Book cover for "Annihilation"
Star rating for Annihilation
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

6. Aurora

Book cover for "Aurora"
Star rating for Aurora
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
"Generations after leaving earth, a starship draws near to the planet that may serve as a new home world for those on board. But the journey has brought unexpected changes and their best laid plans may not be enough to survive. "--
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the...
Book cover for "Blacktop wasteland"
Star rating for Blacktop wasteland
Author:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"A gritty, voice-driven thriller about a former getaway driver who thought he had escaped the criminal life who is pulled back in by race, poverty, and his own former life of crime. Beauregard "Bug" Montage is a man with many different titles: husband, father, friend, honest car mechanic. But before he gave it up, Bug used to be known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best Wheel Man on the East Coast. After a series...
Book cover for "Bluebird, bluebird"
Star rating for Bluebird, bluebird
Series:
Highway 59 volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from...
Book cover for "Broken Harbor"
Star rating for Broken Harbor
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
In the aftermath of a brutal attack that left a woman in intensive care and her husband and young children dead, brash cop Scorcher Kennedy and his rookie partner, Richie, struggle with perplexing clues and Scorcher's haunting memories of a shattering incident from his childhood.
Book cover for "Cloud atlas"
Star rating for Cloud atlas
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Recounts the connected stories of people from the past and the distant future, from a nineteenth-century notary and an investigative journalist in the 1970s to a young man who searches for meaning in a post-apocalyptic world.
Book cover for "Come and get it"
Star rating for Come and get it
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue"--
Book cover for "Confessions of the fox"
Star rating for Confessions of the fox
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found. Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript--a gender-defying exposé of Jack and Bess's adventures. Dated 1724, the book depicts a London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with the city's newly established...

14. Contact

Book cover for "Contact"
Star rating for Contact
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway receives an encrypted message, apparently from a solar system many light-years away.
Book cover for "The crying of Lot 49"
Star rating for The crying of Lot 49
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge."--P. [4] of cover.
Book cover for "Detransition, baby"
Star rating for Detransition, baby
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"[A novel] about three women--transgender and cisgender--whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex..."--
Book cover for "The dispossessed"
Star rating for The dispossessed
Series:
Hainish series volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.
Book cover for "Einstein's dreams"
Star rating for Einstein's dreams
Average Rating:
4 stars
Book cover for "Exhalation"
Star rating for Exhalation
Author:
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others
Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the...
Book cover for "Exit west"
Star rating for Exit west
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, a love story that unfolds in a world being irrevocably transformed by migration. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet--sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, thrust into premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it...