Britt's Staff Picks


Showing 21 - 40 of 115  There are a total of 170 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "No longer human"
Star rating for No longer human
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being." Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his...
Book cover for "Under the broken sky"
Star rating for Under the broken sky
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
When Soviet troops invade Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the last days of World War II, twelve-year-old Natsu Kimura must care for her younger sister as they struggle to survive and return to Japan.
Book cover for "The good son"
Star rating for The good son
Description:
"Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself? Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home--he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered...
Book cover for "An elderly lady is up to no good"
Star rating for An elderly lady is up to no good
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown...
Book cover for "A psalm for the wild-built"
Star rating for A psalm for the wild-built
Series:
Monk & robot volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor...
Book cover for "Several people are typing"
Star rating for Several people are typing
Description:
"A mid-level employee of a New York-based public relations firm finds his consciousness uploaded into the company's internal Slack channel"--
Book cover for "Take a hint, Dani Brown"
Star rating for Take a hint, Dani Brown
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relive all that career-driven tension. When big, brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it's an obvious sign: they are destined to sleep together. Dani's plan is simple, fake a relationship in public, and seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf's secretly a romantic.
Book cover for "The darkness outside us"
Star rating for The darkness outside us
Series:
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
"Two boys, alone in space: sworn enemies sent on the same rescue mission. Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor with no memory of a launch. There's more that doesn't add up: evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship's operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself away. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed--not when he's rescuing his own sister. In...
Book cover for "The secret talker"
Star rating for The secret talker
Author:
Description:
"Hongmei is the perfect Asian wife: beautiful, diligent, and passive. She lives a quiet life in Northern California with her husband, Glen, an intelligent and caring college professor. But when a mysterious person begins to email her, Hongmei can't resist and soon finds herself enthralled in a psychological cat-and-mouse game. Who is stalking her? And why does s/he know her deepest, darkest secrets? As Hongmei is forced to confront her own dark past...
Book cover for "Red Rising"
Star rating for Red Rising
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
A tale set in a bleak future society torn by class divisions follows the experiences of secret revolutionary Darrow, who after witnessing his wife's execution by an oppressive government joins a revolutionary cell and attempts to infiltrate an elite military academy.
Book cover for "The song of Achilles"
Star rating for The song of Achilles
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War.
Book cover for "The fellowship of the ring"
Star rating for The fellowship of the ring
Series:
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
Following Bilbo's 111th birthday, Frodo Baggins and his companion Sam Gamgee, set off along the same East Road down which Bilbo the Hobbit had accompanied Thorin Oakenshield and his dwarves all those years before.
Book cover for "Pet sematary"
Star rating for Pet sematary
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow's tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed's beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing...as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved...
Book cover for "Blockade Billy"
Star rating for Blockade Billy
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Even the most die-hard baseball fans don't know the true story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first--and only--player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game's history. Every effort was made to erase any evidence that William Blakely played professional...
Book cover for "The Martian"
Star rating for The Martian
Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he...
Book cover for "The goldfinch"
Star rating for The goldfinch
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld. Composed with the skills...
Book cover for "The guest cat"
Star rating for The guest cat
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Book cover for "Circe"
Star rating for Circe
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.
Book cover for "Milk and honey"
Star rating for Milk and honey
Author:
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"A collection of poetry and prose about survival, about the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity"--Amazon.com.
Book cover for "Prosper's demon"
Star rating for Prosper's demon
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man. But they don't die, and we do. Equilibrium. The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren't delicate but they're undeniably effective: he'll get the demon out--he just doesn't particularly care what happens to the person. Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the...