Elizabeth's Staff Picks


Showing 1 - 20 of 45  There are a total of 83 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All the light we cannot see"
Star rating for All the light we cannot see
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six,...
Book cover for "Before the ever after"
Star rating for Before the ever after
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
ZJ's friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career.
Book cover for "Blue Shoes and Happiness"
Star rating for Blue Shoes and Happiness
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:

Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea.

Life is good for Mma Ramotswe as she sets out with her usual resolve

...
Book cover for "Brown girl dreaming"
Star rating for Brown girl dreaming
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
In vivid poems that reflect the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, an award-winning author shares what it was like to grow up in the 1960s and 1970s in both the North and the South. Writer Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of her childhood in free verse.
Book cover for "Countdown"
Star rating for Countdown
Series:
Sixties trilogy volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall. It's 1962, and it seems the whole country is living in fear.
Book cover for "The devil in the white city"
Star rating for The devil in the white city
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

7. Dune

Book cover for "Dune"
Star rating for Dune
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny. In the far future, the son of Duke Leto Atreides leads a struggle against the Emperor from the desert planet of Arrakis, where his family has lived in exile for many years at the Emperor's command.
Book cover for "East of Eden"
Star rating for East of Eden
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America's most enduring authors, in a deluxe Centennial edition. In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose...
Book cover for "Enemy of all mankind"
Star rating for Enemy of all mankind
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"How did a single manhunt spark the modern era of multinational capitalism? Henry Avery was the seventeenth century's most notorious pirate. The press published wildly popular--and wildly inaccurate--reports of his nefarious adventures. The British government offered enormous bounties for his capture, alive or (preferably) dead. But Steven Johnson argues that Avery's most lasting legacy was his inadvertent triggering of a new model for the global...
Book cover for "Firekeeper's daughter"
Star rating for Firekeeper's daughter
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Daunis, who's part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.
Book cover for "Frankenstein"
Star rating for Frankenstein
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.
Book cover for "Garden spells"
Star rating for Garden spells
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
A successful caterer in Bascomb, North Carolina, Claire has always remained tied to the legacy of the Waverly family, until her peaceful life is transformed by Tyler Hughes, an art teacher and new next-door neighbor, and by the return of her prodigal sister, Sydney.
Book cover for "The gentle art of Swedish death cleaning"
Star rating for The gentle art of Swedish death cleaning
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning "death" and städning meaning "cleaning." This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace...
Book cover for "The geometry of sisters"
Star rating for The geometry of sisters
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice explores the complex emotional equations of love and loyalty that hold together three pairs of remarkable sisters, in an unforgettable story of loss, redemption, and forgiveness
 
The storm off Mackinac Island that engulfed Maura Shaw’s husband and elder daughter,Carrie, also swept away the illusion of her life as the perfect midwestern wife and mother. Now, after years away,...
Book cover for "The giver"
Star rating for The giver
Author:
Series:
Giver quartet volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives. Living in a "perfect" world without social ills, a boy approaches the time when he will receive a life assignment from the Elders, but his selection leads him to a mysterious man known as the Giver, who reveals the dark secrets behind the utopian...
Book cover for "The golden tresses of the dead"
Star rating for The golden tresses of the dead
Series:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop's Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce's sister Ophelia is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. 'A church is a wonderful place for a wedding,' muses Flavia, 'surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar.' Flavia is not your normal twelve-year-old girl. An expert in the...
Book cover for "The graveyard book"
Star rating for The graveyard book
Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own. Nobody Owens is a normal boy, except that he has been raised by ghosts and other denizens of the graveyard.
Book cover for "Harbor me"
Star rating for Harbor me
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world.
Book cover for "Hello, universe"
Star rating for Hello, universe
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Lives of four misfits are intertwined when a bully's prank lands shy Virgil at the bottom of a well and Valencia, Kaori, and Gen band together in an epic quest to find and rescue him.
Book cover for "Invisible man"
Star rating for Invisible man
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
A Black man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility