Amy's Staff Picks


Showing 1 - 20 of 38  There are a total of 64 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Children of blood and bone"
Star rating for Children of blood and bone
Series:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.
Book cover for "The future"
Star rating for The future
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"When Martha Einkorn fled her father's isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now, she's surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father's fox and rabbit sermon once a parable...
Book cover for "How the García girls lost their accents"
Star rating for How the García girls lost their accents
Average Rating:
2.5 stars
Description:
In the 1960s, political tension forces the García family away from Santo Domingo and towards the Bronx, where the sisters adapt and thrive despite cultural differences, language barriers, and prejudice, but Mami and Papi are more traditional, and they have far more difficulty adjusting to their new country.
Book cover for "In the time of the butterflies"
Star rating for In the time of the butterflies
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
A story based on actual events evokes the horror of the Dominican Republic under dictator General Trujillo, as three sisters die in a jeep "accident" "Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republica in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands."--Provided by publisher.
Book cover for "The testaments"
Star rating for The testaments
Series:
Handmaid's tale volume 2.
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE A modern masterpiece that "reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)—and can be read on its own or as a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale.  

“Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling...
Book cover for "The vanishing half"
Star rating for The vanishing half
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...
Book cover for "Parable of the sower"
Star rating for Parable of the sower
Series:
Parable books volume 1.
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy,...
Book cover for "Piranesi"
Star rating for Piranesi
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"From the ... author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi...
Book cover for "Legendborn"
Star rating for Legendborn
Author:
Series:
Legendborn volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"To discover the truth behind her mother's mysterious death, a teen girl infiltrates a magical secret society claiming to be the descendants of King Arthur and his knights."--
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 "Cloud Cuckoo Land"
Star rating for Cloud Cuckoo Land
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
A "novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world who find resilience, hope, and story ... [They] are trying to figure out the world around them, and to survive. In the besieged city of Constantinople in 1453, in a public library in Lakeport, Idaho, today, and on a spaceship bound for a distant exoplanet decades from now, an ancient text provides solace and the most profound human connection to characters in peril"--
Book cover for "The circle"
Star rating for The circle
Author:
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"The Circle is the exhilarating new novel from Dave Eggers, best-selling author of A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award. When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating...
Book cover for "This is how you lose the time war"
Star rating for This is how you lose the time war
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would...
Book cover for "The sentence"
Star rating for The sentence
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year...
Book cover for "The wedding people"
Star rating for The wedding people
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew. It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn't here for the big event....
Book cover for "Girl, woman, other"
Star rating for Girl, woman, other
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about...
Book cover for "Lessons in chemistry"
Star rating for Lessons in chemistry
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Set in 1960s California, this ... debut is the ... story of a female scientist whose career is constantly derailed by the idea that a woman's place is in the home, only to find herself starring as the host of America's most beloved TV cooking show"--
Book cover for "Less"
Star rating for Less
Series:
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
A failed novelist about to turn fifty travels internationally with humorous results.
Book cover for "The vaster wilds"
Star rating for The vaster wilds
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Woman's colonial narrative, North America. Fiction"--
Book cover for "The ten thousand doors of January"
Star rating for The ten thousand doors of January
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A gorgeous, aching love letter to stories, storytellers, and the doors they lead us through...absolutely enchanting."—Christina Henry, bestselling author of Alice and Lost Boys
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER! Finalist for the 2020 Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. 
In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious...