Amy's Staff Picks


Showing 1 - 20 of 64  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 "I'm judging you"
Star rating for I'm judging you
Description:
"I'm Judging You is [blogger Luvvie Ajayi's] debut book of humorous essays that dissects our cultural obsessions and calls out bad behavior in our increasingly digital, connected lives--from the importance of the newest Shonda Rhimes television drama to serious discussions of race and media representation to what to do about your fool cousin sharing casket pictures from Grandma's wake on Facebook"--
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 "Daughter of fortune"
Star rating for Daughter of fortune
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
A Chilean woman searches for her lover in the goldfields of 1840s California. Arriving as a stowaway, Eliza finances her search with various jobs, including playing the piano in a brothel.
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 "Alias Grace"
Star rating for Alias Grace
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Takes readers into the life and mind of Grace Marks, one of the most notorious women of the 1840s, who is serving a life sentence for murders she claims she cannot remember
Book cover for "Surfacing"
Star rating for Surfacing
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
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 "Fun home"
Star rating for Fun home
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
A memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father--a funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.
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 "The best we could do"
Star rating for The best we could do
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
The author describes her experiences as a young Vietnamese immigrant, highlighting her family's move from their war-torn home to the United States in graphic novel format.
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 "A renaissance of our own"
Star rating for A renaissance of our own
Description:
"A deeply personal and illuminating approach to antiracism and allyship, revealing the power of imagination and action to dismantle oppressive systems and build liberating ones, from a highly lauded lecturer, public academic, writer, and activist. In A Renaissance of Our Own, Rachel Cargle details the seminal event that put her on the map--her viral 2017 Women's March appearance that thrust her into the national conversation on feminism and allyship--and...
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...