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April 2024: new releases, staff picks, and more!: Library Book Club Selections

The Thirty Names of Night

The Thirty Names of Night

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award--Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost ​The author of the "vivid and urgent...important and timely" (The New York Times Book Review) debut The Map of Salt and Stars returns with this remarkably moving and lyrical novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts. Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother's ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother's sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's--and his grandmother's--in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn't and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother's ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar's signature "magical and heart-wrenching" (The Christian Science Monitor) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are.

The Viscount Made Me Do It

The Viscount Made Me Do It

Diana Quincy returns with the second novel in her Clandestine Affairs series featuring a steamy romance between a working class London bonesetter who is dangerously attracted to her mysterious noble client.   A seduction that could ruin everything . . . Hanna Zaydan has fought to become London's finest bonesetter, but her appealing new patient threatens to destroy everything she's worked so hard for. With each appointment, the daughter of foreign merchants is slowly seduced by the mysterious former soldier. She's smart enough to know Griff is after more than he'll reveal, but whatever it is, the bonesetter's growing desire for the man just might tempt her to give it to him. An attraction that cannot be denied . . . Rumors that he killed his own parents have followed Thomas Ellis, Viscount Griffin, practically since he was a boy. More than a decade after the tragedy, Griff receives a tip about his parents' killer . . . one that takes him straight to a beautiful bonesetter. Griff is convinced Hanna is a fraud, but she stirs genuine feelings in him that he thought had perished along with his family. Hanna has a gift for fixing fractured people, but can she also mend a broken heart More importantly, will Griff let her

The Pioneer Woman Cooks--Dinner's Ready!

The Pioneer Woman Cooks--Dinner's Ready!

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The #1 New York Times bestselling author and Food Network favorite The Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond returns with an exciting new cookbook filled with no-fuss family recipes for dinners, desserts, and more. Cook smarter, not harder! After seventeen years of sharing recipes in my cookbooks, on my website, and on my cooking show, I still absolutely love cooking! That said, while I enjoy making a slow-cooked meat sauce or long-braised pork roast, life is just too busy these days to devote that much time to getting dinner on the table day after day. Heck, even if I have the time to whip up a complicated recipe, for some reason I just don't seem to have the patience. If you find yourself in the same dinner boat, here's a collection of flavorful and fast recipes to breathe speedy new scrumptiousness into your cooking. In The Pioneer Woman Cooks--Dinner's Ready! you'll find lots of new dishes to fit your schedule, whether you're in a hurry to get supper made or simply want to get out of the kitchen quicker to spend time doing other things you enjoy (even if that's curling up in front of the TV for the night)! Every occasion is covered, from hosting company, with my mom's Seafood Casserole from the '70s and Pork Marsala with Mushrooms, to pizza night, with my classic Cast-Iron Hamburger Pizza and gorgeous Rainbow Pizza, to teenager-friendly fun food like Pretzel Dogs and Pickle Chicken Bites. You'll also enjoy tasty new pasta dishes, chicken dinners, and fuss-free sides like Crispy Parmesan Potatoes and Pimento Cheese Grits, as well as delicious desserts like Blackberry Lime Whip and Chuckwagon Brownies. As a delicious bonus, there's a whole chapter of easy-to-make Fridge Grabs--from Refrigerator Pickles to Garlic Confit--that are great to have on hand for adding even more flavor and zip to the recipes! These low-stress, fuss-free, big-on-flavor recipes are sure to be new family faves. You'll be able to holler "Dinner's ready!" faster than ever.