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Staff Favorites 2020

From children's books to biographies, bestselling romance to National Book Award winners, here are the favorite books read by the Silas Bronson Library staff in 2020.

Note: eBooks and downloadable audiobooks are available using the Overdrive web browser as well as the Libby and SimplyE apps.

 

 

Biography/Memoir

 

 

 

   

Allie Brosh, Solutions and Other Problems

Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh's childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.

 

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Book

eBook

 

 

 

 


 

Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You

A rip-roaring, edgy and unabashedly raunchy new collection of hilarious essays from Samantha Irby about aging, marriage, and settling down with step-children in small-town America.

 

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Book

eBook

 

 

 
 

 

   

 

Children's Books

 
   

Jerry Craft, Class Act

Award-winning and bestselling author Jerry Craft returns with a companion book to New Kid. This time, it's Jordan's friend Drew who takes center stage in another laugh-out-loud funny, powerful, and important story about being one of the few kids of color in a prestigious private school.

 

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Book

eBook

 

   

 
 

Veronica Jamieson, Roller Girl

A heartwarming graphic novel about friendship and surviving junior high through the power of roller derby.

 

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Book

eBook

 

   
 

 

London Carter Williams & Subi Bosa, Our 1st Protest

Waterbury seventh-grader, London, attends her first protest with her little sister Brooklyn and their mom.

 

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Book

 

   
   
 

Fiction

 

 


 

 
 

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

The classic story written during the late 1860s.

Genre: Coming-of-Age

 

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Book

Large Print

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

 

   
 
 

Sandra Byrd, Bride of a Distant Isle

In Victorian England, Annabel Ashton fights to save her family home and her mother's honor while trying to figure out if the man she loves wants her--or just wants to use her to achieve his own ambitions.

Genre: Christian Fiction, Romance, Historical Fiction

 

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Large Print Book 

 

   
   

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

From the New York Times bestselling 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.

Genre: Fantasy, Literary

 

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Book

 

 

 


 

Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

Winner of the Booker Prize, Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.

Genre: Literary, LGBTQ

 

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Book

Paperback Book

eBook

 

   
   

Jessica Fletcher & Jon Land, Murder in Red

Jessica Fletcher's favorite gin rummy partner, Mimi Van Dorn, checks into the brand-new Clifton Care Partners, a private hospital that's just opened up shop in town, for a simple procedure--one that leads tragically, and inexplicably, to her death. Based on the Murder She Wrote TV series.

Genre: Mystery

 

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Book

 

 

   
 


 

 

Lucy Foley, The Guest List

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn't wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

Genre: Mystery, Suspense

 

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Book

Large Print

CD Audiobook

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

   


 

 

Sherry Jones, Josephine Baker's Last Dance

In this illuminating biographical novel, Sherry Jones spans Josephine Baker's early years in servitude and poverty in America, to her rise to fame as a showgirl in her famous banana skirt, to her activism against discrimination, and her many loves and losses.

Genre: Biographical Fiction, Historical Fiction

 

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Book

CD Audiobook

 

 

 



 

 

Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings

"I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus." So begins the new novel from the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings, an extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny in a time of great despair and great hope.

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

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Book

Large Print Book

CD Audiobook

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

 

 
 

 

Stephen King, The Outsider

What begins as a manhunt for an unlikely doppelgänger takes an uncanny turn into the supernatural. King’s skillful use of criminal forensics helps to ground his tale in a believable clinical reality where the horrors stand out in sharp relief.

Genre: Horror

 

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Book

Large Print

CD Audiobook

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

 

 
 

 

Silvia Morena-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Genre: Horror

 

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Book

eBook

 

   
 

 

Jojo Moyes, The Giver of Stars

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who's never asked a man's permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky.

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

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Book

En Español

Large Print

CD Audiobook

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

 

   
   

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

In late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world.

Genre: Coming-of-Age

 

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Book

En Español

CD Audiobook

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

   
   

J. D. Robb, Shadows in Death

In the new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series, Lt. Eve Dallas is about to walk into the shadows of her husband’s dangerous past… While Eve examines a fresh body in Washington Square Park, her husband, Roarke, spots a man among the onlookers he’s known since his younger days on the streets of Dublin. A man who claims to be his half brother. A man who kills for a living—and who burns with hatred for him.

Genre: Mystery

 

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Book

eBook

 

 

 

 

   

Veronica Roth, Chosen Ones

Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North America. He was known as the Dark One, and his weapon of choice--catastrophic events known as Drains--leveled cities and claimed thousands of lives. Chosen Ones, as the teens were known, gave everything they had to defeat him.

Genre: Fantasy, Dystopian

 

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Book

eBook

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

Two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village's all-female diving collective. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger.

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

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Book

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts

Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.

Genre: Science Fiction

 

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Book

 

 

 

 

   

Beatriz Williams, Her Last Flight

In 1947, photographer and war correspondent Janey Everett arrives at a remote surfing village on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to research a planned biography of forgotten aviation pioneer Sam Mallory, who joined the loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War and never returned.

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

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Book

 

   
   

 Graphic Novels

 
   
 

 

Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran, Snow, Glass, Apples

A not-so-evil queen is terrified of her monstrous stepdaughter and determined to repel this creature and save her kingdom from a world where happy endings aren't so happily ever after. From the award-winning and bestselling writer Neil Gaiman comes this lavishly illustrated graphic novel adaptation by Colleen Doran.

Genre: Fairy Tales

 

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Book

 

   

 
 

Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie, The Wicked + The Divine

Every ninety years, twelve gods return as young people. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are all dead. It's happening now. It's happening again.

Genre: Fantasy

 

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Book, Volume 1

Book, Volume 2

 

   
   

Sam Humphries & Jen Bartel, Blackbird

Nina Rodriguez knows there’s a hidden magical world run by ruthless cabals hiding in Los Angeles. And when a giant magic beast kidnaps her sister, Nina must confront her past (and her demons) to get her sister back and reclaim her life.

Genre: Fantasy

 

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Book

 

 

 

   

Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

From British illustrator, artist, and author Charlie Mackesy comes a journey for all ages that explores life's universal lessons, featuring 100 color and black-and-white drawings.

Genre: Fables, Inspirational

 

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Book

eBook

 

 

 

 

 
 

C. S. Pacat & Johanna the Mad, Fence

Nicholas Cox is determined to prove himself in the world of competitive fencing, and earn his place alongside fencing legends like the dad he never knew, but things get more complicated when he’s up against his golden-boy half-brother, as well as sullen fencing prodigy, Seiji Katayama.

Genre: Sports, LGBTQ

 

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Book, Vol. 1-3

Book, Vol. 4

 

 

 

 

 

Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples, Saga

A sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe.

Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction

 

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Book, Compendium 1

 

 

 

 

 

Non-Fiction

 
   


 

 

Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning

Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped from the Beginning uses the lives of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists.

Subject: U.S. History

 

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Book

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook

 

   
   
 

Teen/Young Adult

 
 
   

Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

Genre: Science Fiction

 

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Book

eBook

Downloadable Audiobook