MLA - Main Librarians' Picks 2023 Q1

Suffering an intense year of public and police scrutiny after being wrongly implicated in his soon-to-be-ex-wife's murder, Boston lawyer Eli Landon takes sanctuary in a centuries-old family home and falls in love with resident housekeeper Abra Walsh, with whom he is entangled in an old, life-threatening mystery.

"Their love was supposed to last forever. But after two devastating tragedies, Yasmen and Josiah Wade realized love alone couldn't solve everything... or keep their marriage together. It's taken a year since their split for Yasmen to finally start feeling like herself again. To finally be able to breathe again. But the more she sees Josiah-whether it's parenting their two children or working together at the restaurant they co-own-the more Yasmen realizes...

"Gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher." When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at...

Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the "complicated"...

In the heart of Greenwich Village, three women form an accidental sorority when a baby--belonging to exactly none of them--lands on their collective doorstep. Lauren and her family--lucky bastards--have been granted the use of a spectacular brownstone, teeming with history and dizzyingly unattractive '70s wallpaper. Adding to the home's bohemian, grungy splendor is the bar occupying the basement, a (mostly) beloved dive called The Sweet Spot. Within...

"Thomas Fawkes is turning to stone, and the only cure to the Stone Plague is to join his father's plot to assassinate the king of England."--

"In the vein of Dominicana and My Brilliant Friend, an unforgettable story about female friendship and queer love in a Pakistani-American community Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. But when a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia's idyllic childhood is shattered forever. In middle school, Razia befriends a new girl, Taslima, and they begin to chafe...

Staying busy has helped Tova cope ever since her son disappeared decades ago. So when her husband dies, she takes a job at the aquarium, where she meets Marcellus, an octopus that deduces what happened to her son. For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus. After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began...

"Discover the evolutionary mind and body benefits of living at the edges of your comfort zone and reconnecting with the wild. In many ways, we're more comfortable than ever before. But could our sheltered, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged lives actually be the leading cause of many our most urgent physical and mental health issues? In this gripping investigation, award-winning journalist Michael Easter seeks out off-the-grid visionaries,...

When Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding New Orleans community are thrust into chaos. Patience is a virtue, but punk rocker turned nun Sister Holiday isn’t satisfied to just wait around for officials to return her home and sanctuary to its former peace, instead deciding to unveil the mysterious attacker herself. Her investigation leads her down a twisty path...