New on the Shelves at Albert Wisner Public Library: Bestsellers
New adult and children's materials that are in high demand or which have received critical acclaim.
BOOKS WITH BUZZ
- Acts of Forgiveness byISBN: 9780593598290Publication Date: 2024-02-13The country's first female president might pass the Forgiveness Act, a bill would allow Black families to claim up to $175,000 if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves. For single mother Willie Revel, the bill could be a long-awaited form of redemption. A decade ago, Willie gave up her burgeoning journalism career to help run her father's struggling construction company in Philadelphia. Now she's living with her parents and her young daughter while trying to keep her family from going into bankruptcy. Could the Forgiveness Act uncover her forgotten roots while also helping save their beloved home? In order to qualify, she must first prove that the Revels are descended from slaves, but the rest of the family isn't as eager to dig up the past. Her mother is adopted, her father doesn't trust the government, and her daughter is just trying to make it through the fifth grade at her elite private school without attracting unwanted attention. It's up to Willie to verify their ancestry and save her family - but as she delves into their history, Willie begins to learn just how complicated family can be.
- Great Expectations byISBN: 9780593448236Publication Date: 2024-03-12A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man's life in the highly anticipated debut novel: when David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator's idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he'll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States' first Black president. “Great Expectations” is about David's eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions - questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood - that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America. Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, “Great Expectations” is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.
- Good Half Gone byISBN: 9781525831553Publication Date: 2024-03-19Iris Walsh saw her twin sister, Piper, get kidnapped - so why does no one believe her? Iris narrowly escaped her pretty, popular twin sister's fate as a teen: kidnapped, trafficked and long gone before the cops agreed to investigate. With no evidence to go on but a few scattered memories, the case quickly goes cold. Now an adult, Iris wants one thing - proof. And if the police still won't help, she'll just have to find it her own way; by interning at the isolated Shoal Island Hospital for the criminally insane, where secrets lurk in the shadows and are kept under lock and key. But Iris soon realizes that something even more sinister is simmering beneath the surface of the Shoal, and that the patients aren't the only ones being observed ...
- The Dredge byISBN: 9780802162564Publication Date: 2024-03-05Brendan Flaherty's debut novel; After some traumatic teenaged years in rural Connecticut, Cale and Ambrose Casey had nothing left to say to each other. Cale ran off to Hawaii to sell luxury real estate. Ambrose stayed behind and built up his construction company. Neither thought they'd be in touch again and were glad for it - until they learned of a real estate developer's plan to drain and expand Gibbs Pond. Nearly 30 years before, the Casey brothers buried a secret in that pond, which fell somewhere between self-defense and family preservation. Lily Rowe, the contractor in charge of the dredging, can also trace her roots - and her trauma - to the banks of Gibbs Pond. After a childhood that saw her and her brother yanked across the country by her abusive father, it was here where she finally stayed put, even if they didn't. But as ambitious as Lily is, and as much as she wants answers of her own, her family also has secrets to protect. Now, the haunted lives of Cale, Ambrose, and Lily collide once more as they reunite to unearth the devastation of the past.
- The Mystery Writer byISBN: 9781728290362Publication Date: 2024-03-19When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. Will her brother support her ambition? What will her parents say when they learn of her decision? Does she even have what it takes to be a successful writer? What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.
- Anita de Monte Laughs Last byISBN: 9781250786210Publication Date: 2024-03-051985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn't. By 1998 Anita's name has been all but forgotten - certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita's story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, “Anita de Monte Laughs Last” is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.
- Pelican Girls byISBN: 9780063299757Publication Date: 2024-03-05Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France's colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So, the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a 100 female "volunteers" of childbearing age - orphans, prisoners, and mental patients - to be shipped to New Orleans. Among this group are three unlikely friends: a sharp-tongued 12-year-old orphan, a mute 'madwoman,' and an accused abortionist. Charlotte, Pétronille, and Geneviève, along with the dozens of other women aboard La Baleine, have no knowledge of what lies ahead and no control over their futures. Strangers brought together by fate, these brave and fierce young women will face extraordinary adversity - pirates, slavedrivers, sickness, war - but also the private trauma of heartbreak and unrequited love, children born and lost, cruelty and unexpected pleasure, and a friendship forged in fire that will sustain through the years.
- The Morningside byISBN: 9781984855503Publication Date: 2024-03-19After being expelled from their ancestral home, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in Island City where Silvia's aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality. Enchanted by Ena's stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia's mission to unravel the truth about this woman's life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.
- The Mars House byISBN: 9781639732333Publication Date: 2024-03-19In the wake of an environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London's Royal Ballet, has become a refugee in Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. There, January's life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger - a person whose body is not adjusted to lower gravity and so poses a danger. January's job choices, housing and even transportation are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to naturalize, a process that is always disabling and sometimes deadly. When Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January's life is thrown into chaos, but Gale's political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a 5-year “marriage” that would secure January's future and ensure Gale's political success. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. As their romantic relationship develops, the political situation worsens, and January discovers Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay - and January may be the only person standing in the way.