Staff Picks from CLP – Mt. Washington

Irene’s pick – Doppelgängers, corporate intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, and the harsh permanence of the border: Sublimation is a thrilling and provocative debut for fans of Severance that asks what you’d sacrifice for a different life from award-winning author Isabel J. Kim.

Zach’s pick – A literary novel set in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus during the years of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war.

Laura’s pick – After her boyfriend cheats on her and ruins her summer, sixteen-year-old Calisa escapes to rural Vermont to help her great-aunt run the Faraway Inn, only to discover a rundown inn in need of repair, the groundkeeper’s handsome son, and mysterious, almost otherworldly secrets lurking among its residents.

Andrea’s pick – Global icon Liza Minnelli shares her inspiring story: stepping out from the long shadow of a mega-star mother and legendary film director father, fighting a lifetime battle with addiction, and emerging from it all to become a once-in-a-lifetime artist.

Anne’s pick – A successful social media influencer who markets an idealized, “pioneer-style” family life–carefully staged with behind-the-scenes help–suddenly finds herself transported to a harsh, authentic version of the early 1800s.

Ben’s pick – From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot , the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin’s quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood.

Cody’s pick – Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew–and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.

Andrea’s pick – Providing an illuminating glimpse into a relationship that turns conventional notions of same-sex marriage on their head, and reveals early America to be a place both more diverse and more accommodating than modern society might imagine, Charity and Sylvia is a significant contribution to our limited knowledge of LGBT history in early America.

Anne’s pick – Today’s lunch special: Freshly caught fish. Bear lives alone in a lighthouse. Bear mends their clothes, sweeps the floors, and catches their own lunch. Today’s lunch is Eustace. Eustace would really like to live. (He has a girlfriend after all.) Will Eustace be released back into the sea? Or will he end up in Bear’s stock pot?

Ben’s pick – Twenty-five years after Jesus’ Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis Johnson.

Cody’s pick – Lambda Literary award winner and national bestselling author Alexandria Bellefleur returns with a steamy sapphic rom-com about a quiet bookseller and a romance novel cover model who agree to a modern-day marriage of convenience.

Irene’s pick – An unforgettable novel about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Laura’s pick – Marin has always belonged on the great blue sea. Betrayed by love, Marin lives and works as a supply runner, sailing from island to island, delivering an array of goods with Perri the sea serpent and Ree the sailor shrub as her crew. On one of her routine trips to the capital, Alyssium, Marin finds a revolution underway–and her friend Dax in the line of fire.

Zach’s pick – A couple discovers a mysterious black hole, known as the Funhole, in the storage room of their apartment building. As they experiment with the Funhole, they find that it has the ability to warp and mutate living things in grotesque ways.

Andrea’s pick – A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.

Anne’s pick – Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant Caz–a magically sentient spider plant–have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite. Then a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames.

Ben’s pick – Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West–its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders–this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

Cody’s pick – The first novel of the Discworld series. On a world supported on the back of a giant turtle, a wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There’s Rincewind, an avaricious but inept wizard, Twoflower, a naive tourist whose murderous luggage moves on hundreds of little legs, dragons who only exist if you believe in them, and of course, the Edge of the Discworld, and its circumference.

Irene’s pick – Naomi knows she should accept her fate, move into a dingy one-bedroom, and try and land a job (since Jeremy drained their joint accounts). But Naomi won’t settle for anything but a happy ending. Instead, she finds herself becoming increasingly obsessed over Veronica, her husband’s new girlfriend. But soon, Naomi loses her grip on the situation.

Laura’s pick – Lately, mythological monsters and the Olympian gods seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy Jackson’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. Zeus’s master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’s stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus.

Zach’s pick – From the bestselling author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , the legendary Hunter S. Thompson’s second volume of the “Gonzo Papers” is back. Generation of Swine collects hundreds of columns from the infamous journalist’s 1980s tenure at the San Francisco Examiner.

Irene’s pick – This fascinating no-bullshit account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean.