SCIENCE FICTION - EXTRATERRESTRIAL BEINGS Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court. Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret, one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life, or rescue it from annihilation.

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NON FICTION - SOCIALISM Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you’re confronted by a pile of new tasks to complete – cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids, and so on. In this ground-breaking book, Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek lay out how unpaid work in our homes has come to take up an ever-increasing portion of our lives – how the vacuum of free time has been taken up by vacuuming. Examining the history of the home over the past century – from running water to white goods to smart homes – they show how repeated efforts to reduce the burden of this work have faced a variety of barriers, challenges, and reversals. Charting the trajectory of our domestic spaces over the past century, Hester and Srnicek consider new possibilities for the future, uncovering the abandoned ideas of anti-housework visionaries and sketching out a path towards real free time for all, where everyone is at liberty to pursue their passions, or do nothing at all. It will require rethinking our living arrangements, our expectations and our cities.

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HISTORICAL FICTION - WORLD WAR (1914-1918) It's 1947 and American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a fervent belief that her beloved French cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive somewhere. So when Charlie's family banishes her to Europe to have her "little problem" take care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister. In 1915, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance to serve when she's recruited to work as a spy for the English. Sent into enemy-occupied France during The Great War, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the "Queen of Spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents, right under the enemy's nose. Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launching them both on a mission to find the truth ... no matter where it leads

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SCIENCE FICTION - INTERPLANETARY VOYAGES They travelled into the unknown and left themselves behind. On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It's the greatest discovery in humanity's spacefaring history -- yet who were its builders and where did they go? Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln's extrasolar labour camp. There, he's condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies. Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp's oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free.

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HISTORICAL FICTION - ARTISTS A beautifully transporting novel capturing the romantic sweep of the twentieth century-- from Toronto in the '20s and '30s through the killing fields of World War II, to 1960s Rome and Florence. Born in 1916, Henry, thin-as-sticks and nearsighted, is an obsessive doodler who shamelessly copies illustrations from his Boys Own magazines. Left in the care of a nurturing, no-nonsense, Shakespeare-quoting, cardsharp grandmother, Henry receives as a gift a pristine set of Faber-Castell colouring pencils (and a pocket knife for the sharpening). He immediately commits each colour to memory-- cadmium yellow; light ultramarine; burst ochre; deep scarlet red-- and a passion for colour, art, and stories and techniques of the great artists is lit. It will sustain him, and obsess him, on his life's journey through the joys and sorrows of the twentieth century: from a boyhood spent dreaming of adventure, to the hothouse world of artistic academia, a first love cut short by tragedy, the brutality and lingering wounds of World War II, and, in the final chapters of life, the grace of unexpected love. Projected against an efflorescent backdrop of iconic art masterpieces-- from the richly hued oils of the European masters to the technicolour splendour of The Wizard of Oz-- All the Colour in the World is Henry's story: part miscellany, part memory palace, exquisitely precise with the emotional sweep of a great modern romance.

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HISTORICAL FICTION - WORLD WAR (1939-1945) Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle ) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill"(Los Angeles Times)

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DOMESTIC FICTION - FAMILIES Nina Browning married a third-generation Nashvillian, enjoys a newly lavish lifestyle thanks to the sudden success of her husband's tech business and has a son, Finch, who just got accepted to Princeton. Thomas Talone is a single dad, works multiple jobs and has a daughter, Lila, who was recently accepted to Nashville's most prestigious private high school on a scholarship. They couldn't be prouder. Then scandal strikes, and the worlds of these very different families collide. Lila passes out at a party, drunk and half-naked. Finch snaps a picture, types out a caption and click--sends it out to a few friends. The photo spreads quickly, and soon heated reactions bubble throughout the already-divided community. Before long, the families find themselves in the midst of an ethical war as their community takes sides, throws blame and implodes. The gray area between right and wrong grows thick, and Nina and Tom are forced to question every assumption they've held about love and family loyalty.

(15 copies)  Reserve

SUSPENSE FICTION - ORGANIZED CRIME También de este lado hay sueños. Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy-two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia-trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier's reach doesn't extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed when they finish reading it. A page-turner filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page, it is a literary achievement.

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DOMESTIC FICTION - FALSE IMPRISONMENT Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young business executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are suddenly ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined when, while visiting Roy's parents in their small Louisiana town, Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend and Roy's best man at her wedding. As Roy's time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. When, after five years, Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together, Celestial is faced with a soul-wrenching decision: whether to let go or to try to rebuild a marriage that has lost its underpinnings.

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY - GRIEF An unforgettable memoir about a young woman who tries to outrun loss, but eventually finds a way home. Ayelet Tsabari was 21 years old the first time she left Tel Aviv with no plans to return. Restless after two turbulent mandatory years in the Israel Defense Forces, Tsabari longed to get away. It was not the never-ending conflict that drove her, but the grief that had shaken the foundations of her home. The loss of Tsabari's beloved father in years past had left her alienated and exiled within her own large Yemeni family and at odds with her Mizrahi identity. By leaving, she would be free to reinvent herself and to rewrite her own story. For nearly a decade, Tsabari travelled, through India, Europe, the US and Canada. But a series of dramatic events forced Tsabari to examine her choices and her feelings of longing and displacement. By periodically returning to Israel, Tsabari began to examine her Jewish-Yemeni background and the Mizrahi identity she had once rejected, as well as unearthing a family history that had been untold for years. What she found resonated deeply with her own immigrant experience and struggles with new motherhood.

(14 copies)  Reserve