New Releases - January Edition

Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!

FICTION

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall.  This captivating postapocalyptic novel is set in and around New York City's American Museum of Natural History. Global warming has resulted in a sea level rise of unforeseen proportions. When the floodgates that keep the city dry are breached during a massive hurricane, the museum is inundated with water. The story is told from the perspective of Nonie, an adolescent insect enthusiast and the child of museum staffers who have taken flood refuge at their workplace. . . The survivors flee the museum using a birchbark canoe taken from one of the exhibits and carefully make their way through the flooded city to the Hudson River. They then face a series of challenges and nearly lose everything before overcoming adversity in an epic finale. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen. In this sweeping and heart-rending debut, Chen brings to life more than 60 years of Chinese history through the tale of childhood sweethearts separated by war and reunited decades later in America. . . In the historical timeline, Haiwen enlists in the Nationalist army in a misguided effort to help his family, a decision that will tragically reverberate through succeeding generations. Suchi, meanwhile, is sent to Hong Kong with her older sister to escape the war. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson. The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick. When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. . . In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present. - from the publisher.

NONFICTION

The Survivor: How I Made It Through Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter by Josef Lewkowicz and Michael Calvin.  Lewkowicz, a survivor of six concentration camps during the Holocaust, later became a Nazi hunter who captured SS commander Amon Goeth (a key figure in Schindler's List). Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

You'll Never Believe Me: A Life of Lies, Second Tries, and Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist by Kari Ferrell.  Ferrell debuts with a raw and riveting account of how she became infamous for scamming New York City’s hipsters… The New YorkObserver nicknamed Ferrell “the Hipster Grifter,” and, while serving nearly a year in jail for her crimes, she began to drop her hard-edged persona as she met and bonded with her fellow inmates. After her release, Ferrell became a prisoners’ rights advocate and developed a production company that focuses on work from women of color. With a combination of bruising vulnerability and self-deprecating humor (“I was like a law-breaking Martha Stewart. Oh, wait”), Ferrell’s audacious coming-of-age tale pairs the thrill of true crime with the redemptive arc of a good memoir. It’s a deliciously edgy testament to reinvention. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty by Bonny Reichert.  Winner of the Dave Greber Book Award for social justice writing, Reichert pens a culinary memoir about her childhood, early adulthood, and midlife as she reflects on her father's survival of the Holocaust, her family's foodways, and all that she has come to know about food, history, and inheritance. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

New Releases - December Edition

Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!

NONFICTION

Good Nature: Why Seeing, Smelling, Hearing, and Touching Plants Is Good for Our Health by Kathy Willis.  Exposure to nature, and plants in particular, can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and boost the immune system, among other benefits, according to this eye-opening survey. Examining the rewards of smelling plants, Willis (Botanicum), a biodiversity professor at Oxford University, notes research that found inhaling the fragrance of cypress and juniper trees raises the number of lymphocytes (cells that destroy infected or cancer-causing cells) in the blood. Even brief glimpses of nature confer advantages, Willis contends, describing how university students who viewed a “flowering green roof” from their classroom window for 40 seconds before a test performed better than peers who instead saw a “bare concrete roof.” Willis is refreshingly candid about the limits of the scientific literature, contending, for instance, that though a few studies have shown that touching wood bestows calming effects, “a lot more work is clearly needed” before drawing definitive conclusions. Additionally, Willis offers pragmatic recommendations on how to take advantage of the research findings, suggesting that while “incorporating real elements of nature such as wood and plants into our homes” provides the strongest boost to physical and mental well-being, images or recordings of natural settings can be used when that’s not practical. This fascinates. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson.  In his first book, woodworker Robinson blends memoir and nature writing to tell the story of how he learned his craft. He grew up in rural Scotland and learned from his father, whom Robinson helped create exquisite objects; he eventually established his own workshop. Contemplating the trees that provide his medium and the art of handcrafting heirloom pieces, he reflects on his journey. Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Matchmaker Matchmaker: Find Me a Love That Lasts by Aleeza Ben Shalom.  Matchmaker and dating coach Ben Shalom (Get Real Get Married), who starred in the Netflix series Jewish Matchmaking, shares the secrets of her trade in this pragmatic guide. Rejecting the idea that “meeting someone should be effortless,” she advises readers to go on at least five dates with a potential partner before judging the relationship’s viability or having sex. Other tips include ensuring that one’s core values align with a partner’s, and pursuing one’s own professional and personal goals because “the best, most whole, and most alive version of yourself” is most likely to attract the right partner. Ben Shalom details client case studies date-by-date, providing insight on how to perceive the lack of an initial spark (“not feeling butterflies in the beginning” doesn’t mean the relationship is doomed) and cautioning against seeking validation from another person (readers should be more concerned with how they feel about potential partners than vice versa). While the advice is aimed at heterosexual couples, and recommendations that men should always pay for the first date or “pursue” women can feel antiquated, readers will glean confidence from Ben Shalom’s concrete guidance and methodical, no-nonsense approach. It’s a solid manual for singles seeking a no-frills approach to finding the one. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

FICTION

Rental House by Weike Wang.  Award-winning Wang (author of the multi-best-booked Joan Is Okay) examines the challenges of family and marriage. Keru is the daughter of strict, well-educated Chinese immigrant parents, while Nate comes from a white, working-class family. Keru and Nate marry, but when their families join them on vacation, the couple's strained relationships with their in-laws force them to confront their own hidden truths. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

North is the Night by Emily Rath.  Inspired by Finnish folklore, bestselling Rath ("Jacksonville Rays" and "Second Sons" series) starts a new duology. When Aina is dragged into the underworld, a pawn to the Witch Queen and of interest to the king, Siiri travels to the far north, hoping to gather the aid of a legendary shaman to enter the world of death and save her.  Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd. Boyd’s latest (after The Romantic) is an electric espionage thriller that calls to mind the best of John le Carré and Len Deighton. As a child, Gabriel Dax was caught in a house fire that killed his mother, and insomnia-inducing nightmares of the tragedy have followed him into adulthood. By 1960, Gabriel has become a travel writer who, through a stroke of good luck, is assigned to interview Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo. Shortly after their conversation, Lumumba is overthrown by a Congolese colonel, and though Gabriel’s editor tells him the tapes are “yesterday’s news,” unknown parties are bent on acquiring them. . . First, a mysterious woman bumps into Gabriel at a pub and inquires about the tapes before introducing herself as MI6 agent Faith Green. Then she asks him to deliver a drawing to someone in Spain as a “small favour” for the agency. Though Gabriel is reluctant to court trouble, he’s smitten with Faith, so he eventually agrees. Soon, he’s taking on ever-more-intricate missions for Faith, unaware he’s been tapped to work for MI6 full-time - in part because of his valuable interview with Lumumba, and in part because of slow-to-emerge secrets from his family’s past. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

Black Friday Sales: How to Shop Strategically Using Consumer Reports

 

How do you know if a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal is good or too good to be true? Do your research beforehand by accessing our Consumer Reports database for free with your WPL library card! You can read articles and topical sections (such as their The Ultimate Guide to Black Friday Deals and Sales), check out product reviews, and find out about recalls on a variety of products. Just go to mywpl.org - Resources - Online Databases and click on Home where Consumer Reports is listed. Enter your WPL library card number and password on the following page and you are in!

We also have print issues of Consumer Reports available from our Newspapers & Magazines Department. Ask our library staff if you need assistance locating a current issue or a back issue. Of course, you can also put print copies of Consumer Reports on hold for yourself to pick up at the main library or one of the branches.  

1. First go to account login at mywpl.org.  Enter your library card number and password. This will bring you to the online catalog.
2. Enter "Consumer Reports" in the search bar and select "title" in the format drop down menu.  Click "search."
3. Click on the "Place Hold" button.  You can then choose a specific issue of the magazine by clicking "Specific Volume," and selecting the specific volume from the drop-down menu.
4. Select which issue you want, choose how you want the library to notify you when it's ready for pick up, and which library you want to pick up the magazine.  Click "place hold."

One last deal that is the best deal ever: a library card from your local library! You can borrow so many things (not just books!) for free with your library card! We no longer have overdue fines on our materials so as long as you return any borrowed materials in a relatively timely fashion, you wouldn't owe anything. Visit any of our branches anytime we're open to get a Worcester Public Library. During this holiday season, that is something for which we can all be thankful!

New Releases - November Edition

Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!

FICTION

Silent Are the Dead by D.M. Rowell (Koyh Mi O Boy Dah).  One mystery bleeds into another as a Native woman and her cousin seek a missing headdress that may have instigated a murder. Mud Sawpole and her cousin Denny have gathered with their tribal elders to bless the Jefferson Peace Medal outside the Kiowa Museum. Cleansing the medal’s negative energy, especially after the duo had to solve a murder to recover the precious symbol, brings a healing sense of contentment to Mud. After the ceremony, she tries to get herself back into the head space of her adopted Silicon Valley home and work, but when she and Denny see that tribe leader Wyatt Walker’s office has been tossed, they know the danger isn’t over. Is this about the medal, other relics in the museum, or the fracking operation that’s commenced on tribal lands? . . .  An immersive cultural experience with Kiowa culture and language wrapped in a mystery plot. Copyright Kirkus 2024.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami.  The latest work from award-winning Murakami (Novelist as a Vocation) transports readers to a small town where residents have lost their own shadows, clocks have no hands, and the high wall surrounding the community can move and change its boundaries. A young man infatuated with a 16-year-old girl narrates. With the girl's help, he becomes a "dream reader" in a library without books or textual materials. He explores different realities as he delves into the dreams he experiences while reading. In his mid-40s, he finally finds a fulfilling position as head librarian in a rural area many miles away. Along a walking path between work, home, and the local cemetery, he frequents a coffee shop and befriends its owner. When he stops by one evening to have dinner with the coffee shop owner, she has just finished reading Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. That magical realism tale sheds a floodlight of insight into the narrator's mind, just as Murakami's book, a masterpiece, will with readers. VERDICT At times a meditation on romance, reality vs. fantasy, ghosts, and the power of written words, this metaphysical novel examines the questionable value of timekeeping while thoroughly exploring unconditional love, self-imposed constraints, and deaths of one's body and soul.—Lisa Rohrbaugh, Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Toto, by A. J. Hackwith.  Toto always tried to be a good dog, but when he was taken by an animal control officer, all bets were off. Transported by a twister to a magical land filled with strange characters, talking animals, and magical quests, Toto is thinking that maybe he found a new place to be. Meeting some unusual people along the way, including a talking scarecrow and a boy-turned-tinman, Toto finds his human Dorothy being led further astray, and not just on a road of gold bricks. The Emerald City is not as friendly as expected, and the Wizard sends Dorothy off to recover a witch's broom, making Toto see that at least one of them needs to figure out the truth behind the curtain and the desire for a pair of fancy bedazzled shoes. A good dog may be his owner's best friend, but a bad dog knows how to get things done. VERDICT Readers will be delighted to discover this unique take on The Wizard of Oz.—Kristi Chadwick, Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

NONFICTION

How to Let Things Go by Shunmyo Masuno.  For those feeling overwhelmed, internationally bestselling Buddhist monk Masuno (The Art of Simple Living) offers a guide for stepping away from the demands of everyday life and prioritizing what really matters. Already a bestseller in Japan, this book offers lessons and practical tips for creating a calmer, more fulfilling life. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Bake Club by Christina Tosi/Shannon Salzano.  A single Instagram post during the 2020 pandemic from Tosi, a James Beard Award winner, cookbook author, and founder and owner of NYC's Milk Bar, led to the creation of the Bake Club newsletter and Instagram sessions. Now Tosi funnels everything she has taught that virtual band of bakers into her latest ingeniously inventive cookbook. After an overview of basic baking ingredients and tools, the book breaks down into chapters such as "DIY Pantry," "Dropoffable, Snacks," and "Fancy Desserts." Recipes themselves range from caramel sauce to English muffins to chocolate mirror cake. Perennial favorites, such as marshmallow treats (with assorted variations) and the classic condensed-milk version of fudge, are included, as well as more Milk Bar-specific recipes, including the one for cinnamon-toast cereal. Baking purists may blanche at some of Tosi's culinary approaches, such as her version of lemon bars, which uses a boxed lemon cake mix in the crust and cream cheese in the filing. But Tosi's easy, breezy writing style and welcoming tone will encourage both baking novices and longtime sweet chefs to give her way a try. VERDICT If, as Tosi believes, baking is a mechanism for magic, then she is a true culinary Houdini. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell.  Literature, folklore, history, and science inform these profiles of 22 endangered species. The award-winning author of young adult books and a superb biography of John Donne turns her sharp literary style and wit to endangered animals in this brisk, eye-opening, thoroughly entertaining book. Animals who exhibit “everlasting flight, a self-galvanizing heart and a baby who learns names in the womb” may seem like inventions, she writes, but the natural world is "so startling that our capacity for wonder, huge as it is, can barely skim the surface." Meet the speedy swift, the American wood frog, and the dolphin. Early on, Rundell reminds us that we’ve lost “more than half of all wild things that lived.” Copyright 2024 Kirkus

  

New Releases - October Edition

Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!

NONFICTION

Sonny Boy by Al Pacino. Pacino writes a memoir about acting, and how it has been the love and light of his life. He details his youth in the South Bronx, his family life, his education in the arts, his life in avant-garde theater, and all the films that made him famous. Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten.  Garten, also known as the Barefoot Contessa, the author of multiple bestselling cookbooks, writes about her life in food, her marriage, her business, and the lessons she has learned and wants to impart (with a handful of recipes). The 25th anniversary edition of The Barefoot Contessa cookbook will be published simultaneously with Garten's memoir. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman.  “Your limitations aren’t obstacles to a meaningful existence”—they’re key to building one, according to this refreshing guide from journalist Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks). He contends that once readers accept that “doing it all” is impossible, they can identify the handful of priorities that deserve their time and attention and better enjoy engaging in them. Laying out 28 brief lessons to be practiced over four weeks, Burkeman suggests swapping a daily to-do list for a “done list”—cataloging the tasks one has completed each day—to improve self-satisfaction; treating a to-read pile as an option rather than an obligation; and breaking tasks into “small, clearly defined packages of work” to be completed daily. Burkeman’s light touch when discussing such modern ills as doomscrolling, coupled with the smart balance he strikes between motivation and reassurance, make this an especially useful resource for burnt-out readers who want to ease their minds without upending their lives. Amid a sea of efficiency-focused, do-it-all self-help guides, this is a welcome alternative. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

FICTION

I'll Be Waiting, by Kelley Armstrong.   Armstrong shines in this nail-biting thriller that hinges on whether its protagonist is dealing with natural or supernatural evil. Nicola Laughton was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a child, and told she’d be lucky to live past 20. Despite this prognosis, Nicola, now in her 30s, is running her own company and happily married to Anton Novak. Then their marriage ends tragically when Anton dies in a car crash. Bystanders report his last words to Nicola—“I’ll be waiting for you”—to the press, with one claiming to have photographed Anton’s ghost as he spoke them, and the publicity makes Nicola a reluctant celebrity. To settle the matter in her own mind, she seeks out mediums to contact Anton’s spirit and plans a séance in his family’s old beach house. What starts with unsettling noises and weird phenomena, including clouds of insects, eventually leads to violence and threatens to expose secrets from Nicola’s past.(Oct.) Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

The Ancients, by Joh Larison.  In a world of sea and sand, everyone looks for green land. Kushim, Maren, and Leerit are a trio of siblings who struggle to survive in the wilderness after they are abandoned by their parents in their rundown fishing village. Their mother Lilah is a captive torn away from her home by desert raiders, and she's desperate to reunite with her children. Cyrus the city-dweller grapples with conflicting loyalties and forbidden love . . .  This is a poignant climate-fiction novel that is post-apocalyptic but with a prehistoric feel. The spare writing style enhances the stark and bleak atmosphere, but it also richly captures both the bounty and brutality of the natural world and the hard lessons they learn from it. Fables are interwoven throughout the story until this novel itself becomes something of a cautionary tale, emphasizing how to learn from the past in order to create a better world for the future. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski.  The Crescent Moon Tearoom, run by the triplet Quigley sisters, dispenses tea, sympathy, and fortune-telling to the well-to-do ladies of early 20th-century Chicago. The tea is magical, the sympathy is real, and the fortunes all true, as the sisters are magically gifted seers. Then they find their peace and prosperity under threat by a mysterious curse intended to separate them—and Coven leadership is determined to hasten the process. At least that's what it seems like, as the formerly united Quigleys chase after separate paths to happiness, leaving each other behind, just as the curse intends. . . This cozy fantasy leads the sisters and readers down a primrose path of fear and foreboding—revealing villains around every corner—only to turn delightfully on its heel and magically change into a story of love and hope and a sisterhood that will endure as fate takes the hand it was meant to in each of their paths.—Marlene Harris, Copyright 2024 Library Journal.