To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
NEW NON-FICTION
The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island: The Agatha Biddle Band of 1870 by Theresa Weller
This book tells a story of the Indigenous and Metis inhabitants of Mackinac Island based on the people (mostly women) enumerated in the Agatha Biddle Band of 1870. Theresa Weller provides a genealogy of the Band members and their families. Adding to their stories, she has provided images, stories, and newspaper accounts to provide a larger picture of people in a time and place – Mackinac Island in the 19th century.
Apple – Skin to the Core: A Memoir in Words and Pictures by Eric Gansworth
The term “apple” is a slur in Native communities across the country. It’s for someone supposedly “red on the outside, white on the inside.” Eric Gansworth is telling the story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who straddles two worlds. Eric shatters the slur and reclaims it in verse and prose. Young Adult.
Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health by Thomas Insel, MD
As director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel was giving a presentation when the father of a boy with schizophrenia yelled from the back of the room, ‘Our house is on fire and you’re telling me about the chemistry of the paint! What are you doing to put out the fire?’ Dr. Insel left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken and what a better path to mental health might look like. Even before COVID, mental illness was claiming a life every 11 minutes by suicide. Dr. Insel offers a comprehensive plan for our failing system and for families trying to discern the way forward.
How To They/Them: A Visual Guide to Nonbinary Pronouns and the World of Gender Fluidity by Stuart Getty
Ever wondered what nonbinary and gender nonconforming really mean? Or if it’s grammatically correct to use they as a singular pronoun? In this charming and disarming guide, a real-life they-using genderqueer writer unpacks all your burning questions in a fun, visual way. No soapboxes or divisive comment-section wars here! Sometimes funny, sometimes serious, always human, this gender-friendly primer will get you up to speed. It’s about more than just bathrooms and pronouns – this is about gender expression and the freedom to choose how to identify.
Hudson Bay Bound: Two Women, One Dog, Two Thousand Miles to the Arctic by Natalie Warren
Paddling from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route made famous by Eric Sevareid in his 1935 classic Canoeing with the Cree, Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho —the first women to make this expedition— faced unexpected trials, some harrowing, some simply odd. Warren’s spellbinding account retraces the women’s journey from inspiration to Arctic waters, giving readers an insider view from the practicalities of planning a three-month canoe expedition to the successful accomplishment of the adventure of a lifetime.
An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy by Kenny Xu
From a journalist on the frontlines of the Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard case comes an examination of affirmative action, the false narrative of American meritocracy, and the attack on Asian American excellence. In the midst of a nationwide surge of bias and incidents against them, Asians have quietly assumed mastery of the nation’s technical and intellectual machinery and become essential American workers. Xu traces Leftist agendas such as eliminating standardized testing, doling out racial advantages to ‘preferred’ minorities, and lumping Asians into ‘privileged’ categories despite their historical experiences.
NEW FICTION
Hell of a Book: A Novel by Jason Mott
In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America. 2021 National Book Award Winner.
The Measure: A Novel by Nikki Erlick
It seems like any other day. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the exact number of years you will live. Every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge? Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is a sweeping, ambitious, and invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.
All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers
In this propulsive debut novel from the host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie, a journalist uncovers her hometown’s dark secrets when she becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of her childhood neighbor – and the disappearance of another girl twenty years later. But the police, the family, the townspeople all seem to be hiding something. And the deeper Margot digs into the disappearance, the more resistance she encounters, and the colder the case feels. Could the killer still be out there? Could it be the same person? Twisty, chilling, and intense, All Good People Here is a searing tale that asks: What are your neighbors really capable of when they think no one is watching?
Summaries and images adapted from publishers.