To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
Non-fiction
Finna: Poems by Nate Marshall
Sharp, lyrical poems celebrating the Black vernacular and its influence on pop culture, its necessity for familial survival, its rite in storytelling and in creating the safety found only within its intimacy.These poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives and other oppressed people in our current era of emboldened white supremacy, and the use of the Black vernacular in America’s vast reserve of racial and gendered epithets.
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami
Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth–such as national origin, race, or gender– still cast their shadows today. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm, and pushes away with the other.
What the Chickadee Knows: Poems in Anishinaabemowin and English by Margaret Noodin
What the Chickadee Knows (Gijigijigaaneshiinh Gikendaan) is a bilingual collection in Anishinaabemowin and English, with the poems mirroring one another on facing pages. The poems build in urgency, from observations of the natural world and human connection to poems centered in powerful grief and remembrance for events spanning from the Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850 to the Standing Rock water crisis of 2016.
Fantastic Women: Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo. Edited by Ingrid Pfeiffer
Between 1930 and the 1960s many women artists contributed to the Surrealist movement. The male Surrealists mostly saw them only as partners or models, but this volume shows how much more these women artists had to offer. The women artists of Surrealism were searching for a new female identity and incidentally discovered their own language of forms. Painting, drawing, objects, photography and films complement each other to create an overall picture of the women artists of the avant-garde.
Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing by Kevin Davies
Editing Humanity takes readers inside the fascinating world of a new gene editing technology called CRISPR, a high-powered genetic toolkit that enables scientists to not only engineer but to edit the DNA of any organism down to the individual building blocks of the genetic code. Davies introduces readers to arguably the most profound scientific breakthrough of our time and sheds light on the implications that this new technology can have on our everyday lives and in the lives of generations to come.
Fiction
We Run the Tides: a Novel by Vendela Vida
An achingly beautiful story of female friendship, betrayal, and a mysterious disappearance set in the changing landscape of San Francisco. Suspenseful and poignant, We Run the Tides is a masterful portrait of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre–tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one’s authentic self. Both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.
2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman, Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.).
From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic, geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 — and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts combined with the authors’ years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. A disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction.
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries. Meanwhile in present-day London, an aspiring historian stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London two hundred years ago.
The Seed Keeper: a Novel by Diane Wilson
Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato. Many years later, she learns what it means to be descended from women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss. A beautifully told story of reawakening and remembering.
We Begin at the End / Chris Whitaker
Thirty years ago, a teenage Vincent King was sent to prison. But now, he’s served his sentence and is returning to his hometown. The hometown where his childhood best friend, Walk, is now the chief of police. The town where his childhood sweetheart, Star Radley, still lives. The same Star Radley whose sister he killed. A crime thriller that will break your heart and a literary novel with a mystery at its core, We Begin at the End unforgettably examines how the choices we make can nudge us into the dangerous ground between good and evil.
Summaries adapted from publishers.