To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
Non-Fiction
Vacant to Vibrant: Creating Successful Green Infrastructure Networks by Sandra Albro
Vacant lots, so often seen as neighborhood blight, have the potential to be a key element of community revitalization. As manufacturing cities reinvent themselves after decades of lost jobs and population, abundant vacant land resources and interest in green infrastructure are expanding opportunities for community and environmental resilience. Vacant to Vibrant explains how inexpensive green infrastructure projects can reduce stormwater runoff and pollution, and provide neighborhood amenities.
Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole by Sarah Dry
Linking the history of the planet with the lives of those who studied it, Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who summited volcanic peaks to peer through an atmosphere’s worth of water vapor, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earth’s ancient climate history, and flew inside storm clouds to understand how small changes in energy can produce both massive storms and the general circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. Gradually, their cumulative discoveries coalesced into a unified working theory of our planet’s climate.
Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan
The celebrated first memoir from arguably the most influential singer-songwriter in the country, Bob Dylan.
Through Dylan’s eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan’s New York is a magical city of possibilities—smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book’s side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota, and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.
The Superhero Symbol: Media, Culture, and Politics by Liam Burke, Ian Gordon, et al.
Superheroes are intellectual property jealously guarded by media conglomerates, icons co-opted by groups, masks people wear to more confidently walk convention floors and city streets. Bringing together superhero scholars from a range of disciplines, The Superhero Symbol provides fresh perspectives on how characters like Captain America, Iron Man, and Wonder Woman have engaged with media, culture, and politics, to become the “everlasting” symbols to which a young Bruce Wayne once aspired.
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person by Frederick Joseph
Writing from the perspective of a friend, Frederick Joseph offers candid reflections on his own experiences with racism and conversations with prominent artists and activists about theirs. Touching on everything from cultural appropriation to power dynamics, “reverse racism” to white privilege, microaggressions to the tragic results of overt racism, this book serves as conversation starter, tool kit, and invaluable window into the life of a former “token Black kid” who now presents himself as the friend many readers need.
Fiction
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. When their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos unleashes repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle Walker who emerges as an unlikely leader. An unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction.
Golden Girl: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand
On a perfect June day, Vivian Howe, author of thirteen beach novels and mother of three nearly grown children, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident while jogging. She ascends to the Beyond where she is allowedi to watch what happens below for one last summer. Vivi is granted three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on earth, and with her daughter Willa on her third miscarriage, Carson partying until all hours, and Leo separated from his high-maintenance girlfriend, she’ll have to think carefully where to use them.
#1 bestselling page-turner from “the queen of beach reads” (New York Magazine)
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike-particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member is found murdered. Mariana suspects that, behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, lies something sinister. When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships.
Libertie: A Novel by Kaitlyn Greenidge
Coming of age as a free-born Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her mother, a physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie will go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie feels stifled by her mother’s choices and is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother, Libertie has skin that is too dark. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it–for herself and for generations to come.
Seven Days in June: A Novel by Tia Williams
Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York’s Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can’t deny their chemistry-or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.
Summaries adapted from publishers.