Adult Fiction
Inheritance by Nora Roberts.
Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about--and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Her engagement recently broken, she sets off to find out why the boys were separated at birth--and why it was all kept secret until a genealogy website brought it to light. Trey, the young lawyer who greets her at the sprawling clifftop manor, notes Sonya's unease--and acknowledges that yes, the place is haunted...but just a little. Sure enough, Sonya finds objects moved and music playing out of nowhere. She sees a painting by her father inexplicably hanging in her deceased uncle's office, and a portrait of a woman named Astrid, whom the lawyer refers to as "the first lost bride." It's becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it...
The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner.
Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she's lived since college still looks like she's just moved in. But she's got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club in Philadelphia. She's at peace with her plus-size body--at least, most of the time--and she's on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart, a man she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend. Fifteen years after her final summer at Camp Golden Hills, when Abby reconnects with a half-his-size Mark, it feels like the happy ending she's always wanted. Yet Abby can't escape the feeling that something isn't right...or the memories of one thrilling night she spent with a man named Sebastian two years previously. When Abby gets a last-minute invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she's happy to have time away from Mark, a chance to reflect and make up her mind. But things get complicated fast. First, Abby spots a familiar face in the group--Sebastian, the one-night stand she thought she'd never see again. Sebastian is a serial dater who lives a hundred miles away. In spite of their undeniable chemistry, Abby is determined to keep her distance. Then there's a surprise last-minute addition to the trip: her mother, Eileen, the woman Abby blames for a lifetime of body shaming and insecurities she's still trying to undo. Over two weeks and more than seven hundred miles, strangers become friends, hidden truths come to light, a teenage girl with a secret unites the riders in unexpected ways...and Abby is forced to reconsider everything she believes about herself, her mother, and the nature of love.
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take.
Adult Non-Fiction
Know What Matters by Ron Shaich.
Shaich is a business visionary who has been part of building three iconic restaurant brands: Au Bon Pain, Panera Bread, and now Cava. Along the way, he developed "fast casual," a $100 billion-plus segment of the industry. Now he reveals what he learned about entrepreneurship, running large enterprises, business transformation, and life itself. He illustrates these lessons with his experiences turning a 400-square-foot cookie store into 2,400 restaurants with $5 billion in revenue, delivering annual investor returns of 25 percent over two decades, and outperforming both Starbucks and Chipotle. How did Shaich succeed repeatedly in such a notoriously tough industry? By discovering today what will matter tomorrow and never hesitating to undertake sweeping transformations in order to get the job done. Shaich offers clear-headed lessons for the entire life cycle of an enterprise, from bootstrapping a startup to going public to managing large companies to selling a business. And the relevance of his message doesn't end in the boardroom. He challenges readers to grapple with how the business impacts life, sharing his own struggles and setbacks with as much candor as he describes his successes.
Jumpman by Johnny Smith.
To become the most revered basketball player in America, it wasn't enough for Michael Jordan to merely excel on the court. He also had to become something he never intended: a hero. Reconstructing the defining moment of Jordan's career--winning his first NBA championship during the 1990-1991 season--sports historian Johnny Smith examines Jordan's ubiquitous rise in American culture and the burden he carried as a national symbol of racial progress. Jumpman reveals how Jordan maintained a "mystique" that allowed him to seem more likable to Americans who wanted to believe race no longer mattered. In the process of achieving greatness, he remade himself into a paradox: universally known, yet distant and unknowable.
Easy/Juvenile/Young Adult/Graphic Novel
The Great Eggscape! by Jory John & Pete Oswald. E
The Great Eggscape is when the Good Egg and his pals escape their carton and drop into the store for a morning of fun, enjoyed by everybody. Well, almost everybody. Shel (an egg) isn't a huge fan of group activities, especially when he's made to be "It" for a game of hide-and-seek. Nevertheless, Shel doesn't want to let his friends down, so he reluctantly plays. But after a morning of hiding and seeking, somebody's still missing. Will the dozen eggs friends ever be reunited?
Tales from a Not-So-Posh Paris Adventure by Rachel Renée Russell. J
Ooh la la! Nikki Maxwell and her band are on their way to Paris, but they run into some roadblocks on the way-- and Nikki's French skills may not be as reliable as she hoped! Can she get them moving again in time to reach their destination? Will Nikki Maxwell and her friends even make it to Paris?
Brooke County Public Libraries Wellsburg (304) 737-1551 Follansbee (304) 527-0860
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