Staff Reading Picks

A planetary scientist details the remarkable history of humankind’s efforts to find signs of life on Mars. Speculation on the nature of Mars, and whether it could harbor life, goes back to the early days of astronomy, when thinkers such as Galileo and Newton peered into the night sky using primitive technologies to examine Mars’ surface. For centuries, theories of what existed there ran rampant. “The idea that Mars was like our planet only drove the quest to see it better,” writes Johnson, who teaches at Georgetown.

When 17-year-old Ari’s father loses his job, the family, Orthodox Jews, leave Brooklyn and move to sun-kissed South Florida, where Ari is enrolled in a prestigious coed yeshiva, Kol Neshama. There he is adopted by his neighbor, golden-boy Noah, and introduced to Noah’s tight circle of friends, the most intriguing of whom is Evan, a reputed genius, who is deeply troubled and insists that he sees himself in naive, unworldly Ari, who hotly disputes this claim. But both boys do have one thing in common: they are obsessed with beautiful, musically gifted Sophia.

After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history.

Catherine has been married for many years to Murat, an influential Turkish real estate developer, and they have a young son together, William. But when she decides to leave her marriage and return home to the United States with William and her photographer lover, Murat determines to take a stand. He enlists the help of an American diplomat to prevent his wife and child from leaving the country--but, by inviting this scrutiny into their private lives, Murat becomes only further enmeshed in a web of deception and corruption.

For readers of Educated and The Glass Castle, a harrowing, redemptive and profoundly inspiring memoir of childhood trauma and its long reach into adulthood, named one of the Best True Crime Books by Marie Claire.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. But three hundred years later, a young man in a bookstore remembers her name.

Kirkus Reviews

September 8, 2020

Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.