Kate's Staff Picks

"One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia's mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community -- an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly...

In The Art of Living, cartoonist Grant Snider, author of The Shape of Ideas and I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf, has created an all-new collection of one- and two-page comics that map his inner thoughts, poetic observations, and frequent failures at living mindfully. With both humor and a touch of reality, The Art of Living centers on mindfulness, but also empathy, relaxation, gratitude, and awareness--evergreen subjects that are more important...

"When an acclaimed author dies at the Regency Grand Hotel, it's up to a fastidious maid to uncover the truth, no matter how dirty."-- "Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J.D. Grimthorpe, the...

"Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life. Paul and Alice's half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at "it" restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins. They couldn't hate it more. The People We Hate at the Wedding is the story of a less than perfect family. Donna, the clan's mother, is...

"The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope. In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice--her truth--was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey--and the strength at the core of one of the greatest...

"A picture book about a young girl who imagines her anxiety as vines that grow around her body making it hard to function."--

A young, determined woman figures out life and love while staying true to herself in this whip-smart and genuinely witty debut.Twenty-eight-year-old Hannah Spencer wants nothing more than to change everything about her life. After ten years of living in cities, Nathan Wild has just moved back home to Vermont and doesn't want to change anything about his. Recently laid off from her depressing job in Boston and ready for a challenge, Hannah heads to...

"On the way home to Utah to see her sick mother, college student Darby Thorne is stranded by a blizzard at a highway rest stop in the Colorado Rockies. With roads impassable, she's forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop with no cell phone reception. Inside are asome vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers. Desparate to find a signal to call home, the exhausted young art student goes back out into the storm...

"After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte's customers turns up dead, there's much ado about murder... The victim is Nancy Hudson, the festival's newest board member. A modern-day...

His story is told by the first Olympian herself, Hestia, Goddess of the hearth and home. From her seat in the center of Mt. Olympus, the first Olympian, Hestia, relates the rise of Dionysos, from his birth to a mortal mother, to his discovery of wine, his battles with madness and his conquering of death itself, culminating, finally, in his ascent to Olympus and Godhood -- the first new god and the last of the Pantheon.