New Books: Nov-Dec '20

A young immigrant woman's obsession with her privileged male classmate - and the lengths she'll go to win his love.

Walter (Beautiful Ruins) reconstructs the free speech riots of 1909-1910 in Spokane, Wash., in this superb tale of orphaned, train-hopping brothers Gig and Rye Dolan.

Four fraught couples in Brooklyn's charmed Cobble Hill. There's Mandie, uninterested in her kids, and once-upon-a-time boyband hubby Stuart, uninterested in Mandie; school nurse Peaches and earphone-wearing husband Greg; British novelist Roy and energized wife Wendy; and shy industrial designer Tupper, still courting out-of-reach wife Elizabeth.

Short story collection that introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively.

A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.

Fifteen-year-old Louisa Adair uncovers an Enigma machine in the small Scottish village where she cares for an elderly German woman, and helps solve a puzzle that could turn the tide of World War II.

While recovering from an attack that leaves him without his memory, gay teenager Kane Montgomery stumbles into a world where dreams known as reveries take on a life of their own, and it is up to Kane and a few unlikely allies to stop them before they spillover into the waking world.

Jamal's best friend, Q, doesn't know that he died, and that he's about to die again. He doesn't know that Jamal tried to save him. And that the reason they haven't been friends for two years is because Jamal blames Q for the accident that killed his parents. But what if Jamal could have a second chance?

When Team Avatar is suddenly ambushed by the Fire Nation, Katara gets separated from the group. Unable to rendezvous with Aang, Toph, and Sokka, Katara must avoid capture by aligning herself with some unlikely allies. The normally sweet and sensitive Katara will need to explore her tougher side if she's going to reunite with the rest of Team Avatar.

Hiram Hightower craves the sun so much that he flies an aircraft into it, plunging the earth into 24-hour darkness. Later, son Joshua overcomes prejudice and blame to begin repairing his father's tragedy. Alongside the men stand courageous women Mara and Claire, whose partnerships carve a future for the now-brightening world. Adapted from Gay's short story.

Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency.

Audiobook narrated by the Author

Soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe has left a lasting mark with a professional sports résumé that includes two FIFA World Cup Championships, a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games, and her selection as Sports Illustrated's 2019 Sportsperson of the Year. One Life is an uplifting memoir that spans from her early childhood to the spring of 2020.

Harris, a United States senator from California, describes how her upbringing and her career as the district attorney for San Francisco and later as California's attorney general influenced her passion for justice. She communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values and discusses the core truths that unite us and how to best act on them.

Partners Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe were French gender bending artists in Paris, were known as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. As residents of the English Channel island of Jersey, they were a two-woman resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. The paper bullets of the title refer to insults against Hitler and the Nazis that they wrote on scraps of paper and ingeniously and secretly distributed around the island to lower the morale of German soldiers.

Garza, one of the three founders of Black Lives Matter, offers a moving and impassioned account of her in-the-trenches experience as a social justice warrior.