FDPL Recommends
Monthly Features
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Seven Days in June
A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK!
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named A Best Book by USA Today * Harper's Bazaar * Oprah Daily * PopSugar * Shondaland * The Los Angeles Times * NPR * Kirkus * Marie Claire * New York Public Library * Bustle * Good Housekeeping * PureWow * CBS News * People * BuzzFeed * Reader's Digest
Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by CNN * Essence * Travel + Leisure * She Reads * Scary Mommy
Named a Best Romance Book of 2021 by The Washington Post
Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget, and seven days to get it all back again...
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 novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York.
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that fifteen years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. While they may be pretending not to know each other, they can't deny their chemistry--or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years.
Over the next seven days, amidst a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect--but Eva's wary of the man who broke her heart, and wants him out of the city so her life can return to normal. Before Shane disappears though, she needs a few questions answered...
With its keen observations of creative life in America today, as well as the joys and complications of being a mother and a daughter, Seven Days in June is a hilarious, romantic, and sexy‑as‑hell story of two writers discovering their second chance at love. -
A Long Time Coming
This YA biography-in-verse of six important Black Americans from different eras, including Ona Judge, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama, chronicles the diverse ways each fought racism and shows how much—and how little—has changed for Black Americans since our country’s founding.
Full of daring escapes, deep emotion, and subtle lessons on how racism operates, A LONG TIME COMING reveals the universal importance of its subjects’ struggles for justice. From freedom seeker Ona Judge, who fled her enslavement by America’s first president, to Barack Obama, the first Black president, all of Shepard’s protagonists fight valiantly for justice for themselves and all Black Americans in any way that they can. But it is also a highly personal book, as Shepard — whose maternal grandfather was enslaved — shows how the grand sweep of history has touched his life, reflecting on how much progress has been made against racism, while also exhorting readers to complete the vast work that remains to be done. -
Caste (Adapted for Young Adults)
In this young adult adaptation of the Oprah Book Club selection and New York Times bestselling nonfiction work, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson explores the unspoken hierarchies that divide us across lines of race and class. Revealing and timely, this work will speak to young people who are engaged more than ever with the world around them, or to anyone who believes in a more just existence for all.
Readers will be fascinated by this young adult adaptation of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction work as they follow masterful narratives about real people that reveal an insidious phenomenon in the United States: a hidden caste system. Caste is not only about race or class; it is about power—which groups have it and which do not. Isabel Wilkerson explores historical social hierarchies, including those in India and Nazi Germany, and explains how perpetuating these rankings dehumanizes vast sections of society. Once we learn the reasons behind caste and see the often heartbreaking effects, Wilkerson says, we can bridge the divides and make way for an inclusive future where we are all equal. -
For Lamb
An interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this powerful historical novel set in the Jim Crow South.
For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb’s mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb’s brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north-- if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature.
Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching.
Told with nuance and subtlety, avoiding sensationalism and unnecessary brutality, this young adult novel from celebrated author Lesa Cline-Ransome pays homage to the female victims of white supremacy.
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Horn Book Fanfare Book
A Booklist Editors’ Choice
A CSMCL Best Multicultural Children’s Book of the Year
A BookPage Best Young Adult Book of the Year
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection -
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR/FRESH AIR, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, AND TIME MAGAZINE
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023
“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird. -
Civil Rights Queen
A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century. • “Timely and essential."—The Washington Post
“A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita HillWith the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.
Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions--how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America. -
His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE IN NONFICTION
WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE; FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS PRIZE; A BCALA 2023 HONOR NONFICTION AWARD WINNER.
A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy—from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing—telling the story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.
“It is a testament to the power of His Name Is George Floyd that the book’s most vital moments come not after Floyd’s death, but in its intimate, unvarnished and scrupulous account of his life . . . Impressive.”
—New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
“Since we know George Floyd’s death with tragic clarity, we must know Floyd’s America—and life—with tragic clarity. Essential for our times.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist
“A much-needed portrait of the life, times, and martyrdom of George Floyd, a chronicle of the racial awakening sparked by his brutal and untimely death, and an essential work of history I hope everyone will read.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.
His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston's housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country's enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd's family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction—putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd's closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd’s America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world. -
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism--and antiracism--in America
This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race.
The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.
Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.
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The Survivors of the Clotilda
Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors--the last documented survivors of any slave ship--whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways.
The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860--more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history.
In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda's 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship's 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile--an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston--to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee's Bend--a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous.
An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors of the Clotilda is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Black experience and of America and its tragic past.
The Survivors of the Clotilda includes 30 artworks and photographs.
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90 Seconds to a Life You Love
How to manage your most difficult feelings and building the emotional strength you need to create the life of your dreams.
Sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, and vulnerability. In 30 years as a practicing psychologist, Dr. Joan Rosenberg has found that what most often blocks people from success and feeling capable in life is the inability to experience, move through, and handle these 8 unpleasant feelings. Knowing how to deal with intense, overwhelming, or uncomfortable feelings is essential to building confidence, emotional strength, and resilience. Yet when we distract or disconnect from these feelings, we move away from confidence, health, and our desired pursuits, ultimately undermining our ability to fully realize our ambitions.
Neuroscientists suggest that the biological lifespan of a feeling, often known first through bodily sensations, lasts approximately 90 seconds. Dr. Rosenberg teaches readers to be aware, consciously lean into, and balance these unpleasant emotions by riding one or more 90-second waves of the bodily sensations. By staying present to these 8 feelings, we cultivate the confidence that we can handle life's challenges and the deep sense we can pursue whatever we want.
Combining more than three decades of clinical experience with aspects of clinical psychology, mindfulness, and neuroscience research, 90 Seconds to a Life You Love is a strategic and practical guide on building core emotional strength, reducing anxiety, and developing the confidence you need to create a life of your design -- a life you love.
Audiobooks
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Everyone is watching
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Overnight Guest comes a twisty locked-room thriller about a mysterious high-stakes game that proves life-threatening.The Best Friend. The Confidant. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Executive.Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated.When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show--someone is out for blood. And the game can't end until the world knows who the contestants really are...
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The wives
Simone Gorrindo was twenty-seven and working her dream job in New York City when her new husband decided to join a special operations unit in the Army. When she made the difficult decision to leave behind the life she had made for the life he'd chosen, nothing could have prepared her for their new reality. Two weeks after their move to Georgia, he was deployed to Afghanistan, and she was left alone in the quiet of their little brick house on a military base. Then she met the other women left behind. Amidst the uncertainty and isolation, Simone was quickly swept up in the world of the other soldiers' wives. Thrown together into the strangeness of a life none of them imagined for themselves, the women navigated marriage over monitored phone calls and intertwined their lives, enduring the long days and dark nights together as they awaited news from overseas. In an unfamiliar and foreign-feeling landscape, the wives became Simone's reliable but imperfect compass, her true north. The Wives is at once an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. Its own kind of coming-of-age story, it asks difficult questions about how far we are willing to bend for those we love, what we owe each other, and who we are in the face of the unknown. Simone's is an unputdownable story of human connection in a country divided, and a deeply personal account of what it means to find home--in each other, and in ourselves.
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It had to be you
In the latest thrilling entry of the bestselling Under Suspicion series by Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, television producer Laurie Moran investigates the unsolved murder of a beloved couple celebrating the college graduations of their successful twin sons.
The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way--handsome, intelligent, popular--until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? And is it possible the two of them planned the perfect crime together?
Years later, the twins are long estranged, each of them claiming to be convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married now with children of their own, they may finally be ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents' murder. But as the Under Suspicion crew gets closer to the truth, the danger that was assumed to be left in the past finds its way into the present.
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The husbands : a novel
When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There's only one problem--she's not married. She's never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they've been together for years.
As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can't remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you've taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living? -
The familiar : a novel
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen--and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive--even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santángel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
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Extinction : a novel
Erebus Resort, occupying a magnificent, hundred-thousand acre valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths in their native habitat, brought back from extinction through the magic of genetic manipulation. When a billionaire's son and his new wife are kidnapped and murdered in the Erebus back country by what is assumed to be a gang of eco-terrorists, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash partners with county sheriff James Colcord to track down the perpetrators.
As killings mount and the valley is evacuated, Cash and Colcord must confront an ancient, intelligent, and malevolent presence at Erebus, bent not on resurrection--but extinction.
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Darling girls
For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.
But their childhood wasn't the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?
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Dark parts of the universe
In Calico Springs, Willie's life has been defined by two powerful forces: God and the river. The "miracle boy" died for five minutes as a young child, and ever since, Willie is certain he survived for a reason, but that purpose didn't become clear until he found the Game.
The Game is called Manifest Atlas, and the concept is simple: enter an intention and the Game provides a target--a blinking blue dot on the map. Willie's second time playing Manifest Atlas, his intention takes him to an ominous target: three empty graves. Willie is sure the Game is telling him he's going to die.
Willie's older brother, Bones, doesn't believe him, but their friends are intrigued. Sarai, a girl from across the river, sets the next intention: something bloody. The group follows the Game's coordinates and they discover something even more unsettling than the graves: a dead body. Sarai's stepfather's body. The Game is suddenly personal.
Willie is dedicated to proving the Game works while Sarai is set on finding out what happened to her stepdad. Bones just wants to enjoy his last summer before real life begins. As the group digs deeper into Manifest Atlas, stranger and wilder things begin to appear, unlocking a much deeper mystery running like an undercurrent through the small town.
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The day tripper : a novel
The right guy, the right place, the wrong time.
It's 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of the beautiful and vivacious Holly, and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a run-in with a former childhood bully sees him bruised and bloody and almost drowning in the Thames.
He awakes the next day only to find he is in a messy, derelict room he's never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn't recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he's older--much older--and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions
He snatches a newspaper and finds it's 2010--fifteen years since that night by the river. After finally drifting off to sleep that night, Alex wakes the following morning to find it's now 2019, another nine years later. But the next day, it's 1999. Never knowing which day is coming, he begins to piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night by the river.
But what exactly is going on? Why does his life look nothing like he thought it would? What happened to Cambridge, to Holly?
Alex must push against the heavy headwind of fate, however impossible that might feel, and learn that small actions have untold impact. It might be all he needs to save the people he loves and, equally importantly, himself.
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Kill for me, kill for you
One dark evening on New York City's Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect plan: if you kill for me, I'll kill for you. In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She's attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there? Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who "is the real deal" (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.