Staff Reading Picks

A darkly funny and devastating memoir of growing up in '90s Manhattan with a mentally ill single parent.

Helen's idyllic life, handsome architect husband, gorgeous Victorian house, and cherished baby on the way, begins to change the day she attends her first prenatal class and meets Rachel, an unpredictable single mother-to-be. Rachel doesn't seem very maternal: she smokes, drinks, and professes little interest in parenthood. Still, Helen is drawn to her. Maybe Rachel just needs a friend. But her increasingly erratic behavior is unsettling. And Helen's not the only one who's noticed.

In the African village of Kosawa, people live in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by a large and powerful American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean up and financial reparations to the villagers are made, and ignored. The country's government, led by a corrupt, brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight the American corporation. Doing so will come at a steep price.

The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow scientists to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and enhance children.

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed"The Lost Village," since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother's entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left-a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn-have plagued her. She's gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened. But there will be no turning back.

After receiving a brain cancer diagnosis, wealthy Dava Shastri leaks news of her death early so she can examine her legacy--a decision that horrifies her children and exposes a lifetime of secrets.

Abigail Baskin's dream honeymoon becomes a nightmare when a man with whom she had a regrettable one-night stand shows up, and Abigail's future life and happiness are turned upside down.

The sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission to save both humanity and the earth, Ryland Grace is hurtled into the depths of space when he must conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

In 1980 in Mississippi, Bobby Western dives from a Coast Guard vessel to explore a sunken jet. But he finds that too much is missing from the crash site, and now he's being shadowed by men with badges.

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea.