Staff Reading Picks

Blackmailed by a mysterious kidnapper to commit a seemingly harmless act, a once-poor woman who married into wealth triggers a devastating chain of consequences.

From the New York Times , USA Today , and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes another dark and dramatic but ultimately uplifting tale of a forgotten woman hero whose inspirational journey sparked lasting change for women's rights and exposed injustices that still resonate today. 1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room.

Secretly dispensing poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them, a London apothecary triggers unintended consequences that shape three lives across multiple centuries.

It may be surprising that singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile has written a memoir on the cusp of only age 40, but she has accomplished a lot and has a lot to say. She has won numerous Grammy awards, including both Record of the Year and Song of the Year for "The Joke." The daughter of a musical mother and a father with a drinking problem, Carlile grew up poor outside of Seattle and started singing country songs when she was a child.

Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney and a relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. But everything changes when Ellice arrives in the executive suite and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head...When she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma.

The single mother of a mixed-race college student and a thriving business owner with a troubled daughter clash over a historic oak tree on their property line and the blossoming romance between their children.

After a fiery attack on a train leaves 104 people dead, the fates of three people become inextricably entangled. Jivan, a bright, striving woman from the slums looking for a way out of poverty, is wrongly accused of planning the attack because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir, a slippery gym teacher from Jivan's former high school, has hitched his aspirations to a rising right wing party, and his own ascent becomes increasingly linked to Jivan's fall.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.