SELECTED NEW BOOKS
MAY 2024
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family. Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her. Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, and Venus's life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians. As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust...Herself included.
Seventeen-year-old musician Xue faces a lifetime of servitude until Duke Meng offers her freedom in exchange for serving as a musician in residence, but Xue soon discovers the Duke is a celestial ruler with ulterior motives and she must unlock her past to prevent an impending war in the Six Realms.
Sixteen-year-old Ebony is devastated when her family moves from Houston to her grandmother's house in the country, but in her new small Texas town, she pushes her boundaries until she realizes she may have gone too far.
On her eighteenth birthday, Wren discovers latent magical powers, earning her a place at the secret Academia de la Luna, where alongside her childhood friend Lee, they uncover secrets and dangerous mysteries, forcing Lee to choose between his family's legacy and protecting the girl he loves.
Magical metal worker Joan Sands must navigate court intrigue and escape the fae queen's control as she strives to release her grandfather from royal prisons, grapple with a city plagued by fae attacks, and fulfill her destiny as Ogun's only child to reforge the pact between humanity and the fae.
Summer's come to Kimetsu Academy, but the chaos sure isn't taking a break! The discovery of a lost cat on campus turns into a race to escape from Giyu's bamboo sword, and Inosuke gets it in his head that--with an egg and a hole--he can hatch his very own hot spring! Afterward, Genya risks his life (and a mountain of watermelons) to ace his math test, Nezuko goes ghost hunting, and Tanjiro and Zenitsu help search for the perfect gift for a pizza delivery girl!
At a young age, Aia Utagawa was scouted as a model, but his real ambition is to become a makeup artist. But, even as the end of high school approaches, it's a dream he hides inside, afraid of stepping outside his prescribed role as a pretty face. Then, one day, he meets Jun, a quiet classmate who hunches because she's ashamed of her face, covered in freckles. He convinces her to enter a school runway fashion contest together--with him doing her makeup. They make an incredible team, with Jun discovering a confidence she never knew she could show and Aia finally learning that, while it may be tough to open yourself up to failing at the one thing you care about, the difficulties can be worth facing.
This graphic biography chronicles the genesis of Ruth Asawa as an artist--from the horror of Pearl Harbor to her transformative education at Black Mountain College to building her life in San Francisco, where she would further develop and refine her groundbreaking wire sculptures.
This book breaks down disinformation tactics and offers tools for defending and restoring truth. Using examples from Darius I of ancient Persia (522-486 BCE), to blood libel of the Middle Ages, to Soviet disinformation tactics and modern election deniers, Teri Kanefield and Pat Dorian show how tyrants and would-be tyrants deploy disinformation to gain power. Democracy, which draws its authority from laws instead of the whim of a tyrant, requires truth. For a democracy to survive, its citizens must preserve and defend truth. Now that the internet has turned what was once a trickle of lies into a firehose, the challenge of holding on to the truth has never been greater. A firehose of falsehood offers readers these necessary tools.
Join author-illustrator Cara Bean as she takes readers on an illustrated journey to the center of the brain. Each chapter explores a different aspect of mental health, from the brain and the mind to feelings and emotions. By portraying complex neuroscience concepts with a cast of illustrated brain-part characters, the book explains what is going on in the reader's head in an accessible, approachable way that ultimately serves to empower the reader.
Laugh, learn, and prepare to embark on the adventure of a lifetime with helpful tips on enjoying the ups and downs of high school.
Can species change? Or go extinct? In the eighteenth century, most people answer no to both questions. But in the century that follows, that certainty gets challenged as some people in Europe question the common belief that all creatures are the same as they've been since life's creation. The Evolution of an Idea, the second volume of Discovering Life's Story, opens with the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who attempts to create an organizing system for the myriad forms of life on Earth. It continued into the late 1800s when two Englishmen-Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace-each developed their own version of a startling new theory of how life forms change over time. This evolutionary idea will alter the understanding of our place in the great web of life on earth. In this remarkable volume, author Joy Hakim continues charting the path of human discovery and shows how groundbreaking thinkers began to unlock the biological secrets of our existence.
When Carlos was nineteen, his mother decided to leave her life in El Salvador. Refusing to let her go without him, Carlos joined the journey north. Together they experienced the risks countless people face as they migrate.
Asian American history is not made up of one single story. It's many. And it's a story that too often goes untold. It begins centuries before America even exists as a nation. It is connected to the histories of Western conquest and colonialism. It's a story of migration; of people and families crossing the Pacific Ocean in search of escape, opportunity, and new beginnings. It is also the story of race and racism. Of being labeled an immigrant invasion, unfit to become citizens, and being banned, deported, and incarcerated. Of being blamed for bringing diseases into the country. It is also a story of bravery and hope. It is the story of heroes who fought for equality in the courts, on the streets, and in the schools, and who continue to fight in solidarity with others doing the same. This book is a stirring account of the ordinary people and extraordinary acts that made Asian America and the young people who are remaking America today.
New Young Adult Books
(Grades 7-12)