Readers' Advisory: ACPL Best of 2023!

A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends. Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls.

Rival physicists collide in a vortex of academic feuds and fake dating shenanigans in this delightfully STEMinist romcom from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain.

In this contemporary romance, two emergency room doctors, both recovering from messy breakups, form a close, comforting friendship and perhaps something more. Dr. Briana Ortiz has enough on her plate. She's in the midst of finalizing her divorce, and her brother's on a deadline to find a kidney donor.

Nash Morgan was always known as the good Morgan brother, with a smile and a wink for everyone. But now, this chief of police is recovering from being shot and his Southern charm has been overshadowed by panic attacks and nightmares. He feels like a broody shell of the man he once was.

Sally is envious of her coworker's romance with a celebrity but then finds herself tangled with a pop star. A long-time writer for a comedy show that airs on Saturdays, Sally is jealous of Danny, another one of her writers who has recently started dating a famous actress.

The novel is the second in a set of novels featuring a housemaid as the main character. This novel centers on Millie Calloway, a convicted felon who works for wealthy clients in Manhattan. After saving a friend from a potential rapist, Millie helps many other women escape their abusive partners.

None of This is True is a psychological thriller about two women who, through a chance encounter, learn they are birthday twins. Their unlikely meeting turns into a podcast in which shared confidences become the motive for murder.

The Only One Left is a 2023 murder mystery/horror novel by American author Todd Ritter, writing under the pen name Riley Sager. The plot concerns a woman who takes a job caring for elderly invalid Lenora Hope, who was accused decades ago of murdering her parents and younger sister.

Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club. An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

After her mother dies from a foot infection, Yunxian finds a new home with her grandparents, who are doctors. Grandmother Ru takes her young ward under her wing, and Yunxian embarks on a medical apprenticeship that will last for years. This is how she meets her first friend, Meiling, who is the daughter of Midwife Shi.

James McBride's novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store follows a community as they work together to save a young deaf Black boy, Dodo, from unjust institutionalization in 1930s America.

Zofia is lost without her life time friend. She finds a way to work in a library and soon smuggles books to the Jewish patrons who are banned from the library in Warsaw. Eventually, she finds a way to sneak letters to Janina in the ghetto. This expands to getting Jewish people to safe houses!

n this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor.

"In this masterful true crime account, Finkel traces the fascinating exploits of Stéphane Breitwieser, a French art thief who stole more than 200 artworks... turning his mother's attic into a glittering trove of oil paintings, silver vessels, and antique weaponry....

Jay Shetty, renowned author of the New York Times bestseller “Think Like a Monk,” delves into the realm of love in his subsequent book, “8 Rules of Love.” In this book, he shared his insights on what exactly love is and how to find it, cherish it, and let it go.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World is a 2023 memoir and political analysis by Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker Naomi Klein. In it, Klein examines the current climate of political polarization and conspiracy thinking by contrasting Klein's worldview with that of Naomi Wolf, for whom Klein is often confused.

Outlive by Peter Attia, with Bill Gifford is a guide to living a longer, healthier life. It explores the science of aging and provides practical advice on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress management to help readers optimize their healthspan and lifespan.

Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory's focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious "Kingkiller" Nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning Bad Boy of chess.

Drawn into twisted games on opposite sides of the globe, Grayson and Jameson - with the help of their brothers and the girl who stole both their hearts - must dig deep to decide what each of them will sacrifice to win.

Five survive. Red Kenny is on a road trip for spring break with five friends: Her best friend - the older brother - his perfect girlfriend - a secret crush - a classmate - and a killer. When their RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, they soon realize this is no accident.

It's been almost two years since Simon died in detention, and the aftermath has been hard to shake. First the Bayview Four had to prove they weren't killers. Then a new generation outwitted a vengeful copycat. Now the entire Bayview Crew is back home for the summer, and everyone is trying to move on.

Immortality: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz is book two of a historical fantasy duology that explores what happens when a woman decides to become a doctor in pre-Victorian Scotland. The story contains mystery, thrills, a light romance, a reimagination of history, and the solution to how one can live forever.

“Yellowface” follows white author June Hayward and her friend Athena Liu, a Chinese-American author who has been working on a book about Chinese laborers in World War I. Following Athena's untimely death, June steals her manuscript and attempts to build up her career through Athena's work.

The story begins in the 1960s with William Waters, a neglected, broken boy who escapes his loveless home by earning a basketball scholarship to Northwestern. There, he meets Julia Padavano, the oldest of four sisters who are remarkably close, and becomes part of her loving, boisterous family.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

A widow organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life — youth, college, motherhood, and midlife — and, voilà, Hollis decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. Look, this first summer without her husband is going to be rough.

The main protagonist, Alex Stern, is determined to discover what's really going on in New Haven and rescue her friend from purgatory using her newfound magical abilities despite the apparent danger it puts her in; she follows her instincts even though those around her don't agree with them or think they are foolish; ...

Tress has spent her entire life on a small island with emerald-green seas. The water, while beautiful, can be deadly. So it takes a certain level of courage to set out upon the sea. Yet that is exactly what Tress will do, despite the danger – and the laws forbidding her actions.

“A Day of Fallen Night,” a striking standalone prequel to “Priory,” interweaves the stories of three women — Tunuva, Glorian, and Dumai — from three wildly different fantastical cultures. Yet they are united through their devotion to their loved ones and quests to hunt down the demonic wyrms which threaten their world.

A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries.

Viv finds herself injured and recuperating in the seaside town of Murk. As she recuperates she meets a bunch of colorful characters that she eventually calls friends. Viv just wants to take it easy and heal so she can get better and rejoin her company, Rackam's Ravens. Nothing is ever that easy though.

In King's new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

A House with Good Bones is a 2023 Southern Gothic horror novel by Ursula Vernon, writing under the pen name T. Kingfisher. The novel centers on Samantha Montgomery, a woman who experiences strange events when she returns to her ancestral North Carolina home.

Vampires, vaqueros, and star-crossed lovers face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda. As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north.

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother's fate—and find a connection that is more than skin deep?

The Wager by David Grann is a thrilling true crime story that explores the mysterious disappearance of a man in the Arctic. It delves into the history of exploration and the lengths people will go to uncover the truth.

Grush skillfully weaves a story that, at its heart, is about desire: not a nation's desire to conquer space, but the longing of six women to reach heights that were forbidden to them… Like space travel itself, The Six widens our vision of what it means to belong to 'the whole family of humankind. '”

Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. What began as a mysterious affliction of two young girls who suffered violent fits and exhibited strange behavior soon spread to other young women. Rumors of demonic possession and witchcraft consumed Salem. Soon three women were arrested under suspicion of being witches--but as the hysteria spread, more than 200 people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, twenty were executed, and others died in jail or their lives were ruined.

Valiant Women is the story of the 350,000 American women who served in uniform during World War II. These incredible women served in every service branch, in every combat theater, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time.

America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story.

The Woman in Me chronicles Spears's journey to stardom, the publicized challenges she faced, and her endeavors to break free from a longstanding conservatorship that once controlled her life.

pare by Prince Harry is a deeply honest and intimate memoir of his life, his struggles, and his journey towards finding purpose and duty in the Royal family. It sheds light on the pressures of royal life and the importance of mental health.

Pageboy details the actor Elliot Page's life-experiences. From growing up knowing that they identified more as male, but having to suppress that side of themselves as they became a famous actor. To having to hide their sexuality from the public before they bravely came out as gay in 2014.

Counting the Cost is Jill Duggar's memoir about leaving her family's reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting and navigating new challenges in adulthood. Jill grew up as part of the famous Duggar family in Arkansas, known for their large brood and conservative Christian values.

All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore is a memoir about overcoming abuse, addiction, and the challenges of growing up poor. She shares how her faith played a central role in finding freedom from trauma and finding purpose in life.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great-aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she suspects that her great-aunt had a secret.

Ink Blood Sister Scribe follows sisters Joanna and Esther who have been around magical books their whole lives and have been taught to protect the books. Esther now lives in Antartica after her mother was killed and Joanna hides away in her house in Vermont.

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York's one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart escapist novel that sparkles with wit. It's about the peculiar unknowability of someone else's family, the miles between the haves and have-nots and everything in between, and the insanity of first love.

With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson's. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

Margaret and her husband Hal were happy to find a Victorian Home at an affordable price. It was going to be their home sweet home, until it wasn't. Soon they discovered that every September the walls were dripping blood, and the home's former residents haunted the place.

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

ASSISTANT TO THE VILLAIN is the story of how Evangelina Sage came into The Villain's employ and subsequently discovered a mole in their midst moving to tear down his evil empire. It is a dual point of view between Evie and The Villain, with most chapters from Evie's POV.

Gods are awakening across Iliseeum and the mortal realm, readying for the war to come. But when Poppy falls into stasis, Cas faces the very real possibility that the dire, unexpected consequences of what she is becoming could take her away from him.

Throne of the Fallen follows The Prince of Envy who enters a game full of riddles, deception and danger to save his crumbling kingdom. Envy makes a deal with Camilla, an artist who is another player in this deadly game. Along the way they face enemies and learn about each other while trying not to fall in love.

Growing up an orphan in a nation under siege by the ruthless Night Emperor, she found her family among the soldiers who fight for freedom. But she is hiding a deadly secret: light magic courses through her veins, a blazing power believed to have been wiped out years ago that can cut through the Night Empire's shadows.

In the Lives of Puppets is about a family. A family that lives deep in the woods, hidden away from prying eyes. There's Gio, a fatherly inventor droid, Nurse Ratched and Rambo, a sociopathic nurse machine and a lovable robot vacuum (respectively), and Victor, a human.

The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains. But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend. The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow. Because after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.

A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

System Collapse starts shortly after the end of Network Effect, with Murderbot and ART, along with humans from Preservation and from the University of Mihira and New Tideland, trying to figure out how to help several colonies of humans who have been abandoned and are suffering from alien remnant contamination.

A tale of survival and resistance in an unfair prison system…about a group of prisoners who decide to fight to the death for the one thing they want most: freedom.” “A defiant, awe-inspiring novel that will be read, studied, and celebrated for generations, Chain-Gang All-Stars leads with love.

From Emmy-award winning actor, author, comedian, producer, and director Henry Winkler, a deeply thoughtful memoir of the lifelong effects of stardom and the struggle to become whole.

Now, I’m gonna be honest: Some of the details might be vague because a b*tch is fifty-five and she’s smoked a ton of weed. But while bits might be a touch hazy, I can promise you the underlying truth is REAL.

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.

The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had.

From Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, How to Stay Married tells the hilarious, shocking, and spiritually profound story of one man’s journey through hell and back when infidelity threatens his marriage.

When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever. After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together.

Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she has it. She's married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle. But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she's paid for this fairytale.

The Stolen Heir is the first book in a thrilling new duology that brings readers back to the world of Elfhame. Jude's brother, Prince Oak, takes the spotlight alongside runaway queen Suren as they band together to embark on a deadly and dangerous quest.

Cordelia Carstairs has lost everything that matters to her. In only a few short weeks, she has seen her father murdered, her plans to become parabatai with her best friend, Lucie, destroyed, and her marriage to James Herondale crumble before her eyes.

Inez has everything a girl might want, except for the one thing she yearns the most: her globetrotting parents―who frequently leave her behind. When she receives word of their tragic deaths, Inez inherits their massive fortune and a mysterious guardian, an archeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law.