Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
New titles from the Peak Picks collection that are currently in rotation. Stop by any branch to see what's available today!
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Automatic Noodle
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Fiction. “When Staybehind and his fellow robots wake up after a mysterious shutdown, they find the restaurant is flooding. And worse, the owners of their shop are on the lam after running a crypto scam. But after conferring, the assorted robots, living in a postwar San Francisco in a future where California is liberated from the U.S. and robots have a first wave of basic civil rights, decide that if humans can run a restaurant, so can they. In a daring move, they reopen as Authentic Noodle, a shop that serves biang biang–style noodles. But when a robophobic group begins to flood their site with one-star reviews, they’ll have to fight to remain open. Newitz has gifted sf readers with a hopeful, postapocalyptic found-family tale.” Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Blessings and Disasters
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Nonfiction. “New Yorker staff writer Okeowo offers a wide-ranging and nuanced account of her home state. Surveying Alabama history, from slavery and Indian removal through the Confederacy’s defeat to the civil rights movement and mass incarceration, she notes that it’s a ‘land that has been turned over so many times, changed character depending on the circumstances, been in dispute as to who owns it.’ During her interviews with a host of figures, from a white woman who endured childhood sexual abuse to a Black survivor of a Klan ‘night rider’ attack, she explores and at times attempts to bridge this divide…to do so, she draws on an ingrained neighborliness that, as a sort of counterpoint, also permeates her depiction of Alabamans. Probing and sumptuously written, this makes for an entrancingly ground-level and empathetic view of Alabama’s past and present.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Jenny Cooper Has A Secret
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Fiction. “In Fielding's new psychological thriller, recent widow Linda Davidson is having trouble coping with her husband's death. To help out, her daughter Kleo and son-in-law Mick move in with her. Adding to her stress, her best friend Carol has dementia and is living in a nearby memory care facility. After one of her visits with Carol, Linda meets another resident, 92-year-old Jenny Cooper, who tells Linda that she has killed four people. At first shocked, Linda writes it off as a ploy for attention since Jenny never has visitors. When a resident dies at the facility, however, Linda can't help wondering if Jenny was behind it. This clever cat-and mouse game keeps readers guessing until the end about who is taking advantage of whom.” Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Moderation
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Fiction. “Castillo’s masterful latest follows the vagaries of a social media content moderator’s work and love lives. The protagonist is known only by her workplace handle Girlie Delmundo… Girlie specializes in flagging videos of child sexual abuse, and her exemplary work gets her recruited for a position with Reeden’s newest acquisition, a virtual reality endeavor called Playground. As Girlie flags objectionable content in Playground’s VR historical theme parks… she learns more about the original medical applications of Playground’s tech, and the fate of its founder, Edison Lau. Castillo shifts seamlessly in scale and tone, from a wide-angled systems novel to a love story, and from barbed satire to staggering emotional depth. It’s a triumph.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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People Like Us
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Fiction. “The latest semi-autobiographical novel by Mott follows two Black authors' adventures in Minnesota and Europe. Mott's writing is funny, intelligent, and sharp as a knife. Especially in the chapters from one author Mott modeled after himself, the language is high-energy and dazzling… He makes jokes about pretending to be Ta-Nehisi Coates or Colson Whitehead. The story encompasses perilous car rides, more than one close scrape with death, and an active shooter drill at a school. Gun violence and its pervasive impact in the United States permeate the story; one gun in particular is almost like a character. Along with all that excitement, the characters have conversations that deliver profound meditations on race, belonging, grief, and the meaning of home, though there's plenty to lighten the mood.” Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Positive Obsession
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Nonfiction. “Cultural critic Morris examines in this unique biography the ‘personal struggles, historical context, and creative obsessions’ behind the work of Octavia Butler (1947-2006). Morris notes that Butler's prolific oeuvre invites readers to imagine the future in a way that prioritizes seeking truth and rejecting tyranny, making use of ‘positive obsession,’ a term Butler coined to describe her desire to write. Morris demonstrates how Butler spoke to America's horrors, noting that her novels ‘pay close attention to the workings of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism to spin a horrifying near future.’ Morris powerfully frames Butler's work and career through her politics and personal struggles, including the way poverty ‘threatened to crush her spirit.’ The result is a moving study of the life and creative pursuits of a literary pioneer.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Sabzi
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Nonfiction. “Lifting its name from the Persian word for ‘herbs’, Sabzi brings you more than 80 accessible plant-forward recipes that celebrate the best of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian flavors. From bountiful salads to fragrant soups, colorful mezze, and heart-warming mains, Yasmin invites home cooks to make delicious meals that are good for the health of both people and the planet, while staying connected to the traditional food cultures that make us who we are. With easy-to-make recipes that put vibrant vegetables at the heart of a meal, dishes in the book include: Halloumi Lasagne; Smoky Tofu Shakshuka; Sweet Potatoes with Pistachio and Mint Pesto; Rhubarb and Cardamom Tart... and many more. An invitation into Yasmin's treasure trove of a kitchen, Sabzi is a celebration of the life-affirming and nourishing power of plants.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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This Happened to Me
NEW FOR AUGUST! Adult Nonfiction. “Having escaped the generations of abuse, violence, and addiction that plagued her family in a small mill town in Pennsylvania, Price (then an adult pursuing her master's degree) began to experience grief, sadness, and anxiety as hazy memories of her childhood surfaced. She realized that her father had raped her. She also learned that something else must have happened at the truck stop, the X-rated theater, and a rest area near the old house she once lived in, as these places gave her chills in the present day, and she instinctively avoided them. Price worked with trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk, and her story became a part of his best-selling book The Body Keeps the Score. Price also collaborated with a Boston Globe journalist who spent a decade researching to bring her truth to light. Price's book provides valuable insight into mining memory.” Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Algospeak
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Nonfiction. “Drawing on archival research and his own posts on TikTok and Reddit, Aleksic explains how social media triggers innovations in language and creates ‘algospeak,’ in which algorithms, which filter and prioritize certain information, ‘shape who gets exposed to certain words, how those words spread, and how popular’ they become. The use of ‘evasive language’ for sensitive content is one of Aleksic's case studies--TikTok users, for example, began using unalive (for ‘dead’) and seggs (instead of ‘sex’) for ‘algorithmic optimization.’ Aleksic steers clear of vilifying algospeak, demonstrating instead that social media amplifies linguistic development and convincingly arguing that evolving language is part of the history of human creativity: ‘Our language, culture, and identity are inevitably molded by our environment, but we work through these molds to keep doing silly, ingenious things with language, because we're resilient,’ he writes.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Archive of Unknown Universes
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Fiction. “Cambridge, 2018. Ana and Luis’s relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, and against her best judgement, Ana uses… an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is. Havana, 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary…, meets Rafael... The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It’s both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.” Publisher
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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