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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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: On order
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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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The Bewitching
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Fiction. “Minerva Contreras is a graduate student at Stoneridge College in 1998, researching obscure horror author Beatrice Tremblay, herself an alumna of the school whose roommate, Virginia Somerset, disappeared when they were students in the 1930s. When Minerva gains access to an unpublished manuscript of Beatrice’s, she realizes it’s an account of Virginia’s last days at Stoneridge. The tale details Virginia’s belief that she was being stalked by a malignant presence, a chain of events Minerva recognizes from her great-grandmother Alba’s stories of battling a witch in rural Mexico. Before long, Minerva feels the darkness coming for her as well and must draw on the wisdom inherited from Alba to survive. Moreno-Garcia immerses readers in multiple settings; the shifting perspectives keep the tension high as the book barrels to the final confrontation.” Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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The CIA Book Club
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Nonfiction. “British author English's book opens with an image of a simple-looking book, computer scientists on the cover, seemingly a technical manual. Had Polish security agents opened it, however, they would have discovered a copy of George Orwell's 1984, smuggled into the country from Paris. The French capital served as an entrepôt for books funded by the CIA, which, brought to Warsaw and other Polish cities by travelers to the West during the brief thaw following Stalin's death, were circulated via a ‘system of covert lending.’ By the program's end, thousands of books had been circulated, to the gratitude of their readers, one of whom exalted, ‘We read poetry and literature. It showed us that there are like-minded people who are above nationality, who we can empathize with, who admire beauty, who admire virtue.’ A well-crafted book about books--and spooks, skullduggery, and a time when ideas mattered.” Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Convenience Store by the Sea
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Fiction. “In the seaside town of Mojiko, the eccentric Mr. Shiba manages a Tenderness store, where his magnetic personality and handsome figure are nothing compared to his love for his customers and employees. The story follows multiple Tenderness patrons as they navigate hardships, with the store bringing them closer together. Among them are employee Mitsuri, a mother who struggles with raising a difficult teenage boy and finds solace in publishing her popular online manga. There’s also customer Yoshirō, an aspiring manga artist who strives to leave his job as a tutor; and Azusa, a middle schooler who yearns to step out of her friend’s shadow and discovers joy in the sweet treats at Tenderness, fueling her desire to become a pastry chef. Mr. Shiba’s interventions in others’ lives has mixed results… but overall, the well-meaning proprietor seeds a sense of hope and purpose in those he encounters.” PW
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Girl in the Creek
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Fiction. “Buried secrets only spread. Erin's brother Bryan has been missing for five years. It was as if he simply walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Determined to uncover the truth, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood where Bryan was last seen alive. He isn't the first hiker to go missing in this area, and their cases go unsolved. When she discovers the corpse of a local woman in a creek, Erin unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of very powerful forces-from this world and beyond-hell-bent on keeping their secrets buried.” Publisher. “A tightly written master class in horror, this is a short, well-paced novel where every detail matters.” Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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I Want to Burn This Place Down
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Nonfiction. “’In the final season of Mad Men, after Peggy and Joan have spent years clawing their way to the middle of their fictional advertising agency,’ they have a meeting with the new owners of the firm during which the continued reign of the grossest kind of misogyny is confirmed. Afterward, Peggy asks Joan if she wants to get lunch, and Joan replies, ‘I want to burn this place down.’ To Kreizman, this is a symbol of all the times she herself has had to learn that ‘working hard and playing by the rules can be futile and demeaning if the game itself has always been rigged.’ Along with righteous anger, there's plenty of sweetness, with evocative passages about her New Jersey childhood and paeans to her very happy union with a nice man named Josh. ‘I'm perpetually astonished to find that marriage is one of the only institutions that has not disappointed me.’ Though gentler than its title suggests, an intelligent and entertaining read.’ Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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A Marriage at Sea
NEW FOR JULY! Adult Nonfiction. “Elmhirst's narrative turns on two 1960s-era British dreamers who decided to pitch it all in and sail from grim, gray Britain around the globe to New Zealand, ‘discovering new lands on the other side of the world.’ The author discovered the story of Maurice Bailey, a printer by trade, who took a studious approach to the voyage, learning navigation and reading and rereading reference books. His wife, Maralyn, was eminently practical--certainly more so than Maurice, who insisted on having no radio transmitter aboard to ‘preserve their freedom from outside interference.’ That would prove a consequential decision when a whale collided with their boat and sank it….they floated, adrift and without a clue as to their location in the vast Pacific, for 117 days until finally being spotted, quite by chance, by a passing South Korean fishing boat. A nimbly told story that should serve as a caution--but oddly, too, as inspiration--to would-be escapists.’ Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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Atmosphere
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Fiction. "Joan Goodwin has always been obsessed with space, which is why she became an astrophysics professor at Rice University. But then,...NASA announces that it's looking for female scientists to join the space program. Joan is accepted on her second try, and in 1980, she begins training...The story cuts back and forth between a disaster in 1984 and the story of Joan's journey through the space program. Reid keeps the tension high, making this perhaps her most propulsive novel yet as she balances the drama of Joan's personal life with the fast-paced action of a catastrophe in space. Even with the high-stakes action, the touching and surprising love story is the emotional heart of the book." Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Bad Company
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Nonfiction. "Greenwell debuts with a scathing indictment of private equity. Profiling individuals whose lives were upended by such firms...she recounts how private equity's takeover of Toys 'R' Us in 2005 led to staffing cuts that forced one Oregon floor supervisor to take on responsibilities previously covered by three employees until the company went bankrupt in 2017 and refused to pay her severance. Such stories outrage, but Greenwell finds reason for hope in ordinary people pushing back against private equity's worst abuses. The result is a stark reminder of the human toll of corporate penny pinching.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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