Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
A complete list of current Peak Picks titles.
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Great Black Hope
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Fiction. "An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not. It's just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, and he's still reeling...Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Homemade God
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Fiction. "There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family's lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece. Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting. As the siblings try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a state of lawlessness: living under the same roof for the first time in decades...Meanwhile, their stepmother's enigmatic presence looms over the house. Is she the force that will finally destroy the family for good?" Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Human Nature
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Nonfiction. "There is no doubt, Marvel asserts, that humans are changing the climate. And yet, we are the loose cannons here -- no one can predict what we will (or won't) do to address the problem. The doom and gloom in the book is balanced with notes of hope: Past efforts to tackle acid rain and to save the ozone layer demonstrate collective action for good. It's full of quotable lines that one might use to argue with climate skeptics. A highly readable argument for tackling climate change that reckons with both cold hard facts and the human heart." Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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It Rhymes With Takei
NEW FOR JUNE! Graphic Nonfiction. "Takei (They Called Us Enemy) famously came out of the closet at age 68, in 2005. Ever since, the actor has been working passionately as an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and social justice. In this sprightly and affecting graphic memoir, Takei guides readers on the winding path that led to his activism -- and tells how he became an actor, known the world over for his portrayal of Hikaru Sulu in the Star Trek franchise. A heartwarming journey that, yes, goes boldly where few men have gone before." Kirkus
Format: Graphic Novel
Availability: Available
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Kuleana
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Nonfiction. "Goo's family kept a 90-something-acre piece of Maui, a small chunk of a much larger gift from King Kahmeamea III, under their ownership for nearly 200 years. In 2019, however, Goo's father revealed in an email that property taxes had jumped 500%, and he didn't know how to pay. Suddenly, like so many other Native Hawaiians, Goo's family had to compete with wealthy investors from the mainland. Ending on a note of fragile hope, Goo's heartrending saga serves as an urgent reminder that Indigenous culture is alive and braided with modern life, and that all Americans have a role in its survival." Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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A Language of Limbs
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Fiction. “Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow. In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. Meanwhile, in the second, a teenage girl pushes down her lustful dreams of her best friend...Through the AIDS crisis -- and from classrooms to art galleries, beds to bars and hospitals to homes -- we witness these two lives shadow each other until, finally and poignantly, they collide." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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So Far Gone
NEW FOR JUNE! Adult Fiction. "Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods...Now Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia? So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The AI Con
Adult Nonfiction. "Linguist Bender and sociologist Hanna, the founders of a merrily debunking podcast about all things AI, write that there's hoopla aplenty about how AI will make our lives better - or perhaps worse. There are real concerns, of course, especially for people of color...[and] those 'daily harms being done in its name' are more profound than a feared robot apocalypse (the authors add, AI probably won't replace your job, 'but it will make your job a lot shittier.') A refreshingly contrarian take on AI and the clouds of hyperbole surrounding it." Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Emperor of Gladness
Adult Fiction. "Vuong follows up his first novel with a searching and beautiful story of a troubled young man. The reader first meets Hai on a bridge in East Gladness, Conn., where he's about to jump to his death. He's stopped by Grazina, an 82-year-old Lithuanian woman. She invites him to stay with her, and as her dementia worsens, he cares for her... Hai tells his mother he is attending medical school, but in fact, shortly before meeting Grazina, he was released from rehab for opioid addiction. Vuong's scenes are vivid, and the pitch-perfect dialogue cuts like a knife...This downbeat tale soars to astonishing heights." Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Is A River Alive?
Adult Nonfiction. "Nature writer Macfarlane (Underland) serves up a lyrical inquiry into the implications of treating rivers as living beings worthy of reverence and legal rights. Macfarlane skillfully braids his immersive travel writing with illuminating historical background, all told in lithe prose ('The horizon widens into ocean and the co-motion of sky and water is lost in a white, grainy light, and there the river's last trace is slow-vanishing spirals in the water, shallowing as they slip on'). Nature lovers will be riveted." Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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