Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
A complete list of current Peak Picks titles.
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Replaceable You
Adult Nonfiction. “The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manu-facturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available--sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we're attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? Irrepressible and accessible, Replace-able You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable and surreal quest to build a new you.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Summer War
Adult Fiction. “Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realizing her childish, angry words would become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love. …Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet …she cannot find the solution—until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings… Now…, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother’s curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Wilderness
Adult Fiction. “Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood… swoops in and stays. As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Will There Ever Be Another You
Adult Fiction. “Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and ‘WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME’ plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are. Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people?” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Automatic Noodle
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: Available
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Moderation
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: Available
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Sabzi
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: Available
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The Convenience Store by the Sea
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: Available
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A Marriage at Sea
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: Available
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Atmosphere
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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