Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
A complete list of current Peak Picks titles.
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So Far Gone
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 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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Storybook Ending
Adult Fiction. "April, a smart and lonely tech worker, worries work from home has gotten out of hand: she's left an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her Seattle neighborhood bookstore... But thanks to fate, Laura - a busy single mom who had given up on love - buys the book, finds the note, and thinks Westley has left it for her. Meanwhile ,Westley...is too distracted...to notice either of the two women. But as April and Laura's anonymous correspondence continues back and forth, their mundane routines are challenged, sparking a glimmer of hope. Is a happy ending in the cards for them?" Publisher description.
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Audition
Adult Fiction. "Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She's an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He's attractive, troubling, young---young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day - partner, parent, creator, muse - and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Book of Alchemy
Adult Nonfiction. "After being diagnosed with leukemia at 22, Jaouad was inspired by Michael Bierut, a design professor who'd asked his graduate students to perform 'one creative act for 100 days,' to start a daily journaling practice in hopes of finding meaning in her illness. With this as a model, she gathers prompts from 100 novelists, journalists, and artists who invite readers to begin their own journaling practice. The prompts are varied enough to appeal to devoted diarists and newbies alike, and Jaouad poignantly interweaves her own intimate meditations on creativity, pain, and art." Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Wild in Seattle
Adult Nonfiction. "For award-winning natural history writer David B. Williams, to be connected to a place you need to pause and look deeply at it. Wild in Seattle is Williams' delightful journey of discovery in this city where not only is nature all around, it's also written in the stones of the urban landscape. Williams' lively essays woven with Elizabeth Person's engaging illustrations will fire up the curiosity of both residents and visitors alike, inspiring all to take a fresh look at the Emerald City." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Everything Is Tuberculosis
Adult Nonfiction. "YA author Green writes that he became 'obsessed' with tuberculosis after a chance meeting at a Sierra Leone hospital with a charming young patient, Henry Reider, who was sick with drug-resistant TB. Green weaves Henry's moving story of illness and recovery together with a social history of the disease, explaining that tuberculosis once killed rich and poor indiscriminately, but after the late-19th-century advent of germ theory, it became a 'disease of the poor and marginalized.' Green contends that, today, injustice...is the 'root cause' of all tuberculosis, and urges that since 'we are the cause... we must also be the cure.'" Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Wild Dark Shore
Adult Fiction. "Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of a remote island near Antarctica, home to the Shearwater research base and the world's largest seed bank. Rising seas have been threatening the island, and readers meet the Salts as they are considering evacuating the island with their precious seeds. When a woman named Rowan washes up on shore, the Salts take her in and nurse her back to health. Rowan shares pieces of her past...but unraveling the island's mysteries brings them both closer to hidden truths. As lush as it is taut with tension, this novel is filled with both the joys and ravages of nature." Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Adult Nonfiction. "As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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