Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
A complete list of current Peak Picks titles.
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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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The Paris Express
Adult Fiction. "A French anarchist targets a passenger train in the taut latest from Donoghue, which is inspired by a true story. On Oct. 22, 1895, Mado Pelletier boards the express from Granville to Paris with a homemade bomb in tow. Born into poverty, she's furious over the plight of the working class, which is made all the more plain to her by the arrangement of the train's carriages: first-class passengers are placed at the center of the train to cushion the blow in the event of a crash. But as the locomotive speeds toward Paris, Mado meets her fellow passengers and questions whether she can follow through with her plan." Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The River Has Roots
Adult Fiction. "The Hawthorn family has tended the magical willows on their land for generations, providing songs of thanks in exchange for the trees' power. The residents of the town of Thistleford, sitting near the edge of Faerie, know that sisters Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn continue to provide according to the ancient agreement, and the two sisters are as much tied to each other as they are to their enchanted trees. However, love and life can still bring the possibility of taking one, or both, away from each other. El-Mohtar's poetic prose brings the magic of language and song to life...with two women who use songs to show the world their truths." Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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When the Moon Hits your Eye
Adult Fiction. "This story isn't really about the moon; it's all about the reactions to it...Because the moon and all of the moon rocks ever taken back to Earth suddenly turn into cheese. There's lots of laughter, and there's plenty of panic. But as they go through one lunar cycle...with the moon being cheese and having moonquakes and sending out cheese meteors - the world changes. People speculate, they hunker down, and they throw out conspiracy theories. They also focus on what's important. Life goes on, and humans still act like humans in all their weird and wacky glory. ...[I]t's frequently absolutely hilarious." Library Journal
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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Three Days in June
Adult Fiction. "Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job - or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn't even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail's ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life..." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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On the Hippie Trail
Adult Nonfiction. "In the 1970s, the ultimate trip for any backpacker was the storied 'Hippie Trail' from Istanbul to Kathmandu. A 23-year-old Rick Steves made the trek, and like a travel writer in training, he documented everything along the way: jumping off a moving train, making friends in Tehran, getting lost in Lahore, getting high for the first time in Herat, battling leeches in Pokhara, and much more. The experience ignited his love of travel and forever broadened his perspective on the world. You know Rick Steves. Now discover the adventure that made him the travel writer he is today." Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Beyond Anxiety
Adult Nonfiction. "In Beyond Anxiety, Dr. Martha Beck explains why anxiety is skyrocketing around you, and likely within you. Using a combination of the latest neuroscience as well as her background in sociology and coaching, Beck explains how our brains tend to get stuck in an 'anxiety spiral,' a feedback system that can increase anxiety indefinitely. Beck provides instructions for engaging the 'creativity spiral,' in a process that not only shuts down anxiety but leads to innovative problem solving, a sense of meaning and purpose, and joyful, intimate connection with others - and with the world.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Water Moon
Adult Fiction. "Hana and Kei meet at the sole intersection of their disparate worlds: Hana's pawnshop in Tokyo, where the lost can sell their regrets. Hana is desperate to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance, and Kei can never resist a puzzle. He is a man of science, while Hana's anime-inspired fantasy world breaks all the rules by which he has lived his life. He can't resist the mystery of her, and she can't help but charm him into being part of her dangerous quest, even though she knows it will end in bitterness and betrayal - unless the magic has one last impossible gift to give them both." Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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