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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The Many Daughters of Afong Moy: A Novel
Adult Fiction. “From the author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a powerful novel about the love that binds one family of women across generations. Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living. As Seattle's former poet laureate, that's how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental breakdowns into her art. …[W]hen her daughter begins revealing similar tendencies, Dorothy seeks to waylay the consequences of inherited trauma by engaging in a radical therapy that connects her with brave women ancestors .” LJ & Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours
Adult Nonfiction. “Prat, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, covers the nature of the human brain in her lively and informative debut. She argues that ‘every brain really is unique’ and that nature and nurture combine to make people who they are. She describes the brain's two sides, for example, as remarkably lopsided, and breaks down the cocktail of neurotransmitters and how they work. There are also ‘assessments’ for readers to examine how their brains have been influenced by their experiences. This work of popular science sets itself apart.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Adult Fiction. “In this exhilarating novel… two friends come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration... Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even 25 years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.” – Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Book Lovers
Adult Fiction. “Literary agent Nora is tired of always playing the ambitious big-city ice queen whose boyfriends leave her for new lives (and new relationships) in small-town America. That's why, when Nora's sister insists on taking her on a trip to a little town that's straight out of one of her authors' novels, and imposes a list of romance tropes to experience, Nora is doubtful she can find her happily-ever-after. Cue Charlie, an editor and Nora's nemesis from New York who mysteriously shows up in town… [T]his novel will delight readers of smart, sexy, and funny romances with emotional depth and storylines featuring family dynamics.” – LJ
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
Adult Nonfiction. “A scientific panorama of our well-being and how it can be sustained in our current tumultuous times and beyond. Smil…explores the science behind essential contemporary topics: energy generation, food production, material dependence, globalization, large-scale risks, responses to environmental threats, and predictive uncertainty. The author aims to combat the widespread ‘comprehension deficit’ about basic scientific facts, and he seeks to ‘explain some of the most fundamental ruling realities governing our survival and our prosperity.’ An exceptionally lucid, evenhanded study of the scientific basis of our current and future lives.” – Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel
Adult Fiction. “In the sleepy town of Sowell Bay, WA, Tova stands on the precipice of a new life. Her husband is dead, and her son drowned many years ago. With her grief threatening to consume her, Tova considers how she’s going to move on while finding comfort in her job at the local aquarium. She’s made friends with an intelligent octopus, Marcellus, who also provides his perspective on the matter. The octopus’ point of view… brings a magical haze to the novel, even as Tova and Marcellus realize their story is coming to an end.” – Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Sea of Tranquility
Adult Fiction. “The author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Hired to investigate the black-skied Night City, Detective Gaspery-Jacques Roberts discovers an anomaly in the North American Wilderness, where he encounters a strange group of individuals who have all glimpsed a chance to do something extraordinary that could disrupt the timeline of the universe.” – Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Swimmers
Adult Fiction. “Otsuka delivers a quick and tender story of a group of swimmers who cope with the disruption of their routines in various ways. The regulars at a pool range in age, ability, and swimming habits, and are connected by an incessant need to swim. When a crack shows up in the deep end of lane four, the swimmers all grows nervous about the pool’s future. While the ‘nonswimmers’ in their lives dismiss their concerns, the swimmers collectively discover how the crack ‘quietly lodges itself, unbeknownst to you, in the recesses of your mind’—except for cheerful Alice, who has swum in the pool for 35 years and now has dementia.” – Publishers Weekly "
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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