The Sylvan Hotel

by Frannie James

Set in the early 1990s, The Sylvan Hotel by Frannie James is a captivating whirlwind of drama that follows a recent college graduate as she navigates the "in-between" stage of her life. James also captures the Emerald City at the precipice of its evolution from a "pretty pit stop" with provincial sensibilities into a 21st-century metropolis. Cameos by Kurt and Courtney Love Cobain set a nostalgic backdrop for James's Seattle story.

Joann is a "somewhat preppy" 20-something Asian American working the swing

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A Gallery of Cats

by Ruth Brown, illus. by Ruth Brown

Beloved picture book author/illustrator Ruth Brown (Eye Spy) pays homage to 13 famous artists in her magnificent picture book A Gallery of Cats, in which she takes readers on an immersive and whimsical tour of an art gallery with a feline focus.

A boy is wandering alone in a museum. Large, framed paintings (rendered in acrylic and pen and ink) line the walls, each modeled after the work of a famous artist. At each piece's heart is a cat that Brown has cleverly inserted into the image. Next to each work is

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Bigger: Essays

by Ren Cedar Fuller

Ren Cedar Fuller's perceptive debut work, Bigger, offers nine linked autobiographical essays in which she seeks to see herself and family members more clearly by acknowledging disability, neurodivergence, and gender diversity.

In "Naming My Father," Fuller theorizes that her late father was "on the autism spectrum." He was exacting and emotionless--he spouted facts but never expressed love; he hit his four daughters and couldn't tell them apart unless they stood in height order. She intersperses notable moments

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The Uncool: A Memoir

by Cameron Crowe

Director Cameron Crowe is best known for films such as Vanilla Sky, Say Anything..., and the semi-autobiographical Almost Famous, all of which feature iconic soundtracks. The critical role music plays in his film work is no accident. Indeed, the journalist turned director claims in his captivating memoir, "The marriage of film and music would soon be my favorite part of writing and directing films."

In The Uncool, Crowe depicts his unlikely journey from gawky high schooler in the 1970s

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Mothers

by Brenda Lozano, trans. by Heather Cleary

Mexican writer Brenda Lozano and translator Heather Cleary reunite after Witches for Mothers, about two women bound together by their temporarily overlapping motherhoods. On January 22, 1946, in Mexico City's wealthy Colonia Juárez, Gloria Felipe leaves her two-year-old daughter, Gloria Miranda Felipe, for 16 minutes to play with a new neighbor in their apartment building's courtyard, and the child vanishes. In nearby Colonia Guerrero, Nuria Valencia, who "had been trying for years to get pregnant with

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Wild Song

by Candy Gourlay

A bold Bontok teen endeavors to live among those who treat her people as savages in this striking YA historical novel, one of the winners of the 2024 National Children's Book Award of the Philippines.

Sixteen-year-old Luki, who lives in U.S.-controlled Bontok in the Philippine Islands, signs up to attend the 1904 World's Fair because the alternative--marriage--enrages her. She seeks instead the "sweet land of liberty" and, with other village members, takes a tumultuous weeks-long voyage to Saint Louis, Mo.

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