Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.
Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud
The Bartimaeus Sequence is made up of four bestselling novels featuring the grumpy, sarcastic and resourceful fourth-level djinni, Bartimaeus. Since the first book, The Amulet of Samarkand, was published in 2003, the series has sold more than 6 million copies in 36 languages worldwide. The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate are set mainly in an alternative present-day London. They follow Bart’s relationships with his young master, Nathaniel, and with Kitty, a fiery member of the Resistance against the magicians.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Allison Bechdel
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books.
This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel’s sweetly gothic drawings.
The Bletchley Circle (television)
Four women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park have taken up civilian lives. Susan has collated data about a series of murders. She tries to convince the police she knows where another body is, but they are unable to locate it and dismiss her. She turns to her three friends and they work out where the next victim will be taken, find the body, and then decide they are the only ones who can track down the killer.
Gives you a completely different perspective on processed food! The science that goes into the foods we take for granted is amazing – not only have these foods been carefully crafted to create a “bliss” point, they’ve also been engineered to be highly addictive (finally, an explanation for why I can’t stop eating chips!) Packed with info but never boring, this was hands-down my favorite read of the year. Finally, it contains one of my favorite facts of the year, which I shared to the glee of many many elementary students: there exists a chip-eating robot, whose sole purpose is to determine the absolute perfect crunch for a chip. Awesome!
A quick read that’s gorgeously written, West of the Moon weaves together folktales and the story of Astri – a Norwegian girl who must rescue her sister, escape a cruel goat-man, and find a way to America, all while pondering questions of magic and right vs. wrong. Beautiful!
Finally! The conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy! Let’s just say I am very satisfied 
Worth the read due to the format alone – if you like a book filled with hidden codes, microscopic hand-written notes in the margin, and an ambiguous ending, this book’s for you!
Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty—a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre—took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased. Honest and heartfelt, self-deprecating and ironic, Caitlin’s engaging style makes this otherwise taboo topic both approachable and engrossing. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).
Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life… A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Each day we face a barrage of images and messages from society and the media telling us who, what, and how we should be. We are led to believe that if we could only look perfect and lead perfect lives, we’d no longer feel inadequate. So most of us perform, please, and perfect, all the while thinking, What if I can’t keep all of these balls in the air? Why isn’t everyone else working harder and living up to my expectations? What will people think if I fail or give up? When can I stop proving myself? In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown, PhD, a leading expert on shame, authenticity and belonging, shares what she’s learned from a decade of research on the power of Wholehearted Living–a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness.
Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices. This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written. Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to.
Inspector Lynley plays the back up role as Detective Sargent Barbara Havers gets caught up in the kidnapping of her young friend, Hadiyyah, and the complications of that act. This volume moves back and forth between England and Italy. The small Italian town is a great setting. I did find the use of Italian phrases annoying, but they did lend depth to the setting and the problems Barbara faced not knowing the language. I loved the Italian, Inspector Lo Bianco. He should get his own series.
This book is dark. We are in London, post Jack the Ripper, and everyone is angry that Scotland Yard couldn’t catch him. Their reputation is on the line again, especially when policemen start getting killed. This is a gritty book, not for the faint of heart. It is a tense page turner with particularly grisly murders.
This delightful sixth book in the Flavia DeLuce series is, I think, the best one so far. Flavia is starting to grow up. I don’t know how Mr. Bradley understands the slow process of maturation in a young girl but it is marvelous to see the subtle ways Flavia is changing in her words and actions. With this book, this series takes a twist I never saw coming, but it promises even more adventures to come.
This book takes place in a very small village in the Shetland Islands. It is very suspenseful, and somewhat dark, showing the negative side of insular living in a small, isolated village. Outsider Jimmy Perez, a detective that grew up in an even smaller island community, heads up the investigation of a dead teenager. Once before in Shetland, a young girl disappeared, never to be found. There was a prime suspect but neither a body nor the proof was ever discovered. Is there a connection? The locals certainly think so, but Detective Perez isn’t so sure. This one kept me guessing right up to the moment of the arrest.
Marcus Luttrell and his team set out on a mission to capture or kill notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, in late June 2005. Marcus and his team are left to fight for their lives in one of the most valiant efforts of modern warfare.
I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. And so begins Elise Dalriss’s story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel’s tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered–and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago. Her story unveils a labyrinth where secrets connect to an inconceivable evil. As only Elise understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale.
For Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when your mother catches you spying on grown-ups. Jess is protective of his older brother, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can’t help sneaking a look at something he’s not supposed to–an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess’s.
Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.
Richard Papen arrived at Hampden College in New England and was quickly seduced by an elite group of five students, all Greek scholars, all worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, all highly unapproachable. As Richard is drawn into their inner circle, he learns a terrifying secret that binds them to one another…a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life…and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning….
A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend’s family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld.
In the mountains of Oaxaca, a major storm wipes out the roads and all communication with the outside world, trapping a tour group in the jungle with a dangerous predator with a secret to protect. With her only resource her determination to live, single mother Eve must fight a dangerous foe and survive against incredible odds–if she’s to make it back home alive.
When 13-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he’s plunged into a new life, issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens. The plan is to get Jace off the grid while police find the two killers. The result is the start of a nightmare. The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and the boy are Ethan and Allison Serbin, who run the wilderness survival program; Hannah Faber, who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower; and endless miles of desolate Montana mountains.
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
A group of intergalactic criminals are forced to work together to stop a fanatical warrior from taking control of the universe.
Astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive.
Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and battles a new threat from old history: the Soviet agent known as the Winter Soldier.
When a vagrant–the Walking Man–finds a dog wandering alone with a scrap of paper with the words “HELP US” attached to its collar, he’s sure it’s a desperate plea from someone in trouble and calls on Detective Inspector Jack Caffery to investigate. Meanwhile a wealthy local family is fighting for their lives, held hostage in their remote home. As their ordeal becomes increasingly bizarre and humiliating, the family begins to wonder: Is this really a random crime?
Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat chronicles another segment of the multifarious adventures of this wild child and his faithful, but skeptical, friend. If the best cartoons compel readers to identify themselves within the funny frames, then all who enjoy Calvin and Hobbes are creative, imaginative, and … bad, bad, bad! Calvin, the irascible little boy with the stuffed tiger who comes to life are a pair bound for trouble. Boring school lessons become occasions for death-defying alien air battles, speeding snow sled descents elicit philosophical discussions on the meaning of life, and Hobbe’s natural inclination to pounce on his little friend wreaks havoc on Calvin’s sense of security.
It’s a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they’re worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help. Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other’s arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder—would they be better off staying here forever?
When three cousins in 1814 London discover their magical powers and family lineage of witchcraft, they accidentally open the gates to the underworld allowing the spirits of dark witches known as the Greymalkin Sisters to hunt and kill young debutante witches for their powers.
London, 1890. Four vicious murderers have escaped from prison, part of a plan gone terribly wrong, and now it is up to Walter Day, Nevil Hammersmith, and the rest of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad to hunt down the convicts before the men can resume their bloody spree. But they might already be too late. The killers have retribution in mind, and one of them is heading straight toward a member of the Murder Squad, and his family
When a rotting torso is discovered in the vault of New Scotland Yard, it doesn’t take Dr. Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, long to realize that there is a second killer at work in the city where, only a few days before, Jack the Ripper brutally murdered two women in one night. Though just as gruesome, this is the hand of a colder killer, one who lacks Jack’s emotion. And, as more headless and limbless torsos find their way into the Thames, Dr. Bond becomes obsessed with finding the killer.
The second installment in the bestselling gothic series, about an ancient order who speak the truth behind Christ’s miracles and strive to protect the world from evil – from the winning writerly combo of James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell.
