Lamar Public Library

-- A spellbinding Swedish novel that follows a young indigenous woman as she struggles to defend her family’s reindeer herd and culture amidst xenophobia, climate change, and a devious hunter whose targeted kills are considered mere theft in the eyes of the law. On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa—daughter of Sámi reindeer herders—sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When...

"An explosive novel about the chaos of revolution, Glory centres around the unexpected fall of Old Horse, a long-serving leader of a fictional African country, and the drama that follows for an unruly nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup, in November 2017, of Robert Mugabe--Zimbabwe's president who took office in 1980 and...never left--Bulawayo's bold, vividly imagined novel shows a country imploding,...

A TODAY Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick! The Great Divide

She points the lens of the camera. The artist turns his head slightly. The light catches his brow and his silver-white hair. She snaps. He is lit like a Vermeer. Ireland. County Wicklow, 1951. A father and son go swimming in the sea. The waves crash. The wind rises. Only one comes back-Colin, aged six. His mother, Eileen, runs to seek help, but this is a tragedy that will haunt them forever. Colin won't speak a word. He is mute and struggling to...

Akiko "Jane" Thompson, a half Japanese, half Caucasian woman in her midthirties, is attempting to forge a quietly happy life in the Bay Area with her fiancé, Shiro. But after a bizarre car accident, things begin to unravel. An intruder ransacks their apartment but takes nothing, leaving behind only cryptic traces of his or her presence. Shiro, obsessed with government surveillance, risks their security in a plot to expose the misdeeds of his employer,...

An obsessive introvert in Beirut, eschewed by her family and neighbors for her divorced status and lack of religious reverence, quietly translates favorite books into Arabic while struggling with her aging body, until an unthinkable disaster threatens what little life remains to her.

"New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman brings together modern mystery, Navajo traditions, and the evocative landscape of the desert Southwest in this intriguing entry in the Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito series. When Tribal Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito arrives to speak at an outdoor character-building program for at-risk teens, she discovers chaos. Annie, a young participant on a solo experience due back hours before, has just returned...

"Life is waiting to happen to Hubert Bird. But first he has to open his front door and let it in. In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfilment. But he's lying. The truth is day after day drags by without him seeing a single soul. Until he receives some good news - good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that...

"PACHINKO follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through...

To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Oceanś Eleven. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu...