APL - Neetha's Staff Picks

"Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue, returns with a tantalizing novel about the secrets, betrayal, and murder within one of New York City's most impressive Gilded Age mansions. Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, twenty-one-year-old Lillian Carter's life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after...

"For over forty years, Jane Rosenberg has been at the heart of the news cycle, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York justice system as a courtroom sketch artist, including the most recent Donald Trump hush money trial. In Drawn Testimony, Rosenberg brings us into the dramatic high-stakes world of her craft, where art, psychology and courtroom drama collide. Over the course of her legendary career, Jane has had a front-row...

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s, with rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rising sharply. The author lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time, and then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults....

"A novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, following the intersecting lives of the local families fighting to protect their homeland, the West Indian laborers recruited to dig the waterway, and the white Americans who gained profit and glory for themselves"-- It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring...

"Have you ever wondered who picked your Fairtrade banana? Or why we can buy British strawberries in April? How far do you think your green beans travelled to get to your plate? And where do all the wonky carrots go? Above all, how do we stop worrying about our food choices and start making decisions that make a difference? In an effort to make sense of the complex food system we are all part of, Louise Gray decides to track the stories of our five-a-day...

"1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen-children's libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains...

When Oliver began work as a school librarian she felt qualified for the job. What she learned was that librarians are expected to serve as mediators and mental-health-crisis-support professionals, customer service reps and administrators of overdose treatment, fierce loyalists to institutionalized mythology and enforced silence, and arms of state surveillance. Here she highlights the national problems that have existed in library since they were founded:...

Nightingale Books, nestled on the main street in an idyllic little village, is a dream come true for book lovers-- a cozy haven and welcoming getaway for the literary-minded locals. But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open after her beloved father's death, and the temptation to sell is getting stronger. The property developers are circling, yet Emilia's loyal customers have become like family, and she can't imagine breaking...

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL BOOK. This is a summary, and it does not accompany the official 'Killers of the Flower Moon' by David Grann uncovers a dark chapter in American history from the 1920s. At that time, the Osage Nation in Oklahoma was the world's wealthiest community per capita, thanks to the discovery of oil beneath their land. They lived in luxury, but their newfound prosperity attracted a sinister wave of violence. Members of the...

"From Borrower to wizard, Tom Felton's childhood was anything but ordinary. Even as his parents' skepticism colored his early forays into acting, his childhood passion for performance buoyed him through a few inauspicious false starts, and he began booking major roles, rubbing shoulders with the likes of 007 and Hannibal Lecter. It wasn't until he landed the role of Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter's Slytherin supervillain, that he was catapulted into the...