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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Madness
Adult Nonfiction. “Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. As it grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America's evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Rental Person Who Does Nothing
Adult Nonfiction. “Morimoto was constantly being told by his boss, ‘It makes no difference whether you're here or not,’ and that his presence contributed nothing to the company. Morimoto began to wonder whether a person who ‘does nothing’ could still have actual value and a place in the world. Perhaps he could turn ‘doing nothing’ into a service? With one tweet, Rental Person was born. He chronicles his extraordinary experiences…and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.’ Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Tusks of Extinction
Adult Fiction. “Moscow has resurrected the mammoth. But someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out again. Dr. Damira Khismatullina, an expert in elephant behavior, was brutally murdered trying to defend the world's last elephants from the brutal ivory trade. Now, her digitized consciousness has been downloaded into the mind of a mammoth. As the herd's new matriarch, can Damira help fend off poachers long enough for the species to take hold? Or will her own ghosts, and Moscow's real reason for bringing the mammoth back, doom them to a new extinction?” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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A City on Mars
Adult Nonfiction. “’There is no urgent need to settle space’ argue Kelly and her cartoonist husband Zach in the wickedly irreverent follow-up to their 2017 collaboration, Soonish. They contend it will likely take centuries to overcome the logistical challenges—including the development of long-term waste management systems and laws to settle conflicts over sovereignty—posed by establishing a colony on Mars, the moon, or a free-floating space station. The cheeky tone is loads of fun, and Zach's humorous illustrations of, for instance, contraptions proposed to facilitate zero-gravity sex, entertain. It adds up to a boisterous takedown of techno-utopianism.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Class
Adult Nonfiction. “Land (Maid) catalogs her experiences juggling housecleaning jobs, childcare, and graduate school while battling poverty in this frank and captivating memoir. Land viscerally conjures the relentless grind she faced to obtain governmental aid and increased child support to cover food, heat, car repairs, childcare, and student loans while fighting to keep her daughter happy and her unborn child healthy without sacrificing her own professional dreams. Eye-opening and heartrending, this will provide succor for readers who've faced similar hardships and essential education for anyone who hasn't.” Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Day
Adult Fiction. “The story begins in April 2019, with Isabel Walker, a magazine photo editor, falling out of love with her partner Dan Byrne, a former rock musician turned ‘househusband.’ A year later, Isabel and Dan’s 10-year-old daughter, Violet, already affected by her parents’ acrimony, is intensely anxious over the virus. Isabel’s beloved brother, Robbie, provides a stabilizing influence from afar via Instagram… Although Cunningham evokes the pandemic only indirectly, such as with references to Violet’s remote learning, its impact on everyone is palpably conveyed, especially in a poignant… final section set in April 2021.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Happy Couple
Adult Fiction. “Meet Celine and Luke. For all intents and purposes, the happy couple. Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more interested in piano than domestic life) plan to marry in a year. Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke… but he finds himself utterly stuck. Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. As the wedding approaches and their… lives intersect, these characters will each look for a path to the happily ever after—but does it lie at the end of an aisle?” Pub description,
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Seattle Book of Dates
Adult Nonfiction. “From the authors of the bestselling Portland Book of Dates comes this cheeky insider's guide to the coolest spots in Seattle and Washington State. Authors (and married couple) Eden Dawn and Ashod Simonian seek out the obscure and fascinating, and the date descriptions are motivating enough to prompt even the most dedicated Netflix-and-chillers to head out the door. The book is an essential resource and armchair read for Seattle's couples of all ages (and singles with friends) interested in learning about off-the-beaten-path things to do, see, and taste.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Vulnerables
Adult Fiction. “In Nunez’s latest, set against the early days of New York City’s Covid lockdowns, a woman finds unlikely—and uneasy—companionship in a troubled college student and his parents’ friends’ parrot. …Nunez’s subject is the core business of being alive: the tenuous beauty of human connection, the nature of memory, the purpose of writing, the passage of time. Spare and understated and often quite funny, the experience is less like reading fiction than like eavesdropping on someone else’s brain.” Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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We Must Not Think of Ourselves
Adult Fiction. “The novel from Grodstein tells the story of Adam Paskow and the efforts of the historical Oneg Shabbat group to keep a record of those living in occupied Warsaw's Jewish ghetto. Adam is a Jewish educator with relentless optimism in spite of the Nazi invasion. Having been swindled by his father-in-law, he finds himself living in a small apartment with nine other people, all of whom have been relocated to Poland's old Jewish district and locked in. Emanuel Ringelblum, the real-life archivist behind Oneg Shabbat, finds Adam teaching children English in secret and recruits him to start documenting his life and the lives of those around him.” Library Journal
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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