Staff Picks

  • Aurora’s Anticipated New Fiction: July

    July 23, 2026Aurora's Anticipated New Fiction: July
    Each month, Reference Librarian Aurora gives a glimpse of a few new titles she is most looking forward to.  Read on for July’s picks and don’t forget to place a hold on your favorites!   We’re Having Much More Fun: Punk Archives for the Present from CBGB to Gilman and Beyond edited by Judith A. Peraino and Tom ...
    Read more…
  • Staff Pick: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    July 15, 2026Staff Pick: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    This coming of age story follows a 15 year-old Nigerian Igbo teenager, Kambili, as she struggles with an overpowering abusive father and an oppressive Catholic upbringing. The story explores a post Colonial Nigeria where the clashes of Igbo traditions bump up against new Christian beliefs for Kambili and her brother Jaja. After spending time with ...
    Read more…
  • What We’re Reading: Summer Reading Edition

    June 25, 2026What We're Reading: Summer Reading Edition
    Summer Reading is here!  Check our what PFL staff is reading to complete their Bingo sheets and Reading Tickets! Place a title on hold by clicking the link provided and don’t forget to register for Summer Reading!   Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Children by Melissa Albert Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin The Nantucket Reader by Susan Beegel The ...
    Read more…
  • Staff Picks: Go Gentle by Maria Semple

    June 17, 2026Staff Picks: Go Gentle by Maria Semple
    Middle ages divorcee Adora Hazzard has it all; a best selling philosophy book and and a cushy job as a personal philosopher to a wealthy family, a smart (and smart alek) teenage daughter, a coven of other divorcees to share the second half of her life, and the wisdom and attitudes of the stoics to ...
    Read more…
  • Aurora’s Anticipated New Nonfiction May 2026

    May 27, 2026Aurora's Anticipated New Nonfiction May 2026
    Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl by Mandy-Suzanne Wong If I were to distill the lesson of novelist Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s essay collection Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl into a single sentence, that sentence would be: snails are someones, too! The same goes for crabs, jellyfish, starfish, oysters, mussels—Wong excludes no one, no matter how eyeless or slimy. Her essays on undersea invertebrates ...
    Read more…
  • Staff Pick: The Witches: Salem,1692 by Stacy Schiff

    May 18, 2026
    A thorough and engaging historical account exploring the mass hysteria, accusations, and executions that took place during the witch trials of 1692. In The Witches, Schiff examines all aspects of the community at that time, including the social, political, and religious tensions of Puritan New England. -Samantha, Development
    Read more…
  • Staff Picks: Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk

    May 14, 2026Staff Picks: Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
    A novel that tracks the lives of the people, animals and angels of a Polish village as they unfurl across the volatile twentieth century, snarled and wrenched askew at intervals by its upheavals and brutalities. There is much quiet, dreamy strangeness here, like a mist laid over the landscape between scenes, swirling full of ghosts ...
    Read more…
  • Staff Pick: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

    May 6, 2026Staff Pick: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
    Parable of the Sower is a sci-fi futuristic tale written in the early 1990s and set in the California of the future – the 2020s. There is no water, food is scarce, and jobs that pay money no longer exist. The main character, Lauren, has hyperempathy, which is a difficult disease to handle when surrounded ...
    Read more…
  • Aurora’s Anticipated New Nonfiction for April 2026: Poetry Month

    April 20, 2026Aurora's Anticipated New Nonfiction for April 2026: Poetry Month
    You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine edited and translated by Tayseer Abu Odeh & Sherah Bloor When the Palestinian-American poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha received the 2024 National Book Award for poetry, in her acceptance speech she said, “I don’t want to write anything that is a consolation. I don’t want to console.” I have read a ...
    Read more…
  • Staff Picks: What We’re Reading: Spring 26

    April 16, 2026Staff Picks: What We're Reading: Spring 26
    See what PFL staff are reading as we move into Spring! Historical fiction, nature observations, many audiobooks, and a lot of us were reading Lauren Groff!  Place a hold on any title below by clicking the link.     Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler   Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback   A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, ...
    Read more…

News & Updates