Staff Picks

  • 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 ...
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  • 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, ...
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  • Staff Pick: Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

    April 8, 2026Staff Pick: Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
    I have not seen the movie, but odds are the book is better! It’s the story of a white Zimbabwean family during the Rhodesian Civil War, in the mid sixties-seventies.  It was a brutal time to live there.  Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight provides a good snapshot of the horrors of the civil ...
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  • Staff Pick: This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi 

    March 19, 2026Staff Pick: This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi 
    In This Woven Kingdom, Alizah, a powerful jinn disguised as a low-ranking servant girl, has been exhausted and freezing for the past decade. Kamren, the melancholic prince of Arulia, has been daydreaming about killing himself for just as long. A chance encounter on the rough city streets winds their disparate fates into one. Now, Kamren, hopelessly ...
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  • Aurora’s Anticipated Non-Fiction: March

    March 11, 2026Aurora's Anticipated Non-Fiction: March
    The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster by Shelley Puhak  Erzsebet Bathory, a 16th-century Hungarian countess, is frequently infamized as history’s most prolific female serial killer, alleged to have murdered housemaids and peasant girls by the hundreds, torturing them, draining their young bodies of blood so she could employ it in her toilette. ...
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  • Staff Pick: Never Flinch by Stephen King (audiobook)

    February 25, 2026Staff Pick: Never Flinch by Stephen King (audiobook)
    This latest novel from Stephen King returns to the crime thriller territory he began with the Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch). It’s another Holly Gibney story, with her private investigation business, Finders Keepers, front and center. King balances two storylines that slowly build and eventually collide in a satisfying conclusion. Holly is ...
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  • Staff Pick: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

    February 19, 2026Staff Pick: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
    River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey finally dares to ask the questions: What if the American Hippo Bill of 1910 actually passed? And, once a community of meat hippos was established, what if outlaws and cowboys were able to tame and ride them? And, AND, what if they all set out on a quest for revenge?! -Sarah, Reference
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  • Staff Picks: The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

    February 4, 2026Staff Picks: The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez
    The Cemetery of Untold Stories is about an author who buries the books she never finished in a cemetery she created.  The stories are based on actual people whose paths had crossed over the years and they whisper their stories to a woman who is a caretaker of the graves.  In addition to being incredible ...
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  • What We’re Reading: Cold Weather Edition

    January 29, 2026
    It may be cold, but we don’t mind!  It’s the perfect weather to cozy up under a blanket and read something good.  Here’s what PFL staff have keeping them company in the snow.   84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff  Arcadia by Lauren Groff The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez   Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t ...
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  • Staff Pick: The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

    January 22, 2026Staff Pick: The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
     A spare and eerie — and eerily peaceful — Austrian novel from the 1960s about a woman who wakes one day to discover herself seemingly the last human alive on earth, encased within the bounds of a glasslike wall that has come down overnight to separate her from a suddenly deadened world. The Wall cycles ...
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News & Updates

  • April 17, 2026
    Gift Card Raffle

    Tickets for our Gift Card Raffle are now on sale! We’…

  • April 16, 2026
    Seed Library

    The Seed Library is now open!
    The majority of seeds fo…