staff picks

71 posts

Staff Pick of the Week: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

This week’s staff pick is a hysterical bite-s-zed novel, perfect for some beach reading.  Our staffer literally laughed out loud several times reading this. This is a fast read, all written via letters of recommendation that a beleaguered creative writing professor writes over the course of a year, and his story […]

Staff Pick of the Week: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

This week’s staff pick is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Six stories in one that follow the same reincarnated souls through time, this novel is wildly inventive.  The first part may seem a bit slow, but once you get to the second story, the novel takes off.  A wild, complicated ride […]

Staff Pick of the Week: Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

This week’s staff pick is a heist thriller that a lot of people couldn’t put down… our staffer loved it, and so we recommend to you: Ghostman by Roger Hobbs. “In a daring operation, two crooks-for-hire rob an Atlantic City casino. But their heist goes horribly wrong, and only one […]

Staff Pick of the Week: French Women Don’t Get Facelifts by Mireille Guiliano

This week’s staff pick is by Mireille Guiliano, and was read by a staffer for the Read Harder Challenge.  She particularly enjoyed French Women Don’t Get Facelifts and found it full of great advice, stories, and recipes. The author of the bestselling French Women Don’t Get Fat shares the secrets and strategies […]

Staff Pick of the Week: Poet Edition Maya Angelou

  The incomparable Maya Angelou is this week’s Poet of the Week (in honor of National Poetry Month).  She’s been a staff pick before, and she absolutely deserves to be again.  An American author, activist, poet, dancer, actress, and singer, she published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books […]

Staff Pick of the Week: The Bard, Shel Silverstein, & Tyrannasaurus Was a Beast

For this week’s National Poetry Month Poet-themed staff pick of the week, we are highlighting 3 prominent and very different poets.  One is the widely acclaimed Shel Silverstein, the immortal bard William Shakespeare, and the popular children’s poet Jack Prelutsky. Silverstein is well known for his children’s poetry collections A Light […]

Staff Pick of the Week: The Poet Billy Collins

It’s National Poetry Month, and who better to be the poet of the week then one of the most popular poets in America.  Billy Collins has said about his poetry that it is “suburban, it’s domestic, it’s middle class, and it’s sort of unashamedly that.” Accessible, delightful, and celebrating and mourning the […]

Staff Pick of the Week: The Poet Rumi

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, most commonly referred to as Rumi, was a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi Mystic, among other things.  His poetry covers a wide range of topics, and are amazingly relatable and full of advice centuries later.  These two collections showcase this magnificent poet’s work. […]

Staff Pick of the Week: The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

  This week’s staff pick kicks off a loose series (meaning that they all occupy the same world but aren’t about the same characters), so you don’t have to read them in order.  The Fairy Godmother looks into what happens when fairy tales go wrong, and how you can change your […]

Staff Pick of the Week: The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

This is an easily readable novel in verse, and the staffer who read this absolutely loved this version of the Shakespeare authorship question and wishes it were true. “On May 30th, 1593, a celebrated young playwright was killed in a tavern brawl in London. That, at least, was the official […]