We are excited to announce that new books have arrived at the MGCC Library! Stop by anytime to browse our new book display, located next to the student computers. Don't forget that MGCC students, faculty, and staff can check out books without a library card.
Read on to learn more about some of these great new titles. And stay tuned, because we are expecting even more new books in the coming weeks!
Also, be sure to visit the MGCC Library Guide, where you can access our catalog and other library resources, including Libby, Films for Education, and a multitude of databases.
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid:
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars
for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is
content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice
University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until
she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to
join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the
few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of
applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s
Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow
candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who
are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission
specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice;
warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and
Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can
fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become
unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a
passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to
question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the
observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
Fast-paced,
thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her
best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex
protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the
transformative power of love—this time among the stars.
Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back by Ingrid Clayton:
From a clinical psychologist and expert in complex trauma recovery comes a powerful guide introducing fawning,
an often-overlooked piece of the fight-flight-freeze reaction to
trauma—explaining what it is, why it happens, and how to help survivors
regain their voice and sense of self.
Most of us are familiar
with the three Fs of trauma—flight, fight, or freeze. But psychologists
have identified a fourth, extremely common (yet little-understood)
fawning. Often conflated with “codependency” or “people pleasing,”
fawning occurs when we inexplicably draw closer to a person or relationship that causes pain, rather than pulling away.
Fawning
explains why we stay in bad jobs, fall into unhealthy partnerships, and
seek out dysfunctional environments, even when it seems so obvious to
others that we should go. And fawning can serve a purpose—it’s a
protective response to an unsafe situation. But when fawning turns from
an emergency coping mechanism into an everyday habit, it stops being
useful and starts being a real problem.
The good we can break the
pattern of chronic fawning for good, once we see it for the trauma
response it is. Drawing on twenty years of clinical psychology work—as
well as a lifetime of experience as a recovering fawner herself—Dr.
Ingrid Clayton has written a groundbreaking book that brings this
emerging concept into the mainstream conversation. Readers will learn
WHY we fawn, HOW to recognize the signs of fawning (including taking
blame, conflict avoidance, hypervigilance, and caretaking at the expense
of ourselves), and WHAT we can do to successfully “unfawn” and finally
be ourselves, in all our imperfect perfection.
A landmark book full of empathy and understanding, Fawning offers trauma survivors the vocabulary to discuss their experiences—and, in so doing, gives them the tools to finally heal.
Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby:
A gothic feminist body horror in two
timelines revolving around three Anatomical Venuses—ultrarealistic wax
figures of women—that come to life at night to murder men who have
wronged them
Seoul, present day. Antiques dealer
Alys’s task is nearly complete. She has at last secured Elizabeth, the
third and final Anatomical Venus. Crafted in eighteenth-century London
and modeled after real-life sex workers to entice male medical students,
these eerie wax figures, known as slashed beauties, carry unsavory
lore. Legend has it that the figures are bewitched, and come to life at
night to murder men who have wronged them. Now Alys embarks for England,
where she knows what she must sever her cursed connection to the
Venuses once and for all.
London, 1763. Abandoned and
penniless in Covent Garden, wide-eyed Eleanor and another young woman,
Emily, are taken under the wing of beautiful and beguiling Elizabeth,
one of the city’s most highly desired courtesans among the rich and
powerful. But as Eleanor is seduced deeper into a web of money,
materialism, and men, it seems that Elizabeth may not be the savior she
appears to be.
As the timelines begin to intersect, it becomes
clear that the women’s stories are linked in deeper, darker ways than it
initially seems. And that the only method for Alys to end the
witchcraft that binds her legacy is to gather all three models in one
place and destroy them.
However, these haunted, murderous dolls might not be ready to burn.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang:
Two graduate students must set aside their
rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at
the cost of their own.
Alice Law has only ever had one goal:
to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has
sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her
love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor
Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is,
until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes
is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his
recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands,
and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will
the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.
The Love Haters by Katherine Center:
It’s a thin line between love and love-hating.
Katie
Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her
career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job
as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a
career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue
swimmer in Key West.
The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but fakes it that she can.
Plus: Cole is Hutch’s brother. And they don’t get along. Next stop paradise!
But
paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch
(the most scientifically good looking man she has ever seen . . . but
also a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful Aunt Rue and his
rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two.
Swim
lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes,
and stolen kisses ensue—along with chances to tell the truth, to face
old fears, and to be truly brave at last.
King Sorrow by Joe Hill:
Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a
student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters,
exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and
burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug
dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can
imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.
Trapped
and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help.
Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from
the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin
Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of
its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave,
beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride;
and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash
reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.
But
there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to
save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a
new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.
Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross:
Dear Matilda, I wrote.
I let the words flow for her.
And when the ink dried,
I gave my very heart
to the fire.
Born
in the firelit domain of the under realm, Matilda is the youngest
goddess of her clan, blessed with humble messenger magic she uses to
carry words and letters through the realms. But the gods will kill for
power, and Matilda holds a secret she must hide from even her dearest
allies.
And there is a mortal who dreams of her, though they have
never met in the waking world. Ten years ago, Vincent of Beckett wrote
to Matilda on the darkest night of his life—begging the goddess he
befriended in dreams to help him. His request went unanswered, and
Vincent became a hardened, irreverent lord of the river who has long
forgotten Matilda . . . until she comes tumbling into his bedroom window
with a letter for him.
Matilda and Vincent were fated to find
each other beyond dreams. But to rewrite the blood-soaked ways of the
gods, Matilda will have to face something she fears even more than
losing her magic: finally allowing herself to be loved.
All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert:
Twenty years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love inspired millions of readers to embark upon their own journeys of self-discovery. A decade later, Big Magic
empowered countless others to live their most creative lives. Now comes
another landmark book—about love and loss, addiction and recovery,
grief and liberation.
In 2000, a friend sent Liz to see a new
hairdresser named Rayya Elias. An intense and unlikely curiosity sparked
between these two apparent opposites: Rayya, an East Village badass who
lived boldly on her own terms but feared she was a failed artist; Liz, a
married people-pleaser with a surprisingly unfettered sense of
creativity. Over the years, they became friends, then best friends, then
inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally
laid bare: The two were in love. Unacknowledged: they were also a pair
of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.
What if the
love of your life—and the person you most trusted in the world—became a
danger to your sanity and wellbeing? What if the dear friend who taught
you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable
partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what
if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest
awakening?
All the Way to the River is for everyone who
has ever been captive to love – or to any other passion, substance, or
craving—and who yearns, at long last, for peace and freedom.
Note: Book descriptions and images from Goodreads.com.
