New books have arrived at the MGCC Library! Read on to learn more about a few of these exciting new books.
Be sure to also check out our Library Guide! Our new books are listed along the bottom; clicking on a book will take you to our library catalog, where you can find out if it's available for checkout.
Happy reading!
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center:
Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a
screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing
romantic comedies―good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the
sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now,
when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter
Charlie Yates―The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!―it’s a break
too big to pass up.
Emma’s younger sister steps in for
caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing
gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes?
Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone―much less “a failed,
nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so
terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t
even care about the script―it’s just a means to get a different one
green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.
But
Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself,
and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love
stories matter―even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . .
what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out
to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story
they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules―and comes true?
Rouge by Mona Awad:
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been
insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her
estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in
Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and
grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate
when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a
tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video
about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red
shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse,
the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle
discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s)
obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons)
that lurk on the other side of the glass.
Snow White meets Eyes
Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy,
grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With
black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of
the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless
gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals,
Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our
collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing
that might lie beneath.
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer:
As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell
went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously
reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or
how they’d survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous
homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and
out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile,
Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his
uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie
Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe
and Jeremy.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the
disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them,
the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible
beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find
Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their
return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets
comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former
lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the
memories.
Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must
return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only
then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt:
After more than a decade of stability or
improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early
2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose
sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation,
social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the
epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same
time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why
children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent,
thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to
decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of
the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a
dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has
interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering
everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation,
addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and
perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys
and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual
world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and
their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to
action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and
then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes
steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments
can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane
childhood.
Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by
data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics
and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health
emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about
protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a
phone-based life.
Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood:
Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has
enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability
she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer
at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food
science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile
takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it
all crumbling down.
Eli Killgore and his business partners want
Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through -
and he's a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue.
The woman he can't stop thinking about. The woman who's off-limits to
him.
Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and
Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is
secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one
of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business - one
that plays for keeps.
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves & China Mieville:
She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.
There
have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed.
Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many
names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known
simply as “B.”
And he wants to be able to die.
In the
present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with
that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an
all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event
ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself.
One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.
In a
collaboration that combines Miéville’s singular style and creativity
with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, these two inimitable
artists have created something utterly unique, sure to delight existing
fans and to create scores of new ones.
Swift River by Essie J. Chambers:
It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and
Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop
disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere
they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased
relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the
only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined
to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance
money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
But
when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key
elements of Pop’s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two
generations of African American Newberry women, whose lives span the
20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and
abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become
clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her
family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future?
A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us and heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.
The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul:
From international drag superstar and pop
culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to
date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate
memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to
discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance.
A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and
identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the
legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world
thinks about drag. Central to RuPaul’s success has been his chameleonic
adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the
world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s ever-shifting nature has
always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul.
Yet
that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir,
his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly
known. Stripping away all artifice, RuPaul recounts the story of his
life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature
wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a
queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his
absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the
punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love
with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul
excavates his own biography, uncovering new truths and insights in his
personal history.
Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary
story is a manual for living—a personal philosophy that testifies to the
value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you
different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.
If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul
totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley:
In the near future, a civil servant is offered
the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project
she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is
gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel
is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She
is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and
monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as
history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed
1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be
living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves,
surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,”
and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for
discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming
and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next
year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a
horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much
deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to
light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with
consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the
choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with
how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time
asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your
house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament
to what we owe each other in a changing world.
Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe:
As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro
wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own.
So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t
imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out
and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while
the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting
pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby,
mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
Now,
at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge
of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father,
Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees
in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan:
she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself
adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to
craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with
you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could
this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame
come with too high a price?
Blisteringly funny and filled with
sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an
endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a
world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and
honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own
narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both
online and off.
Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne:
A fascinating, revelatory memoir revealing the
author’s struggle to come to terms with her own sociopathy and shed
light on the often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder.
Patric
Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started
kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she
didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things
the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded
her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way
that “nothing” felt.
She did her best to pretend she was like
everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she
knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied.
She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and
home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness
with...something.
In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d
long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very
first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy
had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was
told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found
herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains
who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.
But when
Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future
beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she
isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious
characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove
that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all
monsters either.
This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.
Note: All images and book descriptions from Goodreads.com.
