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LitLoot is a free literary subscription box filled with a custom selected library book and other free goodies! We’ll contact you when your box is ready for pickup at the end of the month.
Stories and songs for our littlest listeners. Please bring a tummy time mat or blanket for the baby. Older siblings welcome.
Birth to 24 months with a parent/caregiver
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Stories and songs for our littlest listeners. Please bring a tummy time mat or blanket for the baby. Older siblings welcome.
Birth to 24 months with a parent/caregiver
Disclaimer(s)
All participants should be accompanied by a parent or caregiver.
Living National Treasure Reginald "Reggio The Hoofer" McLaughlin will bring the roots of tap dance to life through performance and historical storytelling.
Join us for a fun storytime featuring our transportation-themed DUPLO Read & Build set. Siblings are welcome but build and craft supplies are limited to registrants.
Ages 2-5 with a parent/caregiver
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Drop in for some open-ended play and meet new friends at our weekly playgroup.
Birth to 5 with a parent/caregiver
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All participants should be accompanied by a parent or caregiver.
Get to Know Our New Board Trustee, Iliana Gonzalez
At a special board meeting at the end of June, the Library Board appointed a new trustee to fill the seat of Trustee Laima Puzzo, who retired after seven years of service. We warmly welcome Iliana Gonzalez, whose term will run through April 2027.
Your life summed up
I was born and raised in Chicago, and recently moved to Morton Grove. I absolutely love it here! I have worked in education for most of my career and love working in Higher Education. We added a new pup to our pack this summer and have enjoyed all of the shenanigans of Sassy and Jett.
Reasons for wanting to be on the Library Board
I have been looking for meaningful ways to get involved and engage in the community. I also happen to really LOVE libraries and leadership opportunities. I couldn't have dreamt of a better combination and knew I had to throw my hat in the ring. Being a Trustee for any organization or company is a big responsibility. You're providing a special service representing an entire community and staff. It's an opportunity I am very excited about and I am eager to be of service and contribution.
Fun fact
I spent my childhood summers in Puerto Rico with my family and have loved keeping traditions alive through cooking traditional dishes like sancocho and most recently mastering homemade pan sobao!
Favorite place in Morton Grove
The first thing that came to mind were trees. I know that's not a place but the trees here are so beautiful! Okay so back to a real place: Burt's Pizza. Having been raised with all kinds of pizza and deep dish, their pepperoni is the absolute best!
Last thing you check out from the Library
Books and seeds!
Favorite book or movie
I absolutely love Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones
Best Reads of 2025
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Stag Dance
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “This inventive, boundary-pushing follow-up to Detransition, Baby . . . [takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory.”—People
“Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, THE WASHINGTON POST, ELECTRIC LIT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY • A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)
In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.
In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.
Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.
Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights. -
King of Ashes
'S. A. Cosby's novels always hit the grand slam of crime fiction' MICHAEL CONNELLY
'Cosby sends a shiver down the spine' DAILY MAIL
'A pulsating saga of family secrets and double and triple-crossing' THE TIMES, THE BEST THRILLERS OF 2025
A son returning home. A dangerous debt. Secrets about to ignite . . . and a family consumed by flames.
Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial adviser in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident.
When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems. His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals. And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything.
A financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years: the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers. It's a mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.
As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash. Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever. Everything burns.
'A pulsating thriller' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'Builds to an explosive finale' DAILY EXPRESS
'American crime fiction has found its future and his name is S.A. Cosby' DENNIS LEHANE
'Dazzlingly bold and brutal, yet still manages to break your heart' CRIME MONTHLY
Praise for S. A. Cosby:
'Sensationally good' LEE CHILD
'Exhilarating' STEPHEN KING
'Stunning. Can't remember the last time I read such a powerful crime novel' MARK BILLINGHAM
'S. A. Cosby is a welcome, refreshing new voice in crime literature' DENNIS LEHANE
'Every once in a while a writer comes along with an incredible voice...add S. A. Cosby to that list' STEVE CAVANAGH
'Elegant, fierce storytelling at its absolute best.' DAILY MAIL -
My Friends
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Goodreads • USA TODAY • Marie Claire • BookPage • Literary Lifestyle • Book Riot • Sunset Magazine • Totally Booked with Zibby Owens * A Fallon Book Club Pick
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later.
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art. -
Stuck
How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?
We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.
Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for two hundred years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.
In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum shows us that these problems have a common explanation: people can’t move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck.
Cutting through more than a century of mythmaking, Stuck tells a vivid, surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and lays out common-sense ways to get Americans moving again. -
Waste Wars
A globe-trotting work of relentless investigative reporting, this is the first major book to expose the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade.
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
Journalist Alexander Clapp spent two years roaming five continents to report deep inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, Tanzanian plastic pickers, whistle-blowing environmentalists throughout the jungles of Guatemala, and a community of Ghanaian boys who burn Western cellphones and televisions for cents an hour, to tell readers what he has figured out: While some trash gets tossed onto roadsides or buried underground, much of it actually lives a secret hot potato second life, getting shipped, sold, re-sold, or smuggled from one country to another, often with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world.
Waste Wars is a jaw-dropping exposé of how and why, for the last forty years, our garbage — the stuff we deem so worthless we think nothing of throwing it away — has spawned a massive, globe-spanning, multi-billion-dollar economy, one that offloads our consumption footprints onto distant continents, pristine landscapes, and unsuspecting populations. If the handling of our trash reveals deeper truths about our Western society, what does the globalized business of garbage say about our world today? And what does it say about us? -
No More Tears
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America’s oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies—from an award-winning investigative journalist
“A damning portrait.”—Associated Press
“A page-turning drama that raises life-or-death questions about the world’s largest healthcare conglomerate.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life
A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY AND NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him, who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company—and the entire pharmaceutical industry—for the Times. His subsequent investigations and ongoing research since that very first conversation led to this book—a blistering exposé of a trusted American institution and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world.
Harris takes us light-years away from the company’s image as the child-friendly “baby company” as he uncovers reams of evidence showing decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. He covers multiple disasters: lies and cover-ups regarding the link of Johnson’s Baby Powder to cancer, the surprising dangers of Tylenol, a criminal campaign to sell antipsychotics that have cost countless lives, a popular drug used to support cancer patients that actually increases the risk that cancer tumors will grow, and deceptive marketing that accelerated opioid addictions through their product Duragesic (fentanyl) that rival even those of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma.
Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work of investigative journalism that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile. -
There Is No Place for Us
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America
“An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, THE WASHINGTON POST, BOOKPAGE
The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.
In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.
Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.
By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right. -
Never Flinch
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The New York Times Book Review, AV Club, Variety, The Boston Globe, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Vulture, Men’s Health, Book Riot, New York Post, Goodreads, AARP, Paste, and more!
From master storyteller Stephen King comes an extraordinary new novel with intertwining storylines—one about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker—featuring the beloved Holly Gibney and a dynamic new cast of characters.
When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,” Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realizes that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard—a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and his belief in his own righteousness.
Featuring a riveting cast of characters both old and new, including world-famous gospel singer Sista Bessie and an unforgettable villain addicted to murder, these twinned narratives converge in a chilling and spectacular conclusion—a feat of storytelling only Stephen King could pull off.
Thrilling, wildly fun, and outrageously engrossing, Never Flinch is one of King’s richest and most propulsive novels. -
Mailman : my wild ride delivering the mail in Appalachia and finally finding home
An exuberant, hilarious, and profound memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that working for the post office saved his life, taught him who he was, gave him purpose, and educated him deeply about a country he loves but had lost touch with.
Steve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown.
Suddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail, including a family legacy of rage and the anxiety of having lost his identity along with his corporate job.
And yet, slowly, surrounded by a ragtag but devoted band of letter carriers, working this different kind of job, Grant found himself becoming a different kind of person. He became a lifeline for lonely people, providing fleeting moments of human contact and the assurance that our government still cares. He embraced the thrill of tackling new challenges, the pride of contributing to something greater than himself, the joy of camaraderie, and the purpose found in working hard for his family and doing a small, good thing for his community. He even kindled a newfound faith.
A brash and loving portrait of an all-American institution, Mailman offers a deeply felt portrait of both rural America and the dedicated (and eccentric) letter carriers who keep our lives running smoothly day to day. One hell of a raconteur, Steve Grant has written an irreverent, heartfelt, and often hilarious tribute to the simple heroism of daily service, the dignity and struggle of blue-collar work, the challenge and pleasure of coming home again after twenty-five years away, and the delight of going the extra mile for your neighbors, every day. -
Bad Company
* KIRKUS BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2025*
*ONE OF AV CLUB'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025*"[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how clichéd abstractions like ‘consolidation’ and ‘efficiency’ have given cover to real betrayals.” - The New York Times
A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.
Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.
Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country’s most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins.
Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company unearths the hidden story of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.
In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar private equity firms, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America’s most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.
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You Weren't Meant to Be Human
A Washington Post and Publishers Weekly Best SF/Fantasy/Horror Novel of 2025
Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.
Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.
Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca. -
Elon Musk: American Oligarch
Darryl Cunningham's new graphic biography of Elon Musk is a riveting deep dive into the audacious mind and tumultuous journey of the world's richest man. Using his signature pictographic style-clean lines, vivid colours, and lean panel compositions-Cunningham peels back the layers of myth around Musk to deliver a timely portrait that is provocative and informative. Spanning several generations, the book traces Musk's journey from his family roots in South Africa and his grandfather's role in the Technocracy movement to his current position at the apex of tech power and far-right politics. From Musk's early education and influences, the creation of PayPal, and the meteoric rise of Tesla and SpaceX thanks to millions in government handouts, to his acquisition of X.com and his ascension as a 'dark MAGA' influencer and kingmaker, Elon Musk: American Oligarch captures the tension, tumult, and chaos in which oligarchs thrive today. Cunningham's award-winning clarity and style sparkle as he presents freewheeling financial and engineering concepts used by startups and tech companies. This fast-paced biography reveals the complex interactions of visionary ideas, relentless drive, and unyielding ambition. Elon Musk: American Oligarch offers a fresh, unvarnished look at Musk's rise, aggressive leadership style, and appetite for risk-taking that have propelled him into a unique position as an unelected private business owner with unprecedented access to political power.
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Future Boy
'Back to the Future super-fans are predictably well served here ... Fox's evocative descriptions of a lost Hollywood - pre-word processor, never mind pre-internet - will also interest a more general readership.' - Guardian
A poignant, heartfelt and funny memoir about how, in 1985, Michael J Fox brought two iconic roles to life simultaneously - Alex Keaton in Family Ties and Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Here is the amazing true story, as only Michael J Fox can tell it ...
In early 1985, Michael J. Fox was one of the biggest stars on television. His world was about to get even bigger, but only if he could survive the kind of double duty unheard of in Hollywood. Fox's days were already dedicated to rehearsing and taping the hit sitcom Family Ties, but then the chance of a lifetime came his way. Soon, he committed his nights to a new time-travel adventure film being directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg, Back to the Future. Sitcom during the day, movie at night - day after day, for months.
Fox's nightly commute from a soundstage at Paramount to the back lot at Universal Studios, from one dream job to another, would become his own space-time continuum. It was in this time portal that Alex P. Keaton handed the baton to Marty McFly while Michael J. Fox tried to catch a few minutes of sleep. Alex's bravado, Marty's flair, and Fox's comedic virtuosity all swirled together to create something truly special.
In Future Boy, Fox tells the remarkable story of playing two landmark roles at the same time - a slice of entertainment history that's never been told. Using new interviews with the cast and crew of both projects, the result is a vividly drawn and eye-opening story of creative achievement by a beloved icon. -
King Sorrow
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill, a chilling tale of modern-world dangers, dark academia, and the unexpected consequences of revenge as six friends dabble in the occult and are tragically, horrifyingly successful… calling forth an evil entity that demands regular human sacrifice.
“A brilliantly Faustian fable with a heart as huge as a dragon’s, and a stinging twist in its tail. I devoured it.” —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Suite 11
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.
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Paper Girl
An Instant National Bestseller!
"There couldn’t be a timelier book . . . searingly poignant, essential . . . Macy follows closely in the footsteps of . . . Barbara Ehrenreich and Tracy Kidder, combining memoir with reportage, a raft of sobering statistics and, most uniquely in our era, a willingness to engage in uncomfortable conversations." —The Washington Post
From one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the forces eroding America’s social fabric, her most personal and powerful work: a reckoning with the changes that have rocked her own beloved small Ohio hometown
Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the ’70s and ’80s—certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that had helped raise her.
But as Macy’s mother’s health declined in 2020, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community’s civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn’t begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. In nearby Springfield, Macy watched as her ex-boyfriend—once the most liberal person she knew—became a lead voice of opposition against the Haitian immigrants, parroting false talking points throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.
This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues.
Paper Girl is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth—in person, with respect—she has found sparks of human dignity that she has used to light a signal fire of warning but also of hope.
Roll for Initiative
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Glitch
From comics rising star Sarah Graley, a fresh and funny middle-grade graphic novel featuring a girl who must save a virtual world... and her own!
Izzy has an incredible secret -- she can enter the world of her new video game! She meets Rae, a robot who says Izzy is destined to save Dungeon City from the Big Boss. How is this possible?! And how can she fight for this virtual world when she's got a whole real life to keep up with: her family (though she could do without her mom's annoying cat), and her best friend, Eric. Things get even weirder when Izzy loses a life while inside the game, and she starts to worry about what might happen if she gets a Game Over for good. Meanwhile, Eric has been super upset with Izzy since she's been keeping secrets and bailing on their plans. Can Izzy survive Dungeon City and save their friendship?
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Just Roll with It
Starting middle school is hard enough when you don't know anyone; it's even harder when you're shy. A contemporary middle-grade graphic novel for fans of Guts and Real Friends about how dealing with anxiety and OCD can affect everyday life.
As long as Maggie rolls the right number, nothing can go wrong...right?
Maggie just wants to get through her first year of middle school. But between finding the best after-school clubs, trying to make friends, and avoiding the rumored monster on school grounds, she’s having a tough time...so she might need a little help from her twenty-sided dice. But what happens if Maggie rolls the wrong number?
A touching middle-grade graphic novel that explores the complexity of anxiety, OCD, and learning to trust yourself and the world around you.
“A charming, compassionate story that’s sure to resonate with anyone who’s ever stayed up worrying.” —Gale Galligan, adaptor and illustrator of the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel series -
Buzzing (a Graphic Novel)
ALA 2025 Rainbow Book List Pick * 2024 Eisner-Nominated for Best Publication for Kids * A 2024 ALA Notable Children's Book * New York Public Library Best Book of 2023
★ "Heartwarming [and] authentic" --Shelf Awareness, starred review
A moving middle grade graphic novel about friendship, belonging, and learning to love yourself despite the voices in your head.
Isaac Itkin can't get away from his thoughts.
As a lonely twelve-year-old kid with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), everything from studying to looking in the mirror becomes a battle between him and a swarm of unhelpful thoughts.
The strict therapy his mother insists on doesn't seem to be working, but when a group of friends invites him to join their after-school role-playing game, the thoughts feel a little less loud, and the world feels a little brighter.
But Isaac's therapist says that exposure to games can have negative effects on kids with OCD, and when his grades slip, his helicopter mother won't let him play anymore. Now Isaac needs to find a way to prove to himself, to his mother, and to the world that the way to quiet the noise in his head may have been inside him all along. -
Spellbinders: The Not-So-Chosen One
"Ben may only be pretending to be the 'Chosen One'—but I’ve definitely chosen this one as my favorite new fantasy series.”
—Max Brallier, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Last Kids on Earth series
How far would you go to play the hero? One seventh grader gets way more than he bargained for when he is swept into the fantasy quest of his gaming dreams in this funny illustrated series full of adventure and twists.
It’s not so easy being the Chosen One (or in Ben Whitlock’s case, pretending to be the Chosen One). Sure, when you’ve been mistaken for a long-prophesied hero by a teenage girl/mysterious assassin and transported to a fantasy realm you're supposedly destined to save, you don’t have to worry about things like math homework. But when flying narwhals are trying to blast you into oblivion (gulp) and a bunch of old mystics in flip-flops want you to enter something called the Gullet of Eternal Torment (double gulp), suddenly a C in algebra doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
Back in the real world, Ben preferred to escape into fictional adventures and role-playing games. But the more he learns about his true quest, the more he realizes that being a hero goes way beyond rolling a few dice. . . . -
Dungeon Critters
Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter's Dungeon Critters is a middle-grade graphic novel about a gang of adorable animal friends on a D&D style dungeon crawl.
Quests! Plots! Evil Plants! Magic and mayhem!
Join the Dungeon Critters—a tight-knit squad of animal companions—on a wild adventure investigating a sinister botanical conspiracy among the furry nobility. As they risk their lives traveling through haunted dungeons, swamps, and high society balls—they also come closer together as friends.
Motivated by rivalries, ideals, and a lust for adventure, these critters navigate not only perils and dangers of the natural world, but also perils and dangers...of the heart! -
Eowulf: Of Monsters & Middle School
A Kirkus Best Book of the Year
This action-packed graphic novel stars an unforgettable, iconic new heroine who has monster problems—and middle school problems!
Eowulf Wegmund just had the most amazing summer ever! She traveled to a magical supply shop at the crossroads of all realities, rescued unicorn soldiers from a pocket dimension, and fought an evil god with the help of her new friend Nico Bravo. Pretty rad stuff, even if you are descended from the legendary monster hunter Beowulf!
Now Eowulf finds herself back home in her boring New Jersey suburb, where the only monsters are the ones in her D&D game and the weirdest creature around is her middle school classmate Amadeus Hornburg—and he’s just an angry little jerk that nobody likes. But when a mysterious supervillain returns to wreak havoc on their quiet town, Eowulf and Amadeus must join forces to unearth a dark past that wants to stay buried. -
DnDoggos: Get the Party Started
A Kirkus Best Book of the Year (Middle Grade)
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year (Middle Grade)
An ALA Best Graphic Novel for Children
Four adorable dogs are tail-waggingly excited to play their favorite role-playing game in DnDoggos: Get the Party Started, the middle grade graphic novel debut from online comic creator Scout Underhill.
They've picked their characters and favorite dice, and are ready to set off on the adventure their game master Magnus has created for them.
Pickles, a rough and tumble fighter; Tonka, a playful and fun-loving bard; and Zoey, a wise and caring cleric, are given a quest to fetch a magical dog collar from a nearby swamp. But when they triumphantly return, they soon find that the collar isn't the only thing that has gone missing from Tail's Bend. All the squeaky toys in town have disappeared and Squish, the mayor's young son, has set off on his own to find them.
It's up to the Doggos to rescue Squish, track down the missing toys, and save the day! -
Table Titans Club
Growing pains, game-play adventure, and 20-sided dice abound in this new graphic novel series about a middle school Dungeons & Dragons club from an Eisner and Harvey Award-winning cartoonist.
Valeria Winters has an easier time finding trouble than making friends. A fantasy-obsessed nerd with the legendary confidence—and temper—of a Valkyrie, Val promises her mom that things will be different at her new school. “No more fighting!”
As if by fate, she meets the Table Titans right away—Alan, Andrew, and Darius, who run the school’s tabletop gaming club. Finally, Val has found her own adventuring party! And even better . . . a place where she belongs.
So when the future of the club is threatened, Val makes it her personal quest to save the Table Titans. She’ll have to face the fire-breathing wrestling coach and popular girl Kate, who seems out for revenge. Revenge for what? Val has no clue.
As the quest grows more and more complicated, Val wishes she was like her peaceful druid Lulani from the Table Titans' campaign, whose calm voice always prevails. If she loses her cool in real life, Val might lose more than the Table Titans club. She'll have to roll a natural 20 in charisma to keep her new friends together.
Set in the same universe as the Eisner Award-winning webcomic PvP, Scott Kurtz’s artwork blends zany, fantastical visuals with slice-of-life humor. For fans of fantasy and coming of age stories alike, Table Titans finds humor, heart, and adventure in a tale of friendship and finding your people.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Named to Little Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List -
Homerooms and Hall Passes
"You can't help falling in love with this hilarious upside-down take on Dungeons & Dragons. I read; I cheered; I laughed out loud."--Gordon Korman
In the mystical realm of Bríandalör, every day the brave and the bold delve into hidden temples or forgotten dungeons, battling vile monsters and evil wizards to loot their treasure hoards for sweet, sweet magic items.
But in their free time, our heroes--Thromdurr the mighty barbarian, Devis the shifty thief, Vela the noble paladin, Sorrowshade the Gloom Elf assassin, and Albiorix the (good!) wizard--need to relax and unwind.
That's why they meet up once a week to play Homerooms & Hall Passes: a role-playing game where they assume the characters of average American eighth graders.
But when the five young adventurers are magically transported into their H&H game by an ancient curse, they must band together to survive their toughest challenge yet: middle school.
Who knew that battling ogres would be easier than passing algebra or navigating the cafeteria social scene? They must use what they've learned from playing Homerooms & Hall Passes to figure out how to save their game world (which might actually be real...).
Dungeons & Dragons meets Jumanji in this new, laugh-out-loud adventure series from the author of the beloved Hamstersaurus Rex series.
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Roll for Initiative
Perfect for fans of Dungeons & Dragons, Raina Telgemeier, and Jessica Kim, a heartfelt coming-of-age middle grade novel about finding your voice and believing in your best geeky self.
Riley Henderson has never taken a bus to school in her entire life. Or made an afterschool snack, or finished her homework on her own, or--ewww--done her own laundry. That's what her older brother Devin was for.
But now Devin's gone. He's off in California attending a fancy college gaming program while Riley is stuck alone in Florida with her mom. That is, until a cool nerd named Lucy gives Riley no choice but to get over her shyness and fear of rejection and become friends. The best part is . . . both girls are into Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, playing D&D was something Riley and Devin used to do together, with Devin as the dungeon master, guiding Riley through his intricately planned campaigns. So, of course, Riley is more than a little nervous when Lucy suggests that she run a campaign for them. For the chance at a friend, though, she's willing to give it a shot. Soon, their party grows and with the help of her new D&D friends, Riley discovers that not only can she function without Devin, she kind of likes it. She figures out that bus thing, totes the clothes down to the laundry room and sets up her D&D campaigns right there on the slightly suspect folding table, makes her own snacks and dinner-- the whole deal. But when Devin runs into trouble with his program and returns home, it's pretty clear, even to Riley, that since he can't navigate his own life, he's going to live Riley's for her. Now she has to help Devin go back to college and prove to her mom that she can take care of herself . . . all before the upcoming Winter-Con.
It's time to Roll for Initiative. -
No Humans Allowed!
From New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Roux and acclaimed artist Tim Probert comes an all-new original Dungeons & Dragons middle grade series!
Welcome to Dungeon Academy, where monsters and creatures train for the dark world that awaits just beyond the dungeon walls! But Zellidora "Zelli" Stormclash is a bit--different. She's the one thing monsters and creatures of the Forgotten Realms fear the most: Zelli is a human!
Knowing she'll never be accepted, Zelli's parents disguise her as a minotaur in hopes she'll blend with the academy's monstrous surroundings. Zelli does her work, keeps to herself, and becomes "invisible" to everyone.
While in History of Horrible Humans class, Zelli learns of the great human adventurer, Allidora Steelstrike, who oddly resembles her. Could Zelli also be a Steelstrike? Seeking answers to her true lineage, Zelli embarks on a dangerous adventure.
But she won't be alone. A vegan owlbear, a cowardly kobold, and a shapeshifting mimic will join Zelli on her quest for truth in a world that holds no place for them. And who knows? Perhaps these monstrous misfits may discover some truths of their own . . .
Get ready for humor, heart, magic, and adventure as middle graders and beyond learn to embrace who they are, accept others' differences, and discover that making mistakes is OK--as long as you learn from them.
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Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Club: Roll Call
From New York Times bestselling author Molly Knox Ostertag and critically acclaimed illustrator Xanthe Bouma comes an all-new Dungeons & Dragons graphic novel series!
Middle school is a dungeon... At least, that's how Jess sees it.
Luckily, she and her best friend Olivia know how to escape into the sprawling worlds of their own imaginations. The two friends have always loved making up stories, first with little kid games of make-believe, and more recently with the fantasy roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. When they play, Olivia runs the game as Dungeon Master and Jess is the solo party member, playing a take-no-prisoners, lone-wolf fighter of her own design named Sir Corius.
But when Olivia wants to add new players to their group, Jess finds herself struggling to share their game--and her best friend. Will their epic campaign withstand all this change, or has their adventure--and their friendship--finally come to an end?