LBC Chat Monthly Picks 2020-2024

"A never before published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great--not the villain the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of valor and vision."--

"Most of us assume that the key to overcoming [anxiety] is to think our way out. And for a while it works. But there is always something that sends us back into the anxious spiral we've been trying to climb out of. In [this book], Dr. Martha Beck explains why anxiety is skyrocketing around you, and likely within you. She also tells you how to not only reduce your anxiety but use it to propel you into a life filled with peace, meaning, and joy. Using...

"It's 1964 and Eliza Kratke is mostly content. Married thirty years, she is long settled in Bayard, Texas, with two grown children, a nice house, a little dog, and a routine. But her husband has a secret, and Eliza has not been brave enough to demand to know what it is. So when her husband dies suddenly, the ground doesn't just shift under Eliza's feet--it falls away entirely, revealing that she has known nothing true about her life. How should she...

"Keru and Nate first meet in college, brought together by a joke at a Halloween party (would a 'great white' costume mean dressing like a shark or a privileged Ivy League student?) and marrying a few years later. Misfits in their own families, they find in each other a feeling of home. Keru is the only child of strict, well-educated Chinese immigrant parents who hold her to impossible standards even as an adult ('To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,'...

"Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells 'small' fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences. Even if it's a lonely life, it's better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed...

"There's been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead--under bizarre circumstances--in the castle tower's book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in--or...

"A once-famous ballerina faces a final choice--to return to the world of Russian dance that nearly broke her, or to walk away forever--in this ... novel of redemption and love"--

"Accidentally Wes Anderson began as a personal travel bucket list, a catalog of visually striking and historically unique destinations that capture the imagined worlds of Wes Anderson. Now, inspired by a community of more than one million Adventurers, Accidentally Wes Anderson tells the stories behind more than 200 of the most beautiful, idiosyncratic, and interesting places on Earth.This book, authorized by Wes Anderson himself, travels to every...

"Dave Win, the son of a a Burmese man he's never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates. Alan Hollinghurst's ... novel follows Dave from the 1960s on--through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others...