Holiday Book Buying Guide

Give the gift of a book this holiday season!

Lackawanna County librarians recommend these books as great gift ideas for readers who like novels and non-fiction.

 

  The Wonder : a novel by Emma Donoghue
Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale’s Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl.

 

 

 

 The underground railroad : a novel by Colson Whitehead.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels.

 

 

 Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. . Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Run fast, eat slow : nourishing recipes for athletes by Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky

 From world-class marathoner and 4-time Olympian Shalane Flanagan and chef Elyse Kopecky comes a whole foods, flavor-forward cookbook and New York Times bestseller that proves food can be indulgent and nourishing at the same time. Finally here’s a cookbook for runners that shows fat is essential for flavor and performance and that counting calories, obsessing over protein, and restrictive dieting does more harm than good.

 

Additional Suggestions:

• Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris
• The Twilight Wife by A. J. Banner
• He Will Be My Ruin by K.A. Tucker
• Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
• A Gift from Bob by James Bowen
• Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Strong is the New Beautiful by Lindsey Vonn
• Monet’s Palate Cookbook: The Artist and His Kitchen Garden at Giverny by Aileen Bordman and Derek Fell
• Alton Brown: EveryDayCook by Alton Brown
• The Seasoned Life: Food, Family, Faith, and the Joy of Eating Well by Ayesha Curry
•  The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War by H.W. Brands
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• My Grandmother Asked Me To Say I’m Sorry by Fredrik Backman
• And, every morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
• The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost
• Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
• The Daily Show by Chris Smith
• The Case of Beasts by Mark Salisbury
• A Life Well Played by Arnold Palmer
• Oh She Glows Every Day by Angela Liddon

 Stop by Library Express to buy new and used books or those on your holiday wish list! Get 15% off your total purchase with this special holiday coupon. Download your coupon here.

Library Express is located on the 2nd Floor of the Marketplace at Steamtown.

Hours:

Sunday 11 am-6 pm
Monday Closed
Tuesday – Saturday 10am-9pm