Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
A complete list of current Peak Picks titles.
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The Unveiling
Adult Fiction. “Striker isn’t surprised to be the only Black passenger on the cruise to Antarctica. While her fellow tourists are wealthy sightseers, Striker is on the ship for business; she’s a location scout for the film industry, hired by a production company making a film about the disastrous Shackleton expedition. …Striker observes her extremely privileged fellow passengers with the same wry detachment as the local wildlife. But when a freak accident leaves the group stranded… and they regroup in a shelter left by some long-forgotten expedition, the natural environment quickly turns against them.” --Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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We Survived the Night
Adult Nonfiction. “NoiseCat's ambitious debut ruminates on generational trauma and resilience among Indigenous communities. It opens with a night watchman's horrific discovery at St. Joseph's Mission, an Indian residential school in B.C.: a Salish newborn, NoiseCat's father, abandoned in the garbage, ‘the only known survivor of the school's incinerator.’ With this harrowing legacy at the heart of his narrative, NoiseCat traces his family's history, including his father's achievements as an artist and struggles with alcoholism, and reflects on Coyote Stories, the oral tradition centered on the famed trickster.” --Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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All the Way to the River
Adult Nonfiction. “Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) first met Rayya Elias in 2000…the pair gradually evolved from casual friends to soulmates, with Gilbert ending her second marriage to start a relationship with Elias after Elias received a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. After the couple consum-mated their attraction, both fell deeper into addiction--Gilbert to love and sex, Elias to alcohol and drugs. After Elias died in 2018, Gilbert examined her addictions and arrived at a spiritual awakening. Gilbert achieves her signature intimacy through a bluntly confessional tone and an admirable ability to stare darkness in the face without losing hope.” Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Amity
Adult Fiction. “Coleman is a young New Orleanian who, newly emancipated, still works as a servant in the household he grew up in. The paterfamilias, Wyatt Harper, has taken off for the desert of northern Mexico…; he has taken Coleman’s sister, June, with him... June escapes, falling in with a guerrilla band made up of Black and Native American men and women. Resourceful and smart, she fits right in, but now Harper is on the hunt for her, employing a grandiloquent ruffian to bring Coleman to him in order to persuade June to return. A memorable, impeccably written tale that engages the reader, with its twists and turns, from beginning to end.” Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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History Matters
Adult Nonfiction. “History Matters brings together selected essays by beloved historian David McCullough, some published here for the first time, written at different points over the course of his long career but all focused on the subject of his lifelong passion: the importance of history in understanding our present and future. Edited by McCullough's daughter, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and his longtime researcher, Michael Hill, History Matters is a tribute to a master historian and offers fresh insights into McCullough's enduring interests and writing life.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Mother Mary Comes to Me
Adult Nonfiction. Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist Roy recounts a life of poverty and upheaval, defiance and triumph in an emotionally raw memoir, centered on her complicated relationship with her mother. Mary Roy…was a volatile, willful woman, angry and abusive. To escape her mother's demands and tantrums, Arundhati, at age 18, decided to move permanently to Delhi…she embarked on a long relationship with a filmmaker, which ignited her career as a writer. Throughout, Mrs. Roy loomed large in her daughter's life, and her death, in 2022, left the author overcome with grief. An intimate, stirring chronicle.” Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Replaceable You
Adult Nonfiction. “The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manu-facturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available--sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we're attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? Irrepressible and accessible, Replace-able You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable and surreal quest to build a new you.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Wilderness
Adult Fiction. “Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood… swoops in and stays. As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Automatic Noodle
Adult Fiction. “When Staybehind and his fellow robots wake up after a mysterious shutdown, they find the restaurant is flooding. And worse, the owners of their shop are on the lam after running a crypto scam. But after conferring, the assorted robots, living in a postwar San Francisco in a future where California is liberated from the U.S. and robots have a first wave of basic civil rights, decide that if humans can run a restaurant, so can they. In a daring move, they reopen as Authentic Noodle, a shop that serves biang biang–style noodles. But when a robophobic group begins to flood their site with one-star reviews, they’ll have to fight to remain open. Newitz has gifted sf readers with a hopeful, postapocalyptic found-family tale.” Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Sabzi
Adult Nonfiction. “Lifting its name from the Persian word for ‘herbs’, Sabzi brings you more than 80 accessible plant-forward recipes that celebrate the best of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian flavors. From bountiful salads to fragrant soups, colorful mezze, and heart-warming mains, Yasmin invites home cooks to make delicious meals that are good for the health of both people and the planet, while staying connected to the traditional food cultures that make us who we are. With easy-to-make recipes that put vibrant vegetables at the heart of a meal, dishes in the book include: Halloumi Lasagne; Smoky Tofu Shakshuka; Sweet Potatoes with Pistachio and Mint Pesto; Rhubarb and Cardamom Tart... and many more. An invitation into Yasmin's treasure trove of a kitchen, Sabzi is a celebration of the life-affirming and nourishing power of plants.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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