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25 Contemporary Authors to Read for Black History Month

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Katie Auman in Book Recommendations, Library Blog, Library Services

Did you know that the month of February was chosen for Black History Month to coincide Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays?

As part of your Black History Month celebrations, take a look at fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from these 25 contemporary, award-winning and acclaimed authors.

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
One of America’s most acclaimed poets presents 70 poems bearing the same title that are haunted by the country’s past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares.

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
An immigrant working class couple from Cameroon and the upper class American family for whom they work find their lives and marriages shaped by financial circumstances, infidelities, secrets, and the 2008 recession. Also as an eBook.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Hired to find a mysterious boy who disappeared three years before, Tracker joins a search party that follows the boy’s trail through ancient cities and into dense forests, and encounters creatures who are intent on destroying them.

Brown: Poems by Kevin Young
Young uses poetry to meditate on how brownness and blackness in the United States tells an ongoing story, drawing on the poet’s own childhood, Emmet Till’s lynching, and De La Soul.

Dear Ijeawele, or, a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. “Dear Ijeawele” is her letter of response. Also as an eBook.

Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith
A collection that opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police—a place where suspicion, violence and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love and longevity they deserved here on earth.

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper
A leading young black feminist illuminates how organized anger, friendship, and faith can be powerful sources of positive feminist change, explaining how targeted rage has shaped the careers of such African-American notables as Serena Williams, Beyoncé, and Michelle Obama.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clementine Wamariya
Traces the author’s experiences as a young child during the Rwanda massacres and displacements, which separated her from her parents and forced the author and her older sister to endure six years as refugees in seven countries before she was granted asylum in the United States. Also as an eBook.

Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History by Camille T. Dungy
The poet-lecturer explores the intimate and vulnerable experiences of raising a child, counting on the goodwill of others, and living with illness.

The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post-Civil Rights Politics by Andreana Clay
Provides a detailed account of the strategies that youth activists use to frame their social justice agendas and organize in their local communities.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Two half-sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations marked by wealth, slavery, war, coal mining, the Great Migration and the realities of 20th-century Harlem. Also an Audiobook/CD.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Driven by the secrets and vengeance that mark his street culture, 15-year-old Will contemplates, over the course of 60 psychologically suspenseful seconds, whether or not he is going to murder the person who killed his brother. (Teen/YA) Also as an eBook and Playaway.

Loving Day by Mat Johnson
Racially-mixed Warren Duffy, returning to America to claim a mansion in Philadelphia left to him by his father, encounters his daughter and they try to forge a life for themselves in a haunted house as members of a Utopian mixed-race cult. Also an Audiobook/CD.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education and public benefits create a permanent under-caste based largely on race. Also as an eBook and eAudiobook.

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
A follow-up to the award-winning The Hate U Give finds an ambitious young rapper pouring her frustrations into a first song only to find herself at the center of a viral controversy that forces her to become the menace that her public reputation has portrayed her to be.

On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by DeRay Mckesson
The civil rights activist and organizer offers ways for all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to take responsibility for imagining and building a better world.

Solo by Kwame Alexander
Seventeen-year-old Blade endeavors to resolve painful issues from his past to navigate the challenges of his former rockstar father’s addictions, scathing tabloid rumors, and a protected secret that threatens his own identity. (Teen/YA Fiction)

Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Two dancers with different approaches to their craft share a complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, in a story that transitions from northwest London to West Africa. Also an eBook and eAudiobook.

They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery
A behind-the-scenes account of the #BlackLivesMatter movement shares insights into the young men and women behind it, and the economic, political, and personal histories that inform its purpose.

Wade in the Water: Poems by Tracy K. Smith
A collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet discusses what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in an American culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Also an eAudiobook.

Well-Read Black Girl by Glory Edim
The founder of the popular online book club curates a collection of original essays from today’s best black female voices, including Jesmyn Ward, Lynn Nottage, Jacqueline Woodson, Gabourey Sidibe, Morgan Jerkins, Tayari Jones and Rebecca Walker.

We are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays by Samantha Irby
The woman behind ‘Bitchesgottaeat.com’ shares stories of her life from a failed “Bachelorette” application to a romantic vacation and ill-fated pilgrimage to scatter her estranged father’s ashes in Nashville. Also as an eBook.

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A portrait of the historic Barack Obama era features essays originally published in “The Atlantic,” including “Fear of a Black President” and “The Case for Reparations,” as well as new essays revisiting each year of the Obama administration. Also as an eBook and Audiobook/CD.

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
Raised in America, the multiracial daughter of a mother from Johannesburg struggles with her mother’s terminal cancer and her own need to find love and a place to belong, quests shaped by losses, changes in her sense of identity, and unexpected motherhood. Also as an eBook.

White Rage: the Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
From the end of the Civil War to the tumultuous issues in America today, an acclaimed historian reframes the conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America. Also as an eBook.

Looking for another author or title not on our list? Stop by the libraries or check our online catalog for availability. #ConnectToCuriosity

Black History Month, book list, book recommendation No Comments Read More

How Do You Love the Library? Let Us Count the Ways this Month

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Katie Auman in Library Blog, Library Programs, Library Services, News

You know you love books. And we know that you love books. And you know that we know that you love books.

But, we also know that you love other aspects of the library, too.

During February, as people celebrate love and Valentine’s Day, it’s also time to celebrate what you love about your library! Yep, it’s National Library Lovers Month, and we want to hear from you about what you love most about the library and how it’s positively impacted your life.

We recently launched a new project called “Share Your Library Story” to gather and share all the ways that the library, its services, resources, and staff have influenced your life.

Of course we want to hear about your love of books and what reading means to you – we are a library after all.

But modern libraries are about more – they’re about people and community. And in a community that avoids the one-size-fits-all label, each of us uses the library in different ways and for different needs.

Tell us how you’re using the library by visiting our Share Your Library Story webpage and sending us a quick love letter. Help us spread the #LibraryLove this month.

P.S. We love you back! Thanks for supporting Poudre River Public Library District.

#LibraryLove, Fort Collins, National Library Lovers Month, share your library story No Comments Read More

Everyone’s Falling in Love with Romance Books!

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Katie Auman in Book Recommendations, Library Blog

Romance Fiction is booming as a billion-dollar industry that outperforms other book genres, and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing.

The industry is about a third larger than the inspirational book industry, and about the size of the mystery novel genre and science fiction/fantasy genre markets combined. Romance is BIG business (and not just during February).

Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: (1) a central love story and (2) an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Writers might include subplots, but the love story is the main focus, and the lovers who risk and struggle for each other are rewarded somehow. 

To give you some new story ideas, our Librarians offer up suggestions for love and romance (or romance-adjacent) novels available at the Libraries. Check out titles for contemporary, historical, paranormal, and erotic romance.

Contemporary Romance

These novels are set from 1950 to the present and focus primarily on the romantic relationship. The subgenre can include romantic suspense, mystery or thrillers, LGBT+ stories, and Christian romance among others.

The Best Man (Blue Heron Bk 1) by Kristan Higgins
After being left at the altar years ago, Faith is ready to return to her family’s winery, but when she finds herself drawn to local police chief Levi, she cannot forget the role he played in breaking up her wedding. Also an eBook and eAudiobook.

Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas
Returning to town two years after marrying a man of whom her family disapproves, rebellious heiress Haven Travis is determined to never again fall for the wrong man, until she meets Hardy Cates, a sexy Texan who is an enemy of her family. Also an Audiobook/CD and eBook.

Brava, Valentine by Adriana Trigiani
When Valentine Roncalli discovers a long lost shoe design, a family secret unravels that helps her take control of the company from a conniving relative, but first she seeks the counsel, and more, of her ex-fiancée, Bret Fitzpatrick, to help re-boot the business while she pursues a hot romance with a handsome Italian from her past. Also an Audiobook/CD.

Burning Lamp (Dreamlight Trilogy Bk 2) by Amanda Quick
A second entry in a trilogy that began with Fired Up finds hallucination-prone crime lord Griffin Winters believing he has been struck with the Winters Curse and engaging in a dangerous psychic experiment with the mysterious Adelaide Pyne, who holds Nicholas Winters’s missing lamp.

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman 
The story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a male summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Winner of the Lambda Award. Also an eAudiobook, on DVD, and in Spanish.

The First Love by Beverly Lewis
In the summer of 1951, Amish woman Maggie Esh is struggling with a debilitating illness and few future prospects. When revival meetings come to the area, Maggie attends out of curiosity, and the words of the evangelist begin to stir something deep inside her. Also in Large Print, Audiobook/CD, and eAudiobook.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Not for the squeamish or faint of heart, this brilliantly daring novel is shocking and delightful. Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same. Available only as an eAudiobook.

Less: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer
Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his 50th birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself and making connections with the past. Also as Audiobook/CD and eBook.

River Road by Jayne Ann Krentz
Returning 13 years after an embarrassing incident from her teens to the hometown of her beloved late aunt, forensic genealogist Lucy Sheridan makes shocking discoveries about her aunt’s death, the disappearance of a cold-blooded local and an attractive former cop. Also in Large Print, Audiobook/CD, eAudiobook.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
A socially awkward genetics professor who has never been on a second date sets out to find the perfect wife, but instead finds Rosie Jarman, a fiercely independent barmaid who is on a quest to find her biological father. Also in Large Print, eBook, and Audiobook/CD.

Rumor Has It (Animal Magnetism Series) by Jill Shalvis
When Special Ops soldier Griffin Reid returns to his hometown of Sunshine, Idaho, to recover from an injury, sparks fly between him and teacher Kate Evans, who he remembers only as his little sister’s friend. Also as an eAudiobook.

Stars of Fortune (Guardians Trilogy Bk 1) by Nora Roberts
Centuries after guardian stars tied to the powers of fire, ice, and water fall to earth and place the fates of worlds in the hands of their finders, reclusive artist Sasha Riggs is drawn by vivid dreams to a Greek island to search for the fire star and passion. Also in Large Print, Audiobook/CD, and eBook.

Historical Romance

This group of romance novels are set prior to 1950. If you like historical fiction, this might be the subgenre for you.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Shocking her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort in 1939 London, socialite Mary teaches evacuated and marginalized children and bonds with her employer, Tom, before their romance is challenged by a painful love triangle and the grueling realities of the war. Also in Large Print and Audiobook/CD.

The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith
In occupied 1945 Venice, a fisherman rescues a Jewish woman on the run from the Wehrmact SS and chooses to protect her from the Nazis, a decision that leads them into a turbulent love affair marked by beauty and danger.  Also in Large Print, eBook, and Audiobook/CD.

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
Sent to medieval Cambridge in order to exonerate a group of Jewish prisoners with financial ties to King Henry I, University of Salerno medical examiner Adelia discovers that the killer may be a former crusader.  Also in Large Print.

Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Series) by C.S. Harris
When a beautiful young musician with ties to Princess Charlotte is found dead in a snowdrift, Sebastian St. Cyr finds himself pulled into a maze of treachery as he untangles the secrets of her world. Also as an eBook and Audiobook/CD.

Paranormal Romance

The eclectic paranormal romance sub-genre includes fantasy worlds or paranormal or science fiction elements that are central to the plot. You will also find sub-subgenres like “space romance” here.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
Discovering a magical manuscript in Oxford’s library, scholar Diana Bishop, a descendant of witches who has rejected her heritage, inadvertently unleashes a fantastical underworld of daemons, witches, and vampires whose activities center around an enchanted treasure. Also Audiobook/CD, Playaway, and eBook.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
A little girl who is detained by the military, restrained in a wheelchair and goes to school while heavily guarded doesn’t truly understand why she is special until it is up to her to save the world. Also DVD, eBook, Audiobook/CD, eAudiobook.

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor
Madeleine Maxwell, new recruit to St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, discovers that the society members travel through time to thwart time-traveling terrorists and investigate major historical events. Also an eBook.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Joining the crew of the aging Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that has seen better days, loner Rosemary Harper must unexpectedly risk her life when they are offered the job of a lifetime, which teaches her valuable lessons about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t the worst thing in the universe. Also an eBook.

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson Series) by Patricia Briggs
While trying to live a so-called normal existence, mechanic Mercy Thompson, a shapeshifter raised by werewolves, gets into trouble with the gremlins, witches, and vampires with whom she deals on a daily basis. Also an eBook.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Further adventures of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the all new voidoid gang upon returning to Earth after eight years of crazed wanderings around the galaxy in this science fiction spoof which continues The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. Also Audiobook/CD, eBook, and eAudiobook.

Spirit Bound: A Sea Haven Novel by Christine Feehan
Rising artist Judith Henderson, an ethereal beauty with a mysterious past, becomes the obsession of two men — deadly undercover agent Stefan Prakenskii and a criminal mastermind — who long to possess her.  Also in Large Print.

Erotic Romance

It’s just like it sounds: novels with strong, often explicit, sexual interaction that is inherent to the story, character growth and relationship development. Erotic romance may contain elements of other subgenres.

Call of Crows Series by Shelly Laurenston
“Vikings, rockin’ women and a little mythology. Laurenston has taken Norse mythology and created a modern world of epic female warriors who battle jerks and Hell’s carrion alike.” Various formats.

Crossfire Series by Sylvia Day
The Crossfire series follows the emotional and romantic journey taken by Gideon Cross and Eva Tramell. Various formats.

Fifty Shades Trilogy by E.L. James
Hailed as “being in a class by itself,” the Fifty Shades Trilogy will “obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.” Various formats.

What are some of your favorite romance – or romance-adjacent – novels?

Share with us in the comments. Happy reading!

book list, book recommendation, fiction, Fort Collins, genreland, holiday, romance No Comments Read More
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    February 14, 2019
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Including the collection of Front Range Community College, Larimer Campus