Having trouble finding a book for this category? Here are some of our recommendations.
Black Buck
Mateo Askaripour
2021
ISBN: 9780358380887
"Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother's home-cooked meals. A chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, CEO of Sumwun, NYC's hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor. As the only Black person in the company, Darren reimagines himself as "Buck," a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. When things turn tragic at home, Buck begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America's sales force, setting off a chain of events that changes the game."--Publisher.
Ebook available from the Alaska Digital Library and audiobook always available on hoopla.
Fire Exit
2024
ISBN: 9781959030553
A TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, Harper's Bazaar Best Book of the Year Finalist 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award Longlisted for 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction "Utterly consuming. . . . Fire Exit absolutely smolders."--Tommy Orange From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, comes a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital library.
Holding pattern
Jenny Xie
2023
ISBN: 9780593539705
"Holding Pattern is a novel about immigration and belonging, mother-daughter relationships, and the many ways we can learn to hold each other. At 28, Kathleen Cheng returns home to live with her single mother, Marissa, an immigrant from China. Her mother, to Katheen's surprise, is in love, and Kathleen helps her mother plan her wedding to a tech entrepreneur. Kathleen takes a job working for an unusual start-up, and as mother and daughter peel back the layers of their history, they come to a new understanding of how they can propel each other forward, and what they've done to hold each other back"-- Provided by publisher.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Sirens & muses : a novel
Antonia Angress
2022
ISBN: 9780593496435
"The lives of four artists are forever altered by the desires, protests, and ambitions that lure and unsettle them in this magnetic novel. It's 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarified bubble, dreaming only of disproving the notion that in art, everything has already been done. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa's unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can't shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Belfer-a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain cultural relevance, and perhaps a spotlight. When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now, all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and amongst each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life-of success, failure, and joy-or risk losing themselves altogether. With mesmerizing grace and earnest beauty, Sirens & Muses wrestles with questions of selfhood and ambition, art and protest, and new love. At the same time, with a canny, critical eye, the novel upends notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation's fight to own their future"-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Four treasures of the sky
Jenny Tinghui Zhang
2022
ISBN: 9781250811783
"Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been-including the ones she most wants to leave behind-in order to finally claim her own name and story. At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat"-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
The bear and the nightingale : a novel
Katherine Arden
2017
ISBN: 9781101885932
"In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay."-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Where am I now? : true stories of girlhood and accidental fame
Mara Wilson
2016
ISBN: 9780143128229
""Growing up, I wanted to BE Mara Wilson. Where Am I Now? is a delight." --Ilana Glazer, cocreator and star of Broad City "Genuine and authentic, funny and heartbreaking, Where Am I Now? reminds you that no matter how unique your life is, some things bind us all together." --Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy A former child actress best known for her starring roles in Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, Mara Wilson has always felt a little young and out of place: as the onlykid on a film set full of adults, the first daughter in a house full of boys, a Valley girl in New York and a neurotic in California, and a grown-up the world still remembers as a little girl. Tackling everything fromwhat she learned about sex on the set of Melrose Place, to discovering in adolescence that she was no longer "cute" enough for Hollywood, these essays chart her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity. They also illuminate universal struggles, like navigating love and loss, and figuring out who you are and where you belong. Honest, insightful, and hilarious, Where Am I Now? introduces Mara Wilson as a brilliant new chronicler of the experience that is growing up young and female"-- Provided by publisher.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
The Young Elites
Marie Lu
2014
ISBN: 9780399167836
Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina's black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel father believes she is a malfetto, an abomination, ruining their family's good name and standing in the way of their fortune. But some of the fever's survivors are rumored to possess more than just scars -- they are believed to have mysterious and powerful gifts, and though their identities remain secret, they have come to be called the Young Elites. Teren Santoro works for the king. As Leader of the Inquisition Axis, it is his job to seek out the Young Elites, to destroy them before they destroy the nation. He believes the Young Elites to be dangerous and vengeful, but it's Teren who may possess the darkest secret of all. Enzo Valenciano is a member of the Dagger Society. This secret sect of Young Elites seeks out others like them before the Inquisition Axis can. But when the Daggers find Adelina, they discover someone with powers like they've never seen. Adelina wants to believe Enzo is on her side, and that Teren is the true enemy. But the lives of these three will collide in unexpected ways, as each fights a very different and personal battle. But of one thing they are all certain: Adelina has abilities that shouldn't belong in this world. A vengeful blackness in her heart. And a desire to destroy all who dare to cross her.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.