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Staff Favorites 2024

A list of titles read and adored by APL staff this year.

User from Austin Public Library

85 items

  • Viola has loved the Limerence book series since she was young. When the opportunity arises for her to design a game based on it, she is thrilled. That is, until she learns that she must work with rival video game designer, Jesse Andrews. Which would…
    eAudiobook, 2024Spotify Audiobooks, 2024
  • Are you “less of shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker”? Is the biopic of your life entitled Groping for Words? Does life taste better with Gentleman’s Relish? If you not only court disaster but buy it a boutonnière, if you “could turn heads of…
    Book, 2023New York : Scribner, 2023.
  • On the 40th anniversary of its publication, Sandra Cisneros's "The House on Mango Street" still resonates as a poetic masterpiece. Through vignettes that are intimate yet universal, Cisneros delicately weaves together the dreams and struggles of…
    Book, 1991New York : Vintage Books, 1991.
  • Most people believe magic to be long dead. The only magicians left are the people who study the subject, after all, “you would not, I imagine, suggest that it is the task of botanists to devise more flowers? Or that astronomers should labour to…
    Book, 2020London : Bloomsbury, 2020
  • A perfect, cross-country summer road trip. Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale used to be friends, before an argument in high school tore them apart. Now, the two are teachers at the same school and are brought together as they face the terminal cancer…
    Book, 2024New York : Atria Paperbacks, 2024.
  • The novel follows a group of translators – known in the first half of the novel only by their native languages -- on their journey into a primordial forest in Poland, poised to translate the next great novel by the titular Irena Rey. But shortly…
    Book, 2024New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, [2024]
  • Told across 12 sessions with a senior workforce counselor, this moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking story of a fiftysomething Dominican immigrant trying to find a job, reconnect with her son, and navigate her nosy neighbors has ties to all our…
    Book, 2022New York, NY : Flatiron Books, 2022.
  • Bob, an introverted, retired librarian has suffered losses in his long life, but has also enjoyed adventures. His lifelong pattern has been to observe more than act. But in his seventieth decade, Bob is moved to act in small and large ways. His…
    Book, 2023New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2023]
  • Håkan Söderström, a young Swedish boy, who speaks no English, finds himself alone, having been separated from his brother in a crowded port, he boards a ship destined for what he believes to be New York. Instead the ship takes Håkan to San…
    Book, 2017Minneapolis : Coffee House Press, [2017]
  • This novel -- a thinly veiled retelling of Nora Ephron's marriage to, and divorce from, Carl Bernstein -- is funny, sharp, and neurotic. If you're an audiobook fan, Meryl Streep's narration is perfect. -- Allison
    Book, 1996New York : Vintage Contemporaries : Vintage Books : A division of Random House, Inc., 1996.
  • How far will you go to uphold your family’s legacy? In this gripping debut, Xochitl Gonzalez introduces us to Olga and Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, Puerto Rican siblings from New York who live very public and complicated lives. Prieto is a congressman…
    Book, 2022New York : Flatiron Books, 2022.
  • Claire DeWitt -- the greatest detective in the world, as she'll tell you -- uses dreams, omens, and portents to solve mysteries (along with more traditional sleuthing). Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, this novel follows Claire as she confronts a…
    Book, 2011Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2011]
  • This retelling of Medusa considers what actually makes a monster a monster? Natalie Haynes reclaims Medusa's story as a victim of circumstance and the gods plaything. As well as portray the heroic Perseus as anything but heroic. Writing with wit and…
    Book, 2023New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2023]
  • This collection is my go-to when I need to be reminded that we’re all in this human experience together. How Hempel’s stories are so spare, but read like an entire novel will never cease to be a magic trick to me. -- Leah
    Book, 2007New York ; Toronto : Scribner, 2007.
  • A Hard Boiled Detective novel written in the style of Raymond Chandler, but with voodoo and black magic. Gory and grisly yet beautifully written. The book the movie Angel Heart was based on, but the book is far superior. -- Rachel
    Book, 2011New York : Open Road Integrated Media, 2011.
  • This reflective and offbeat book follows two lonely middle-aged Londoners who form a connection through a mutual fixation with freeing sea turtles from the London Zoo. Told from the alternating perspectives of William, a bookseller, and Neaera, a…
    Book, 2013New York : New York Review Books, [2013]
  • The Prospects by KT Hoffman taught me that my favorite romance subgenre is queer sports romance. Nothing hits harder, pun intended. The Prospects was such a pleasure to read even as a person who knows very little about baseball because there was…
    Book, 2024New York : The Dial Press, [2024]
  • Jemisin, a four-time Hugo Award author, presents this speculative fiction short story collection featuring everything from steampunk to time travel. This collection is heavily indicative of her body of work, featuring stories that became the basis…
    Book, 2018New York, NY : Orbit, 2018.
  • Are you a Driver or a Parker? Have you hurtled off a cliff? Could the plunge be seen before itself, the future in the fall? If you’ve ever felt like a “two-hundred-year-old starving beast being fed,” if you’ve got a knack for meeting people in…
    Book, 2024New York : Riverhead Books, 2024.
  • This is a book of short stories filled with imagination, humor, and a ton of moxie. Fun and poignant, the pages turn fast but you will think about what's on them for weeks. -- Dale
    Book, 2022[New York, New York] : Penguin Books, [2022]