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HOSPITAL HEROES SAVE THE DAY!

Tomorrow’s Parade Day in Breezy Valley, a city populated by anthropomorphic animals, but its sick and injured residents still need help. At the hospital, doctors, nurses, and other vital personnel spring into action. As this fast-paced book unfolds, readers follow the activities of numerous hospital heroes as well as an especially important patient. Lemur, the […]

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THE LITTLE PUPPY

Ollie has ambitious intentions for dog sitting Milo, her grandmother’s puppy, but those plans are spoiled when he chews up her drawing, a gift intended for Grandma when she returns from visiting friends. The girl scolds the little dog and then takes some time to herself, leaving him behind and walking farther and farther away […]

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A WALKER IN THE EVENING

Owchar’s debut novel opens in 1909 in Galicia, a rural Ukrainian province that adheres to various superstitions, one of which holds that, every night, a different person conducts a walk through the town carrying a “totem” that’s supposed to ward off any troubling spirits. On duty this night is the narrator, Yuri, who grew up […]

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THE NIGHT ANIMALS

Nora Frost and her mum are “fine.” Mum’s PTSD from her work as a paramedic means sometimes she has bad days where she stays in bed. Nora has distanced herself from her friends rather than have to explain and face their pity—she doesn’t need any help. At least, that’s what she keeps telling herself and […]

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BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE

Boaz’s novel opens two weeks after George’s mother, Louise, vanished from Willow, New Mexico. In the year or so before her disappearance, George and their girlfriend, Truley, had been living with Louise in her home. Cobbling together part-time jobs, the two semi-adrift 20-somethings pursued their creative pursuits while Louise, a native New Yorker and former […]

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DECEMBER ON 5C4

In this short, somewhat whimsical tale, two very different men meet in a ward for patients with mental illness: a short Jewish man named Josh with a brown beard, and Nick,a big-bellied fellow with white whiskers. Josh was just committed by paramedics because he was found wandering in traffic after breaking up with his boyfriend; […]

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A TRICKY KIND OF MAGIC

Cooper Stanley is a gifted young stage magician whose father, an electrician named Eddie, taught him all he knew about the craft, creating a strong father-son bond. But when Eddie (whose magical alter ego was the Great Eduardo) suddenly and tragically dies, Cooper struggles with his volatile emotions. Although he tries to internalize his grief, […]

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HOW TO DRAW THE WORLD

Nel’s interest in the picture book Harold and the Purple Crayon began five decades ago, when he encountered the book as a child. In the ensuing decades, he not only wrote a biography of the book’s author, Crockett Johnson, but also aspired to write the current volume, which he calls “a biography of a book.” […]

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THE ICON AND THE IDEALIST

Drawing on considerable archival sources, journalist Gorton creates an informative history of the fight for women’s reproductive rights in her dual biography of activists Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) and Mary Ware Dennett (1872-1947). Dennett came to the cause from her personal experience of accidental pregnancies and birth trauma; Sanger, from work as a visiting nurse among […]

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FOUR AGAINST THE WEST

Born in Kentucky, the Bean brothers—James, Samuel, Joshua, and Roy—were living emblems of westward expansion. All possessed, to varying degrees, something of the rule-evading, even lawless ethos of the Anglo conquest, from outright murder to the mere gaming of the system. Trade brought some brothers west, war others; several thrived in an economy of contraband […]