April is National Poetry Month, and added with that in mind is After, poems by Jane Hirschfield. New children’s books are Scaredy Squirrel, who learns the hard way that there’s a world outside his tree, by Melanie Watt; I Lost My Tooth in Africa by Penda Diakite, a child author who based her story on a real-life incident; Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor by Emily Arnold McCully, a biography of a determined woman inventor and patent holder who worked during the 19th century; and Anne Hutchinson: Puritan Protester, a biography of this pioneer of religious freedom, by Darlene R. Stille.
Lots of adult fiction from all genres:
- Mystery/Thriller: Gone by Jonathan Kellerman; The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker; Prior Bad Acts by Tami Hoag
- Science Fiction: Counting Heads by David Marusek
- General Fiction: Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar, set in modern day India and describing the intersecting yet separate lives of the rich and the poor; The World to Come by Dara Horn, which starts with the theft of a Marc Chagall painting and veers off from there; and prodigal daughter tale Where Mercy Flows by Karen Harter.
For young adult readers, we’ve added Pete Hautman’s Invisible, a novel that involves mental illness, bullying and its repercussions, and high school culture; Come Back to Afghanistan, a California teen’s account of spending three summers in Afghanistan with his father, who was appointed to then-new President Hamid Karzai’s staff; and we replaced a well-worn copy of the very popular A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.