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Skyward

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Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Who it’s for: Teens, Adults
Format: Book, eBook

Epic space battles, a nearly-sentient AI-powered ship, a strange yellow and blue slug that mimics voices and sounds, and a teenager who wants to claim the stars – that’s Skyward in a nutshell. Brandon Sanderson is an excellent world-builder and it shows in the first of a four part series.

Spensa is trapped on a planet called Detritus with what remains of humanity. They are frequently attacked from above by unknown forces they call the Krell. Spensa dreams of being a space pilot to defend her home. But when she was young, her father was branded a coward, and now the entire family bears the label. Fighting her way into flight school, Spensa works to prove that she’s not a coward (and that her father wasn’t either), and that she can help in the fight against the Krell. 

Outside of school, M-Bot, the abandoned AI-driven ship with a personality, and Doomslug. Spensa, with the help of her friend Rig, repairs M-Bot and takes him for a spin. M-Bot has been programmed not to fight, and when he believes Spensa would fly him in battle, he shuts down.

Fast forward to the most epic of epic battles – can Spensa save Detritus from destruction, or will what happened to her father happen to her too?

Starsight, book two of four, is also out now, so there’s more to come when you reach the cliffhanger at the end!

Find Skyward in the catalog.

 

Niko Draws a Feeling

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Niko Draws a Feeling by Bob Raczka, illustrated by Simone Shin
Who it’s for: Kids
Format: eBook

Niko carries his paper and colored pencils everywhere he goes, in case he is inspired to make a picture. He loves to draw, but Niko doesn’t draw the things he sees. Instead, he draws the way they make him feel. His parents, teacher, and friends don’t seem to understand his pictures. When Niko draws the way the sun feels warm on his face, they can’t understand why they don’t see the sun.

Niko draws a picture of himself and how he feels, but he doesn’t share it with anyone. Until one day, a new family with a girl Niko’s age moves in next door. Has Niko finally found someone who understands?

Niko Draws a Feeling shows children that art can be representative. It doesn’t always reflect actual things we can see. Sometimes it reflects how the artist feels. And as viewers of art, we all experience it differently as well. The illustrations in the book encourage children to think about what they see when they look at Niko’s pictures.

This title is part of OverDrive’s Always Available collection. The eBook is available with no wait on OverDrive/Libby for everyone with a library card!

Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder And Memory In Northern Ireland

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Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder And Memory In Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Who it’s for: Adults
Format: eBook, digital audiobook

Say Nothing begins with the abduction of widow and mother of 10, Jean McConville, in Belfast in 1972. From there, Radden Keefe traces several of the key players of the Troubles, the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland between nationalists (often Catholic) who wanted to see Northern Ireland united with Ireland, and loyalists (often Protestant) who supported continued British rule in Northern Ireland.

McConville was one of the “disappeared,” sixteen people who were determined to have been taken, killed, and buried in unmarked graves by the Provisional IRA (the IRA admitted to being involved in nine of the sixteen cases). But Radden Keefe’s account is not just of McConville and her children. We also meet Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, and, most intriguing, the Price sisters, Delours and Marian, all members of the IRA (though Adams has denied his own membership in the organization). Radden Keefe describes hunger strikes, bombings, prison stays, and the gradual shift by some members of the IRA from violence to politics. This shift is an underlying theme of the story; some IRA members viewed the shift and the compromises made as removing the moral justification for the violent acts they had committed. This led to some of them speaking at length with interviewers for a Boston College oral history project. That project’s history, and its legal battles and their outcomes are entwined in the story of the more recent events in Radden Keefe’s account. 

Throughout the book, Radden Keefe returns to Jean McConville, and to her children and their lives after their mother’s abduction. Many of the others discussed in the book were leaders of or soldiers in the IRA, so McConville’s children provide a different view of the Troubles and the events discussed in the book.

Say Nothing often reads like fiction, but it’s not. Every so often, the realization hits that these people are real, many of them still living and dealing with the trauma of their experiences. Radden Keefe has thoroughly researched this story, taking four years to conduct research and interviews, leading to a fascinating true account of events that occurred not that long ago.

You can find Say Nothing in eBook and digital audiobook format on OverDrive/Libby, or in digital audiobook format on RBdigital.

Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic

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Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic by Michael McCreary
Format: eBook
Who it’s for: Adults, Teens

Michael McCreary was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age 5, shortly before being bitten by the performance bug. He landed his first stand-up gig at age 14 and now, at age 22, performs across the US and Canada, using humor to dispel myths about autism. Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic will appeal to readers with ASD, as well as those looking for a better understanding of ASD.

Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic is OverDrive’s latest Big Library Read, running March 23 – April 13. Big Library Read connects readers around the world with the same book at the same time without any waitlists or holds. Borrow Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic and join the online book discussion!

Plus – use #BigLibraryRead on social media from March 23 – April 13 for a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy tablet from OverDrive! | Official Rules

 

Six of Crows

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Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Format: Book, eBook, Audiobook
Who it’s for: Teens, Adults

In Ketterdam, a center of international trade, Kaz Brekker and his crew fight to survive in the underworld of the city. At its core, Six of Crows is a heist story. A wealthy merchant offers an obscene amount of money if Kaz and the others can travel to a nearby nation, break into the Ice Court, and free a scientist being held prisoner. Complicating matters is disagreement among the crew about what should be done with the prisoner when (if) they get him out.

The crew is Jesper, Matthias, Wylan, Nina, Inej, and Kaz: “a gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.” The story is told in alternating viewpoints and you really get to know these characters and their backgrounds. Six of Crows takes place in the Grishaverse, the same fantasy world featured in Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy, and some of the characters will be familiar to those who’ve read her other works.

Six of Crows is the first book in a duology. It ends in a cliffhanger – be ready to immediately dig in to Crooked Kingdom! Netflix is creating a series based on Bardugo’s Grishaverse, so these characters will soon be making their way to our television screens as well.

Find Six of Crows in the catalog.

Arc of a Scythe Series

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Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Teens, Adults

In a distant future, disease, hunger, and war are things of the past – humanity has conquered death. A benevolent AI called the Thunderhead holds all human knowledge, watches over the population (literally), prevents crime, alerts the ambu-drones in case of accidental ‘death’ (leaving a person ‘deadish,’ which is reversible), and generally prevents poverty and other issues in society. Scythes have taken on the responsibility of culling the population to sustainable levels. If killed by a Scythe, death is permanent. The only area in which the Thunderhead does not intervene is Scythe business.

Teenagers Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a Scythe. They are trained to glean compassionately. But there is a new order of Scythes in the Scythedom – those who take pleasure in killing and don’t appreciate the restrictions placed on them. The conflict between the traditional Scythes and the new order follows Citra and Rowan throughout the trilogy. The dichotomy between the Scythedom and the Thunderhead is an important angle to the story as well. Another teenager, Grayson, becomes an important part of the Thunderhead’s story in the second book.

Citra, Rowan, and Grayson travel around the world over the course of the trilogy, leading to a final confrontation in the Land of Nod between the old order and the new, and the Thunderhead and Scythedom.

For fans of Shusterman’s Unwind and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, or anyone who enjoys a good trilogy (all three books have been released – no waiting years for the next installment)!

Series Order:
Book 1: Scythe
Book 2: Thunderhead
Book 3: The Toll

Find all the books in the catalog.