Staff Picks
From Wiki
Article in Adult Fiction and Adult Nonfiction and Personal Picks categories.
See what staff are reading (and recommending!) and see the young adult librarians' selections.
Bob Bjoring (Central)
- How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet.
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
Tim Carrier (Central)
- The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson.
Anne Chiles (Central)
- And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields.
- Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery by Heather Andrea Williams.
- Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky.
Nancy Cook (Central)
- Vanished by Sheela Chari.
- Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.
- Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick.
Meredith Dickens (Gordon)
- Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings.
- Embassytown by China Mieville.
- Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy DeLisle.
- Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams.
- Also see my recommendations on the Gordon Avenue Library staff picks page
Krista Farrell (Central)
- Home Is a Rppof Over a Pig: An Amerian Family's Journey in China by Aminta Arrington.
- Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
- King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village by Peggielene Bartels.
- Poster: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses by Claire Dederer.
Noelle Funk (Scottsville)
- The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier.
- An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain M. Pears.
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.
- The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.
- There But for the by Ali Smith.
Willow Gale (Bookmobile)
- Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin.
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
- Time to Be in Earnest by P. D. James.
- The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart.
- When She Woke by Hillary Jordan.
Karen Gillaspie (Central)
- A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison.
Gary Grant (Albemarle Trustee)
- The Orchard: A Memoir by Adele Crockett Robertson.
John Halliday (Central)
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
- Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie.
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.
- Goronwy and Me: A Narrative of Two Lives by Proal Heartwell.
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Sarah Hamfeldt (Central)
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
Holly Huffman (Greene)
- Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage by Richard Stengel.
- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
- Also see my recommendations on the Adult Mystery Series Authors page
Lindsay Ideson (Northside)
- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
- Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt.
- This Life is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone by Melissa Coleman.
- The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen J. Greenblatt.
Rhonda Johnson (Crozet)
- May B by Caroline Starr Rose.
- Vanished by Gary D. Schmidt.
- Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg Way: 18th-Century Methods for Today's Organic Gardeners by Wesley Greene.
Kathy Judge (Central)
- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey.
Tanith Knight (Nelson)
- Lost Communities of Virginia by Terri Fisher.
Jackie Lichtman (Central)
- Selected Stories by Alice Munro.
- The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak.
Russ Lyttleton (Central)
- The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough.
- Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks.
Joyce MacDonald (Central)
- Let's Take the Long Way Home: a Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell.
Gail Ott (Louisa)
- Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray.
- Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith.
- Following Atticus: Forty Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship Now by Mark Ryan.
- The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.
- The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson.
Willoughby Parks (Central)
- Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.
- The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery by Louise Penney.
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
Heather Pehnec (Central)
- The Aviary by Kathleen O'Dell.
- Down the Mysterly River by Mark Buckingham.
- The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis by Kevin Brockmeier.
David Plunkett (Central)
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
- The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason.
- The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer.
- The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White by Henry Wiencek.
Stella Pool (Central)
- World Without End by Ken Follett.
Ginny Reese (Greene)
- Dragonbreath: Curse of the Were-Wiener by Ursula Vernon.
- Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos.
- The False Friend by Myula Goldberg.
- No Such Thing As Dragons by Philip Reeve.
- Yes, Chef: a Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson.
Jacqueline Rice (Central)
- Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt.
- Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
Wendy Saz (Crozet)
- Emily Alone by Stewart O'Nan.
- In the Sea There Are Crocodiles: a Novel Based on the True Story of Enaiatollah Akbari by Fabio Geda.
- Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.
- Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden.
- The Odds by Stewart O'Nan.
Phoebe Anne Tucker (Nelson)
- The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair
Andrea Williams (Central)
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
- Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante.
