A little shelf of well-loved books

Part of Your World

$5Very good

Alexis is a big-city ER doctor from a family of famous surgeons. Daniel is a laid-back small-town carpenter ten years younger. Their fling isn't supposed to last, but the longer it goes, the harder it is to choose between her world and his.

Reasons to Be Loved by You

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Wild Dark Shore

$8Like new

★Book of the Month edition

Dominic Salt and his three children are the last people on Shearwater, a tiny island near Antarctica that holds a huge seed bank. During a fierce storm, a woman named Rowan washes ashore, and she isn't saying why she came. Soon she finds that the family is keeping secrets of its own.

Thinner Leaner Stronger

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A training and diet guide for getting toned, lean and strong without crash diets, great genes or endless hours at the gym. It promises results at any age, without spending a fortune on supplements.

The Bodybuilding Meal Prep Cookbook

$5Like new

The Complete Maus

Borrow onlyGood

It's Your Ship

$5Very good

When Captain Michael Abrashoff took command of the USS Benfold, he decided to fix his own leadership before he fixed the ship. Within months his crew became confident problem-solvers, and the Benfold became a model for the whole Navy. He shares the management lessons any team leader can use.

The Five Love Languages: Singles Edition

$5Good

Gary Chapman adapts his famous five love languages for single adults: words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service and physical touch. He shows how they help in every relationship, with parents, friends, coworkers and dates. It includes a study guide for groups and book clubs.

Absolute Honesty

$5Good

Written in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, this book shows managers how to build a workplace where people can speak up without fear. It's built around six laws of honesty and comes with practical tools for facing hard issues head-on.

The Daily Walk Bible (NLT)

$5Very good

Girls Like Us

Free!Good

FBI agent Nell Flynn comes home to Suffolk County for the first time in ten years after her father, a homicide detective, dies in a motorcycle accident. Settling his estate pulls her into his last case, the murders of two young women. The deeper she digs, the more she doubts what she thought she knew about her own mother's death.

Dear Debbie

$5Very good

For years Debbie Mullen has handed out sensible advice to the wives of New England in her column, Dear Debbie. Now she's lost her job, her teenage daughters are acting strange, and the tracking app on her husband's phone says he's hiding something. She's done being reasonable, and it's time for payback.

The Correspondent

$5Very good

Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer, mother and grandmother, makes sense of her life through letters: to her brother, her best friend, even Joan Didion. When letters from someone in her past arrive, she has to face one of the most painful chapters of her life. A novel about letters, memory and forgiveness.

The Checklist Manifesto

$5Fair

Atul Gawande makes the case for the humble checklist. He shows how it's quietly changing medicine, aviation, construction, finance and all kinds of businesses.

Crucial Conversations (2nd ed.)

$5Good

A bestselling guide to the talks that matter most, when the stakes are high, opinions differ and emotions run hot. It teaches you how to prepare, make it safe to speak up, stay persuasive without getting harsh, and turn the talk into real results, at work or at home.

In Defense of Food

$5Good

Michael Pollan answers the question of what to eat in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." It's a manifesto about food, health and how to think about both.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

$5Good

What should we have for dinner? Michael Pollan follows four meals back to their sources, from industrial food and organic farms to food he hunts and gathers himself. Along the way he visits Iowa cornfields, feedlots, food labs and the woods, and it changes how you see what's on your plate.

The Leadership Playbook

Free!Fair

No: The Only Negotiating System You Need

$5Very good

Negotiation coach Jim Camp argues that you shouldn't meet people halfway. Start with "no." His system takes the emotion and neediness out of negotiating, whether it's a client demanding a discount, a home sale or a tough teacher. He explains why "yes" and "maybe" are the worst things to hear and how good questions get to the real issue.

The Marketing Gurus

Free!Good

Summaries of seventeen classic marketing books in one volume, from the editors of Soundview Executive Book Summaries. It covers Positioning, Purple Cow, The Tipping Point, Crossing the Chasm and more. A quick way to get the big ideas without reading thousands of pages.

Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People

Borrow onlyGood

Truett Cathy turned a tiny Atlanta diner called the Dwarf Grill into Chick-fil-A. He tells his own story: a work ethic forged in the Depression, a business run on his faith, and his lifelong investment in young people.

5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth

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SuperFreakonomics

Borrow onlyGood

The follow-up to Freakonomics. Levitt and Dubner use economics to answer odd questions, like how a street prostitute is like a department-store Santa and whether eating kangaroo could help the planet. The common thread is how people really respond to incentives.

Fortitude

Borrow onlyGood

Who Moved My Cheese?

$5Fair

A short parable about two mice and two little people who live in a maze and search for "cheese": the job, relationship or peace of mind we each want. When the cheese moves, each of them handles the change differently. It takes under an hour to read.

Bring Me Back

$5Fair

Ten years ago, Finn's girlfriend Layla vanished from a highway rest stop, and he never told the police the whole story. Now he's engaged to her sister, Ellen. Then someone says they've seen Layla, and things from her past start turning up around their house.

The Nightingale

Borrow onlyVery good

Sisters Vianne and Isabelle couldn't be more different. Vianne is content in the French countryside, and bold Isabelle lives in Paris. When World War II arrives and Vianne's husband goes off to fight, the two are pushed into frightening choices, each finding her own way to be brave and to resist.

The Science of Beauty

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Cosmetic chemist Dr. Michelle Wong (Lab Muffin Beauty Science) answers more than 100 common beauty questions. Do you need sunscreen every day? Do collagen supplements work? Is "clean beauty" really healthier? She looks past the marketing and TikTok trends to what the research says.

The Unfolding

Borrow onlyVery good

A collection of poems, essays and meditations about the seasons when life is changing. It gently invites you to reflect on your own periods of growth and come home to yourself.

Touched Out

Borrow onlyVery good

Success Mindsets

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Bringing Up Bébé

Borrow onlyVery good

American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris and notices that French kids sleep through the night early, eat real food and let their parents finish a coffee. With a notebook in her diaper bag, she sets out to learn why. She finds French parents strict about some things, relaxed about others, and calmly in charge.

Margo's Got Money Troubles

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Margo is young, alone with a new baby, out of work and about to be evicted. Her estranged father, Jinx, moves in to help with childcare, and she starts an OnlyFans, borrowing his tips from the world of wrestling on building a character an audience will love. It takes off, but internet fame comes with a price.

Tourist Season

Borrow onlyGood

In the seaside town of Cape Carnage, gardener Harper Starling protects her home from troublesome tourists by burying them under her prize-winning flowerbeds. Then Nolan Rhodes arrives, a charming visitor out for revenge with Harper as his last target. When a true-crime sleuth comes to town, the two killers have to call a truce.

Quiet Your Mind & Get to Sleep

Borrow onlyVery good

A self-help workbook built on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). It walks you through calming racing thoughts so you can finally get restful sleep, with a focus on people living with depression, anxiety or chronic pain.

The Mad Wife

$5Like new

The Midnight Library

$5Very good

Between life and death is a library where every book is another version of your life, the one you'd have lived if you'd chosen differently. Nora Seed finds herself there with a chance to try those other lives and see if any of them would really be better.

Just for the Summer

$5Good

Every woman Justin dates finds her soulmate right after they break up. When Emma, a traveling nurse, messages him with the same curse, they plan to date and break up so the curses cancel out. A summer fling in Minnesota gets complicated when family trouble shows up and real feelings follow.

Malibu Rising

$5Good

August 1983: it's the night of Nina Riva's famous end-of-summer party in Malibu. Nina and her siblings are the children of legendary singer Mick Riva, and everyone wants to be near them. By morning the house will be on fire, and before that, the family's secrets will come out.

Carrie Soto Is Back

$5Good

Carrie Soto was the greatest tennis player in the world. Six years after retiring, she watches a young British player take her record, and she decides to come back and win it back, even if nobody believes she can. A story about the cost of greatness.

Ignited

Borrow onlyGood

This Story Might Save Your Life

$8Like new

★Book of the Month edition

Best friends Benny and Joy host a hit podcast about people who survived against all odds. One morning Benny arrives to record and finds broken glass and an empty house, with Joy and her husband gone. The only clue is an unfinished draft of Joy's memoir, and the police think Benny did it.

Our Missing Hearts

$5Like new

A Little Life

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Hanya Yanagihara's 2015 novel, written over eighteen months. It's long and deals with difficult subjects, yet it became a bestseller.

Maybe in Another Life

Borrow onlyVery good

After years of drifting between cities and jobs, Hannah Martin moves into her best friend Gabby's guest room. On a night out she runs into her high school boyfriend, Ethan, and at midnight she has to choose: leave with Gabby or stay with Ethan. The novel follows both choices, side by side.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

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Dale Carnegie's classic personal development guide, one of the best-selling books of all time, with more than 15 million copies sold.

The Last Lecture

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Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, gave a "last lecture" after learning he had terminal cancer. It wasn't about dying. It was about chasing childhood dreams, getting past obstacles and making every moment count. This book turns that famous talk into something to keep.

The Four Agreements

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Drawing on ancient Toltec wisdom, don Miguel Ruiz lays out four simple agreements to make with yourself. They help you drop the self-limiting beliefs that steal your joy. A longtime bestseller, published in 52 languages.

The Untethered Soul

$5Good

Michael Singer asks what it would be like to drop your limits and feel free inside, and what you can do each day to get there. A gentle, thoughtful book whether you're new to the inner journey or have been on it for years.

The Untethered Soul

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Michael Singer asks what it would be like to drop your limits and feel free inside, and what you can do each day to get there. A gentle, thoughtful book whether you're new to the inner journey or have been on it for years.

How Freaking Romantic

$8Like new

★Book of the Month edition

On Becoming Babywise

$5Very good

A plan for new parents that helps babies settle into a rhythm of feeding, awake time and sleep. The goal is a contented baby who sleeps through the night and parents who aren't exhausted.

Shoe Dog

$5Fair

Nike founder Phil Knight's memoir. In 1962, fresh out of business school, he borrowed $50 from his father to import athletic shoes from Japan and sold them out of his car trunk. He tells the candid, funny story of how that start-up became one of the world's best-known brands.

The Art of Living

$5Good

The Wonder Weeks

$5Very good

A stress-free guide to your baby's behavior that answers the big question: why is my baby suddenly cranky, clingy and crying? It explains the predictable leaps in brain development babies go through, with helpful guidance for each one.

Moms on Call: Basic Baby Care 0-6 Months

$5Very good

Moms on Call: Next Steps Baby Care 6-15 Months

$5Very good

The next-steps guide from Moms on Call, the popular baby-care service run by two nurses, for babies 6 to 15 months. It tackles the questions parents ask most, like how to get your baby to sleep and stop crying.

It Happened One Summer

$5Very good

Party girl Piper Bellinger lands in jail after one rooftop party too many, so her stepfather cuts her off and sends her and her sister to run their late father's dive bar in a small Washington town. There she keeps running into Brendan, a gruff, bearded sea captain who's sure she won't last a week.

The Leadership Handbook

Free!Fair

John C. Maxwell's guide to 26 critical lessons every leader needs, starting with a question few leaders stop to ask themselves.

Expecting Better

$5Very good

Pregnant women are told to skip coffee, sushi and cold cuts, usually without being told why. Emily Oster shows that many of these rules are misguided or plain wrong, and lays out the facts so moms-to-be can make their own choices.

The Greatest Salesman in the World

Borrow onlyGood

Og Mandino's classic about how you can change your life with the wisdom of ten ancient scrolls, handed down for thousands of years.

The Whole-Brain Child

$5Like new

Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explain how a child's brain is wired and how it develops. They turn that science into practical ways to raise happier, calmer kids.

Vanishing Acts

Borrow onlyVery good

Delia Hopkins grew up in rural New Hampshire with her widowed father and now finds missing people with her search-and-rescue bloodhound. As she plans her wedding, flashbacks of a life she can't remember start to surface. Following them could upend everything she knows.

Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies

$5Like new

The Favorites

$5Very good

Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha, a foster kid she met growing up, become champion ice dancers and the sport's most talked-about couple, until a shocking incident at the Olympics ends their partnership. Ten years later, a documentary claims to tell the real story, and Kat can't stay out of it.

FYI: For Your Improvement

$5Good

A guide for development and coaching, written for learners, managers, mentors and anyone who gives feedback. This is the 4th edition.

We Are All Guilty Here

$5Good

In North Falls, a small town where everyone thinks they know everyone, two teenage girls vanish on the night of the fireworks. Officer Emmy Clifton turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help, and now she has to bring her home. The deeper she looks, the more secrets she finds.

Reminders of Him

$5Very good

After five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan comes back to town hoping to know her four-year-old daughter. Everyone in the girl's life wants to keep her out, except Ledger Ward, a local bar owner. A story about second chances and healing.

A Flicker in the Dark

$5Good

★Book of the Month edition

When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls disappeared in her Louisiana town, and her father confessed. Twenty years later she's a psychologist in Baton Rouge planning her wedding when local girls start going missing again. Is she seeing her past everywhere, or is it happening again?

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

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★Book of the Month edition

Sam and Sadie, friends since childhood, run into each other on a subway platform during Sam's junior year at Harvard and start making video games together. Their first game makes them famous before they're twenty-five. The novel follows them over thirty years of work, friendship and love.

The Great Alone

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★Book of the Month edition

In 1974, Leni Allbright's impulsive father moves the family to Alaska. The winter there is as harsh as he is, and life becomes a fight to survive.

The Ghostwriter

$8Like new

★Book of the Month edition

In 1975, two teenagers in the Taylor family were found dead at home, and the surviving brother, Vincent, became a famous horror writer under a cloud of suspicion. Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has hidden for years that he's her father. Now, broke, she agrees to ghostwrite his last book, and he finally wants to tell what happened that night.

The Intruder

$5Like new

A hurricane is bearing down on Casey's cabin in the woods when she spots a girl outside her kitchen window: young, alone, covered in blood and holding a knife. The girl won't say where she came from. And she has a secret she'd kill to keep.

Next to Heaven

$8Like new

★Book of the Month edition

The Women

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In 1965, nursing student Frankie McGrath follows her brother to Vietnam and joins the Army Nurse Corps. War overwhelms her, but the friendships she makes there run deep. The hardest fight comes when she returns to a divided America that wants to forget the war.

Best Offer Wins

$8Very good

★Book of the Month edition

After eleven lost bidding wars in the Washington, DC suburbs, Margo Miyake hears about the perfect house before it hits the market. She'll do whatever it takes to get it, from a little stalking to some trespassing. A darkly funny novel about ambition, class and wanting it all.

My Husband's Wife

$8Very good

★Book of the Month edition

Artist Eden Fox comes home from a run to find her key doesn't fit, a woman who looks like her answers the door, and her husband insists the stranger is his wife. Six months earlier, a Londoner named Birdy inherited the same seaside house. One house, one husband, two women, and someone is lying.

Most Eligible

$8Like new

★Book of the Month edition

Journalist Georgia Rose joins the reality dating show Love Shack undercover to expose the producers. Then the season's new host turns out to be Rhett Auburn, the country singer from her unforgettable one-night stand. Keeping her cover gets harder as their behind-the-scenes moments start to feel real.

One True Loves

$5Like new

Emma married her high school sweetheart, Jesse. On their first anniversary his helicopter went missing over the Pacific. Years later, just as she's engaged to her old friend Sam, Jesse is found alive, and Emma has to figure out who she is and who she really loves.