Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi ; translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot
Year: 2020
ISBN: 9781335430991
Abstract: In a small back alley in Tokyo at a century-old coffee shop rumored to offer patrons the chance to travel back in time, four customers reevaluate their formative life choices.
Chosen by: Keelin
8/12/2026
Shadow Divers
Author: by Robert Kurson
Year: 2004
ISBN: 9780375508585
Abstract: Into thin air and Sebastian Junger's The perfect storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mysteryand make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships. But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bonesall buried under decades of accumulated sediment. No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location. Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailorsformer enemies of their country. As the mens marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew. Author Robert Kursons account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the oceans underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.
Chosen by: Margo
8/12/2026
7 Miles a Second
Author: text, David Wojnarowicz ; art, James Romberger ; color, Marguerite Van Cook
Year: 2012
ISBN: 9781606996140
Abstract: The gritty life of New York artist David Wojnarowicz, including his childhood spent hustling on the streets of Manhattan and his adulthood living with AIDS, engulfed with anger at government and health agencies.
Chosen by: Paris
8/12/2026
Being Mortal
Author: Atul Gawande
Year: 2014
ISBN: 9780805095159
Abstract: Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Chosen by: Elizabeth
8/12/2026
Eat Your Heart Out
Author: Kelly deVos
Year: 2021
ISBN: 9780593204825
Abstract: Six disgruntled teens are forced to spend their winter break at fat camp during Flagstaff, Arizona's worst blizzard in a century, only to find that Camp Featherlite is even worse than expected because it is crawling with genetically-modified monsters.
Chosen by: Jon
8/12/2026
Dune
Author: Frank Herbert
Year: 2019
ISBN: 9780593099322
Abstract: Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.
Chosen by: Robert
8/12/2026
A Bike Like Sergios
Author: Maribeth Boelts ; illustrated by Noah Z. Jones
Year: 2016
ISBN: 9781536202953
Abstract: Ruben feels like he is the only kid without a bike. His friend Sergio reminds him that his birthday is coming, but Ruben knows that the kinds of birthday gifts he and Sergio receive are not the same. After all, when Ruben's mom sends him to Sonny's corner store for groceries, sometimes she doesn't have enough money for everything on the list. So when Ruben sees a dollar bill fall out of someone's purse, he picks it up and puts it in his pocket. But when he gets home, he discovers it's not one dollar or even five or ten--it's a hundred-dollar bill, more than enough for a new bike just like Sergio's! But what about the crossed-off groceries? And what about the woman who lost her money?
Chosen by: Samantha
8/12/2026
The Listeners
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Year: 2025
ISBN: 9780593655504
Abstract: "January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa is where high society goes to see and be seen. Located deep in the West Virginia mountains, where healing sweetwater flows, the hotel is managed by a local, June Hudson, whose skills were noted by the wealthy Guilfoyles who own the place. War has begun, and June is trying to shield the Avallon from it, but when the owner's son makes a deal with the State Department to house dozens of Axis diplomats, June must convince her staff-many of whom have sons and husbands heading to battle-to offer luxury to Nazis for the war effort. Peacefully. Meanwhile, FBI agent Tucker Minnick is searching for a spy among the detainees. He has his own history with West Virginia and would have done anything to avoid coming back, but this mission is an exile that he can't escape unless he earns it. As tension grows between locals and the detainees, Tucker's spy games disturb the peace, and the eerie sweetwater proves more dangerous than once thought. June's future at the Avallon hangs in the balance - but who is she without the hotel? And what is it without her? Maggie Stiefvater makes her adult fiction debut in this mesmerizing portrait of an unlikely heroine, a hotel-and a world-in peril, and the love that can bloom even in such unlikely circumstances."-- Provided by publisher.
Chosen by: Lisa
8/12/2026