OBD Patron Picks Summer Reading 2025 - Adult

The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times -bestselling author of Friday Black , about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. "A new and necessary American voice." -- Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or...

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved....

"When a young woman must win a pickleball competition alongside her longtime rival to save her family's business, sparks fly on and off the court in this charming romcom. Bex Martin's life isn't where she thought it would be at twenty-four. She dropped out of college and moved back home to her small, Southern California hometown to help out at her parents' racquet club after her dad got sick. But over a year later, she's still there, teaching pickleball...

Maisie is asked to investigate a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a village in Kent during the hop picking season. Mysterious fires erupt in the village and a series of petty crime suggest a darker criminal element at work. A peculiar secrecy shrouds the village, and Maisie needs to use her skills to solve one of her most intriguing cases yet.

Early in the Great War, men left Britain's factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. "Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun," the recruitment posters beckoned. Thousands of women-cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives-answered their nation's call. These "munitionettes" worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives...

"For twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a charity student at a boarding school, the chance to go to the World's Fair feels like a gift. But only once he's there, amid the exotic exhibits, fireworks, and Ferris wheels, does he discover that he is the one who is actually the prize. The half-Chinese orphan is astounded to learn he will be raffled off-a healthy boy “to a good home.” The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel,...

Investigating a cold case while recovering from a near-fatal injury, Simon Serrailler finds his personal and professional lives intertwining in unexpected ways when his constable brother-in-law suffers a setback at the same time an arsonist begins a deadly rampage.

It's harvest season at Montgomery Estate Vineyard; the busiest time of year for winemakers in Atoka, Virginia. A skull is unearthed near Lucie Montgomery's family cemetery, and the discovery of the bones coincides with the arrival of handsome, wealthy aristocrat Jean-Claude de Marignac. He's come to be the head winemaker at neighboring La Vigne Cellars, but he's no stranger to Lucie; he was her first crush twenty years ago when she spent a summer...

"Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else...

"From the beloved author of The House on Mango Street: a richly illustrated compilation of true stories and nonfiction pieces that, taken together, form a jigsaw autobiography: an intimate album of a literary legend's life and career. From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street to her abode in Mexico, in a region where "my ancestors lived for centuries," the places Sandra Cisneros has lived...