Ryan's Staff Picks

Yared Heywat lives an isolated life in Addis Prime--a hardscrabble city with rundown tech, lots of rules, and not much to do. His worrywart Uncle Moti and bionic lioness Besa are his only family...and his only friends. Often in trouble for his thrill-seeking antics and smart mouth, those same qualities make Yared a star player of the underground augmented reality game, The Hunt for Kaleb's Obelisk. But when a change in the game rules prompts Yared...

In order to steal the Midnight Drum and free her powerful grandmother, twelve-year-old vampire Serwa deceptively collaborates with her rival Declan, a Slayer, but joining forces compels Serwa to confront truths about herself she has tried hard to deny.

"This is the story of Begonia, who was abandoned at a retirement home when she was a baby. You might think that's the worst thing that could happen to someone, but for Bug, the worst is yet to come. You see, Swamp Root Manor isn't just any old house. It's alive, it's haunted, and everyone in it is...a little bit Odd. Everyone except Begonia. And while she's waiting for her Oddity to arrive, the manor is running out of money, thanks in no small part...

"Since it burst onto the literary scene over twenty-five years ago, The Things They Carried has not stopped changing minds and lives, challenging readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. It is an unparalleled Vietnam testament and a major literary achievement. It depicts the men of Alpha Company, who carried love letters, mine detectors, Bibles, and each other. And if they made it home, they carried...

"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...

Cooper tells the story of her privileged Liberian childhood cut brutally short by a bloody 1980 coup, her family's escape and survival, and, twenty-three years later, her return to her native country to find the foster sister her family left behind.

"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia"--

After her home is attacked by shapeshifting vampires, twelve-year-old Serwa Boateng is sent to live with her aunt and cousin in Maryland, but the aspiring vampire hunter discovers that middle school is harder than it appears on television, especially when she has to avoid detention and turn her classmates into warriors before they become vampire food.

"Shuna, the prince of a poor land, watches in despair as his people work themselves to death harvesting the little grain that grows there. And so, when a traveler presents him with a sample of seeds from a mysterious western land, he sets out to find the source of the golden grain, dreaming of a better life for his subjects. It is not long before he meets a proud girl named Thea. After freeing her from captivity, he is pursued by her enemies, and...