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Category: –Staff Picks

--Staff Picks General

“Drunken Master” by Yuen Woo-ping

Drunken Master, a classic Hong Kong martial arts movie, was directed and action choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping, who would go on to choreograph the fight scenes in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Kill Bill; and the Matrix movies. Jackie Chan stars as Wong Fei-hung, a cocky, rude, and belligerent rising talent in his […]

--Staff Picks

“Anatomy: A Love Story” by Dana Schwartz

Edinburgh, 1817. A secluded castle becomes a make-shift teaching hospital for one pupil determined to solve a mystery endangering the city’s impoverished and make her lifelong dream a reality. In “Anatomy: A Love Story” by Dana Schwartz, Hazel Sinnett loses her status as the brightest prospect of a renowned surgeon’s anatomy class when it is […]

--Staff Picks General

“Devolution” by Max Brooks

“As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined, until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing and too earth-shattering in its implications, to be forgotten. Because if what […]

--Staff Picks

“The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey” by Dawn Anahid MacKeen

On April 24th, 1915 the Ottoman Empire began its systematic annihilation of the Armenian people with the arrest and deportation of Armenian leaders from Constantinople. The ensuing genocide resulted in the deaths of at least 600,000 Armenian men, women, and children before the First World War was over. The toll is estimated even higher, with […]

--Staff Picks General

Shady Hollow by Juneau Black

First in a newer series of cozy mysteries, this is a fun novel for when you want an easy read with a bit of a twist. All the main characters are anthropomorphic creatures living in the quiet woodland community of Shady Hollow. Think Midsomer Murders meets Wind in the Willows. Local curmudgeon, Otto the Toad, […]

--Staff Picks

“Decision to Leave” by Park Chan-wook

“From a mountain peak in South Korea, a man plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, he finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire.” […]

--Staff Picks

“The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I” by Lindsey Fitzharris

1914 saw the start of a new type of war, where technological advances in weaponry reshaped the battlefield into an unforeseen nightmare. The Great War is cited as the first modern, mechanized war, its impact reverberating far beyond the toll of almost ten million soldiers lost. Another twenty-one million who survived would be irrevocably changed […]

--Staff Picks

“The Spare Man” by Mary Robinette Kowal

Tesla Crane is an engineering genius and famous heiress who is traveling with her new spouse and service dog Gimlet on a luxury cruise spaceship headed to Mars.  She is reveling in her anonymity when a body turns up and her husband is taken into custody as suspect #1.  Tesla is willing to do whatever […]

--Staff Picks

“Pearl” by Ti West

“In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation and lovelessness of life on her parents’ farm.” Happy women’s history month! I am such a sucker for any movie or media where a woman let’s her rage get the better of her and […]

--Staff Picks

Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman

Deb Perelman is the author of two best-selling cookbooks; one of the Internet’s most successful food bloggers; the creator of a homegrown brand with more than a million Instagram followers; and the self-taught cook with the tiny kitchen who obsessively tests her recipes to make sure that no bowls are wasted and that the results […]