Nei an der BIB!

Long way down

Jason Reynolds and Chris Priestly (Graphic Novel)

After Will’s brother, Shawn, is shot, he knows the next steps. Don’t cry. Don’t snitch. Get revenge.

So he gets in a lift with Shawn’s gun, determined to follow The Rules.

Then the lift doors open and Shawn’s friend walks in… a friend who isn’t supposed to be there.

Can Will’s short journey to street level change everything?

This haunting, lyrical, powerful verse novel will blow you away.

Under the Udala trees

Chinelo Okparanta (Young Adults)

Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out on the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.

When their love os discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.

Inspired by Nigeria’s folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees shows – through one woman’s lifetime – how the struggles and divisions of a nation are inscribed into the souls of its citizens. In prose that is elegant and spare, with insights heartbreaking and electrifying, it offers a story charged with hope that points to a future when a woman might just be able to become fully herself, shaping her life around truth and love.

The fire next time

James Baldwin (New Adults)

A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movements. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, The Fire Next Time is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters”, written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle… all presented in searing, brilliant prose,” Baldwin’s masterwork stands as a classic of our literature and as urgent today as when it was written.

Between the world and me

Ta-Nehisi Coates (New Adults)

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates shares the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

We are okay

Nina LaCour (Young Adults)

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need… Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks and the tragedy Marin has tried to outrun. Not even her best friend, Mabel. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will finally be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

An intimate whisper that packs an indelible punch, this gorgeously crafted and achingly honest portrayal of grief will leave you urgent to reach across any distance to reconnect with the people you love.

To Paradise

Hanya Yanagihara (New Adults)

To Paradise is a fin de siècle of a marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.

Girl, woman, other

Bernardine Evaristo (Young Adults)

Welcome to Newcastle, 1905. Ten-year-old Grace is an orphan dreaming of the mysterious African father she will never meet.

Cornwell, 1953. Winsome is a young bride, recently arrived from Barbados, realising the man she married might be a fool.

London, 1980. Amma is the fierce queen of her squatter’s palace, ready to smash the patriarchy with a new kind of feminist theatre.

Oxford. 2008. Carole is rejecting her cultural background (Nigeria by way of Peckham) to blend in  at her posh university.

Northumberland, 2017. Morgan, who used to be Megan, is visiting Hattie, who’s in her nineties, who used to be young and strong, who fights to remain independent, and who still misses Slim every day.

Welcome to Britain and twelve very different people – mostly women, mostly black – who call it home. Teeming with life and crackling with energy, Girl, Woman, Other follows them across the miles and down the years. With vivid originality, irrepressible wit and sly wisdom, Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible.

Almond

Won-Pyung Sohn (Young Adults)

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions fear or anger. He does not have friends, but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and contented life. But everything changes when a shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own.

Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation until troubled teenager Gon arrives at school. The two form a surprising bond and when Gon suddenly finds his life at risk, Yunjae will have to step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become th ehero of his own story.

This winter

Alice Oseman (Young Adults)

This winter has been a tough one for Tori, Charlie and Oliver Spring. They are all trying to get through Christmas Day with a minimum drama. For Oliver that means Mario Kart with his brother and sister, but for Tori and Charlie it means putting the past few months behind them.

Will this Christmas drive the Spring family apart or start to put them back together.

Heartstopper 4

Alice Oseman (Young Adults)

“I think I’m in love with Charlie. This summer with him and our friends has been amazing, and I want to say ‘I love you’, but… I guess I’ve had other things to worry about lately…”

The memory police

Yoko Ogawa (New Adults)

Hat, ribbon, bird, nose.

To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to safe him. For some reason, he doesn’t forget, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

Open water

Caleb Azumah Nelson (New Adults)

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists – he a photographer, she a dancer – trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.