Washoe County Library System

Discusses a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so you can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.

"Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time"). Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. But this, Pinker...

In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance -- beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the East, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies. As they gather, one young man embarks up in his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind. Fleeing...

Finding Mr. Right: Brilliant chemist Maggie Bell has a knack for choosing Mr. Wrong, and with yet another lonely Christmas looming, she decides it's time to alter the equation -- and seek out someone who seems totally wrong for her. Eureka! The heart is a genius ... Bah handsome: Behind on her bills, B&B owner Hope receives an unlikely guest -- stranded solicitor Danny, who's been threatening to put her out of business. Funny how the holidays can...

"Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman--Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, author of the classic memoir Out of Africa. Brought to Kenya from England as a...

On the Finfarran Peninsula on Ireland’s west coast, at the Lissbeg Library, a group of women gather together for the first book club of the summer where they’ll all face difficult choices and hope to get the happy endings they all deserve.

The historic hotel in BoonsBoro, Maryland, has endured war and peace, changing hands, even rumored hauntings. Now it's getting a major facelift from the Montgomery brothers and their eccentric mother. As the architect of the family, Beckett's social life consists mostly of talking shop over pizza and beer. But there's another project he's got his eye on: the girl he's been waiting to kiss since he was fifteen.

In this novel the author takes us to Telegraph Avenue. It is a story that explores the profoundly intertwined lives of two Oakland, California families, one black and one white. Here he creates a world grounded in pop culture: Kung Fu, 1970s Blaxploitation films, vinyl LPs, jazz and soul music, and an epic of friendship, race, and secret histories. Longtime band mates Archy and Nat preside over Brokeland Records, a used-record emporium. All is well...

Just as Alix Madsen is finishing up architecture school, Adelaide Kingsley dies and wills her, for one year, the use of a charming nineteenth-century Nantucket house. The elderly woman's relationship to the Madsen family is a mystery to the spirited Alix -- fresh from a romantic breakup -- but for reasons of her own Alix accepts the quirky bequest, in part because it gives her time to plan her best friend's storybook wedding. But unseen forces move...

Stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea-- while taking us to the heart of what is means to be human.