Washoe County Library System

"From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel following a New Mexican family's extraordinary year of love and sacrifice. It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans....

An exploration of the human immune system analyzes four immunotherapy cases to explain how our defense systems protect and sometimes injure the body. Magnificently reported and soulfully crafted, An Elegant Defense is an epic, first-of-its-kind exploration of the human immune system and the secrets of health, by Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times journalist Matt Richtel. “One of those rare nonfiction books that transcends the genre. ... Fascinating...

"A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpectednew frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human...

"Amy and Brian's world was changed forever with his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's. Forced to confront the daily frustrations and realities of the disease and its impact on their lives and marriage, Brian resolved not to let it dictate his life and instead asked himself: What makes life meaningful, and how do I want to live the rest of mine? His decision led them to learn about Dignitas and to fly to Zürich for a peaceful ending of Brian's...

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a diagnosis of Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease, Alice and her family find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her struggle to stay connected to who she once was is frightening, heartbreaking, and inspiring.

After alleged serial killer Edgar Roy is apprehended and locked away in a psychiatric unit, private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are called in by Roy's lawyer--an old friend of Sean King--to look into the case. But en route to their first meeting with the lawyer, King and Maxwell discover his dead body.

"A divinity professor and young mother with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis explores the pain and joy of living without certainty. Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed...

"Becoming a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer's disease or another neurocognitive disorder can be an unexpected, undesirable, underappreciated--and yet noble role. It is heartbreaking to watch someone lose the very cognitive capacities that once helped to define them as a person. But because of the nature of these disorders, the only way to become an effective caregiver and cope with the role's many daily challenges is to become well-informed about...

Author Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer. He instantly worried what his daughters' lives would be like without him. "Would they wonder who I was? Would they yearn for my approval, my love, my voice?" Three days later he came up with a stirring idea: he would reach out to six men from all the passages in his life, and ask them to be present in the passages in his daughters' lives. And he would call this group "The Council...