Librarians' Favorites Book List - Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

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incoldblood

Librarians love reading and recommending great reads. We serve the public's reading needs daily and always look for ways to keep people inspired to pick up a book (or listen to one).

We asked staff to share fiction and nonfiction titles they would re-read or recommend others read. Get a load of this eclectic mix of books – all great! You may want to bookmark this page so you can return to it as you work your way through our summer reading program. Adults need to read just eight books in June and July to be entered to win an ereader.

Click the title to be taken directly to the catalog where you can reserve the title online and have us hold it for you for pickup later. Comment below about what titles off this list you'd recommend for a read or a re-read. Or share your favorites so we can create a similar list based on customer favorites!

Fiction

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Red Grass River by James Carlos Blake

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

World War Z by Max Brooks

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton

L. A. Requiem by Robert Crais

Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip Dick

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Howards End by E.M. Forster

84 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Ulysses by James Joyce

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

The Stand by Stephen King

Watchers by Dean Koontz

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Rhino Ranch by Larry McMurty

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Relic by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

silverliningsplaybook

Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

The Last English King by Julian Rathbone

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Nora Nora by Anne Rivres Siddons

God’s Fool by Mark Slouka

The Pornographer’s Poem by Michael Turner

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works by Kurt Vonnegut

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Nonfiction

The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson

Red Zone by Aphrodite Jones

stiff

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Tales of a Rat-hunting Man by David Brian Plummer

Before and After Getting Your Puppy by Ian Dunbar

The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell

Good to Great by James Collins

Factory Made: Warhol and the '60s by Steven Watson

Hotel California by Barney Hoskyns

Kraftwerk: Man, Machine & Music by Pascal Bussy

The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music by Steve Lopez

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Beautiful Trouble poems by Amy Fleury

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Don’t Fall Off the Mountain by Shirley MacLaine

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

My Life in France by Julia Child

memoriamtoidentity

In Memoriam to Identity by Kathy Acker

Lisa Coble-Krings

Books

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