Peak Picks Current Titles Book List
A complete list of current Peak Picks titles.
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The Overthinker's Guide to Making Decisions
Adult Nonfiction. “Your brain is wired to overthink decisions--not because something's wrong with you, but because you care deeply about making the right choice. The Overthinker's Guide to Making Decisions breaks new ground where ‘just trust your gut’ advice has failed you. Unlike traditional approaches that leave you stranded between endless analysis and vague intuition, this book provides a counterintuitive system that bypasses the overthinking loop entirely. This isn't about making perfect choices. It's about making aligned ones from a place of clarity instead of chaos.” Publisher
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Tortoise's Tale
Adult Fiction. “The Tortoise’s Tale claims to be the memoir of a 150-year-old tortoise as she experiences life in the 20th century and beyond. Magic, our narrator, goes by many names as she is passed from hand to hand, residing mostly on a private California estate. Sometimes surrounded by family and fellow animals, other times regarded merely as a decorative curiosity for tourists, Magic observes the world with measured compassion. Her most enduring connection is with Lucy, a young girl she meets early on and remains tethered to throughout their intertwined lives. This quiet but beautifully written debut will resonate particularly with animal lovers…” Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Bog Queen
Adult Fiction. “When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she’s ever seen. Though its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved. Flashing between… post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with contemporary urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious and complex than either can imagine.” -- Publisher
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Enshittification
Adult Nonfiction. “This trenchant treatise from Doctorow explores how and why the internet has devolved into a wasteland of scams, ads, and surveillance. Platforms from Google to Apple to Facebook have deliberately worsened themselves, he argues?as their users ‘remain trapped in their rotting carcasses unable to escape’?by pursuing monopolistic goals including limited competition, regulatory capture, and diminished worker power, all of which has rendered these platforms not only too big to fail but ‘too big to care.’ The result is a razor-sharp yet subtly optimistic look at the soul-sucking state of the internet.” -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Hole in the Sky
Adult Fiction. “On the Great Plains of Oklahoma—in the heart of the Cherokee Nation—a strange atmospheric disturbance is noticed by Jim Hardgray, a… father trying to reconnect with his teenaged daughter, Tawny. At NASA’s headquarters in Houston, astrophysicist Dr. Mikayla Johnson observes an interaction… and concludes that something enormous and unidentified is heading directly for Earth. And in an undisclosed bunker deep in the earth, an American threat forecaster known only as The Man Downstairs intercepts a cryptic communication and sends an urgent message to the president and highest-ranking military brass: ‘First contact imminent’.” -- Publisher
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Mother Mary Comes to Me
Adult Nonfiction. Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist Roy recounts a life of poverty and upheaval, defiance and triumph in an emotionally raw memoir, centered on her complicated relationship with her mother. Mary Roy…was a volatile, willful woman, angry and abusive. To escape her mother's demands and tantrums, Arundhati, at age 18, decided to move permanently to Delhi…she embarked on a long relationship with a filmmaker, which ignited her career as a writer. Throughout, Mrs. Roy loomed large in her daughter's life, and her death, in 2022, left the author overcome with grief. An intimate, stirring chronicle.” Kirkus
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Replaceable You
Adult Nonfiction. “The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manu-facturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available--sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we're attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? Irrepressible and accessible, Replace-able You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable and surreal quest to build a new you.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Automatic Noodle
Adult Fiction. “When Staybehind and his fellow robots wake up after a mysterious shutdown, they find the restaurant is flooding. And worse, the owners of their shop are on the lam after running a crypto scam. But after conferring, the assorted robots, living in a postwar San Francisco in a future where California is liberated from the U.S. and robots have a first wave of basic civil rights, decide that if humans can run a restaurant, so can they. In a daring move, they reopen as Authentic Noodle, a shop that serves biang biang–style noodles. But when a robophobic group begins to flood their site with one-star reviews, they’ll have to fight to remain open. Newitz has gifted sf readers with a hopeful, postapocalyptic found-family tale.” Booklist
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Sabzi
Adult Nonfiction. “Lifting its name from the Persian word for ‘herbs’, Sabzi brings you more than 80 accessible plant-forward recipes that celebrate the best of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian flavors. From bountiful salads to fragrant soups, colorful mezze, and heart-warming mains, Yasmin invites home cooks to make delicious meals that are good for the health of both people and the planet, while staying connected to the traditional food cultures that make us who we are. With easy-to-make recipes that put vibrant vegetables at the heart of a meal, dishes in the book include: Halloumi Lasagne; Smoky Tofu Shakshuka; Sweet Potatoes with Pistachio and Mint Pesto; Rhubarb and Cardamom Tart... and many more. An invitation into Yasmin's treasure trove of a kitchen, Sabzi is a celebration of the life-affirming and nourishing power of plants.” Publisher description
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Convenience Store by the Sea
Adult Fiction. “In the seaside town of Mojiko, the eccentric Mr. Shiba manages a Tenderness store, where his magnetic personality and handsome figure are nothing compared to his love for his customers and employees. The story follows multiple Tenderness patrons as they navigate hardships, with the store bringing them closer together. Among them are employee Mitsuri, a mother who struggles with raising a difficult teenage boy and finds solace in publishing her popular online manga. There’s also customer Yoshirō, an aspiring manga artist who strives to leave his job as a tutor; and Azusa, a middle schooler who yearns to step out of her friend’s shadow and discovers joy in the sweet treats at Tenderness, fueling her desire to become a pastry chef. Mr. Shiba’s interventions in others’ lives has mixed results… but overall, the well-meaning proprietor seeds a sense of hope and purpose in those he encounters.” PW
Format: Book
Availability: Available