Find your Next Great Read | George Hail Library

Library Recommendations:
Staff Picks

Find your next great with a curated list of recommendations available through Ocean State Libraries! We are currently recommending:

Orbital

Samantha Harvey

Deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. (2024)

Praise:

Winner of the Booker Prize, 2024

Winner of the Hawthornden Prize, 2024

Audition

Katie Kitamura

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. (2025)

Praise:

Shortlisted for the Book Prize, 2025

“Beguiling… Kitamura chooses to upend everything … as her story creeps toward a brutal climax. … Hypnotic and finely observant … sleek, provocative … a must for literary collections and for book club discussions.”
—Library Journal

The Oligarch's Daughter

Joseph Finder

Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move.

Six years ago, Paul was a rising star on Wall Street who fell in love with a beautiful photographer named Tatyana—unaware that her father was a Russian oligarch and the object of considerable interest from several U.S. intelligence agencies. Now, to save his own life, Paul must unravel a decades-old conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of the government. (2025)

Praise:

“Finder deftly fuses the essence of the best Cold War spy novels with modern, high-tech espionage thrillers...Creating compelling apprehension, this suspenseful thriller keeps readers off-balance and unsure whom to trust. Finder achieves a perfect one-sitting read.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

Immaculate Conception

Ling Ling Huang

Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise-and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up a close friendship that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde's fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close-no matter the cost. Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family's company is funding a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy, and which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde's mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a haunting series of events that forever change their lives. (2025)

Praise:

"...unlike anything else I’ve read this year…timely in the way it looks at power, fame and ‘the industry of art’ and at how A.I. affects art; and its exploration of the way trauma shapes us is emotionally resonant. It is a messy, heartfelt love letter to art, and a superb work of fiction.”
—New York Times Book Review

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NoveList - a database offered by the Ocean State Libraries consortium & the state RI Office of Library and Information Services.

Use Author Read-alikes to locate other authors and titles of interest or search for fiction by topic. NoveList also includes full-text searchable book reviews, annotations, genre- and theme-based book lists, award lists, and book discussion guides.

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Summer Hours begin on May 23

Library Recommendations:
Staff Picks

Check out our social media for more!

Don't like the list? Find your next read with these popular sources:

Summer Hours begin on May 23

Library Recommendations: Staff Picks

Check out our social media for more!

Don't like the list? Find your next read with these popular sources:

Library Recommendations:
Staff Picks