Boss Lady by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans

August 2024

A few years ago, I met Alli Frank and Asha Youmans at a library event, and I immediately became a fan of their work. BOSS LADY, their fourth book, does not disappoint. Their stories are true to life but also laced with lots of humor.

Antonia "Toni" Arroyo is Black and Puerto Rican. She is working at the San Francisco Airport where she assists passengers getting to and from their gates. Among her regulars is Sylvia Eisenberg, a widow who travels between San Francisco and Arizona. Sylvia enjoys hearing all about Toni’s plans --- and is continually cheering her on. Toni appreciates the older woman’s zest for life, as well as the love she has for her family.

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Fall Reading 2024

Fall is known as the biggest season of the year for books. The titles that release during this latter part of the year often become holiday gifts, and many are blockbusters. We spotlighted 10 of these books in our Fall Reading Contests and Feature. While our series of 24-hour giveaways have ended, we encourage you to take a look at our featured titles, which we know people will be talking about this fall and beyond.

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Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger

The disappearance of a local politician’s teenage daughter is major news in Minnesota. As a huge manhunt is launched to find her, Cork O’Connor’s grandson stumbles across the shallow grave of a young Ojibwe woman --- but nobody seems that interested. Nobody, that is, except Cork and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police.

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Tracy Chevalier, author of The Glassmaker

It is 1486, and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass --- but she has the hands for it, the heart and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss --- from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists.

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