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Check out these recommended reads, hand-picked by library staff just for readers like you!

 

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Storeyville

Frank Santoro

A perfect match of form and content, Storeyville was originally published in 1995 as a 40-page tabloid newspaper. Now rare, it was printed in black and white, along with a set of three muted tones ranging from sandy yellow to deep sepia, and it described the arc of a youthful adventure that took its protagonist, Will, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Montreal, Quebec at the opening of the twentieth century. Rendered with humor, pathos and a gentle graphic flair, this story brings Will to terms with himself and his fate. It is a sprawling story that gives Santoro ample opportunity to showcase his love of drawing through dramatic cityscapes, landscapes and seascapes rendered in a unique combination of pencils, inks and grey-scale markers. Hugely influential on the likes of Chris Ware, Seth and many others, this long out-of-print cult work finally gets a proper release with this deluxe new hardcover edition. Frank Santoro's work was recently shown at Canada Gallery, New York.

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Ducks

Kate Beaton

A New York Times Notable book! One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022! Winner of Canada Reads 2023!

“An exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival.“—Carmen Maria Machado

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beaton, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush—part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, northern lights, and boreal forest. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.

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Bone

Jeff Smith

BONE - The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume 

Winner of 41 National and International Awards including 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards!
Meet the Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, three misfits who are run out of Boneville and find themselves lost in a vast uncharted desert. They make their way into a deep, forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. With the help of the mysterious Thorn, her tough-as-nails Gran'ma Ben and the Great Red Dragon, the boys do their best to survive in the middle of brewing trouble between the valley's denizens. It will be the longest - but funniest - year of their lives!
Originally serialized in black & white comic books and graphic novels, the award-winning novel was presented complete and unabridged for the first time in this impressive 1300 page tome preserving the original black & white artwork.
 

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Castle Waiting

Linda Medley

The Castle Waiting graphic novel tells the story of an isolated, abandoned castle, and the eccentric inhabitants who bring it back to life. A fable for modern times, Castle Waiting is a fairy tale that's not about rescuing the princess, saving the kingdom, or fighting the ultimate war between Good and Evil — but about being a hero in your own home. The opening story, "The Brambly Hedge," tells the origin of the castle itself, which is abandoned by its princess in a comic twist on "Sleeping Beauty" when she rides off into the sunset with her Prince Charming. The castle becomes a refuge for misfits, outcasts, and others seeking sanctuary, playing host to a lively and colorful cast of characters that inhabits the subsequent stories, including a talking anthropomorphic horse, a mysteriously pregnant Lady on the run, and a bearded nun.

For the first time, Fantagraphics' Castle Waiting collects the first volume of the Harvey and Eisner Award-winning* comic book series into one hearty hardcover. Linda Medley lavishly illustrates Castle Waiting in a classic visual style reminiscent of Arthur Rackham and William Heath Robinson. Blending elements from a variety of sources—fairy tales, folklore, nursery rhymes—Medley tells the story of the everyday lives of fantastic characters with humor, intelligence, and insight into human nature. Castle Waiting can be read on multiple levels and can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

*Awards:

  • 2007 Eisner Award nominee: Best Graphic Album — Reprint, Best Publication Design (Adam Grano)
  • 2007 Harvey Award nominee: Best Graphic Album — Previously Published
  • Official Selection, 2008 Festival International de la Bande Desinée de Angoulême (French edition)
  • "20 Essential Albums for Summer 2008," l'Association des Critiques de Bandes Dessinées (French edition)
  • Finalist, Prix de la Critique 2008, l'Association des Critiques de Bandes Dessinées (French edition)
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Through the Woods

Emily Carroll

Discover a terrifying world in the woods in this collection of five hauntingly beautiful graphic stories that includes the online webcomic sensation “His Face All Red,” in print for the first time.

Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to “Our Neighbor’s House”—though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret in “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold.” You might try to figure out what is haunting “My Friend Janna,” or discover that your brother’s fiancée may not be what she seems in “The Nesting Place.” And of course you must revisit the horror of “His Face All Red,” the breakout webcomic hit that has been gorgeously translated to the printed page.

Already revered for her work online, award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll’s stunning visual style and impeccable pacing is on grand display in this entrancing anthology, her print debut.

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Wires and Nerve

Marissa Meyer

#1 New York Times– and USA Today–bestselling Marissa Meyer extends the world of the Lunar Chronicles with a brand-new, action-packed graphic novel that follows Iko, the beloved android with a heart of (mechanized) gold.

No android likes feeling useless... but this feeling of stagnation, of helplessness, is one I can’t shake.

When rogue packs of wolf-hybrid soldiers threaten the tenuous peace alliance between Earth and Luna, Iko—an audacious android and best friend to the Lunar Queen Cinder— takes it upon herself to hunt down the soldiers' leader, Alpha Lysander Steele. Though her friends have already accepted her unusual human-like programming, the rest of the world is another story. But if Iko wants to catch Steele, she will have to face the world and question everything she knows about love, loyalty, and her own humanity.

With appearances by Cinder, Cress, Scarlet, Winter, and the rest of the Rampion crew, this is a must-have for fans of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series.

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Long Way Down

Jason Reynolds

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)

Jason Reynolds’s Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, and Coretta Scott King Honor–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel Long Way Down is now a gripping, galvanizing graphic novel, with haunting artwork by Danica Novgorodoff.

Will’s older brother, Shawn, has been shot.
Dead.
Will feels a sadness so great, he can’t explain it. But in his neighborhood, there are THE RULES:

No. 1: Crying.
Don’t.
No matter what.

No. 2: Snitching
Don’t.
No matter what.

No. 3: Revenge
Do.
No matter what.

But bullets miss. You can get the wrong guy. And there’s always someone else who knows to follow the rules…

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Cairo

G. Willow Wilson

Written by G. Willow Wilson Art and cover by M.K. Perker Written by breakout talent G. Willow Wilson, a Cairo-based journalist, and drawn by renowned illustrator M.K. Perker, the original hardcover graphic novel CAIRO is action-adventure that brings the ancient and modern Middle East together with a Vertigo twist! A stolen hookah, a spiritual underworld, and a genie on the run change the lives of five strangers forever in this modern fable set on the streets of the Middle East's largest metropolis! This magical-realism thriller interweaves the fates of a drug runner, a down-on-his luck journalist, an American expatriate, a young activist, and an Israeli soldier as they race through bustling present-day Cairo to find an artifact of unimaginable power, one protected by a dignified jinn and sought by a wrathful gangster-magician. But the vastness of Africa's legendary City of Victory extends into a spiritual realm - the Undernile - and even darker powers lurk there...

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Frankenstein

Joe Sutliff Sanders

Conceived as part of a literary game among friends in 1816, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is today regarded as a classic piece of 19th century literature. The story begins with the journey of an adventurer, Robert Walton, who saves the life of a man at the North Pole. That man, Victor Frankenstein, tells Walton about his experiments with the creation of life and how he ended up at the North Pole. Through this simple plot device, Shelley was able to deal with serious real-world issues like acceptance, tolerance, and understanding, as well as the universal human need for companionship and love. The novel, of course, inspired a host of films, from the 1931 classic starring Boris Karloff to Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, and more recently, a series of novels by Dean Koontz. This version, though slightly abridged, retains much of the original dialogue and remains true to Shelley's brilliant vision.

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The Flip Side: A Graphic Novel

Jason Walz

This breathtaking, page-turning graphic novel is a supernatural survival story in which a grieving teen finds himself in a haunting alternate reality—the frightening embodiment of his depression. For fans of Stranger Things and Nimona.

Theo’s best friend has died, and he can’t pull himself out of his sadness—a sadness that those around him don’t seem to respect or even notice. And then something even more disconcerting happens: His town literally flips upside down and everyone disappears, except for a threatening, shape-shifting monster and a snarky teenage girl who knows her way around this flipped world. Is Theo doomed to spend the rest of his life in this scary state?

Tremendously unique and suspenseful, The Flip Side tackles grief and depression in a fascinating and affecting way.

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Bitter Root Volume 1: Family Business

David F. Walker

"In the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance is in full swing, and only the Sangerye Family, once known as the greatest monster hunters of all time, can save New York -- and the world -- from the supernatural forces threatening to destroy humanity. But those days are fading and the once-great family that specialized in curing the souls of those infected by racism and hate has been torn apart by tragedies and conflicting moral codes. A terrible tragedy has claimed most of the family, leaving the surviving cousins divided between by the desire to cure monsters or to kill them; they must heal the wounds of the past and move beyond their differences ... or sit back and watch a force of unimaginable evil ravage the human race."--Provided by publisher.

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March: Book One

John Lewis

#1 New York Times Bestseller

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole).

March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.

Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.

Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award — Special Recognition
#1 Washington Post Bestseller
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
An ALA Notable Book
One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens
One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound
One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read
Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program
Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University
Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards
Nominated for the Glyph Award
Named one of the best books of 2013 by USA TodayThe Washington PostPublishers WeeklyLibrary Journal, School Library JournalBooklistKirkus ReviewsThe Horn Book, PasteSlateComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.

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Monstress 1

Marjorie M. Liu

"Set in an alternate world of art deco beauty and steampunk horror, Monstress tells the epic story of Maika Halfwolf, a teenage survivor of a cataclysmic war between humans and their hated enemies, the Arcanics. In the face of oppression and terrible danger, Maika is both hunter and hunted, searching for answers about her mysterious past as those who seek to use her remain just one step behind ... and all the while, the monster within begins to awaken ..."

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