Plano Reads: Get Caught Reading!
12 mins read

Plano Reads: Get Caught Reading!

May is Get Caught Reading Month, and it’s a reminder for all of us that reading can be relaxing and fun. Get a head start on your summer reading with one or more of these exceptional titles!

For Adults

Book of Night by Holly Black – Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall. Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but getting out isn’t easy. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world—all trying to steal a secret that will give them vast and terrible power. Print |eBook |Audiobook 

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler – An epic and intimate novel about the family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth. In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin northeast of Baltimore. One by one, ten children arrive, as the country draws frighteningly closer to civil war. The Booths emerge from their hidden lives to become one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But multiple scandals, triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with a painful legacy. Print |eBook |Audiobook

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall – Luc O’Donnell is tangentially—and reluctantly—famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything. To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened, unless … Print |eBook |Audiobook  

The Break-Up Book Club by Wendy Wax – The story of a book club of broken hearts, where four women come together and discover the power of female friendship and find the courage to pursue their dreams. Together, with a lot of inspiration from their favorite books, they help one another move forward, to discover who they want to be now and what will make them happy. Print|

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan – An enthralling debut fantasy inspired by the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess, in which a young woman’s quest to free her mother sets her on a dangerous path and pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm. Daughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting, romantic duology that weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic, of loss and sacrifice – where love vies with honor, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant. |Print |eBook 

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara – In a sprawling Indian city lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use his crime-solving skills to find him, and asks his friends Pari and Faiz to help. But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined, and a triumph of suspense.  Print |eBook |Audiobook  

Dracula by Bram Stoker – Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, may not be the first vampire novel, but it is certainly the most famous. This classic tale couldn’t be more different than the conservative Victorian era during which it was published. Though critically praised from the start as being ahead of its time, it was not an immediate bestseller. But today we recognize it as a classic know Print |eBook |Audiobook |

Faithful and Virtuous Night  by Louise Glück – This spellbinding poetry book by Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück explores the nuanced, intimate human experiences of dreams, death, and purpose. The poems in this book connect like two interwoven strings of pearls, one string traces the life of an artist orphaned as a child, and the other sketches the portrait of the poet after her mother passes away. Mysterious, fateful, and heartbreaking, this book is a night cruise of wonders. |Print |eBook | 

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung – The voice of Ghost Forest is an unnamed Asian-Canadian woman attempting to form an understanding of the generational and cultural differences between her and her immigrant family, and how those differences have impacted her relationship with them. The prose is lyrical, and the format of the story is a series of vignettes that jump back and forth in time, covering conversations and experiences that the protagonist has with different family members, particularly her father, who is dying. Print |eBook |

Girls of Flight City by Lorraine Heath – 1941. A talented flier, Jessie Lovelace yearns for a career in aviation. When the civilian flight school in her small Texas town begins to clandestinely train British pilots for the RAF, she fights to become an instructor. As the war intensifies and America becomes involved, the Girls of Flight City do their part to bring a victorious end to the conflict, pouring all their energy into preparing the young cadets to take to the skies and defeat the dangers that await. This is based on true story.  Print|

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Renée Nault – Renée Nault’s graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s renowned dystopian novel stays faithful to the original while incorporating stunning artwork that conveys the horror of living under a totalitarian regime. The bright colors bring the story to life, and the bloody red color of the handmaids’ clothing commands the reader’s attention and serves as a reminder of the sense of inescapability and violence connected to totalitarian regimes as the one depicted in the book. Nault balances the images she created for the graphic novel with Atwood’s original text in such a way that readers will not be missing essential parts of the story for the sake of the artwork. Print |eBook|

Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River by John N. Maclean – A brief, well-written memoir which explores the Macleans’ deeply-felt connections to the “home waters” of Montana’s Blackfoot River, where they have lived and fished for more than one hundred years. John Maclean is the son of Norman Maclean, and refers frequently to events and characters his father’s classic novella, A River Runs Through It. |Print|

Jameela Green Ruins Everything by Zarqa Nawaz – A no-holds-barred satire about the international cost of the American Dream, Jameela Green Ruins Everything is a compulsively readable, darkly comedic, yet unexpectedly touching story of one woman’s search for meaning and connection. |eBook|

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente – The Past is Red is a science-fiction novella set in a world where global warming has caused sea levels to rise to the point where everything is inundated except for a few floating patches of garbage. Tetley, our protagonist, lives on one of these garbage islands, where she is the most hated person because she wanted to protect the small remnants of the surviving world. Still, the book’s tone is humorous at times, and reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ absurdist humor and wit. Print |eBook|

Shadows of Pecan Hollow by Caroline Frost – In 1970, teenage Kit is abducted by Manny and becomes his unwilling partner in crime. Twenty years later, Kit has made a new life for herself and her daughter Charlie in a small Texas town. But what will happen when Manny, just out of prison and born-again, reappears in Pecan Hollow? An addictive and satisfying debut. Print |eBook |

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker – This exceptional mystery, the tale of teenage “outlaw” Duchess Day Radley and her troubled family, recently enthralled the members of our Second Tuesday Book Club. It’s fast-paced, with striking and complicated characters, and a storyline that is absolutely spellbinding. Print |eBook |Audiobook|

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid – In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered. But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain called Gáspár, they have no choice but to rely on each other as they undertake a dangerous and fateful mission. Print |eBook|

And for Younger Readers

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang (Graphic Novel) – Gene understands stories – comic book stories, in particular. Big action. Bigger thrills. And the hero always wins. But Gene doesn’t get sports. As a kid, his friends called him “Stick” and every basketball game he played ended in pain. He lost interest in basketball long ago, but at the high school where he now teaches, it’s all anyone can talk about. The men’s varsity team, the Dragons, is having a phenomenal season that’s been decades in the making. Each victory brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the California State Championships. Once Gene gets to know these young all-stars, he realizes that their story is just as thrilling as anything he’s seen on a comic book page. He knows he has to follow this epic to its end. What he doesn’t know yet is that this season is not only going to change the Dragons’ lives, but his own as well. Print |eBook 

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (Fiction) – When families go missing in Baltimore County, Jane McKeene, who is studying to become an Attendant, finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy that has her fighting for her life against powerful enemies.  A provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive look at an America both foreign and familiar. Print |eBook |Audiobook 

White Rose by Kip Wilson (Fiction) – A novel which re-tells the true story of Sophie Scholl, a young German college student who challenges the Nazi regime during World War II as part of the White Rose, a non-violent resistance group. Print |eBook |Audiobook  

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