Best Of 2022

Once upon a time... In a land far away, there were two kingdoms: the Outside, where twisted beasts roamed that could curse with a touch, and the Inside, where humans lived in safety and peace. The girl and the beast should never have met, but when they do, a quiet fairytale begins. This is a story of two people \- one human, one inhuman \- who linger in the hazy twilight that separates night from day.

Librarian's Note: For an alternate cover edition of the same ISBN, click here. When young Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away - home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain.

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of our most imaginative writers, a radical thinker, and a feminist icon. The interviews collected here span 40 years of her pioneering and prolific career. When she began writing in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: she was a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, she wrote genre at a time where it was dismissed as non-literary, and she lived out West, far from fashionable east coast literary circles. The interviews collected here—covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to her process of world-building; from her earliest experiments with genre to envisioning the end of capitalism—highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature.

Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel by Oscar Wilde that was first published in 1890. It is the story of a young, handsome man named Dorian Gray who becomes corrupted by his own vanity and the influence of a hedonistic friend, Lord Henry Wotton. Dorian makes a Faustian bargain to keep his youth and beauty forever, while a portrait of him ages in his place. The novel explores themes of morality, decadence, and the corrupting influence of beauty and wealth. It is notable for its depiction of homosexuality, which was considered scandalous at the time of its publication. The novel has been adapted into numerous film and stage productions, and is considered a classic of English literature.

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming. Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556)