All Library branches will close at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 26, and remain closed through Thursday, Nov. 27, for Thanksgiving. The Mobile Library will not make its scheduled stops.
The Library Express West is temporarily out of service.
Take the 2025
WINTER READING
CHALLENGE
For Adults
The Winter Reading Challenge returns for everyone, especially those who love a challenge. The Library's fifth cold-weather reading event for adults runs January 2-February 28, 2025.
Download a Winter Reading Challenge form (pdf) or pick up a form at the checkout desk of any library branch or Mobile Library. Or, you can complete the challenge online.
Librarians have assembled 15 new reading categories this year. Some will surprise you, some may nudge you out of your comfort zone. All of them are bound to introduce you to some new ideas and new authors.
Read books that match at least five of the 15 categories, turn in your completed challenge form to your library branch and receive the 2025 edition mug for being a Winter Reading Master!
Need help getting started?
Here are suggested titles for each of the 15 challenges
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My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris
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Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy
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Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror by Junji Ito
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Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
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Lore Olympus: Volume One by Rachel Smythe
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Dog Days by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
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A Firehose of Falsehood: The Story of Disinformation by Teri Kanefield
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Just Another Story: A Graphic Migration Account by Ernesto Saade
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Watership Down: The Graphic Novel by James Sturm
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Roaming by Mariko Tamaki
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The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl
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Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
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Orbital by Samantha Harvey
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From Scratch by Tembi Locke
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So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan
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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
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Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
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Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
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Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum
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World Travel by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
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Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
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The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
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Minor Feelings by Cathy Hong Park
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The Verifiers by Jane Pek
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The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee
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The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
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Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
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Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
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The Traveling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
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The Hunger by Alma Katsu
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Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
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Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas
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So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison
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The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon
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The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan*
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Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson
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Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubeshig Rice
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A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories edited by Richard Z. Santos
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Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes
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Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
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The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
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Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
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The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
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How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler
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Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
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The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi
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The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai
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Jade City by Fonda Lee
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The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova
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A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
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Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
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Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
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Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian
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The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
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Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
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Kindred by Octavia Butler
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The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
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Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey
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Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
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Desperation Reef by T. Jefferson Parker
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One Life by Megan Rapinoe
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Running While Black by Alison Mariella Désir
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The Chase by Elle Kennedy
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The Fireballer by Mark Stevens
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The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of New City by Kevin Baker
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The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller
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Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World by Lauren Fleshman
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I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
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Burn by Peter Heller
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
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How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos by David Pogue
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Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
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Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant
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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishigiro
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Severance by Ling Ma
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Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
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Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
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James by Percival Everett
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Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
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This Motherless Land by Nikki May
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The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
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Longbourn by Jo Baker
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Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin
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Circe by Madeline Miller
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Julia by Sandra Newman
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Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
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Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
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Love & Saffron by Kim Fay
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She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki
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Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks by Crystal Wilkinson
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Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
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Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala
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The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai
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We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto by Alice Waters
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Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford
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The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro
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Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
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The Trackers by Charles Frazier
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All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
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The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel
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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
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The Masterpiece by Francine Rivers
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The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
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A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline
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Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
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River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer
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Holly by Stephen King
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I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
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How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair
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The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
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The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
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The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
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The Fraud by Zadie Smith
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Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig
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Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
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The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
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The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
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There’s Always this Year: On Basketball & Ascension by Hanif Abdurraquib
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Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
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Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch
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The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
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The Overstory by Richard Powers
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The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
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By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagler
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The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland
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Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
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The Chicken Sisters by K.J. Dell’Antonia
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Starter Villain by John Scalzi
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Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Sutanto
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America the Beautiful? One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled by Blythe Roberson
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Less by Andrew Sean Greer
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Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson
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Life in the Present by Liz Climo
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The Guncle by Steven Rowley
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We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida
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We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
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Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
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The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
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The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
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How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery
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Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy
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This is Happiness by Niall Williams
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Harry’s Trees by Jon Cohen
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