Gates Mills Branch Library

06/01/2026

06/01/2026

From the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, moving tales of the marvelous animals who have crossed his path.

Scott Simon’s household does not make much distinction between humans and other animals. Whether two legged or four, flesh-covered, fur-covered, feathered, or gilled—everyone is family. Today, the beloved radio host lives with the haiku-writing and absolument charmant French poodle Daisy; the daringly audacious foster cat Gato Blanco; and the energetic, cage-escaping hamster Bagel, who was almost Gato’s meal. And that’s just the start. In Ulysses S. Cat and Other Animals I Have Known, Simon warmly philosophizes on the unforgettable and utterly ordinary but enduring moments in the remarkable relationships between species, along with their joys, worries, love, and humor. From a cat who escaped the British Embassy—Simon had to promise she’d keep her accent—to street dogs during Sarajevo’s siege, to a series of beta fish all named Salman Fishdie, this enchanting work is a profusion of exuberant memories and musings on a life spent in animal company. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/496698

05/30/2026

A young author becomes the object of a fan’s desire―and rage.

He showed up at Arden Bowie’s debut author appearance with a copy of her novel and an eager smile. He showered her with compliments and got her autograph. Then he came to her next event. And the one after that.

Dustin was just an aspiring writer who wanted advice, Arden reassured herself. But after giving in to one of his incessant invitations and chatting with him over coffee, she discovered that ignoring her inner alarm bell had been a terrible mistake…

An introvert at heart, Arden had long craved solitude―but now, after a harrowing assault, she finds herself hiding behind locked doors and startling at every sound. And her relief at his imprisonment is tempered by anxiety when Dustin’s wealthy mother helps to get him a paltry five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility.

Arden decides to write a new story for herself, moving to a tiny Oregon town and befriending Gideon, an ex-LAPD detective. But while she learns to thrive, Dustin remains his delusional, twisted self, as fixated as ever and now seething with anger. He still believes Arden's purpose on earth is to serve and please him. And his job is to protect her. But who will protect her from him? https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/478353

05/29/2026

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. Her children and grandchildren worry it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: she’s pregnant.

Once word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and the paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, all descending on Vista View as Pepper tries to determine her next move. Soon Pepper has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.

Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose. It’s about motherhood and family, s*x and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks—even so late in the day—can still change, and then change everything. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/499151

05/28/2026

The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at humanity’s deep past, showing us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by trial and error on a global scale.

There’s a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering bands to villages and cities, clans and chieftains to states and kings. But Lost Worlds offers a new narrative of humanity’s deep history. Here beloved podcast host Patrick Wyman focuses on the 10,000-year span between the end of the Ice Age and the decline of the Bronze Age—the period when civilization as we understand it emerged, introducing social hierarchies, urbanism, complex political organizations, and the written word.

But instead of being an arc of progress, this period of immense change was not linear; it was littered with fits and false starts, failures, disasters, and the complete collapse of complex societies. With the recent explosion in available archaeological evidence, including ancient human DNA, we can now understand long-past people in unprecedented detail. By focusing on lost worlds of individuals and societies, we see that to be human is to try and fail. But it is also to endure.

In this nuanced retelling, human progress is no longer a straight march from caves to cities: Farming didn’t always replace foraging, villages didn’t automatically spark agriculture, and cities didn’t necessitate rigid hierarchies. For thousands of years, humans merely improvised. By the end of the Bronze Age, the world had become unrecognizable: mammoths and giant sloths replaced by cattle and sheep, scattered nomadic bands replaced by millions living in cities, and farming on nearly every continent. Wyman argues that the rise of states and steady food production wasn’t inevitable, but rather, the outcome of countless choices that reshaped the planet and made us who we are today.

Sweeping, accessible, and filled with colorful detail, Lost Worlds is the story of how humanity built the world we live in—not by destiny, but by experiment. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/481685

05/27/2026

What does it mean to heal from trauma caused by the people, beliefs, and practices of your faith? And to rebuild a sense of self, when high-control religion said you shouldn’t have one?

Indoctrinated from early childhood to obey, conform, and want what others wanted for her, Tia Levings learned love and acceptance meant being someone other than herself.

After years of abuse in a violent marriage and high-control religion, Tia Levings escaped with her children (a story told in her memoir, A Well-Trained Wife) and thought the hardest was behind her.

But leaving was just the beginning.

With an audacious persistence to reclaim her life, Tia set off on a 15-year quest to psychological peace. The result is an emotionally regulated, actualized, self-aware woman who is able to tell her harrowing story without retraumatizing herself —a woman who can reach back to help others claim what’s theirs. If trauma took your past, it shouldn't get your present and future too.

Through a series of personal stories, therapeutic stages, and resources, Tia Levings guides readers through the journey that helped her leave abuse, rediscover selfhood, and heal her mind, soul, and body after religious trauma —so that you can too. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/486209

05/26/2026

A written memoir rooted in Hakka culture about the lesson to accept both bitterness and sweetness in life.

Eat Bitter is a memoir about guts and feelings. In Eat Bitter food is not fuel. It’s a vehicle for us to digest reality. A pause for us to pick a truth from our teeth. It’s a belly full of contemplation. It’s an ode to food as a material for conversation and connection.

This book is a story told through the lens of Hakka culture, the unique cultural identity of a Han Chinese subgroup that has migrated across Asia and the Americas. As a result, their cuisine has been swallowed up in the monolith of broader Chinese traditions. Indeed, hakka literally translates to “guest families,” and since they have experienced the most forced migration in China, they have had to forage off the land, ingenuity thereby becoming one of their defining characteristics. As such, the process of cooking and the endurance of such things is a significant part of Hakka traditions.

In Hakka culture, “eating bitter” means to endure pain alongside sweetness, in both food and life. Lydia Pang applies this ethos and mindset to those modern-day issues we all face. Whether it’s losing a parent, navigating pregnancy, pushing her marriage to the brink, or coming face to face with the fact that she's unhappy with the life she's built, Lydia learns to take the bitter with the sweet, the challenging with the rewarding. She offers a renewed appreciation for food as a medium to process emotions—one that's heartfelt and tender, witty in all the right places. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/488265

05/25/2026

Nothing is as it seems—and no one is telling the truth—in this page-turning thriller about a young lawyer forced to defend a man on trial for murder against the mentor who taught her everything: her husband.

When Leila Reynolds is handed her first murder case, she’s shocked by the victim: a well-known, well-respected judge, whose death sent shockwaves through the legal community. She’s also incredulous—she’s nowhere near experienced enough to handle such a high-profile assignment—but the defendant is insistent: he wants her, and only her, to represent him.

Except he’s refusing to talk. And if that wasn’t complicated enough, Leila soon learns her opponent is the most ruthless prosecutor she’s ever known: her husband.

It’s an impossible situation, yet Leila is determined to sway the jury to her side—until she’s blindsided once again by a shadowy figure from her past. Suddenly, Leila finds herself fighting not only for her client and marriage, but also to keep her own secrets buried. And if she has to rewrite the rules to win, so be it. https://discover.cuyahogalibrary.org/Record/508178