November recommended lists you don’t want to miss
As November brings shorter days and cooler temperatures, it is the perfect time to escape into a book before the busy holidays are in full swing. It is Native American Heritage month and there are many great Indigenous voices to highlight in celebration. As people gather with family and friends around Thanksgiving, readers will be looking to fill up on books too. For all that November holds and great new releases, we have all the Marketplace lists, and your patrons will be thankful for all the great reads!
Native American Heritage
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Recognizing the culture, traditions, and achievements of indigenous Americans, this large list covers all audiences and genres, so there are plenty of titles for all readers to check out.
Featured Title
The Indian Card by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz
From the publisher: A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States.
Who is Indian enough? To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded—increasing 85 percent in just ten years—the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe.
In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity—the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children—she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today’s Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.
All In the Family
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As we approach the upcoming holiday season, many people will be missing family or seeing a lot more of their family, for better or worse. This extensive list of adult fiction titles focused on family will offer readers many options to explore as they connect with their own families.
Featured Title
Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato
From the publisher: From the National Book Award–winning translator, an atmospheric and wise debut novel of a young Brazilian woman’s first year in America, a continent away from her lonely mother, and the relationship they build over Skype calls across borders.
In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother she left behind in northeastern Brazil. Four thousand miles apart and bound by the angular confines of a Skype window, they ask each other a simple question: what’s the news?
Offscreen, little about their lives seems newsworthy. The daughter writes her papers in the library at midnight, eats in the dining hall with the other international students, and raises her hand in class to speak in a language the mother cannot understand. The mother meanwhile preoccupies herself with natural disasters, her increasingly poor health, and the heartbreaking possibility that her daughter might not return to the apartment where they have always lived together. Yet in the blue glow of their computers, the two women develop new rituals of intimacy and caretaking, from drinking whiskey together in the middle of the night to keeping watch as one slides into sleep. As the warm colors of New England autumn fade into an endless winter snow, each realizes that the promise of spring might mean difficult endings rather than hopeful beginnings.
Expanded from a story originally published in The New Yorker, and in elegant prose that recalls the work of Sigrid Nunez, Katie Kitamura, and Rachel Khong, Bruna Dantas Lobato paints a powerful portrait of a mother and a daughter coming of age together and apart and explores the profound sacrifices and freedoms that come with leaving a home to make a new one somewhere else.
Top Titles of November
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Featured Title
Vanishing Treasures by Katherine Rundell
From your OverDrive DCL: There are incredible creatures all around us, and in Vanishing Treasures, Katherine Rundell looks at some of these extraordinary, yet endangered, animals. Exploring what makes each creature unique, how they have been perceived over time, and the impact that human activity has on their numbers, Rundell brings to life what makes these animals extraordinary. Discussing over 20 creatures from all around the world and through the lens of history, science, and literature, these profiles inspire awe. Still, Rundell does not shy away from the alarming decline of these animals or the direct impact humans have on these endangered creatures. The beautiful illustrations add to the experience of learning more about these unusual, marvelous, struggling species. From the humorous look at what people first thought of giraffes, to the selling of giraffe products, Rundell provides a whole picture that presents the strangeness of these creatures in a delightful way, while calling for preservation.
Coming Blockbusters of November
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Featured Title
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
From your OverDrive DCL: Robin Wall Kimmerer, bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, starts her new book picking serviceberries that a neighboring farm offered her and other neighbors for free. While picking these abundant berries, she ponders what she will do with them, including sharing them and sharing recipes with others. She continues on to explore the natural world and how abundance and reciprocity work with trees, insects, birds, and more. Compared to our economy of scarcity, commodity, and competition, Kimmerer looks at the benefits of a gift economy and gives examples of gift economies in communities. She discusses the natural resources of our current economy and how looking at the natural world could benefit our economy in terms of equality and environmental impact. In both nature and our current world, Kimmerer looks at the interconnectedness that comes from abundance and reciprocity. The inspiring lessons in The Serviceberry are easy to connect with and Kimmerer’s gratitude towards nature is felt throughout.
From the publisher: Robin Wall Kimmerer is donating her advance payments from this book as a reciprocal gift, back to the land, for land protection, restoration, and justice.
Top Historical Fiction of November
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Featured Title
The Jewel of the Blues by Monica Chenault-Kilgore
From the publisher: Set in the sparkling 1920s jazz era, The Jewel of the Blues pulls back the curtain on all the romance, danger and drama in the bustling backstage life of a young performer.
Billed as the Little Girl with the Big Voice, blues singer Lucille Arnetta Love always dreamed of life under the lights. From traveling family gospel band to lead singer in a riotous vaudeville troupe, Lucille is on the rise. But a devastating family secret, one that’s poised to shatter every dream she’s ever had, casts an inescapable shadow over Lucille’s career.
Decades ago, a botched robbery ended in a suspicious death—and all signs point to Lucille’s own father as the culprit. It’s a secret that Lucille’s family is determined to keep buried—even from Lucille herself. For a time, a fresh start feels possible, especially when Marcus Williams, Lucille’s manager—and sometimes paramour—sets her up with a band to tour the country: Miss Lucille’s Black Troubadours. Lucille’s dream of seeing her name in the bright lights of Broadway may happen yet, if she and the Troubadours can endure the highly competitive, rocky road to fame.
Beneath the dazzling glamour of the vaudeville scene lies a wicked underbelly, as drinking, gambling, salacious love affairs and racial tensions compete to dim Lucille’s shining star. And when shady figures from her father’s past emerge, their thirst for revenge threatens to silence Lucille’s career—and the sultry singer herself—for good.
Top Romance of November
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Featured Title
The Jewel of the Isle by Kerry Rea
From your OverDrive DCL: Isle Royale National Park is an exciting backdrop for this grumpy-sunshine rom-com full of adventure.
Emily Edwards is an ER doctor that sees the potential danger in everything, since she sees it come into her ER all the time. Her late father had a bucket list of national parks to visit, with a first trip planned for Isle Royale. Passing before the trip, Emily decides to take the trip for him, but knows she will need some help for this very outdoorsy feat. The tour guides are pretty booked, but she does find one.
Ryder Fleet of Fleet Outdoor Adventures is available for a short notice trip, but he may not be as prepared for the great outdoors either. That was his late brother Charles, the true adventurer of Fleet Outdoor Adventures. Ryder is used to the marketing side of the company but decides to give the adventure side a try too.
Both Emily and Ryder find more adventure than they bargained for when they get tangled up with archeologists looking for a lost jewel among shipwrecks. As they traverse Isle Royale seeking help, they grow closer and find there may be a spark between them. This is one trip neither of them will forget, if they make it off the island, that is.
Top Mystery/Thriller of November
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Featured Title
Kill Yours, Kill Mine by Katherine Kovacic
From the publisher: Mia’s grief counselling practice, The Pleiades, is named for the seven sisters from Greek mythology who were the companions of the Goddess of the Hunt—and who, in some stories, die of grief or are killed to be saved from attackers.
Mia has been gathering broken women together for a radical form of group therapy. Amy. Gabrielle. Katy. Brooke. Olivia. Five women crippled with grief by the murders of their sisters—and seething with rage that the partners who killed them all walk free. She just needs one more.
When Mia meets Naomi, she knows she has found the perfect candidate, but Naomi is resistant. She only needs to meet the others before she realizes that they, too, are consumed with desire for hands-on revenge. Under Mia’s guidance, the women devise a plan to heal themselves. They’ll take back their lives from the men who took their sisters. The premise is satisfyingly simple: I’ll kill yours if you kill mine…
More November Recommended Lists You Don’t Want to Miss
Top Sci-Fi of November. Shop the list here.
Top Nonfiction of November. Shop the list here.
Top Fantasy of November. Shop the list here.
Top Self-Published of November. Shop the list here.
If you ever need help shopping, you can always email your Digital Content Librarian! Find your DCL in the SUPPORT tab of Marketplace.
About the author: Tori has worked in academic libraries, archives, and public libraries in various roles. Now at OverDrive, she helps public libraries build and highlight their digital collections. Outside of work and reading, she enjoys hiking, gardening, wildlife photography, and planning trips to national parks. Tori is always happy to discuss all the books with strong nature settings!
