November Monthly Essentials
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. There are also many great titles to feature for Veterans Day. As people gather with family and friends around Thanksgiving, readers will be looking to fill up on books too. Below are the Marketplace lists for all that November holds and great new releases- your patrons will be thankful for all the great reads!
Native American Heritage Month
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 Titles
The Inner Winter by Asha Frost
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From the publisher: Indigenous Medicine Woman and author of You Are the Medicine, Asha Frost invites readers to honor their “inner winter” by slowing down, listening deeply, and returning to the natural rhythm of the seasons.
Following in the footsteps of Wintering by Katherine May and Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, Asha Frost brings a heart-centered voice and an Indigenous perspective to the rising call for rest, repair, and reconnection. Where others frame winter as a temporary retreat, Frost reveals it as a lifelong companion for those living with chronic illness, grief, depression, or soul-weariness—a truth she knows intimately through her own lupus diagnosis. Through the lens of the Medicine Wheel and the turning of the seasons, she guides readers to see their “inner winter” not as something to fix, but as something sacred to tend.
Each of the four parts of the book embodies a season: Spring as rebirth, Summer as growth, Fall as harvest, and Winter as rest. Every chapter opens with an ancestral Ojibwe legend, flows into embodied teachings, and closes with a healing ritual, ceremony, or journal practice. With gentleness and grounded spiritual authority, Asha invites readers to come home to themselves—not by transcending or romanticizing their pain, but by honoring it as medicine.
In a market hungry for authentic, inclusive healing paths—and in a culture reckoning with burnout, long COVID, and the unraveling of hustle ideology—The Inner Winter stands apart. This is not a book of platitudes. It is a guide, a companion, and a quiet revolution.
For those who feel left behind in the light-chasing world of manifestation, productivity, and peak performance, The Inner Winter offers a new paradigm: healing that begins in the dark and roots you in wholeness.
A Glacier’s Guide to Dying by Michelle Porter
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From the publisher: A young Métis man searching for his missing father finds himself arguing with a dying glacier in this compelling and hopeful novel about the burdens and blessings of inheritance, from the award-winning author of A Grandmother Begins the Story.
Robbie has spent most of life wondering about his real father, Mike, who long since left their family due to his struggles with visions and mistrust of the modern world. Robbie can’t forget how much he felt connected to him from his few visits, and not just because they share two differently colored eyes. But now, as he rescues his mother from encroaching wildfires, he’s determined to also find his father. Robbie takes off to find answers, and when his uncle confesses that he last dropped Mike off at a glacier, he and his uncle head climb up the mountain of ice to see if Mike might still be there, and whether he’s still alive.
On the slopes of a huge glacier, Robbie, starts hearing the ancient voice of the glacier itself giving him guidance. Has he accessed a deep connection to the land, or is he succumbing to the same illness that had wreaked havoc on his father’s life?
Michelle Porter brings her profoundly moving sensibility and disarmingly funny voice to a powerful contemporary story of identity and belonging, loss and healing, within families and with the immortal land itself
Top Titles of November
Featured Title
Sunflower Season by Danica Nava
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From the publisher: Fed up and burnt-out, a woman leaves the city to take on the challenge of owning a sunflower farm but finds that her biggest trial is facing her first love in this charming second-chance romance by USA Today bestselling author Danica Nava.
Drained by her high-pressure tech job, June Walker finds an escape in homesteading videos and the fantasy of a quieter life. When she finally hits her breaking point, she does the only reasonable thing: She quits her job and buys a crumbling sunflower farm in rural Oklahoma, where she grew up.
June thought her biggest challenge in restoring Sunshine Farm would be the rotting fences but soon comes to the crushing realization that “positive vibes” are not a business plan. Nothing, however, tests her resolve quite like running into her first love, the boy she left behind after her world imploded when she was seventeen. She’s back for a fresh start, not to unpack old heartbreaks.
Noah Abbott never left Love County. Between his family, his job with the local fire brigade, and a town that knows him inside and out, he has everything he needs—except answers. So when June Walker returns as the new owner of Sunshine Farm, Noah is determined to find out why the girl who once meant everything to him vanished without a word.
As old wounds crack open and attraction flares back to life, June and Noah are forced to reckon with their past and decide whether first love is a memory best left buried or the one thing worth replanting.
Top of Historical Fiction of November
Featured Title
Love, Like Apples by Jeff Zenter
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From the publisher: A lyrical, deeply felt story of an artist and the great love that defined his life, set against the electric, delirious backdrop of 1970s New York City and the tumultuous years prior—for readers of Taylor Jenkins Reid and Kristin Hannah.
“A wonder of a book.” -Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
Growing up motherless and under the cruel eye of his alcoholic, emotionally distant father, Tiller Loomis seems destined for a hardscrabble life. In the 1960s, the small Appalachian town of Sawyer, Tennessee offers few opportunities outside of working arduous hours on his family’s apple orchard. The one ray of light is his older brother Smith, a compassionate and gentle boy who salvages what might have otherwise been a brutal childhood. Kindness, he teaches Tiller, is a choice.
But when Smith is drafted into the Vietnam War, Tiller’s world collapses. Directionless and grief-stricken, he stumbles into a children’s puppet show at his church and ultimately finds purpose and joy through the strange, tender art of puppetry. Chasing his dream of puppeteering full time, Tiller lands in the gritty, graffitied, bohemian hothouse of 1977 New York City, where experimental artists and misfit idealists are using puppets to try to reach teens with a message of hope on a PBS show called Imagine Nation. In Imagine Nation‘s cast, Tiller finds a chosen family of dreamers and creators who will change his life forever, chief among whom is the beautiful Julie DiFrancesca, a fiercely vivacious woman who offers Tiller a chance at a life he never thought possible.
Narratively framed as a present-day documentary production about Imagine Nation, Love, Like Apples takes us from the 1970s into the modern era, tracing how the ripples from one controversial but forgotten TV show and a complicated love affair continue outward over decades, while also exploring the indelible power of radical empathy and the lives of the artists who carry its flame in their hearts.
November Blockbusters
Featured Title
And If I Die Before I Wake by George M. Johnson
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From the publisher: They may be the author of the #1 most banned book in America, but George M. Johnson isn’t finished telling their story yet. Written with unflinching emotion and unapologetic boldness, And If I Die Before I Wake is nothing short of a testimony — one the world desperately needs to hear.
George M. Johnson is no stranger to death. In this debut adult memoir, readers are invited to witness untrodden ground as George navigates an HIV diagnosis, alcoholism, tremendous loss, and nationwide book bans over the span of 15 years. Through the highs and lows of life in the spotlight, they have clung to family and community like never before — finding their most authentic self along the way.
Drawing inspiration from Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, And If I Die Before I Wake explores grief, trauma, sexuality, and the Black family through the lens of transformation, healing, and hope. Poetic, grounded, and bursting with signature humor, this is New York Times-bestselling author George M. Johnson more bold, more brave, and more daring than ever — ready to share a new part of their journey with the world.
Top Fantasy of November
Featured Title
Cello’s Gate by Maurice Africh
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From the publisher: With a wit to rival Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl, action on par with Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, and the scope of Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth, this is a rollicking, “must-read” (Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wyld) sci-fi fantasy epic about a ragtag crew of rogues on the hunt for mythic treasure. They did not, however, sign up to save the world.
One crew of sky pirates. Seven mythological stones. A race to find them all.
Captain Grey and his crew of sky pirates have a reputation for doing the impossible. From breaking into high-security military research facilities to conning the iCity elite, there isn’t a lock they can’t pick, a safe they can’t break, or a hidden treasure they can’t find. Until now.
Returning from a harrowing heist involving a neon battery and a trash chute, Grey and his crew are approached by Dalia, the immortal daughter of the infamous ArchGovernor—and she has an offer.
The job? Locate and steal the Stones of Indigo—seven fabled rocks invested with godlike power. The search for the first stone is a bona fide treasure hunt, guided by an ancient map to a deadly, uncharted island that’s protected by a mysterious guardian. The score? One million credits per crew member, per stone. The catch? Well, that’s where things get a little complicated.
The stones don’t exist. They’re a myth. A bedtime story told to little pirates to make them believe that power and wealth are attainable if you just work hard enough.
And to make matters infinitely worse, Grey’s never trusted immortals, and Dalia’s definitely hiding something—something bad. And if they don’t figure out what it is, it might cost them their lives in this “wickedly wild and uniquely imaginative adventure” (Grimdark Magazine).
Top Mystery/Thriller of November
Featured Title
The Party in the Woods by Fiona McPhillips
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From the publisher: From the much-praised author Fiona McPhillips (“Excruciating suspense” — Stephen King; “Shocking” —NYTBR), a novel of murder and betrayal, pulse-pounding music, and all the lives we leave behind
Annie Fagan, one of Ireland’s first female electronic DJs and producers, spent her early twenties hosting and playing illegal raves across Ireland. Part of a legendary free party crew, she was surrounded by loud music, beautiful people, and the alluring chaos of the dance floor. But after one of their huge parties in the woods, Annie’s friend Seán disappeared without a trace, and Annie gave up that part of herself for good.
Years later, when Seán’s body is discovered in the Dublin mountains and new information about his disappearance comes to light, Annie reunites with her old group of friends—led by Fran Baker, the man she once believed she was destined to end up with—and feels inexplicably drawn back into the scene. Annie—and the police—starts to realize that, far from a tragic accident or random misadventure, Seán’s death must have been caused by someone who was at their party. Someone who had a motive.
One of her friends.
As Annie investigates, her new and old worlds clash, another old friend is silenced, and she realizes that some people may not want the mystery of Seán’s death to be solved. In fact, they might do anything to stop her from discovering what happened that night, when the party truly ended.
More Recommended Lists You Don’t Want to Miss
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