Hartford Public Library customers can’t get enough of legal thrillers and politics — at least according to the most checked out books from the past year.
Bestselling author John Grisham had three titles on the 10 most borrowed adult books from June 30, 2020, to July 1, 2021 , and there were two political entries on the list, President Barack Obama’s latest book and Mary L. Trump’s tell-all about her uncle, President Donald Trump.
Here are the 10 books that were checked out most by patrons, across all our branches, with links to borrow them from our catalog if you haven’t read them yet!
1. The Vanishing Half
by Britt Bennett
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
“[Bennett’s] second [book], The Vanishing Half, more than lives up to her early promise. . . more expansive yet also deeper, a multi-generational family saga that tackles prickly issues of racial identity and bigotry and conveys the corrosive effects of secrets and dissembling. It’s also a great read that will transport you out of your current circumstances, whatever they are. . . Like The Mothers, this novel keeps you turning pages not just to find out what happens.” — NPR
“Bennett’s gorgeously written second novel, an ambitious meditation on race and identity, considers the divergent fates of twin sisters, born in the Jim Crow South, after one decides to pass for white. Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterization with the historical and social realities of her subject matter.”— The New York Times
2. Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
“Magnificent . . . a trailblazing work on the birth of inequality . . . Caste offers a forward-facing vision. Bursting with insight and love, this book may well help save us.”— O: The Oprah Magazine
“This book has the reverberating and patriotic slap of the best American prose writing. . . . Wilkerson has written a closely argued book that largely avoids the word ‘racism,’ yet stares it down with more humanity and rigor than nearly all but a few books in our literature. . . . It’s a book that changes the weather inside a reader.”— Dwight Garner, The New York Times
3. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
by Mary L. Trump
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.
“[T]he most devastating, most valuable and all-around best Trump book since he started running for president. In the vast Trump literature, this one is something new…[W]hat this book does do is help us understand him, offering the most incisive rendering yet of why he is the way he is.”— Politico
“Mesmerizing beach reading and a memorable opposition research dump…It is salacious, venomous and well-sourced…Yet the narrative remains compelling.” — The Guardian
4. A Time For Mercy
by John Grisham
Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.
“Grisham has returned to the place closest to his heart… The trial is riveting…it’s striking how suspenseful the story is…how much we’re gripped by the small details.”– Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
“Textbook Grisham—and that’s a compliment…a briskly paced legal drama, with just the right amount of suspense, conflict, plot twists, and courtroom theatrics.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
5. American Dirt
by Jeanine Cummins
Lydia Quixano Pérez runs a bookstore in Acapulco, Mexico, where she lives with her husband, Sebastián, who is a journalist, and their son, Luca. When a man starts visiting her store, buying books and striking up a friendship, she has no idea initially that he will be responsible for turning her life upside down. But Lydia and Luca will have to flee Acapulco, setting them on a journey they will share with countless other Central and South Americans-turned migrants.
“American Dirt just gutted me, and I didn’t just read this book―I inhabited it….Everything about this book was so extraordinary. It’s suspenseful, the language is beautiful, and the story really opened my heart. I highly recommend it, and you will not want to put it down. It is just a magnificent novel.”
― Oprah
“American Dirt is a literary novel with nuanced character development and arresting language; yet, its narrative hurtles forward with the intensity of a suspense tale. Its most profound achievement, though, is something I never could’ve been told…American Dirt is the novel that, for me, nails what it’s like to live in this age of anxiety, where it feels like anything can happen, at any moment.”
― Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
6. Deacon King Kong
by James McBride
In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird.
“A mystery story, a crime novel, an urban farce, a sociological portrait of late-1960s Brooklyn: McBride’s novel contains multitudes… He conducts his antic symphony with deep feeling, never losing sight of the suffering and inequity within the merriment.” — The New York Times, Top 10 Books of 2020
“Shouldn’t we just get it over with and declare McBride this decade’s Great American Novelist?…McBride has a way of inflating reality to comical sizes, the better for us to see every tiny mechanism that holds unjust systems in place.” — Los Angeles Times
7. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies
by Resmaa Menakem
In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.
“Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois put his finger on African American consciousness when he wrote ‘one ever feels his twoness―an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.’ But even Du Bois never addressed the process of healing the psychological wounds of the ‘two-ness.’ In My Grandmother Hands, Resmaa offers a path of internal reconciliation for a Person enduring the generational trauma of American racism, and gives us all a chance to dream of a healing from it.”― Keith Ellison, Member of Congress and Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee
“Resmaa Menakem cuts to the heart of America’s racial crisis with the precision of a surgeon in ways few have before. Addressing the intergenerational trauma of white supremacy and its effects on all of us―understanding it as a true soul wound―is the first order of business if we hope to pull out of the current morass. As this amazing work shows us, policies alone will not do it, and bold social action, though vital to achieving justice, will require those engaged in it to also take action on the injury, deep and personal, from which we all suffer.”― Tim Wise, bestselling author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son and Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority
8. The Coldest Winter Ever: A Novel
by Sister Souljah
Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets like the curves of her own body. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn’t want to go, her street smarts and seductive skills are put to the test of a lifetime. Unwilling to lose, this ghetto girl will do anything to stay on top.
“Winter is nasty, spoiled, and almost unbelievably libidinous, and it’s ample evidence of the author’s talent that she is also deeply sympathetic.” ― The New Yorker
“Winter is precious, babacious, and as tough as a hollow-point bullet.” ― Salon.com
9. A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
“A powerful book with lots of insights into great leadership.”— Bill Gates, GatesNotes
“Barack Obama is as fine a writer as they come. . . . [A Promised Land] is nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid. . . . The story will continue in the second volume, but Barack Obama has already illuminated a pivotal moment in American history, and how America changed while also remaining unchanged.”— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times Book Review
10. Camino Winds
by John Grisham
Just as Bruce Cable’s Bay Books is preparing for the return of bestselling author Mercer Mann, Hurricane Leo veers from its predicted course and heads straight for Camino Island. Florida’s governor orders a mandatory evacuation, and most residents board up their houses and flee to the mainland, but Bruce decides to stay and ride out the storm. The hurricane is devastating: Homes and condos are leveled, hotels and storefronts ruined, streets flooded—and a dozen people lose their lives. One of the apparent victims is Nelson Kerr, a friend of Bruce’s and an author of thrillers. But the nature of Nelson’s injuries suggests that the storm wasn’t the cause of his death: He has suffered several suspicious blows to the head.
“The perfect crime scene…in the type of wild but smart caper that [John] Grisham’s readers love.” — Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing