Katie's parents never told her "no" when she asked for a book, which was the start of most of her problems. She has an MLIS from the University of Illinois and works full time as a Circulation & Reference Manager in Illinois. She has a deep-rooted love of all things disturbing, twisted, and terrifying and takes enormous pleasure in creeping out her coworkers. When she's not at work, she's at home watching the Cubs with her cats and her cardigan collection. Other hobbies include scrapbooking, introducing more readers to the Church of Tana French, and convincing her husband that she can, in fact, fit more books onto her shelves.
Twitter: @kt_librarylady
If you’ve worked in a public library, you’ve had a patron come to the desk with a newspaper clipping in hand, asking you to help them find a book that they just read about in The New York Times/The Washington Post/People magazine. Here are four titles that have been reviewed in big publications over the last few weeks to help you keep up with your patrons.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Sonia is a college student who is homesick for India and enters into a dark relationship with an older artist she meets in a gallery. Sunny is a journalist from Delhi living in New York, who finds himself increasingly alienated by the country and by his American girlfriend. When Sonia and Sunny end up back in India, they face the meddling of their families, who are determined to bring the two together in marriage. Or will they succeed only in driving the two of them further apart? This is a complex family saga about love and identity that stretches across multiple years.
Featured in Vulture and The Washington Post.
Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
This book is the definition of “ripped from the headlines.” Virginia Roberts Giuffre was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who made a powerful choice to speak out against her abusers. Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025, but emailed her publicist before her death saying that she wanted her memoir to be published, which goes into excruciating detail about her abuse and her fight for justice against the powerful people who abused her. Giuffre’s family has contended that the memoir shouldn’t have been published as it had been written, but that hasn’t stopped this book from being one of the most talked-about titles of the year. (It probably goes without saying, but this book comes with a lot of trigger warnings.)
Featured in The Guardian, New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
This is Joe Hill’s first full-length novel in ten years, and it packs quite a punch. Arthur Oakes is a college student with access to the rare books in the library, but ends up being blackmailed by a family of drug dealers to steal valuable books to pay off a debt. When Arthur steals a book with instructions on summoning a dragon, he and his friends summon King Sorrow in the hopes that the dragon will take care of the blackmailers. But they soon realize that making a deal with a dragon is not a one-and-done thing, and now they have to deal with King Sorrow for the rest of their lives. The story is epic, the length is epic, and it straddles the line between fantasy and horror in a way that only Joe Hill knows how to do.
Featured in The New York Times and USA Today.
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Megha Majumdar’s latest novel takes place in a near-future Kolkata, where Ma and her family are just about to leave for America when their immigration documents are stolen. Over the next week, Ma frantically searches for the thief while trying to navigate an increasingly dire food shortage. And interspersed with Ma’s narrative is the story of Boomba, the thief whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes with unfathomable consequences. How far will each of them go to protect their children’s futures? This is also Oprah’s latest book club pick, so prepare to get a lot of questions from patrons about this one.
Featured in Elle, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
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