Reading Suggestions

Use Our Reading Guides to Find Your Next Great Read!

Readers' Advisory: What Should I Read Next?

Personalized Readers’ Advisory – Now for Adults & Kids!

Personalized Readers’ Advisory! Get personalized book selection services from a dedicated selector! Fill out our online form to let your selector know your reading preferences and within three (3) days your assigned selector will contact you to introduce you to the program.

Find out More & Sign Up Today!

READSquared

READSquared

See the challenges, games, and prizes are available during our Summer and Winter Reading Challenges on READSquared!


Little Free Libraries

Little Free Libraries

There are now 50,000 Little Free Libraries all over the world. Search the official Little Free Library map to find any near you today!

Novelist Plus

Looking for your next great read? NoveList Plus has expert reading recommendations. Find series information, reading lists, award winners, book discussion guides, and more.


Reading Kits for You

Book Club Kits

Book Club Kits available by request to any patron on a first come, first serve basis. Each bag contains 10 copies of the book, a discussion guide, and information about the author in a handy tote bag. Find more information and available titles here.

Know which kit you want already? Reserve it here.

Kits for Kids

  • Books and Stories to Go
  • Educational Kits

Staff Reviews

Women’s History Month Picks

Women’s History Month Picks

Since March is Women’s History Month, we’re sharing some of the Historical Fiction books that were published in the last year by women, about women in history! Becoming…
Great Books to Read as a Family

Great Books to Read as a Family

Parents and caregivers know the best way to help their child become a strong reader and successful at school is to read to them! But as kids get…
The Bandit Queens

The Bandit Queens

The Bandit Queens. Shroff, Parini. New York : Ballantine Books, [2023]. Content warnings: misogyny, classism, body shaming, rape and attempted rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, alcoholism, acid attacks,…
North Carolina Novels

North Carolina Novels

There’s some sort of thrill when you read a book that is set in a familiar place, either where you live now, or a place you used to…
Lovingkindness Meditation

Lovingkindness Meditation

Lovingkindness Meditation by Sharon Salzberg On this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to share a resource that has been proven to increase people’s sense of well-being called lovingkindness meditation. …

Reading Databases

You will need your library card to access these!

Popular

Overdrive – digital collection allows access to eBooks and audiobooks, extending content beyond the physical walls of the library available anytime, anywhere.  Use the Libby App on your tablet, phone or any app capable device today! Overdrive instructions here.

Hoopla – A digital streaming service providing patrons an enormous selection of digital video (movies and TV shows), music, and comics. Also available on: iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Chromecast, Apple TV, Android TV, FireTV, Roku. Find Hoopla instructions here.

Biblioboard – Also known as the NC Live Homegrown Collection. A growing library of traditional content including, fiction, graphic novels, comics, children’s books, university press books and much more.

Literature

ABC-CLIO Ebook Collection – History and literature ebooks, including the series Daily Life, Critical Companions, Literature in Context, as well as American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography.

eBooks on EBSCOhost – Over 26,000 fiction, reference, scholarly, and professional books online.

Gale Literature Resource Center – Articles, critical essays, work and topic overviews, full-text works, and biographies covering authors, their works, and literary movements.

North American Women’s Letters and Diaries – Women’s writings from the Colonial period to 1950. Includes writings by Abigail Adams, Louisa May Alcott, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Dorothea L. Dix, Julia Ward Howe, and more.

ProQuest Learning: Literature – Full-text works of poetry, prose and drama, and secondary sources such as author biographies, literary criticisms, essays, reviews and interviews. Designed with schools and public libraries in mind.

Poetry

African American Poetry – Poems from 1750-1900 including Lucy Terry Prince, Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and more.

American Poetry – Find poems written from 1650-1920. Includes Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman and Herman Melville.

English Poetry – Find poems written from 600 to 1900 including Thomas Percy, Walter Scott, Robert Dodsley, Francis Turner Palgrave, and more.

Faber Poetry Library – Find poems written by modern poets such as Wendy Cope, T. S. Eliot, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Tom Paulin, Sylvia Plath and more.

Twentieth-Century African American Poetry – 62 of the most important African American poets of the last century: Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove.

Twentieth-Century American Poetry – A database of modern and contemporary American poetry from the early twentieth century to the present. Presently includes 36,000 poems drawn from 460 volumes by 217 poets.

Twentieth-Century English Poetry – Modernist poems (1900-1999): W.B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, A.E. Housman, D.H. Lawrence, Carol Ann Duffy, and more.