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!

Your Next Great Read Personalized Readers' Advisory service

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.

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READSquared

READ Squared app

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


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

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.


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.

Staff Reviews

When Women Were Dragons

When Women Were Dragons

When Women Were Dragons “When Women Were Dragons,” by Kelly Barnhill. Copyright 2022, Doubleday (340 pages, $28.00). Content Warning: Death of a parent, abandonment, sexism, cancer, misogyny, homophobia.…
‘Tis The Season for Baking

‘Tis The Season for Baking

‘Tis the Season for Baking As the joyous spirit of Christmas approaches, here is a curated list of books to inspire your baking creativity.   Martha Stewart’s Cookie…
Give Thanks

Give Thanks

Give Thanks Explore these titles to honor Thanksgiving, a day dedicated to expressing gratitude for the things we cherish most. This year, I am especially thankful for my…
New Worlds in YA

New Worlds in YA

New Worlds in YA The best part of fantasy fiction? The incredible worlds the authors make up! These new(ish) YA books have compelling worlds for us to enjoy…

Reading Databases

You will need your library card to access these!

Popular

Library Downloadable Books

Libby/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 Streaming Media

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

Biblioboard/Indie Author Project – A growing library of traditional content including, fiction, graphic novels, comics, children’s books, university press books and much more.

Readers' Advisory

Readers’ Advisory – Find season reads, popular authors, read-a-likes, reading suggestions, and more!

NC Homegrown Collection

NC Homegrown Collection – More than 4,800 locally-published ebook and audiobook titles made available to more than 200 libraries across the state. The collection includes titles from North Carolina publishers like Algonquin Books, CrossRoad Press, UNC Press, Duke University Press, McFarland, Press 53, Gryphon House, John F. Blair, and Workman that are available in perpetuity with unlimited, simultaneous access, which means no holds, no checkout limits, and no wait lists. Immediate access for everyone, at any time, forever from Libby.

Literature

ABC CLIO eBook Collection from NC Live

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.

Gale Literary Sources

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 from NC Live

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.

Poetry

African American Poetry from NC Live

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

American Poetry from NC Live

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

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

Faber Poetry from NC Live

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 from NC Live

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

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

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.