From the staff of the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library

“Rental House” by Weike Wang (fiction)

Keru and Nate first meet in college, brought together by a joke at a Halloween party (would a “great white” costume mean dressing like a shark or a privileged Ivy League

student?) and marrying a few years later.

Misfits in their own families, they find in each other a feeling of home. Keru is the only child of strict, well-educated Chinese immigrant parents who hold her to impossible standards even as an adult (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father).

Nate is from a rural, white, working class family that has never trusted his intellectual ambitions or – now – the citizenship status of his “foreign” wife. Nevertheless, some years into their marriage, Keru and Nate find themselves incorporating their families into two carefully planned vacations.

The results are disastrous and revealing. First in a cozy beach house on Cape Cod and later in a luxury bungalow in the Catskills, the couple is forced to confront the hidden truths at the core of their relationship.

How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) are needed to make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what does it take to shepherd everyone back together?

“The Bitter End” by Alexa Donne (young adult fiction)

Students from an elite prep school travel to a remote ski cabin for their senior excursion, but as the temperature drops and a blizzard traps them inside, tensions rise, secrets and betrayals are revealed, and when classmates begin to die, the group must uncover the killer among them to survive.

“It Is Okay” by Ye Guo (youth picture book)

Goat and Bunny are best friends. They love meeting up to eat canned grass together.

But when they share coffee, a hike or dinner at Bunny’s burrow, Goat and Bunny realize that they aren’t as similar as they thought.

Can these friends learn to accept each other’s personalities and preferences — even if it means changing their plans? With playful art and gentle humor, “It Is Okay” reminds young readers that kindness and respect are essential for friendship.

Differences don’t have to stop friends from spending time together — instead, they can spark whole new kinds of fun.