The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg

Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and a screen-door muncher who spends his days playing chicken with the FedEx man, picking up livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house in rural Alabama. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty, as he stared down a litany of physical ailments straight from the Old Testament, and a creeping sadness from deaths in his great family. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon.

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman

How humankind first hunted and gathered explains our emergence as a new species and our earliest technology. Our first food systems, from fire to agriculture, tell where we settled and how civilizations expanded. The quest for food for growing populations drove exploration, colonialism, slavery, even capitalism. A century ago, food was industrialized. Since then, new styles of agriculture and food production have written a new chapter of human history, one that is driving both climate change and global health crises. Bittman offers a panoramic view of the story and explains how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn. -- adapted from jacket

Haben: The Deafblind Woman who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma

Haben takes readers through a thrilling game of blind hide-and-seek in Louisiana, a treacherous climb up an iceberg in Alaska, and a magical moment with President Obama at The White House. Warm, funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, this captivating memoir is a testament to one woman's determination to find the keys to connection.