Each year, the Gulf Coast Reads Committee selects books that have broad appeal to adults and young adults, and that encourage dialogue about important issues. You, the readers, will decide the Gulf Coast Reads selection.
Voting poll closed June 21, 2024
The 2024 Finalists
Infinite Country by
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK AND INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2021 NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD, LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL, A 2022 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST, AND A NATIONAL ENDOWMENT OF THE ARTS "BIG READS" SELECTION "A knockout of a novel...we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021's best." --O, The Oprah Magazine Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 from Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, GMA, New York Post, Ms. Magazine, The Millions, Electric Literature, LitHub, AARP, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, She Reads, Alma, and more. I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country. Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north. How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro's deportation and the family's splintering--the costs they've all been living with ever since. Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America? Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family--for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.
Night Will Find You by
"Heaberlin's work calls to mind that of Gillian Flynn." --The Washington Post * A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK * BEING DEVELOPED BY FOX TELEVISION AS A TV SERIES * KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR * STARRED PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW * LONG-LISTED FOR THE UK's GOLD DAGGER AWARD * In the new thriller from the author of the bestselling We Are All the Same in the Dark, a brilliant young astrophysicist with an uncanny gift is asked to find a girl who vanished. Their story will make you examine everything you believe. Vivvy Bouchet was only ten when she saved a boy's life by making an impossible prediction. She doesn't want to explain it. A wunderkind scientist, she just wants to be left in peace to scan the desert Texas sky with her telescopes in one of the darkest places on earth. But when the boy she saved, now a Fort Worth cop, begs for her help on a cold case, she can't turn him down. In the past decade, Lizzie Solomon and the Victorian mansion where she disappeared have taken on almost mythic status. Conspiracy theorists feed the frenzy that Lizzie is still buried in the crumbling walls while her mother, who sits in prison convicted of killing her, loudly proclaims her innocence. Paired with a skeptical detective, Vivvy falls deeper into the mystery of why Lizzie has never been found. When a vicious podcaster takes aim at Vivvy's own secrets--and those of the vanished girl--Vivvy's life unravels like the mysterious galaxies she chases. Julia Heaberlin delivers a resilient and unforgettable heroine in Vivvy Bouchet, a woman who walks the line between evidence-based science and unexplained phenomenon. Sharply relevant, Night Will Find You explores the mysterious nature of belief―in science, in conspiracies, in a higher power―and the delicate dance with the things we can't know.
Vampires of el Norte by
As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters - her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead. Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago. Believing Nena dead, Nestor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind. When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Nestor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion - and Nena's rage at Nestor for seemingly abandoning her long ago - is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh. And unless Nena and Nestor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.
The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by The Fishermen and the Dragon is also available at HCC in print.
You can also check Houston Public Library, Harris County Public Library, Fort Bend County Libraries, and Montgomery County Memorial Library System for additional copies.
Gulf Coast Reads: On the Same Page is an annual regional reading initiative focused on promoting the simultaneous reading or listening to a selected title by those living along the upper Texas Gulf Coast. [Source] HCC Library is one of thirty-nine partners with Harris County Public Library (HCPL) supporting the program.
HCC students, staff, and faculty can check out the Gulf Coast Reads calendar for public events taking place at area libraries and join in. Learn more about the program and past years' selections at GulfCoastReads.org.
[Harris County Public Library Announcement] Gulf Coast Reads 2024 is upon us and it's time to cast your vote for what we read this year! 
For the third year in a row, you, the readers, will decide the Gulf Coast Reads selection and it's going to be a hard choice with these amazing titles:
Make sure to vote here https://harris-county-public-library.visitlink.me/E68RIs
in on the conversation on the Gulf Coast Reads Facebook page! Polls close June 21st.
If you're unfamiliar with Gulf Coast Reads, each year, the Gulf Coast Reads Committee selects books that have broad appeal to adults and young adults, and that encourage dialogue about important issues. Reading and programming begins in October.
By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen's rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else "it's going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!" The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays-and who now represents the fishermen's last hope"-- Provided by publisher.
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