Check this out at the library this week
Howard County Library is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, for Grab & Go access to the library. Customers have 30 minutes to browse the shelves, checkout items, make copies and send a fax, an appointment is still required to use a computer.
Please visit our website at http://howard-county.ploud.net and our Facebook page at www.facebook. com/howardcolibrary for more information. You may reach us at (432) 264-2260 and our fax number is (432)264-2263.
We hope you enjoyed the holidays. We want to remind patrons to visit our webpage to review our services, whether in person or with digital content, browse our collection to find the right book to help you tackle your new year's resolutions. Computer reserves are for one hour, you can reserve online, by calling or in person. For Grab and Go services please limit your visit to 30 minutes, you may fax, print, copy or check out books. Mobile and Remote printing are also available visit our website for more information. We are still offering Curbside Pickup, reserve books, DVD'S and audiobooks and we will deliver them to your car, reserve online or by phone. You can also visit our Facebook page for any updates.
This week's reviews are all fiction titles. Marcus Ryker has spent his entire career studying killers in “The Jerusalem Assassin” (F ROS J) by Joel C. Rosenberg. One thing he knows for sure: a peace summit is the ultimate stage for an assassination. President Andrew Clarke is determined to announce his historic peace plan from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But when senior American officials who support the plan begin violently dying, Clarke orders Ryker and his team of CIA operatives to hunt down those responsible and bring the killing spree to an end. When the Palestinians denounce the American plan, the Saudis signal they may be ready to forge a historic treaty with Israel. Could the Saudi king's support be the missing ingredient that will lead to peace at long last? Ryker soon uncovers a chilling plot to kill the American president. A well-resourced international alliance is dead set against the peace plan. They will stop at nothing to strike a blow against the Americans and seize leadership of the Muslim world. With all eyes on Jerusalem and the president in the crosshairs, it's up to Ryker to eliminate the terrible evil that's been set in motion. The fate of the region depends on his success.
He has 48 hours.
In 2000, bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher in “My Dark Vanessa” (F RUS K) by Kate Elizabeth Russell. In 2017, amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager, and who professed to worship only her, may be far different from what she has always believed?
When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the "Become a Jetsetter" contest in “The Jetsetters” (F WAR A) by Amanda Eyre Ward, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a bride; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young and she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When she wins the contest, the family packs all their baggage, both literal and figurative, and spends ten days traveling from sundrenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapasladen Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso.
As lovers new and old join the adventure, longburied secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the reasons that drove them apart and the defining choices in their lives. Can four lost adults find the peace they've been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back together?
With her relationship with Jack as shaky as the foundation of her family home, Melanie's juggling a number of problems in “The Strangers on Montagu Street” (F WHI K) by Karen White. Like restoring her Tradd Street house and resisting her mother's pressure to 'go public' with her talent--a sixth sense that unites Melanie with the lost souls of the dead. But Melanie never anticipated her new problem. Nola, Jack's estranged young daughter who appears on her doorstep, damaged, lonely and defiantly immune to her father's attempts to reconnect. Melanie understands the emotional chasm all too well.
As a special, bonding gift Jack's mother buys Nola an antique dollhouse, a precious tableau of a perfect Victorian family. Melanie hopes the gift will help thaw Nola's reserve and draw her into the family she's never known. At first, Nola is charmed, and Melanie is delighted, until night falls, and the most unnerving shadows are cast within the dollhouse's miniature rooms. By the time Melanie senses a malevolent presence she fears it may already be too late. A new family has accepted her unwitting invitation to move in, with their own secrets, their own personal demons, and a past that's drawing Nola into their own inescapable darkness.
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.” Edith Lovejoy Pierce