Check this out, at the library this week

This week Howard County Library is jumping back into virtual programming, join us this week on Facebook as we start up virtual Babytime, Storytime and join us on Zoom for virtual Code Club. Virtual Babytime will start Tuesday, March 9 at 10:30 on Facebook and will focus on stories for babies and toddlers. Virtual Storytime will start Thursday, March 11 at 10:30 also on Facebook and will focus on stories for kids ages 3-5. We will also host virtual Code Club starting Thursday, March 11 from 5-5:30 PM on Zoom. There is no registration required for any of the virtual programs all information will be posted on our Facebook page.

This week’s reviews include fiction and large print western.

Everyone says there’s no place like home in “The Warning” (F PAT J) by James Patterson and Robison Wells. A small southern town was evacuated and placed on quarantine after a freak power-plant accident. Now the first anniversary of the mishap approaches, and some residents are allowed to pass the National Guard roadblocks and return home. Mount Hope natives Maggie and Jordan are back, but nothing is quite the same. A sinister feeling has taken over. The military are stationed around every corner and have put the damaged power plant under lockdown. As friends and family turn against one another, Maggie and Jordan must discover the truth behind what’s happening in Mount Hope. And soon they’ll be in the crosshairs of something far more menacing than anyone could have imagined.

Tramparas Range, mean country, rustler country, a country of dry canyons and stony mesas, a country that hid whole herds of stolen cattle, that was the country Miles Trask rode back into in “Cow Thief Trail” (LP W FOS B) by Bennett Foster. A country alone, bitter and spoiling for trouble. On his hip was a gun and in his pocket a commission from the Texas Rangers. He was one man against a land full of killers, a land too wild for the law. Miles had to tame it! Miles Trask was back. Asa Ryland heard the news and hired more men. Whitey Arburg looked thoughtfully at his guns. Ellis Heming smiled, but she wondered, these three had beaten Miles once, but now he was back and there would be killing in the harsh Tramparas country.

Walt Slade rides back to Echo, Texas in “Ranger Daring” (LP W SCO B) by Bradford Scott. Echo, was the scene of a past showdown and now he finds he must challenge a new deadlier desperado gang. The safety of the town and Walt Slade’s friend hangs in the balance while the greatest of the Texas Rangers meets his match in a hail of bullets on a hellfire range.

Enjoy Max Brand’s unpublished western stories in “The White Streak: A Western Duo” (LP W BRA M). In the first story “The White Streak,” the protagonist is twenty-one-year-old Jimmy Babcock, a former football star, but now a worker at the local bank run by William Parker in the town of Dresser, which has changed from cattle country to one made up of oil and alfalfa fields. When Parker fires Jimmy, all Jimmy can think is how he will hurt Muriel

Aiken, his fiancée, who wants to marry. When his father signs over the old family homestead that is in serious need of repair, Jimmy feels better. But an unexpected invitation from Parker to meet him at the Club convinces him that Parker wants him back. When he learns what Parker really has in mind, Jimmy finds himself recalling the stories he has heard about the notorious robbers the White Streak and Utah Billie, and he has to make a hard decision. The second western story, “The Masked Rider,” the betrothed of Carlos Torreño, Lucia d’Arquista, is making her way to Casa Torreño in Spanish California in which no expense has been spared in making her journey a lavish one by her soon-to-be father-in-law, Francisco Torreño. But it is on the journey that Francisco decides that Lucia is a sparrow hawk and that she must be watched carefully, especially once she takes an interest in Taki, a Navajo who is working off a debt to Francisco.

"Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create.” — Oprah Winfrey

Howard County Library is open from 9 AM to 6 PM 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.