Check this out, at the library this week
The library will be closed on Monday, Jan. 20 in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day; we will reopen Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 10 a.m. We are getting ready to host a job fair in February and to prepare we are having a Resume Workshop on Wednesday, Jan. 22, in the computer lab from 2 p.m.- 4 p.m. This is an opportunity to learn to create your resume or polish your existing resume. Come learn to navigate some of the online tools to help you in your job search.
We will have Babytime on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., Brown Bag history on Tuesday at 12 p.m., Storytime on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., Code Club session 1 at 10:30 a.m. and Code Club session 2 at 5:30 p.m. Come by the library and check out any of these events.
This week's reviews include mystery and fiction.
One beautiful September weekend, three sixty-six-year-old men convene on Martha's Vineyard in “Chances Are...” (F RUS R) by Richard Russo.
Bonded together what feels like a lifetime ago, circa the sixties, at a Connecticut college, they're still the closest of friends despite being a considerable distance apart. In fact they could not have been more different even as freshman, much less more than forty years later: Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker in Las Vegas, Teddy a tiny-press publisher in Syracuse, Mickey a musician nearing his legal limit in nearby Cape Cod. While each man holds a few secrets of his own, they have in common not only their school days and the rockin', volcanic sixties but also a monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-four years later, as this new weekend unfolds, their lives are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present.
In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know, everyone, that is, except Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz in “Lady in the Lake” (M LIP L) by Laura Lippman.
Last year, she was a happy, pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Maddie wants to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl, assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star.
Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name as she pursues the story of a missing black woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Cleo Sherwood was a young black woman and no one seems to know why she was killed. As Maddie searches the truth about Cleo's life and death, Cleo's ghost, privy to Maddie's poking and prying, wants to be left alone.
Maddie's investigation brings her into contact with people who used to be on the periphery of her life, a jewelry store clerk, a waitress, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, and a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie may fail to see the people right in front of her, and her inability to look beyond her own needs could lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people, including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.
In “The Nickel Boys” (F WHI C) by Colson Whitehead, the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee. Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is “as good as anyone.”
Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is a high school senior about to start classes at a local college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides “physical, intellectual and moral training” so that the delinquent boys in their charge can become “honorable and honest men.”in reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and abuses the students, corrupt officials steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear “out back.” Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion “Throw us in jail and we will still love you.”
His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, “The Nickel Boys” is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist.
An impossible-to-put-down domestic thriller about secrets and revenge, “The Woman Inside” (F SCO E) by E. G Scott, is told from the perspectives of a husband and wife who are the most perfect, and the most dangerous, match for each other.
Rebecca knows that she is not built for marriage. She doubts whether love is even possible for someone like her. That is, at least, until she met Paul, a successful, charismatic, married man with damage from a dark past that mirrors her own. They are each other's perfect and perhaps only match. But twenty years later, Paul and Rebecca are hardly living happily ever after.
Everything from their dog to their picket fence mocks the bliss they had imagined, and every day they balance more precariously on a growing mountain of lies: Paul is cheating on Rebecca, and Rebecca is finding it ever harder to resist her access to limitless prescription pills.
But when Paul's mistress begins stalking them both, when women start disappearing, and when Rebecca uncovers Paul's elaborate plan to build a new life without her, they are thrown into a furious tailspin. As Paul's absences grow longer and his texts get vaguer, Rebecca spirals out of control. Paul is to blame for their unhappiness, and he will not get away with it. So Rebecca devises a plot of her own, and this one could end absolutely everything. What follows is a stylish game of cat and mouse, a shocking tale of unfaithfulness and unreliability that has you racing until the final twist and keeps you up wondering how well you really know the one you love.
“Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service… You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Library’s hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 am to 6 pm; the computer room closes at 5:30 and Tuesday and Thursday from 10 am to 7 pm; the computer room closes at 6:30. You may reach us at (432) 264-2260 and our fax number is (432)264-2263. Our website is http://howard-county.ploud.net. Visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/howardcolibrary.