My LINKcat AccountAlready the days of summer are winding down. The days are getting shorter both in the morning and in the evenings. (I have a die-hard cardinal who lives in a tree near my house that still insists on singing every morning at 5 o’clock in the morning even though it is dark!) We have passed the dog days of summer which started on July 3rd and ended on August 11th. (As we all know (and I quote Google), “the Dog Days of Summer are those hot, sultry days that were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star Sirius (the dog star) which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, thunderstorms, mad dogs, and bad luck.” We have already had a couple of days which felt positively autumnal. The crickets are chirping, the (annual) cicada are chirring, the frogs are singing, and birds are starting to flock up a bit as they start thinking about migrating. And what does this all mean for you? Well, it means the Summer Reading Program too is coming to an end. In fact, the 2024 Summer Reading Program ends on Saturday, August 17th, which should be tomorrow. You can still redeem and spend Dragon Dollars until 7 p.m. on August 28th. The end is very near. But don’t quit reading! There are lots of new books just waiting to be opened. Below you will find some of books which recently arrived at your library. Enjoy!
New Non-Fiction
“The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House” by Nancy Pelosi. A noted politician tells the story of her transformation from housewife to House Speaker—how she became a master legislator, a key partner to presidents and the most visible leader of the Trump resistance.
“Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World” by Anupreeta Das. From the finance editor of The New York Times comes an examination of Bill Gates—one of the most powerful, fascinating and contradictory figures of the past four decades—and an eye-opening exploration of our national fixation on billionaires.
“Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist” by Alexia Pauline Gumbs. A marine biologist and co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences shares how she flourished outside of academia by remembering the important lesson she learned from sharks: keep moving forward, in this guidebook to respecting and protecting some of nature’s most misunderstood and vulnerable creatures—and grant the same grace to ourselves.
“The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory” by Thomas Fuller. Revealing a portrait of high school athletics, and deafness in America, this extraordinary true story of an all-deaf high school football team’s triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated looks back at their 2021 and 2022 season during which they chased history.
“Love Triangle: How Trigonometry Shapes the World” by Matt Parker. An ode to trigonometry, the most important idea in mathematics and the key concept that enables our modern world, from the internationally best-selling author of Humble Pi.
New Fiction
“The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur” by Lev Grossman. Arriving at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, a gifted young knight Collum, instead finds only a handful of knights left after the Battle of Camlann, and together, joined by Merlin’s apprentice Nimue, set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.
“Confessions of the Dead: Who Can Solve the Mystery of Cemetery Lake?” by James Patterson and J.D. Barker. The arrival of a mysterious teen girl disrupts the idyllic peace of Hollows Bend, leading Sheriff Pritchett to investigate a wave of shocking crimes that lead him closer and closer to a lake that doesn’t appear on any map.
“The Lost Story” by Meg Shaffer. Forced to return to the enchanted world they called home for six months 15 years ago to confront their shared past no matter how traumatic the memories, reclusive artist Rafe and famed missing persons’ investigator Jeremy search for their friend Emilie’s sister—and for everything they’ve lost.
“All This and More” by Peng Shepherd. From the critically acclaimed, best-selling author of “The Cartographers” and “The Book of M” comes a novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made ... and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.”
“The Bang-Bang Sisters” by Rio Youers. From a critically acclaimed author comes an action-packed crime novel featuring three female bandmates who moonlight as vigilantes.
“Bright Objects” by Ruby Todd. A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences. A first novel.
“Broiler” by Eli Cranor. The award-winning author of “Don’t Know Tough” returns with a story of two families—one white, one Mexican American—who come together in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant.
“The Cliffs” by Courtney Sullivan. A Harvard archivist, returning to Maine after a terrible mistake, Jane is hired to research the history of a Victorian house and the women who lived there, uncovering a story of lost lovers, romantic longing, shattering loss and the long shadow of colonialism that is even older than Maine itself.
“The God of the Woods” by Liz Moore. In 1975, when a camp counselor discovers the 13-year-old daughter of the summer camp’s owners has disappeared just like her brother 14 years earlier, a panicked search begins as the secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow are revealed.