FICTION
Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee
Being reborn as an immortal defender of the realm gets awfully tiring over the years — or at least that’s what Sir Kay’s thinking as he claws his way up from beneath the earth yet again. Kay once rode alongside his brother, King Arthur, as a Knight of the Round Table. Since then, he has fought at Hastings and at Waterloo and in both World Wars. But now he finds himself in a strange new world where oceans have risen, the army’s been privatized, and half of Britain’s been sold to foreign powers.
The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson
London, 1944: Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While war ravages the city above her, Clara has risked everything she holds dear to turn the Bethnal Green tube station into the country’s only underground library. Down here, a secret community thrives with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café, and a theater — offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall upon their city.
Sunsetter by Curtis LeBlanc
When two teens, Dallan and Hannah, attend the opening night of the infamous Sunsetter rodeo, they find themselves entangled in the suspicious deaths of their two closest loved ones. Driven by loss, rage, and their gut instincts for justice, they channel their grief and confusion into uncovering the criminal truth about their small town of Perron, a prairie community that has been long deserted by industry, leaving a ghostly emptiness of abandoned gravel pits, golf courses, and storefronts.
Bombay Monsoon by James W. Ziskin
The year is 1975. Danny Jacobs is an ambitious, young American journalist who’s just arrived in Bombay for a new assignment. He’s soon caught up in the chaos of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s domestic “Emergency.” Willy Smets is Danny’s enigmatic expat neighbor. He’s a charming man, but with suspicious connections. As a monsoon drenches Bombay, Danny falls hard for Sushmita, Smets’s beguiling and clever lover — and the infatuation is mutual.
NONFICTION
We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope by Steven Charleston
You’d be hard pressed to find an apocalypse more total than the one Native America has confronted for more than four hundred years. Yet Charleston’s ancestors are a case study in the liberating and hopeful survival of a spiritual community. How did Indigenous communities achieve the miracle of their own survival and live to tell the tale? What strategies did America’s Indigenous people rely on that may help us to endure an apocalypse—or perhaps even prevent one from happening?
Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—a Cool History of a Hot Commodity by Amy Brady
Ice is everywhere: in gas stations, in restaurants, in hospitals, in our homes. Americans think nothing of dropping a few ice cubes into tall glasses of tea to ward off the heat of a hot summer day. Most refrigerators owned by Americans feature automatic ice machines. Ice on-demand has so revolutionized modern life that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way — and to overlook what aspects of society might just melt away as the planet warms.
Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood by Jessica Grose
Close your eyes and picture the perfect mother. She is usually blonde and thin. Her roots are never showing and she installed that gleaming kitchen backsplash herself (watch her TikTok for DIY tips). She seamlessly melds work, wellness and home; and during the depths of the pandemic, she also ran remote school and woke up at 5 a.m. to meditate. You may read this and think it’s bananas; you have probably internalized much of it.
Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington
In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others — the vast majority, then and now — who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone.
CHILDREN’S
Destiny Finds Her Way: How a Rescued Baby Sloth Learned to Be Wild by Margarita Engle
Destiny was a baby three-toed sloth who fell from her mother in the rainforest in Costa Rica. She was born a twin, and she was sick, with an injured eye, so her mother could not care for her. Humans from The Sloth Institute (TSI) found Destiny and took her to the rescue center, where she was named and attended ‘sloth preschool’ to learn how to successfully navigate the wild. Her eye could not be saved, but Destiny grew into a confident and sociable adult sloth using all her other senses. She was a star student and is now living a happy wild sloth life in the rainforest. This book documents her journey, and features some of the other sloths being helped at the Institute. Another winner from the National Geographic Kids series.
Ages: 8 – 12
LIBRARY OPEN
• Lima Public Library is open to the public six days a week. Hours for the Main Library in Lima are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Our Cairo, Elida and Spencerville branch libraries are open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Our Lafayette branch is open from 12 noon to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday.
• Curbside pickup is available at the Main Library from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Arrangements can be made by calling 567-712-5239, contacting the library through Facebook Messenger, or putting a hold on a book through the online catalog. 24 hour notice is required. Call us when you arrive (park near the main entrance) and your items will be brought to you.
