FICTION
The Book of Witches Edited by Jonathan Strahan
Witches! Whether you know them from Shakespeare or from Wicked, there is no staple more beloved in folklore, fairy tale, or fantasy than these magical beings. Witches are everywhere, and at the heart of stories that resonate with many people around the world. This dazzling, otherworldly collection gathers new stories of witches from all walks of life, ensuring a Halloween readers will never forget.
Shy: A Novel by Max Porter
This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy. In Shy, Max Porter extends the excavation of boyhood that began with Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and continued with Lanny. But here he asks: How does mischievous wonder and anarchic energy curdle into something more disturbing and violent? Shy is a bravura, lyric, music-besotted performance by one of the great writers of his generation.
Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora by Michael Burstein
The first Jewish diaspora began nearly 3,000 years ago. Those three millennia have informed a rich story-telling tradition that will only continue to expand in the coming centuries. Sometimes moody, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, Publishers Weekly says these “16 appealing stories extrapolating Jewish themes into near- and far-future settings …. open diverse and challenging vistas for sci-fi fans-Jewish and gentile alike.”
Dayswork: A Novel by Chris Bachelder & Jennifer Habel
In the endless days of the pandemic, a woman spends her time sorting fact from fiction in the life and work of Herman Melville. As she delves into Melville’s impulsive purchase of a Massachusetts farmhouse, his fevered revision of Moby-Dick there, his intense friendship with neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his troubled and troubling marriage to Elizabeth Shaw, she becomes increasingly obsessed by what his devotion to his art reveals about cost, worth, and debt.
NONFICTION
American Gun: The True story of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter & Zusha Elinson
In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II. What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century. Follow the history of the same gun that represents the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more.
Killing the Witches by Bill O’Reilly
Killing the Witches tells the dramatic history of how the Puritan tradition and the power of early American ministers shaped the origins of the United States, influencing the founding fathers, the American Revolution, and even the Constitutional Convention. The repercussions of Salem continue to the present day, notably in the real-life story behind The Exorcist and in contemporary “witch hunts” driven by social media. The result is a compulsively readable book about good, evil, community panic, and how fear can overwhelm fact and reason.
The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America by Kathryn Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, & Tomothy Nelson
Three of the nation’s top scholars – known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there. The unfolding revelation in The Injustice of Place is not about what sets these places apart, but about what they have in common—a history of raw, intensive resource extraction and human exploitation.
All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambitions and all the Ways We Strive by Rainesford Stauffer
All the Gold Stars looks at how the cultural, personal, and societal expectations around ambition are driving the burnout epidemic by funneling our worth into productivity, limiting our imaginations, and pushing us further apart. Stauffer discovers the common factors driving us all, peeling back layers of family expectations, capitalism, and self-esteem that dangerously tie up our worth in our output. All the Gold Stars provides ways for us to reject our current reality and reconceive ambition as more collective, imaginative, and rooted in caring for ourselves and each other.
CHILDREN’S
Hidden Hope: How a Toy and a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust by Elisa Boxer
This nonfiction picture book is a tribute to one of the unsung heroines of the French Resistance during World War II. Judith Geller, a teenage Jewish girl, spent the five years of the war posing as a Christian social worker named Jacqueline Gauthier. Jewish people were being arrested by the Nazis and taken to camps. Judith hid her parents and using the identity of Jacqueline rode her bicycle all over Paris, delivering false identity papers to other Jewish families to help keep them safe. With her cover as a social worker coming to visit children, she carried the false papers inside a wooden toy duck especially made for the purpose, risking her life every day. The Nazis never found out, and Judith/Jacqueline and her wooden duck saved more than 200 lives. Judith’s duck is now part of the collection of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. May her heroism and that of countless others never be forgotten.
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.
