Have you noticed that bookshelves everywhere are overflowing with titles about libraries and librarians, book club groups and their readers, book shops and their clerks and clients? Why the growing fascination with readers and the systems that engage and support them? Because libraries, librarians, book shops, and their customers can provide the elements for many an enticing tale.
Explore some of the best that Westlake Porter Public Library has to offer. (No — I don’t think we’ve been the setting of a work of fiction … yet, but perhaps, pen in hand, the author is beginning Chapter 1 of that next great tome right now. I’ll keep you posted.) The following descriptions have been excerpted from the WPPL catalog, Goodreads, and publishers.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Every book in The Midnight Library provides a chance to try a life you could have lived, to see how things would be if you had made other choices. Would you do anything different if you had the chance to undo your regrets? One book tells the story of your life as it is next to other books for the lives you could have lived if you had made different choices at key points in your life. In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. With possibilities looming of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dream of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But living alongside her overbearing father-in-law in small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. What happens to them—and to the men they love—becomes an exhilarating drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion. Though they face all kinds of dangers, they’re committed to their job of bringing books to people who have never had any, sharing the gift of learning that will change their lives.
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Christian Miller
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, both born and raised in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, are about to butt heads. Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on a mission to rid the public library of inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the ‘pornographic‘ books she’s challenged at the local library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the ‘worthy‘ literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need. A local troublemaker switches the book jackets and replaces Lula’s wholesome books with her banned books: literary classics, gay romances, Black history, witchy spell books, Judy Blume novels, and more. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. This sets the stage for the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula to roil the whole town… and change it forever.
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome a demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, and a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book recommendation will change your life?
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
In post World War II Barcelona, Daniel has begun to forget his dead mother’s face so his father takes him to a secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where he is allowed to choose one book. He selects a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. When he looks for more of the author’s works, he learns that someone is destroying all of the copies of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. In his seemingly innocent quest to discover the reason behind the destruction, he opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets and he becomes entangled in a tale of murder, magic, madness, and doomed love.
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles
Young, ambitious, and tempestuous, Odile Souchet has it all: Paul, her handsome police officer beau; Margaret, her best friend from England; her adored twin brother Remy; and a dream job at the American Library in Paris 1939, and working alongside the library’s legendary director. But when World War II breaks out, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear—including her beloved library. After the invasion, as the Nazis declare a war on words and darkness falls over the City of Light, Odile and her fellow librarians join the Resistance with the best weapons they have: books. They risk their lives again and again to help their fellow Jewish readers. When the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal. Now, her solitary existence in gossipy small-town Montana is unexpectedly interrupted by her neighbor, Lily, a lonely teenager longing for adventure. Lily uncovers secrets about Odile’s mysterious past and helps her reckon with her terrible secret. Based on the true story of the American Library in Paris, The Paris Library explores the geography of resentment, the consequences of terrible choices made, and how extraordinary heroism can be found in the quietest of places
The Memory Library by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
For forty-two years, Sally Harrison has been building a library. Each year, on her daughter’s birthday, she adds a new book to her shelves — with a note in the front dedicated to her own greatest work. But Ella – Sally’s only child fled to Australia twenty-one years ago after a heated exchange, and she has never looked back. And though Sally still dutifully adds a new paperback to the shelves every time the clock strikes midnight on July 11th, her hopes of her daughter ever thumbing through the pages are starting to dwindle. Then disaster strikes and Ella is forced to return to the home she once knew. She is soon to discover that when one chapter ends, another will soon follow.
The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence
Two strangers find themselves connected by a mysterious and vast library, which contains many wonders and even more secrets, in the powerfully moving first book in a new series from an international bestselling author. On a used-up world where civilizations have risen and retreated in an endless tide, leaving a dusty wasteland in their wake, there is one constant: an ancient library, the repository of all knowledge and art. It also contains a multitude of lives, including those of Evar, the boy who has lived his whole life trapped within this vast library, older than empires and larger than cities and Livira, the girl who has spent hers in a tiny settlement out on the Dust where nightmares stalk and no one goes. The world has never even noticed them. That’s about to change. Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and the blurring of one into another. A journey on which knowledge erodes certainty, and on which, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, blood will be spilled and cities burned.
Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story; how they met, fell in love, and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. Too bad Peter dumps Daphne just before their wedding to begin a relationship with his lifelong best friend, Petra. That’s how Daphne, stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family, ends up living with Petra’s heartbroken ex, Miles Nowak. What keeps her from fleeing back to her home town is her dream job as a children’s librarian even though it barely pays the bills. As she begins to fall for the town, Daphne wonders what this summer is supposed to mean. Is it just for fun or an interlude to her own love story? Or maybe it was never meant to be a love story at all; maybe it was just an anecdote to share at future dinner parties: that time she fell in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex-boyfriend. Who’s to say?
The Librarian of Burned Books by Brianna Labuskes
Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a cultural exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts—and herself. She escapes Berlin for Paris, where acquaintance Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live–or die–for. And, since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator’s attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever.
