Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group: February

Join us for a live virtual program on Thursday, February 25 at 2:00PM via Zoom video conference as the Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group discusses:

Also available in: audiobook | e-audiobook

 

Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles--Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.

Bone china cup and saucer--Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.

Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects--the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidently left behind--and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life's mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.

Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony's lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor's quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony's last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.

Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious--a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.

As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice's redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest?

 

This book is available immediately on Hoopla in e-book and e-audiobook formats. If you would like to reserve a print copy, you may stop in to pick one up or call 734-397-0999 and select option 4. Curbside pick up of materials is also available.

Registered participants will receive an email one day before the program with a link to attend the discussion. To help you make the most of your virtual program experience we have compiled some tips and resources.

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

Fall weather is approaching and new books are filling the Large Print shelves at the library. Here are some of the new titles available this month.

Last Girl Standing by Nancy Lisa/ Bush Jackson
Also available in: print | e-book

First they were five. Then they were four.

Who's turn will it be next?

New York Times bestselling Sisters of Suspense join forces for a gripping novel about a clique of popular girls whose high school friendship is marked by a tragedy that continues to haunt them decades later.

The midwife murders [large print] by 1947- James Patterson
Also available in: print | e-book | audiobook

To Senior Midwife Lucy Ryuan, pregnancy is not an unusual condition, it's her life's work. But when two kidnappings and a vicious stabbing happen on her watch in a university hospital in Manhattan, her focus abruptly changes. Something has to be done, and Lucy is fearless enough to try.
Rumors begin to swirl, blaming everyone from the Russian Mafia to an underground adoption network. The feisty single mom teams up with a skeptical NYPD detective to solve the case, but the truth is far more twisted than Lucy could ever have imagined.
 

The present day is odd (to put it mildly), but history is always there to remind us of what humanity has persevered through. To take a look back, as well as enjoy the new voices in the memoirs listed, check out just a few of the new history books on the library shelves. 

Greenlights by 1969- Matthew McConaughey

Drawing on the Academy Award-winning actor's journals and diaries from the last 40 years, this book presents a uniquely McConaughey approach to achieving success and satisfaction.

Also available in: e-book

"Co-authored by the Chief White House correspondent at The New York Times and the Washington columnist at the The New Yorker, this is a biography any would-be power broker must own: the story of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of stateJames A. Baker III, the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, no Republican won the presidency without his help, and the men he counseled in the Oval Office--Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush--defined more than one generation of American life. Campaign manager, chief of staff, treasury secretary, and ultimately secretary of state, James A. Baker III understood better than anyone how to make Washington work and how to pull the levers of power at home and abroad. A suave and profane Texas Democrat, Baker worked as a wealthy Houston lawyer until his best friend, George H. W. Bush, drew him into Republican politics. His first dramatic win was in 1976 as the delegatehunter who secured the Republican nomination for Ford against a challenge from Ronald Reagan. His next job, as Bush's campaign manager four years later, maneuvered Bush onto the ticket with Reagan and Baker into the most powerful office in Washington other than the Oval Office: White House chief of staff. In his years in the White House and in the cabinet, Baker was the avatar of a style of politics and governance that valued pragmatism and deal making over purity. He went from win to win--reforming thetax code, negotiating the first Middle East peace talks, managing the dissolution of the Soviet Union--until his capstone victory, as field marshal for the younger Bush's Florida recount battle, helped divide the country forever. In today's era of gridlock, The Man Who Ran Washington is an electrifying escape.

Creative Spotlight Program: Geometric Shadowboxes

Creativebug* boasts more than 1,000 arts and crafts videos. In October, the library is happy to highlight one specific Creativebug class for an October grab-and-go program: Geometric Shadowboxes. With step-by-step instructions provided by video, you will be able to experiment with different colors and papers to create geometric patterns in a lovely shadowbox for display.

Each kit will contain:

  1. 8 x 10" piece of smooth vellum Bristol paper
  2. Scraps of paper in a variety of colors and patterns
  3. 02 Micron pen and white paper (to create your own pattern)
  4. 1"-wide diamond template
  5. Neutral pH adhesive
  6. Paintbrush
  7. 8 x 10: shadowbox frame

You will need to supply at home:

  1. Pencil
  2. Eraser
  3. Scissors
  4. Dish
  5. Wet rag or papertowel

 

  • Registration for the grab-and-go kits will take place beginning September 24, while supplies last.
  • Once registration has closed on October 6, you will receive an email with instructions on how to pick up your kit at the library through our contact-free holds pick-up.
  • Kit pick-up will take place from October 9 to October 16.

 

Looking for more inspiration? Check out the thousands of craft videos available on Creativebug to get started today!

 

*a CPL Library card required in order to use Creativebug

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

So the summer heat might be subsiding, but the crime waves in the books below are not. Stay current on the new true crime titles found in the library's non-fiction 360's.

One Omaha winter day in November 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knifepoint from a church parking lot. She was thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and then left to die as an ice storm descended over the city.

Debora survived. She identified her attacker to the police and then returned to her teenage life in a dysfunctional home where she was expected to simply move on. Denial became the family coping strategy offered by her fun-loving, conflicted father and her cruelly resentful mother.

It wasn't until decades later - when beset by the symptoms of PTSD- that Debora undertook a radical project: she met her childhood attacker face-to-face in prison and began to reconsider and reimagine his complex story. This was a quest for the truth that would threaten the lie at the heart of her family and with it the sacred bond that once saved her.
Dexterously shifting between the past and present, Debora Harding untangles the incident of her kidnapping and escape from unexpected angles, offering a vivid, intimate portrait of one family's disintegration in the 1970s Midwest.
Written with dark humor and the pacing of a thriller, Dancing with the Octopus is a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking narrative of reckoning, recovery, and the inexhaustible strength it takes to survive.

In 1968, during Albert Lepard?s fifth escape from a life sentence at Parchman Penitentiary, he kidnapped Lovejoy Boteler, then eighteen years old, from his family?s farm in Grenada, Mississippi. Three decades later, still beset by half-buried memories of that time, Boteler began researching his kidnapper?s nefarious, sordid life to discover how and why this terrifying abduction occurred.

Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard is the true story of Lepard, sentenced to life in Parchman for the murder of seventy-four-year-old Mary Young in 1959. During the course of his sentence, Lepard escaped from prison six times in fourteen years.

In Crooked Snake, Boteler pieces together the story of this cold-blooded murderer's life using both historical records and personal interviews?over seventy in all?with ex-convicts who gravitated to and ran with Lepard, the family members who fed and sheltered the fugitive during his escapes, the law officers who hunted him, and the regular folks who were victimized in his terrible wake.

Throughout Crooked Snake, Boteler reveals his kidnapper?s hardscrabble childhood and tracks his whereabouts before his incarceration and during his jailbreaks. Lepard?s escapes take him to Florida, Michigan, Kansas, California, and Mexico. Crooked Snake captures a slice of history and a landscape that is fast disappearing. These vignettes describe Mississippi?s countryside and spirit, ranging from sharecropper family gatherings in Attala County?s Seneasha Valley to the twenty-thousand-acre Parchman farm and its borderlands teeming with alligator, panther, bear, and wild boar. 

Summer titles are still hitting shelves! And while library browsing may currently be unavailable, users can still browse new materials that have arrived or are on order. If there is a title you're interested in, place it on hold and try the library's holds pick-up. We are also always available to help you over the phone with titles or authors you are interested in. 

In the meantime, here are some of the new large print titles that have arrived this summer.

Also available in: print | audiobook | e-audiobook

On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's "Secret Circle," to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

The house of Kennedy [large print] by 1947- James Patterson
Also available in: print | e-book | audiobook

The Kennedys have always been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel, living by the dual family mottos: "To whom much is given, much is expected" and "Win at all costs." And they do--but at a price.

Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have occupied a unique place in the American imagination: charmed, cursed, at once familiar and unknowable. The House of Kennedy is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most storied family, as told by America's most trusted storyteller.

Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group: November

Join us for a live virtual program on Thursday, November 19 at 2:00PM via Zoom video conference as the Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group discusses: 

Commonwealth : a novel by Ann Patchett
Also available in: e-book | audiobook | e-audiobook | large print

The acclaimed, bestselling author--winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize--tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families' lives. One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them. When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another. Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.

 

This book is available immediately on Hoopla in e-book and e-audiobook formats. If you would like to reserve a print copy, please call 734-397-0999 and select option 4.

Registered participants will receive an email one day before the program with a link to attend the discussion. To help you make the most of your virtual program experience we have compiled some tips and resources.

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group: September

Join for a live virtual program on Thursday, September 24, 2020 at 2:00PM via Zoom video conference as the Canton Seniors Book Discussion Group discusses:

The bean trees : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver
Also available in: e-book | audiobook | e-audiobook

The Bean Trees is bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, now widely regarded as a modern classic. It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a 3-year-old native-American little girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Tucson, Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West.

Written with humor and pathos, this highly praised novel focuses on love and friendship, abandonment and belonging as Taylor, out of money and seemingly out of options, settles in dusty Tucson and begins working at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires while trying to make a life for herself and Turtle. 

This book is available immediately on Hoopla in e-book and e-audiobook formats. If you would like to reserve a print copy, please call 734-397-0999 and select option 4.

Registered participants will receive an email one day before the program with a link to attend the discussion. To help you make the most of your virtual program experience we have compiled some tips and resources.

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

Alefia Hakim recommends This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. Alefia shares, "I would love for others to read this book because it's an excellent example of family ties, decisions made as parents, and the love and support from siblings. The author has an amazing depiction of marriage between the main characters. It reminded me of my own relationship and how a supportive and encouraging partner can make a great relationship."

This is how it always is by Laurie Frankel
Also available in: e-book | e-audiobook | large print

This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever. 

Janice Ford recommends A Computer Called Katherine by Suzanne Buckinham Slade. Janice shares, "Katherine was a math whiz, who was African American and was instrumental in providing the necessary math calculations for NASA's first human space flights." Janice also shares, "I selected this book because, as an engineer, I want to share Katherine's contribution to the world, especially with young girls and minority children in our community. I want them to be encouraged to dream big and to plunge into the Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) fields." 

The inspiring true story of mathematician Katherine Johnson--made famous by the award-winning film Hidden Figures--who counted and computed her way to NASA and helped put a man on the moon!
Katherine knew it was wrong that African Americans didn't have the same rights as others--as wrong as 5+5=12. She knew it was wrong that people thought women could only be teachers or nurses--as wrong as 10-5=3. And she proved everyone wrong by zooming ahead of her classmates, starting college at fifteen, and eventually joining NASA, where her calculations helped pioneer America's first manned flight into space, its first manned orbit of Earth, and the world's first trip to the moon!

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