The James E. Nichols Memorial Library

Winter travel advisory in effect, so the library will not be open today. Stay cozy if you can. If you need to go out, go safely.

Home Work by Julie Andrews takes off from her arrival in Hollywood from England. She achieved success and, with director Blake Edwards, a partner and collaborator. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria , a gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. The Husband Hunters by Anne De Courcy is a lively story about American heiresses who married into the British aristocracy.  Like the fictional Crawley family of Downtown Abbey, the women gained social cachet while their husbands acquired needed funds for their failing estates.

In The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys, eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson, traveling with his parents, arrives in 1957 Madrid.  While they enjoy the sun and wine, Daniel hopes to connect more deeply with the country of his mother’s birth, using the lens of his camera.  His guide is Ana, who introduces him to the lingering wounds and reveals the dark side of Franco’s regime.  Sepetys has crafted a ‘captivating, deft, and illuminating historical fiction” (enough so that you grown-ups might enjoy it, too).

Before and After by Judy Christie true story behind last year’s bestseller Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. Between 1920 and 1950, the Tennessee Children’s Home Society ran a black-market baby business.  They offered up more than 5,000 children for adoption, many who were taken from poor families, single mothers, and women told in maternity words that their babies had died. Author Christie  documented fifteen family stories of determined survivors who set out to trace their roots and find their true families.  

For toddlers and tots. Fun starts at 11:000

In The Topeka School by Ben Lerner, a star student and debater from an academic family befriends a troubled loner. When he brings his new friend to a party, a “singular act of violence” occurs. This “powerful and heartbreaking story” was deemed one of 2019’s top 10 books by the NY Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Atlantic and Buzzfeed.