Blog Post
Adriania Trigiani's Rococo
by sernabad
Trigiani leaves her much beloved fictional community of Big Stone Gap in Virginia Big Stone Gap, Big Cherry Holler, and Milk Glass Moon for the laugh-filled tale of Bartolomeo di Crespi, a male interior decorator who has spiffed up nearly every square inch of Our Lady of Fatima, NJ. Now comes the dream job of completely renovating the local church. Trigiani was recently featured on Weekend Today (NBC).
Blog Post
"It ain't over..."
by Robb
On Morning Edition, August 3, 2005 · Commentator Frank Deford reminisces on the baseball career of living legend Yogi Berra, as well as the player's unique command of the English language. Yogi is really a national treasure.
Blog Post
The Game's Afoot
by Mazie
There are few literary characters more “real” to us than Sherlock Holmes. Recent new additions to the vast Holmesian literature include The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr, The Final Solution: A Story Of Detection by Michael Chabon and A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin. But for the most entertaining read, turn to Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King. In this latest in the series, Sherlock Holmes and his much younger wife (!) Mary Russell are caught up in the mystery surrounding the tragic deaths of her parents and brother. The game’s afoot once more.
Blog Post
Asylum
by muffy
Asylum, the movie based on the psychological thriller by Patrick McGrath of the same title, will be released in early August across the country.
For fans of McGrath’s who enjoyed Spider, his previous book-to-reel sensation, Asylum, will be a much anticipated treat. But read the book first – you will be blown away. Guaranteed!
Blog Post
Baby Giant Panda Born at San Diego Zoo
by erin
Another giant panda has done it again! Check a book out from our collection to find out why it's so hard for these amazing animals to breed and raise their babies.
Blog Post
William Least Heat Moon
by sernabad
Tune into to Book TV August 7th and 8th to hear William Least Heat Moon’s latest take on the national pulse.
Least Heat Moon first exploded into the public awareness with Blue Highways: A Journey into America, published in 1982. Looking for a simpler America, not the consumer-glutted U.S. his country was becoming, Least Heat Moon kept to the two-lane roads (the blue lines on his map) while traversing the perimeter of the lower 48. Often, understandably, compared to Henry David Thoreau and, of course, John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America), Least Heat Moon’s record of his three-month road trip is now considered a classic. For a real adventure, hit the road with the audiobook version, narrated by the incomparable Frank Muller.
Then check out two more Least Heat Moon titles, PrairyErth (A Deep Map) or River-Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America.
Blog Post
The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser
by sernabad
Sri-Lankan-born Michelle de Kretser spent her first 14 years in her native land (formerly Ceylon) before emigrating to Australia. Now 45, Ms. de Kretser sets her second novel, The Hamilton Case, in the land of her birth.
Sam Obeysekere is a Ceylonese prosecutor from a spectacularly dysfunctional family. Wanting to fit into the upper class British way of life, he takes on a scandal-ridden murder case of a white English tea-grower in the 1940s. A big fan of Agatha Christie mysteries, Sam’s attempt to emulate her method derails, and The Hamilton Case becomes something much more than a crime novel.
The French Revolution provides the backdrop for De Kretser’s first novel, The Rose Grower.
Blog Post
This Week on Stateside
by Debbie G.
On the July 29th edition of Stateside Charity Nebbe interviewed David Pilgrim, Curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University. The museum explores the Jim Crow system of segregation that began at the end of the Civil War and lasted through the mid-1960s and the dehumanizing racial caricatures it engendered.
The library has two new books that deal with different aspects of Jim Crow. The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South by William P. Jones illustrates how industrial employment was not incompatible with the racial segregation that defined African American life in the Jim Crow South.
Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, South Carolina by Christina Greene explores how this particular fight against Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s changed the women, the community and the civil rights movement.
Blog Post
You think it is hot out there?
by muffy
Intense heat was what Dave Robicheaux felt in James Lee Burke’s 14th entry in this award-winning series set in New Iberia, La. This time our unemployed, widowed, ex-homicide detective came up against a wealthy family, the New Orleans Mafia and several gruesome killings.
“Superb writing and a throbbing pace… a violent, complex story peopled by sharply defined characters who inhabit a lush, sensual, almost mythological world”, prompted Publishers Weekly AND Booklist to give Crusader's Cross much-deserved starred reviews.
Blog Post
August 1, 1791: Virginia Planter Robert Carter III Frees His Slaves
by Van
Robert Carter III filed a Deed of Gift to gradually emancipate his slaves (fifteen slaves each year over twenty-one years): “I have for some time past been convinced that to retain them in Slavery is contrary to the true principles of Religion and Justice and therefore it is my duty to manumit them.”
Andrew Levy’s The First Emancipator: the Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves details Carter’s life, the Deed of Gift, and the ideas behind it and the reactions to it. One anonymous correspondent wrote “A man has almost as good a right to set fire to his own building, though his neighbors is to be destroyed by it, as to free his Slaves.”