
As a staff dedicated to fostering the pure enjoyment of reading and the pursuit of knowledge, we’re eager to help you find exactly what you’re looking for at the library. From personalized book lists and programs designed to connect readers with their favorite authors, to providing a wide array of online resources designed to assist in exploring the book world at large, the library is here to get you connected.
The library offers help with discovering new titles by your favorite authors as well as exploring new titles to enjoy. We can also assist with placing holds on items and navigating our digital collections ready for check out via OverDrive/Libby and Hoopla.
Library Staff Picks
Looking for what to read next? Check out this list of what library staff are reading, watching and listening to, and enjoying. We love to share!
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The Personal Librarian: A GMA Book Club Pick
Over one million copies sold!
The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick!
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR! Named a Notable Book of the Year by the Washington Post!
“Historical fiction at its best!”*
A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.
In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection.
But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.
The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives. -
She's Not Sorry
The instant New York Times bestseller that BookTok is calling "absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G" (@hollylovesbooks1519) and "impossible to put down" (@kurryreads), from the author of Local Woman Missing and Just the Nicest Couple
Everyone has secrets, but not everyone has remorse...
A terrible accident.
Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom and working full time as an ICU nurse, when a patient named Caitlin arrives in her ward with a traumatic brain injury. They say she jumped from a bridge and plunged over twenty feet to the train tracks below.
A shocking revelation.
When a witness comes forward with new details about Caitlin's fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was a crime committed? Did someone actually push Caitlin, and if so, who... and why?
No one is safe.
Meghan lets herself get close to Caitlin until she's deeply entangled in the mystery surrounding her. Only when it's too late, does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims...
"A tense, compelling thriller with completely gasp-worthy twists." --Nita Prose, #1 bestselling author of The Maid
Look for these other pulse-pounding thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica:
- The Good Girl
- The Other Mrs.
- Local Woman Missing
- Just the Nicest Couple
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The Borrowers
A enchanting and enduring children's classic, The Borrowers is the award-winning tale of three tiny people who are big heroes.
The Clock family--Homily, Pod, and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Arrietty--are tiny people who live underneath the kitchen floor of an English manor. All their minuscule home furnishings, from postage stamp paintings to champagne cork chairs, are "borrowed" from the "human beans" who tromp around loudly above them. All is well until Pod is spotted upstairs by a human boy! Can the Clocks stay nested safely in their beloved hidden home, or will they be forced to flee?
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Salt & Broom
A gifted healer unravels the mysteries of a cursed estate--and its enigmatic owner--in a witchy retelling of Jane Eyre.
Trunks packed with potions and cures, Jane Aire sets out on a crisp, clear morning in October to face the greatest challenge of her sheltered girls'-school existence. A shadow lies over Thornfield Hall and its reclusive master, Edward Rochester. And he's hired her only as a last resort.
Jane stumbles again and again as she tries to establish a rapport with her prickly new employer, but he becomes the least of her worries as a mysterious force seems to work against her. The threats mount around both Jane and Rochester--who's becoming more intriguing and appealing to her by the day. Jane begins to fear her herb healing and protective charms may not be enough to save the man she's growing to love from a threat darker and more dangerous than either of them imagined.
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The Grace Year
The Instant New York Times Bestseller! Kim Liggett's The Grace Year is a speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power.
Survive the year.
No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.
In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.
Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.
With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.
“A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author -
The Hitchcock Hotel
"A clever, sinister fun-house ride." –People
"Jaw-dropping." –Riley Sager
"Hugely readable and tremendous fun." –Alex Michaelides
A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel from the international bestselling author of Darling Rose Gold.Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body. -
The Break-Up Pact
A Library Reads Pick!
Most Anticipated by Goodreads, Cosmo, E! News, and more!
Two best friends who haven’t spoken in ten years pretend to date after break-ups with their respective exes go viral, in this delightfully fun and deeply emotional novel from New York Times bestselling author Emma Lord.
June and Levi were best friends as teenagers—until the day they weren’t. Now June is struggling to make rent on her beachside tea shop, Levi is living a New York cliché as a disillusioned hedge fund manager and failed novelist, and they've barely spoken in years.
But after they both experience public, humiliating break-ups with their exes that spread like wildfire across TikTok rabbit holes and daytime talk shows alike, they accidentally make some juicy gossip of their own—a photo of them together has the internet convinced they're a couple. With so many people rooting for them, they decide to put aside their rocky past and make a pact to fuel the fire. Pretending to date will help June’s shop get back on its feet and make Levi’s ex realize that she made a mistake. All they have to do is convince the world they're in love, one swoon-worthy photo opp at a time.
Two viral break-ups. One fake relationship. Five sparkling, heart-pounding dates. June and Levi can definitely pull this off without their hearts getting involved. Because everyone knows fake dating doesn’t come with real feelings. Right? -
The Forest Demands Its Due
A Lesson in Vengeance meets The Taking of Jake Livingston in this page-turning YA horror/fantasy set in dark academia about a queer Black teen who discovers the sinister history of his boarding school and the corrupt powers behind it all. A USA Today bestseller!
Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious.
Seventeen-year-old Douglas Jones wants nothing to do with Regent's king-making; he's just trying to survive. But then a student is murdered and, for some reason, by the next day no one remembers him having ever existed, except for Douglas and the groundskeeper's son, Everett Everley. In his determination to uncover the truth, Douglas awakens a horror hidden within the forest, unearthing secrets that have been buried for centuries. A vengeful creature wants blood as payment for a debt more than three hundred years in the making--or it will swallow all of Winslow in darkness.
And for the first time in his life, Douglas might have a chance to grasp the one thing he's always felt was missing: power. But if he's not careful, he will find out that power has a tendency to corrupt absolutely everything.
A high-octane mystery of murder and magic for fans of Ace of Spades, House of Hollow, and Get Out!
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It Had to Be You
In the latest thrilling entry of the bestselling Under Suspicion series by Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, television producer Laurie Moran investigates the unsolved murder of a beloved couple celebrating the college graduations of their successful twin sons.
The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way—handsome, intelligent, popular—until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? And is it possible the two of them planned the perfect crime together?
Years later, the twins are long estranged, each of them claiming to be convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married now with children of their own, they may finally be ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents’ murder. But as the Under Suspicion crew gets closer to the truth, the danger that was assumed to be left in the past finds its way into the present.
Featuring chilling suspense, a cast of characters whom loyal readers have come to love, and a final jaw-dropping twist, It Had to Be You is not to be missed. -
A Flicker in the Dark
A New York Times Bestseller
“A smart, edge-of-your-seat story with plot twists you’ll never see coming. Stacy Willingham’s debut will keep you turning pages long past your bedtime.” —Karin Slaughter
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren't actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?
From debut author Stacy Willingham comes a masterfully done, lyrical thriller, certain to be the launch of an amazing career. A Flicker in the Dark is eerily compelling to the very last page.
Book & Author Programs
Art & Literary Magazine: Accepting Submissions!
Are you an artist or an author? Submit your original artwork, poetry, short stories, or personal essays for a chance to be published in the Blue & Berry Bulletin, WAPL's Art and Literary Magazine.
Novel Thoughts Book Club: The Coast Road (In-Person)
Join us as we discuss The Coast Road by Alan Murrin
Books are available at the Adult Help Desk.
About the book:
Mystery Book Club: The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Join us at the library as we discuss The Plot by by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Books are available at the Adult Help Desk.
Beyond Fiction Book Club - A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak
Join us to discuss this month's Beyond Fiction Book Club selection, A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak. Books will be available to check out at the Adult Help Desk.
Book Buddies
KIDS-
Readers looking for a new way to gain confidence and practice reading skills? Kids will enjoy being partnered with a young volunteer buddy. Enjoy great books, a relaxed reading time and making a new friend.
TEENS-
Read Online
Digital Library of Illinois (Libby)

Powered by Libby (formerly known as Overdrive), we have combined our exclusive e-content titles with other libraries to provide a much larger selection of materials to choose from, while still maintaining first dibs on titles we will continue to add regularly.
EBSCO
Freegal Music

The Freegal® Music service allows patrons to access a collection spanning over 15 million songs, music videos and audiobooks from more than 40,000 music labels worldwide including Sony Music, Epic, RCA, and Columbia. Freegal® Music also offers a completely rebuilt mobile app and website which utilizes modern application practices to ensure an easy-to-use and enjoyable experience.
Hoopla

Stream & download movies, music, audiobooks, ebooks, comics and TV shows to enjoy on most any device.
Kanopy

Stream full-length independent, foreign, classic & documentary films for free, brought to you by your public library. Over 30,000 films are offered.
KanopyKids

Browse educational and engaging videos for children of all ages that promote positive social and emotional development and inspire creativity in young minds.