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 God of the Woods
NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2024
A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY TOP 10 PICK OF 2024
ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” 2024
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S “100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2024”
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY:
REAL SIMPLE
OPRAH DAILY
NEWSWEEK
VULTURE
“Extraordinary . . . Reminds me of Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut, The Secret History . . . I was so thoroughly submerged in a rich fictional world, that for hours I barely came up for air.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR
“This expertly paced thriller ...has the kineticism of a well-crafted miniseries.”
—The New Yorker
“Riveting from page one to the last breathless word.” —Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of I Have Some Questions For You
When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet. -
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. -
Force of Nature
A beautiful and hopeful story of how a young impassioned naturalist grows up to change the world. For everyone who cares about our fragile planet.
"An absolute joy to read." --Book Riot
"Gracefully written...pleasing to the eye and ear." --Kirkus Reviews
Rachel was a girl who loved
science and the sea,
books and writing
and all the creatures of the world.
Rachel was quiet,
a listener by nature.
But when she saw problems,
she could not remain silent.
Some people thought girls
shouldn't be scientists.
They thought girls
shouldn't use their voices
to question or challenge,
even to protect
all the creatures of the world.
Luckily Rachel didn't listen
to them.
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.
Mystery Book Club: Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger
Join us at the library as we discuss Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger
Books are available at the Adult Help Desk
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: All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (In-Person)
Join us as we discuss All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
Books are available at the Adult Help Desk.
About the book:
Mystery Book Club: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Join us at the library as we discuss The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Books are available at the Adult Help Desk
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.
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.
NoveList Plus K-8
Great for kids, parents and teachers! Browse recommended reads by age, get book discussion guides as well search titles, authors, plot summaries, and series. Includes lexile scoring for both fiction and non-fiction titles.