Don't miss these book happenings - including new materials at our library, featured recommendations, and more! Click on any of these book covers to get your hold placed.

New Materials

Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan -- Fiction Henry Maxwell has spent his whole life trying to live with honor. A native Pittsburgher and engineer, he's always believed in logic, sacrifice, and hard work. Now, 75 and retired, he feels the world has passed him by. It's 1998, the American century is ending, and nothing is simple anymore. His children are distant, their unhappiness a mystery. Only his wife Emily and dog Rufus stand by him. Once so confident, as Henry's strength and memory desert him, he weighs his dreams against his regrets and is left with questions he can't answer: Is he a good man? Has he done right by the people he loves? And with time running out, what, realistically, can he hope for?

The Ash Family by Molly Dektar -- Literary Fiction At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins an intentional community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie—now renamed Harmony—renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear.

The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handler -- Historical Fiction In rural north Georgia two decades after the Civil War, 13-year-old Lulu Hurst reaches high into her father’s bookshelf and pulls out an obscure book, The Truth of Mesmeric Influence.  Lulu begins to “captivate” her friends and family, controlling their thoughts and actions for brief moments at a time. After Lulu convinces a cousin she conducts electricity with her touch, her father sees a unique opportunity. He grooms her into an electrifying new woman: The Magnetic Girl. Lulu travels the Eastern seaboard, captivating enthusiastic crowds by lifting grown men in parlor chairs and throwing them across the stage with her “electrical charge.” While adjusting to life on the vaudeville stage, Lulu harbors a secret belief that she can use her newfound gifts, as well as her growing notoriety, to heal her disabled brother. As she delves into the mysterious book’s pages, she discovers keys to her father’s past and her own future--but how will she harness its secrets to heal her family?

The League of Wives by Heath Hardage Lee -- History On February 12, 1973, 116 men shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. These American servicemen had endured years of brutal torture, kept shackled and starving in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-laden prisons, the worst of which was The Hanoi Hilton. Months later, the first Vietnam POWs to return home would learn that their rescuers were their wives. These women, who formed The National League of Families, would never have called themselves “feminists,” but they had become the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands’ freedom―and to account for missing military men―by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a savvy media campaign, conducting covert meetings with antiwar activists, and most astonishingly, helping to code secret letters to their imprisoned husbands.

Featured Ditto

Check out one of MPL's featured dittos, where we let you know what else you might like to read based on a popular item. Click on the image to get to our catalog and start searching!

May We Suggest...

Anita Mehuys, Adult Services Librarian here at MPL, recommends reading American Pop by Snowden Wright. She liked the book because it was a superbly written saga of a family dynasty and how past decisions continuously affect the future.

Jan LaRoche, Young Adult Services Librarian here at MPL, recommends reading Pride by Ibi Zoboi. She liked this retelling of Pride & Prejudice because it was written in a beautiful lyrical language, and gave a great sense of community and life in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

Maribel Lassuy, Technical Services Assistant here at MPL, recommends reading Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough. She liked the book because it was a dark, twisty, & supernatural ride, and she loves it when she doesn't see the ending coming!

Click on any of these book covers to get your holds placed!