FICTION
Queen B: The Story of Anne Boleyn, Witch Queen by Juno Dawson
It’s 1536 and the queen has been beheaded. Lady Grace Fairfax, witch, knows that something foul is at play — that someone had betrayed Anne Boleyn and her coven. Wild with the loss of their leader, she will do anything in her power to track down the traitor. But there’s more at stake than revenge: it was one of their own, a witch, that betrayed them, and Grace isn’t the only one looking for her. King Henry VIII has sent witchfinders after them, and they’re organized like they’ve never been before under his new advisor, a cold man blinded by his faith. His cruel reign could mean the end of witchkind itself. If Grace wants to find her revenge and live, she will have to do more than disappear. She will have to be reborn.
The Love of my Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood
If she wasn’t dead already, Delphie would be dying of embarrassment. Not only did she just die by choking on a microwaveable burger, but now she’s standing in her ‘shine like a star’ nightie in front of the hottest man she’s ever seen. As they start to chat, everything else becomes background noise. That is until someone comes running out of a door, yelling something about a huge mistake, and sends the dreamy stranger back down to earth. And here Delphie was thinking her luck might be different in the afterlife. When Delphie is offered a deal in which she can return to earth and reconnect with the mysterious man, she jumps at the opportunity to find her possible soulmate and a fresh start.
Ghostroots: Stories by Pemi Aguda
In this beguiling collection of twelve imaginative stories set in Lagos, Nigeria, ’Pemi Aguda dramatizes the tension between our yearning to be individuals and the ways we are haunted by what came before. In “Manifest,” a woman sees the ghost of her abusive mother in her daughter’s face. Shortly after, the daughter is overtaken by wicked and destructive impulses. In “Things Boys Do,” a trio of fathers finds something unnatural and unnerving about their infant sons. These and other stories in Ghostroots map emotional and physical worlds that lay bare the forces of family, myth, tradition, gender, and modernity in Nigerian society.
The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan
On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable.
NONFICTION
Bones Worth Breaking: A Memoir by David Martinez
Nobody around David Martinez saw how quickly he was breaking apart except for his younger brother, Mike. They stood out in Idaho: mixed-race in a Mormon community that, in the years before David’s birth, considered Black people ineligible for salvation. The Martinez brothers were raised to be “good boys,” definitely not to get high, skateboard all night, or get arrested, all of which they did with zeal. Then their paths diverged. David went on a two-year mission trip to Brazil like his father before him, and Mike stayed in the States, finding himself in and out of prison. When David returned, in the middle of the still-unnamed opioid epidemic, things had irrevocably changed, and in 2021, Mike unexpectedly died in prison.
The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America by Tracie McMillan
In The White Bonus, McMillan asks a provocative question about racism in America: When people of color are denied so much, what are white people given? And how much is it worth — not in amorphous privilege, but in dollars and cents? McMillan begins with three generations of her family, tracking their modest wealth to its roots: American policy that helped whites first. Simultaneously, she details the complexities of their advantage, exploring her mother’s death in a nursing home, at 44, on Medicaid; her family’s implosion; and a small inheritance from a banker grandfather. In the process, McMillan puts a cash value to whiteness in her life and assesses its worth.
Polished: College, Class and the Burdens of Social Mobility by Melissa Osborne
An ethnography that draws on in-depth interviews with 150 first-generation and low-income students across 18 elite institutions, Polished uncovers the hidden consequences of the promise of social mobility in today’s educational landscape. Sociologist Melissa Osborne reveals how the very support designed to propel first-generation students forward can unexpectedly reshape their identities, often putting them at odds with their peers and families. Without direct institutional support, this emotional journey can lead to alienation, mental health challenges, poor academic outcomes, and difficult choices between upward mobility or maintaining authenticity and community.
Inconceivable: Super Sperm Donors, Off-the-Grid Insemination and Unconventional Family Planning: A Memoir by Valerie Bauman
Inconceivable combines memoir and investigative reporting to reveal an underground community of sperm donors and recipients who have chosen to circumvent traditional fertility avenues and meet up on their own terms. As an active participant in this community, Valerie Bauman uses her own story as a lens into this movement of people attempting to dodge the costly and often discriminatory world of sperm banks and fertility clinics. Inconceivable is a window into the unfair legal, financial, and medical entanglements that compel many single women and LGBTQ+ couples to take their fertility into their own hands.
CHILDREN’S
Endangered Animals Atlas: A Journey Across the World and Into the Wild by Tom Jackson and Sam Caldwell
This is the perfect book for young animal lovers. Kids meet a huge cast of unique animals and learn about endangerment and how to protect animals at risk. The illustrations are colorful and engaging, and the book is sure to capture a curious mind.
Ages 6-9
LIBRARY OPEN
Lima Public Library is open to the public six days a week. Hours for the Main Library in Lima are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Our Cairo, Elida and Spencerville branch libraries are open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Our Lafayette branch is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
