FICTION
King of Sloth by Ana Huang
Charming, easygoing, and rich beyond belief, Xavier Castillo has the world at his fingertips. He also has no interest in taking over his family’s empire (much to his father’s chagrin), but that hasn’t stopped women from throwing themselves at him … unless the woman in question is his publicist. Nothing brings him more joy than riling her up, but when a tragedy forces them closer than ever, he must grapple with the uncertainty of his future. Cool, intelligent, and ambitious, Sloane Kensington is a high-powered publicist who’s used to dealing with difficult clients. She may be forced to work with him, but she’ll never fall for him … no matter how fast he makes her heart beat or how thoughtful he is beneath his party persona.
Maria: A Novel of Maria von Trapp by Michelle Moran
In the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of a woman named Maria von Trapp. He’s intrigued to learn that she was once a novice who hoped to live quietly as an Austrian nun before her abbey sent her away to teach a widowed baron’s sickly child. But when Maria sees the script that is supposedly based on her life, she becomes so incensed that she sets off to confront Hammerstein in person. Told that he’s busy, she is asked to express her concerns to his secretary, Fran, instead. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship as Maria tells Fran about her life, contradicting much of what will eventually appear in The Sound of Music.
Calder Country by Janet Dailey
Heir to the Hollister Ranch on his mother’s side, Mason Dollarhide is back home after a five-year prison sentence for smuggling bootleg liquor. Cynical and daring, he’s already up to his old tricks, having his goods trafficked to him by plane. Ruby Weaver learned to fly from her smuggler father. She agrees to take over his route and go undercover to help the Feds break up a bootlegging ring. Mason is only one part of that large operation, but he’s the rugged, rebellious, and tantalizingly irreverent part that makes an impression. Against her better judgement, Ruby finds herself falling for him, fighting an attraction that could jeopardize them both, while harboring a secret that could destroy any hope of a future together.
Warrior King by Wilbur A. Smith
South Africa, 1820. When Ann Waite discovers a battered longboat washed ashore in Algoa Bay, she is stunned to find two survivors: a badly scarred sailor and a little boy. As the man walks away into the morning mist alone, Ann is left with no choice but to raise the boy as her own. After two years of disaster and hardship in the African interior, desperation drives Ann and Harry back into the path of the mysterious shipwrecked man. Ralph Courtney has recently escaped from Robben Island and is determined to seek his fortune in Nativity Bay, the hidden harbor that his father told him about when he was a boy. But it isn’t long before Ralph, Ann and their fellow settlers learn that Nativity Bay now lies on the borders of a mighty kingdom, where the warrior king Shaka rules.
NONFICTION
Just Add Water: My Swimming Life by Katie Ledecky
Just Add Water charts Ledecky’s life in swimming. It details her start in Bethesda, Maryland, where she played sharks and minnows and first discovered the joy of the pool; her early foray into the Olympics at the tender age of 15 where, as the youngest member of the American team, she stunned everyone by winning her first gold medal; her time balancing competition and her education at Stanford University; how she developed a champion’s mindset that has allowed her to persevere through so many meets, even under intense pressure; and how she has maintained her dominance in a sport where success depends on milliseconds. You learn how every element of her life set her up to become the champion she is.
How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living by Vincent Deary
In How We Break, the health psychologist and author Vincent Deary explored the process of habit and change in everyday life. How We Break is a deeply compassionate and illuminating exploration of suffering. Deary examines what happens when we are pushed to our limits. Deary is a practitioner health psychologist who also works in a fatigue clinic and specializes in interventions that help people cope with the things life throws at them. The big traumas in life are relatively rare. Much more common is when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to a prolonged period of difficulty or precarity. When we are subjected to too much turbulence we become unhappy, worried, hopeless, exhausted. In other words, we break.
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live and Die by Keith Payne
In The Broken Ladder psychologist Keith Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically, but has profound consequences for how we think, how our cardiovascular systems respond to stress, how our immune systems function, and how we view moral ideas like justice and fairness. Experiments in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics have not only revealed important new insights on how inequality changes people in predictable ways but have provided a corrective to our flawed way of viewing poverty as the result of individual character failings. Economic inequality is not primarily about money, but rather about relative status: where we stand in relation to other people.
Sharing space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change by Cady Coleman
In 2010, Cady Coleman boarded a rocket and blasted off into space for her third NASA mission, a six-month expedition to the International Space Station where she was the only woman on her six-person crew. In Sharing Space, Cady shares counterintuitive insights integral to her success, such as how to know when to adapt and when to press for change instead, how to leverage insecurities to beat expectations, and how to be the glue that holds a disparate team together, shaping it to thrive. Illustrated with stories from her life and training, Cady takes readers from meteorite hunting in Antarctica to launching a $1.6 billion telescope into space to the wonder of spending six months living and working in zero gravity.
CHILDREN’S
The Beast of Buckingham Palace by David Walliams
Prince Alfred is sent on a dangerous quest to save his captured mother from the king’s malicious advisor, Lord Protector. As abnormal events strike the palace, Alfred journeys on his first epic adventure. Will Prince Alfred face his destiny or his demise? Join Alfred as he fights The Beast of Buckingham Palace.
Ages 8-12
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.
