FICTION
Blizzard by Marie Vingtras
Bess stops to tie her shoes. The boy is lost, gone in a flash, swallowed up by the snow. Bess is a California girl, while Benedict, with whom she and the boy live, is the last in his family’s long line of rugged Alaskans. Benedict knows better than to venture out in such weather. But he has no choice. “Blizzard” is a race against death and destiny. Benedict, the local, and Bess, the outsider, are joined in the frantic search by Cole, an unsavory figure who washed up decades ago and clings on, downing moonshine. Then there’s Freeman, a Black Vietnam vet who seems wholly out of place in the North. “Blizzard” is a breathless panorama of lonely souls making a life for themselves in the Far North, and of the dark truths they carry.
Off the Air by Christina Estes
Jolene Garcia is a local TV reporter in Phoenix, Arizona, splitting her time between covering general assignments ― anything from a monsoon storm to a newborn giraffe at the zoo ― and special projects. Stories that take more time to research and produce. Stories that Jolene wants to tell. When word gets out about a death at a radio station, Jolene and other journalists swarm the scene, intent on reporting the facts first. The body is soon identified as Larry Lemmon, a controversial talk show host, who died under suspicious circumstances. Jolene conducted his final interview, giving her and her station an advantage. But not for long.
Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, “Five-Star Stranger” follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app as he navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings. As she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?
NONFICTION
What If We Get It Right: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take — from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer — to create. If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world — or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it — this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.
Intervals by Marianne Brooker
What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her 40s and a harsh wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker’s mother was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. She made a workshop of herself and her surroundings, combining creativity and activism in inventive ways. But over time, her ability to work, to move and to live without pain diminished drastically. Determined to die in her own home, on her own terms, she stopped eating and drinking in 2019. In “Intervals,” Brooker reckons with heartbreak, weaving her first and final memories with a study of doulas, living wills and the precarious economics of social, hospice and funeral care.
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: Essays and Interviews by Adrienne Su
In “Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet,” Adrienne Su contemplates her own use of food as a recurring metaphor, influential teachers and peers, the push and pull between cooking and writing, changing expectations around English usage. Su’s essays are driven by the tensions between worlds that overlap and collide: social conventions of the northern and southern United States; notions of what’s American and what’s Asian American; the demands of the page and the demands of the home; the solitariness of writing and the meaningful connection a poem can create between writer and reader. In interviews, she discusses a range of topics, from her early days in the Nuyorican poetry-slam scene to cooking during Covid-19 lockdown.
Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature by Colby Gordon
Colby Gordon challenges the prevailing assumption that trans life is a byproduct of recent medical innovation by locating a cultural imaginary of transition in the religious writing of the English Renaissance. “Glorious Bodies” insists that transition happened, both socially and surgically, hundreds of years before the 19th-century advent of sexology. Pairing literary texts by Shakespeare, Webster, Donne, and Milton with a broad range of primary sources, Gordon examines the religious tropes available to early modern subjects. From George Herbert’s invaginated Jesus and Milton’s gestational Adam to the ungendered “glorious body” of the resurrection, early modern theology offers a rich conceptual reservoir of trans imagery.
CHILDREN’S
Chick Chat by Janie Bynum
Baby Chick loves to chat, but she wishes there was someone who would listen. One day, her wishes are answered when she finds a large egg who hears her every chirp. Listen to Chick Chat and her large egg crack into life in this cute and colorful story.
Ages 4-8
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.
