Library Notes for the week of January 5

Last year we had a great time providing a reading program for adults. Why should the kids have all the fun with their Summer Reading Program? Thanks to our partners—Friends of the Library and Next Chapter Bookstore—we will be running the Winter Reading Program from January 15-March 31. Pick up a reading record the week of January 12. After you finish reading three books, bring it in for a free “literary latte” and a chance to win a book lover’s basket of great local products.

Here are a few books from our new book shelf to get you started toward that free latte.

Just Breathe by Susan Wiggs. Chicago cartoonist Sarah Moon tackles life's real issues with a healthy dose of sharp wit in her syndicated comic strip Just Breathe. As Sarah's cartoon alter ego, Shirl, undergoes artificial insemination, her situation begins to mirror Sarah's own difficult attempts to conceive. However, Sarah's dreams of the future did not include her husband's infidelity: snag number two in Sarah's so-called perfect life.

Death Swatch by Laura Childs. Jekyl Hardy is hosting a Mardi Gras party in his French Quarter apartment, amid Zydeco rhythms and popping champagne corks. On a wild night like this, anything can happen. The guests—including scrapbook-store owner Carmela Bertrand—never imagine it will be murder. But as the evening progresses, Jekyl’s neighbor, float designer Archie Baudier, is found on the balcony choked to death with a barbed wire garrote. Buried up to her neck in strange clues, Carmela is sure of only one thing: whoever killed Archie is now following her.

The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall. Davinsky Labor Camp, Siberia, 1933: Only two things in this wretched place keep Sofia from giving up hope: the prospect of freedom, and the stories told by her friend and fellow prisoner Anna, of a charmed childhood in Petrograd, and her fervent girlhood love for a passionate revolutionary named Vasily.