Short Story Collections

With the long, hot summer ahead of us, I thought it would be nice to have a few quick, easy reads on our list. "What's a quicker read than a short story?," I thought, so here are a few new collections for your enjoyment.

Carmen Maria Machado is happy to obliterate the borders between genres in Her Body and Other Parties: Stories. These 8 stories relate the verisimilitude of women's lives and the violence that is often thrust upon them externally and internally. A wife refuses her husband's pleadings to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. Another woman recounts her sexual exploits as a plague sweeps through the world around her. A clerk in a mall makes a shocking discovery when she inspects seams of the prom dresses she has been selling. The included novella, "Especially Heinous," was inspired by Law & Order: SVU, but it smears the police procedural with all the hallmarks of a horror novel; including doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells-for-eyes. If you lean toward the sci-fi/fantasy/horror novels, then this collection may be for you.

If you lean toward political intrigue, spy/war thrillers, and the like, then Will Mackin's Bring Out the Dog: Stories may be right up your alley. These 11 stories draw from Mackin's many deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would scribble notes in grease pencil on the inner side of his arm and make lists on the flaps torn from MRE kits. He used these notes in his journals and, years later, those journals became this book. The world he relates is one of intense bonds, archaic tenets, and unexpected compassion. These stories are set at home and abroad and reflect the dual reality of war--victory and loss. There is not an ounce of grandiosity to these stories, they are told with the keen eye of someone who has lived each scenario.

Nine stories comprise Kelly Barnhill's collection entitled Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories. This is another collection of stories that bend reality and drift toward the bizarre. In "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch," the titular widow decides to rekindle a long dormant relationship with a most unsuitable mate. The title story illustrates the strength and power--both known and unknown--of the imagination. In "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through," a young man struggles with intense grief and his sexuality in his letters to his long-distance love. Included in this collection is her award-winning novella "The Unlicensed Magician" which introduces the secret and magical life of an invisible girl who was once left for dead.

Finally, in Back Talk: Stories by Danielle Lazarin, women don't hate themselves, don't hate each other, not their mothers or sisters, their fathers, husbands, ex-husbands, and certainly not their children. Sound boring? Don't be so quick to judge. These women are just like you and I in that they are just trying to navigate the world without losing their minds. These 16 fresh, witty stories relate the ups and downs of strong, capable women and girls who still manage to be compassionate and tender.

Summer Library Program - Online Registration Opens June 1!

It's time again for the Summer Library Program!  This year's theme is Libraries Rock and we're all about the music.

Online registration starts Friday, June 1 and in-library registration will being with our kick-off party on June 4 featuring Magic Man, Dorian LaChance!

We have a lot planned this summer including a movie, a dulcimer performance, a visit from the Natural Science Museum, air guitar, kaoroke and more!

Join us for a music-filled summer!

Cookbooks Are Not Just for the Holidays

Want to learn a new way to cook? Have you ever thought of trying a plant-based diet? "Chef Chloe Coscarelli has revolutionized how vegans cook and eat with exciting, plant-based recipes that are fun, full of flavor, and make you feel healthier. When she decided to become a vegan chef, she dreamed of changing the way the world ate. Chloe believes the most delicious dishes come from plant-based ingredients, and has debunked the myth that vegan cooking is bland and visually unenticing. Enter: Chloe Flavor: Saucy Crispy Spicy Vegan. Every recipe here is bold in taste, loud in color, unabashedly unique, and, above all, easy to make. With dishes like Smoky Grits & Greens, Mango-Guacamole Crunch Burgers, and Sea Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies, this food is for fun, friends, and family—and it’s all about the flavor. Vegans will delight in Chloe’s creations and carnivores won’t miss the meat one bit."(Amazon.com)

For those who want to keep their omnivore ways, but you want something new, you could also try The Home Cook by Alex Guarnaschelli. "For Alex Guarnaschelli—whose mother edited the seminal 1997 edition of The Joy of Cooking, which defined the food of the late twentieth century—a life in food and cookbooks was almost predestined. Now an accomplished chef and author in her own right (and mom to a young daughter), Alex pens a cookbook for the way we eat today. For generations raised on vibrant, international flavors and supermarkets stocked with miso paste, harissa, and other bold condiments and ingredients, here are 300 recipes to replace their parents’ Chicken Marbella, including Glazed Five-Spice Ribs, Roasted Eggplant Dip with Garlic Butter Naan, Roasted Beef Brisket with Pastrami Rub, Fennel and Orange Salad with Walnut Pesto, Quinoa Allspice Oatmeal Cookies, and Dark Chocolate Rum Pie." (Amazon.com)

Perhaps you're ready to expand your culinary skills on the perfect holiday meal. Why not try Cook's Illustrated All Time Best Holiday Entertaining from America's Test Kitchen? "With decades of experience turning out perfect turkeys, the experts at Cook's Illustrated are no strangers to pulling off a great holiday meal. In All-Time Best Holiday Entertaining, we have gathered 75 spectacular, foolproof recipes from our extensive archives to help you confidently prepare memorably festive feasts for years to come. America’s Test Kitchen is well-known for its top-rated television shows with more than 4 million weekly public television viewers, bestselling cookbooks, magazines, websites, and cooking school. The highly reputable and recognizable brands of America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated, and Cook’s Country are the work of over 60 passionate chefs based in Boston, Massachusetts, who put ingredients, cookware, equipment, and recipes through objective, rigorous testing to identify the very best. Discover, learn, and expand your cooking repertoire with Julia Collin Davison, Bridget Lancaster, Jack Bishop, Dan Souza, Lisa McManus, Tucker Shaw, Bryan Roof, and our fabulous team of test cooks!" (Amazon.com)

Holiday Reminder

We will be closed on Saturday, May 26 through Monday, May 28 for the Memorial Day weekend.

Take advantage of our online offers which are available even when our doors are closed.  Go to our catalog homepage located at https://wcvpl.biblionix.com/catalog/ - you will find the links there to access the Gale Virtual Reference Library, RB Digital audiobooks, eBooks and eMagazines, and even World Book Online!

Have a safe holiday weekend.

Old Frontiers--Historical Fiction for Your Enjoyment

The Mannequin Makers is a novel by Craig Cliff. It's 1903 in the small town of Marumaru, New Zealand as the train pulls up and a young Maori man steps off and announces the imminent visit of a famous strongman. The entire town turns out to greet him, save one, Colton Kemp, a department store window dresser. Kemp is at home watching his beloved wife die during the premature birth of their twins. The grief torments Kemp and he often leaves the twins in the care of his wife's younger sister. As the grief he feels turns into an irrational obsession with thwarting his rival--the silent and gifted Carpenter--Colton Kemp allows his demons to spill out onto his family causing irreparable harm.

For something with a little more romance, why not try Out of the Ashes: The Heart of Alaska Book Two by Tracie Peterson and Kimberley Woodhouse? With the death of their father, Collette and Jean-Michel Langelier are no longer tied to post-war France. Collette is dreaming of adventure, but her brother just wishes he could forget the horror of the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925. An unexpected invitation to visit Alaska and the Curry Hotel located at the foot of Mt. Denali seems like the ideal opportunity for the siblings, so they make their way west. Katherine Demarchis has agreed to accompany her beloved grandmother on one last adventure into the Alaska wilderness. She is still nursing wounds from a painfully abusive forced marriage. When Katherine and Jean-Michel come face to face, their past together is revealed and their plans for the future are thrown into chaos.

Only Killers and Thieves is a novel of colonial Australia by Paul Howarth. In 1895 the McBride family is in danger of losing everything they hold dear. A crippling drought has their land parched and their cattle are starving, but the rains do come and things start to look up. After spending the afternoon swimming in a replenished water hole, fourteen-year-old Tommy and sixteen-year-old Billy return home to a shocking tragedy. As the thirst for vengeance falls upon the brothers, they turn to the ruthless and cunning John Sullivan--their father's former employer and the wealthiest landowner in the region. Sullivan gathers a posse to go after the man thought to have commited the horrific crime the boys came home to, however, the posse takes on a larger roll to "disperse" the Aboriginal people and "protect" the rights of the white settlers. The impact of these actions will haunt Tommy for the rest of his life and put a stain on the young country struggling to come into its own.

Many people are familiar with the tragic events that befell the Donner Party on their travel west in the late 1800s. Alma Katsu fictionalizes their story and gives it a supernatural twist in The Hunger. With their rations depleted and bitter quarrels breaking out between their members, the Donner Party is driven closer to the brink of madness by the mysterious death of a little boy. Even with the promise of what awaits them in the West, the long-buried secrets of these isolated travelers breeds dissent that leads to murder and chaos. Is it a curse from the beautiful Tamsen Donner who thinks she's a witch, their ill-advised choice of route, or just plain bad luck that plagues their adventure? Members of the group begin to disappear and survivors wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, for them in the mountains.

New Graphic Novels

Our collection of graphic novels is growing!  Here are a few of the newest ones that we've added.

Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
The diffident, brilliant Mycroft pulled into a globe-spanning adventure at the behest of Queen Victoria and a secret organization at the heart of the British government. A madman is on the loose with civilization-destroying weapons, each two hundred years in advance of the status quo. Can the smartest man in England set aside his idle, womanizing ways for long enough to track down the foe that may be his match?





Verax by Pratap Chatterjee
From a prize-winning journalist and the co-author of the best-selling Zahra’s Paradise, a sweeping graphic history of electronic surveillance from 9/11 to the latest drone strike.

9/11 not only marked the worst domestic terror attack in U.S. history, but also unleashed electronic spying by the government on a massive worldwide scale. In a wholly original and engaging telling, Verax (“truth-teller” and one of Edward Snowden’s code names) recounts the full story of American electronic surveillance post 9/11, in comics form.




I, Parrot by Deb Olin Unferth
When Daphne loses custody of her son, she is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back―even if it means enlisting the help of the wayward love of her life, a trio of housepainters, a flock of passenger pigeons, a landlady from hell, a super-sized bag of mite-killing powder, and more parrots than she knows what to do with.

New YA Fiction For Everyone

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe (translated by Lilit Thwaites) is based on the experiences of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus. This incredible story tells how Dita risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust. At fourteen, Dita is one of the many Jews and other "undesirables" imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz in Poland. First, she and her parents were removed from their home in Prague and moved to the ghetto. Then, they were moved northward to the Terezin settlement. Finally, they were brought to Poland and Dita is trying to adjust to the constant terror that makes up the life in the camp. When a Jewish leader, Fredy Hirsch, asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious books the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees and becomes the librarian of Auschwitz even though her life would be forfeit if the Nazis found her out.

If You're Gone is a novel by Brittany Goodwin. When her boyfriend, Brad, disappears, Lillian White's perfect plans for the summer are shattered. Brad didn't go home after his graduation ceremony. That also happens to be the night he told Lillian that he loves her for the the first time. Law enforcement insist that Brad is voluntarily missing and they are not pursuing his disappearance as related to foul play. Lillian believes otherwise and sets out to prove that he would not just walk away from his friends, family, and especially not from her. As she digs deeper, however, she comes to the realization that there is a lot that she doesn't know about the love of her life. Soon, she is questioning everything she thought she knew about Brad, their relationship, as well as her own faith.

In the novel, Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp, Corey and Kyra don't fit in with the other kids in their small Alaska town, but they do fit together. They become inseparable, so when Corey's family has to move away, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winter until Corey is able to come back and visit. Only, just days before Corey is to return, Kyra dies and Corey is devastated and more than a little confused. The entire community seems to speak in whispers about Kyra, call her a lost daughter and saying her death was meant to be. To add insult to injury, they push Corey away like she's a stranger. She knows something is wrong, but what can you do when the whole town is keeping secrets and you are determined to find out what happened to your best friend?

This is Not a Love Letter is a novel by Kim Purcell. Jessie thought that a one week break to get some perspective before graduation and before she and her boyfriend, Chris, had to make all the big, scary decisions about their future was a perfectly logical idea. Only, those decisions had them fighting for weeks. When Chris vanishes, the police think he has just run away, but Jessie isn't buying it. Chris is popular and good-looking, not to mention, he's about to head off to college with a full baseball scholarship. He disappeared while going for a run along the river--the same place where he was jumped by some boys from a rival school a few weeks earlier. Chis is one of the only black kids in their depressed paper mill town, and Jessie is afraid something unthinkable has happened. As Jessie searches for answers, she will face her fears, her guilt, and the frightening threats of an unknown evil.

Looking Forward to Summer!

It might be hard to believe, but summer will be here before we know it!  This year, our Summer Library Program's theme is Libraries Rock!

Join us for a summer filled with music and music related reading.  We'll kick-off with an opening party featuring Magic Man Dorian LaChance and that's just the start!  There will be contests, performances and it will all be topped off with a Sock Hop.

Don't miss out - register online starting Friday, June 1 or register in-person at the library starting on Monday, June 4.

Science and Medical Non-Fiction

What happens when institutional racism and junk forensic science come together? Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington explore this scenario in their book, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: a True Story of Injustice in the American South. After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement agents arrested and convicted two innocent men--Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. By the time they were exonerated in 2008, they had spent a combined thirty years in prison based largely on the testimony of two men--Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West. For nearly twenty years, Hayne, a medical examiner, performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend, West, a local dentist, touted his skill as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. They became the go-to experts for prosecutors all over the state and helped to convict many Mississippians, however, some of those convictions began to fall apart.

Lindsy Fitzharris writes about surgical innovations in The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. Nineteenth-century surgery was brutal. Surgeons, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. Surgical theaters were no place for the squeamish, either. The most baffling outcome of these surgeries was the extremely high mortality rates of post-operative infections. Into the fray steps and unassuming Quaker surgeon by the name of Joseph Lister, who worked tirelessly to solve the mystery of these infection deaths and whose efforts would revolutionize science and medicine forever.

The History of Medicine in 50 Discoveries is by Marguerite Vigliani, MD and Gale Eaton. This book, arranged in chronological order, lists 50 medical discoveries that helped mankind leap forward in our evolution. For instance, a 5,000 year old mummy was found to have 61 tattoos--most of which matched acupuncture points--and walnut-sized pieces of medicinal fungus. Neolithic surgeons bored holes in patients' brains to relieve pressure at least 10,000 years ago. From Mesopotamian pharmaceuticals and ancient Greek sleep therapy to germs, X-rays, and modern prosthetics and organ transplants, this book traces all of the inspirations, accidents, and dogged determination that has helped humanity's ability to heal itself.

National Library Week - April 8-14

To celebration National Library Week, we will be featuring quotes about libraries and reading on our Facebook page daily.  Take a look to see if one of your favorite authors is among those featured.

This year's National Library Week theme is 'Libraries Lead'.  Are you taking advantage of all the things our library has to offer?

Here are some of the things you might be missing :

• Current best selling books (both print and eBooks)
• Magazines (both print and eMagazines)
• Weekly storytime for preschoolers and toddlers
• Movies and television shows on DVDs
• Audio books on CDs and on MP3 players
• Up to three hours of free computer usage for patrons
• Daily local newspapers
• Sitting areas for reading and tables for work or writing
• Reference books for assisting with school projects
• Information on college programs and scholarships
• Books on home improvement and repairs
• Local history information
• Newspaper archives for the Vicksburg paper
• Graphic novels for both children and adults
• Manga novels
• Large print books for those with vision impairment 
• Bilingual books in Spanish/English
• Summer Library Reading Program with various activities

That is only part of what we have to offer,  We also provide meeting places for groups as well as sponsor book signings and other events!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay informed - don't miss out on what's going on.