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.