Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 7, at noon in the Cumberland Room, the Dulcimores will perform their magical feats on the most American of instruments. Come and enjoy.
The Four Fifths Barbershop Quartet featuring Tom Liebert, Brian Weaver, Tim Knipp, and Buzz Ziegler will be performing at the library next Wednesday, May 14, at noon. Sensational is a byword.
Great New Books
Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs
Four couples have been friends for ages, but the shine has definitely gone from each of their marriages.
They argue and stew over tiny affronts, such as why can’t Andre just cut down the juniper bush that Shalisa hates? Didn’t Hank know that Pam was saving that leftover pad thai to eat later?
After one wife, Marlene, suffers a loss that turns out to be a win (Dave’s sudden death by garage door makes her well-off after she gets a huge insurance payout), the other women start to think that they too should bump off their husbands for the life-insurance money.
They have no idea, however, that the men have been plotting as well; their scheme to skim funds from the casino where Hank works has been a wild success, and it’s almost time for the men to cash out and flee the country.
The plots thicken when someone gets wise, prompting Hank to hire a hit man.
What happens in Amsterdam by Rachel Lynn Solomon
After losing her boyfriend and job, thirtysomething Dani Dorfman decides to leave Los Angeles for a position at an Amsterdam startup that soon folds, giving her only three months to find new employment before her visa runs out.
Already falling in love with the city and finding some hard-won independence from her overprotective parents, she’s desperate to stay.
When she literally runs into Wouter van Leeuwen, the hot Dutch exchange student her family hosted when she was in high school and who was her first love and heartbreak, he offers an unexpected solution: they get married for a year so Wouter can inherit his family home while giving Dani more time to find a job in Amsterdam.
Living together and keeping up their marriage charade soon has them realizing that they might still be in love with each other, but getting over their past heartbreak and admitting their true feelings won’t be easy.
As Dani finds her footing in her own life and in a new city, readers also get to vicariously experience the fantastic Dutch setting.
The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers and Alex Kiester
Fans of Flowers’s Crime Junkie podcast will experience the author’s narrative style in full force in her latest mystery novel, this one written with Alex Kiester.
Seven years after the disappearance of her sister Kasey, 24-year-old Nic is struggling with alcohol, a suspended license, and a dead-end job in Mishawaka, IN.
Enter Jenna Connor, whose sister Jules also disappeared around the same time as Nic’s.
Told entirely from Nic’s point of view, the story spirals into memories and explores the fragmentation of lives left behind with the recognition that everyone touched by potential murder lives with the inability to move forward.
There’s drama and fast-paced action alongside moments of humor, comfort, and casualness that bring the novel’s small-town setting to life, both as it was before the girls vanished and as it is for Nic in the present.
Psychologically nuanced, the book veers unexpectedly in its final chapters in ways that are as beautiful as they are unsettling.
Library Laugh I
What’s a tree’s favorite drink? Root beer.
Stingy Schobel Says
What’s one simple thing you can do to help your refrigerator work as efficiently as possible?
Cover your food.
When your leftovers or pitchers of water are inside your fridge, they release moisture, and that moisture forces the compressor in your fridge to work harder to keep everything else inside cool.
Use food storage containers with lids or pitchers with caps on them to keep your fridge running like a lean, green refrigeration machine.
Library Laugh II
What lies on the ocean floor, twitching uncontrollably? A nervous wreck.
Libraries=Information
Have you read the latest statistic that says humans may have enough microplastics in our bodies to equal that of a small spoon?
It’s shocking, and it proves that plastics are everywhere.
If you want to do one simple thing to significantly cut down on your consumption of microplastics, do this: Quit drinking from single-use plastic bottles.
A recent scientific paper says you can cut up to 90% of your plastic intake by doing this one simple thing.
Switch to filtered water and drink from a reusable metal bottle instead.
Spring Bonus
Did you hear about the quarry that went out of business? They hit rock bottom.