Addie LaRue was born in the wrong time. Her world is too small; she feels trapped by the village she lives in and trapped by the expectations that society has for her. She dreads the inevitability of marriage which will take away the bit of freedom she has managed to create. When she finds herself […]
Mallory Viridian spends her life keeping people at arms distance, trying to keep them alive. Death has followed her for as long as she can remember. When she was very young, her mother died. Then one of her teachers was murdered, followed by her guidance counselor. Just before she dropped out of college, an annoying […]
Beginning with A DEADLY EDUCATION, Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy is a contemporary fantasy series about magically gifted teenagers forced to struggle for survival in a school determined to destroy them. Once a year, the fourteen-year-old magically-inclined children of the world are pulled into the Scholomance – a sentient school designed to teach them how to […]
There are many stories about the resilience of Christmas. From Rudolph’s shiny nose making it possible for presents to be delivered to Scrooge providing a goose dinner and presents hoping to improve his Christmas Yet to Come. But none of them is as weird and wonderful as the book I am about to share with […]
In Judy I. Lin’s debut novel, A MAGIC STEEPED IN POISON, certain people — those who have been blessed with Shennong’s gifts — are able to use the ingredients and rituals of tea brewing to weave spells. Some can use their power to see the future, others can brew teas that affect the mind, and […]
Nell Young’s whole life is maps, it always has been. Her father is a world-renowned expert in mapmaking and cartography at the New York Public Library, and he raised her to love maps as much as he does. She followed in his footsteps through college: studying cartography and earning a highly-competitive internship in the NYPL’s […]
It’s another Bring-Your-Own Craft day for this month’s Chat & Craft, but that’s not all we’re doing! Over the past few months members of our community have been gracious enough to donate plenty of craft magazines to the library. Now it’s time for you to take some home! Quilting, scrapbooking, knitting, crochet, and cross stitch […]
JPL’s Summer Reading Program has officially started, and this year’s theme is Oceans of Possibilities! In keeping with that theme, I thought it would be fun to crochet jellyfish. I just found out that the name for a group of jellyfish is a smack, though they can also be called a bloom or a swarm. […]
SPACE OPERA by Catherynne M. Valente is a book so up my alley that I put off reading it for years because I was afraid it couldn’t live up to how amazing it sounded. I can tell you now that I was wrong. But before I tell you about the book, let me ask: have […]
When the pandemic started, many people – including myself – thought that no one would want to read fiction set during this time. On top of the fact that this is a disaster we are all living through, everyone was stuck in their homes learning to make their own bread and hoping they had enough […]
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