Library Lines ...

Encountering people who come from all walks of life and a variety of backgrounds is a real perk of working in a public library. Here at Rhoads Memorial Library, we see people representing the entire socio-economic spectrum ranging from homelessness to being wealthy as well as those of different ethnicities, races and religions. We never know who will come through our front door.

Case in point: last week a Filipino woman and her two daughters stopped by. Residents of Canada, they were in Dimmitt visiting relatives; the woman was curious about our facility as she works in a library in a Canadian city of 80,000 people. As she toured our facility, which she noted was so spotless and organized, she complimented us for providing such an inviting, quiet, and cozy ambience.

She noted that her library is open from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., seven days a week. They are so busy they use a conveyor belt to send returned books to a different floor where several people check them in and organize them for re-shelving. That, along with coin-operated copiers and printers located throughout their main floor, render their library bustling but noisy.

While we are not yet in need of a conveyor belt for returned items, we do have some newly released books ready for checkout. They include: -”Storm Watch” (a Joe Pickett novel) by C.J. Box; -”Worthy Opponents” (a novel) by Danielle Steel; -”Murder Book” (a thriller) by Thomas Perry.

That last work, “Murder Book,” refers to a notebook compiled by ex-cop Harry Duncan as he investigates a crime wave enveloping several small midwestern towns. He received this task via the region’s U.S. Attorne,: Ellen Leicester, the wife who left him 15 years ago. His investigation soon puts his life - and hers - in danger. Another new release is “Stealing” by Margaret Verble. This work of historical fiction follows Kit, a Cherokee child removed from her family and sent to a Christian boarding school in the 1950s.

“The London Seance Society” (a novel) by Sarah Penner, is set in 1873 and features Vaudeline D’Allaire of Paris, an acclaimed spiritualist who conjures the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them.

Invited to England to solve a high-profile murder, she, and understudy Lenna Wickes, team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Seance Society to solve the case. But they begin to suspect that they may have become entangled in a crime themselves.

Until next week, Happy Reading!