Library Lines ...

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This week marks the sixth week of Summer Reading Club with three weeks remaining (not that we're counting!). Youngsters continuing to read in the program are now able to enter a drawing for grand prizes that will be awarded July 31 here at Rhoads Memorial Library. Prizes range from an instant camera to circuit building blocks to stuffed animals, in addition to free passes to Wonderland Amusement Park in Amarillo, Discovery Center, and a Sod Poodles baseball game, among others.

Weekly take-and-make kits provided by Castro County Agent Felice Acker of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service remain popular with youngsters, as Terrific Tuesdays have morphed into this activity. In addition to the kits focusing on birds, snakes, and insects, other kits have covered animal nutrition and the octopus. (I tried to impress children receiving these kits with the fact that the plural of octopus is octopi, but the look I received from them was either disbelief or disdain. Tough crowd...)

In last week's Library Lines, I mentioned to adult patrons that we have the Seven Sisters' series of books penned by the late Lucinda Riley. As for her motivation in writing this series, a tribute to her this week quoted Riley as saying, "I wanted to celebrate the achievements of women, especially in the past, where so often their contributions to make our world the place it is today have been overshadowed by the more frequently documented achievements of men."

While it is not required that the books comprising the Seven Sisters' series be read in chronological order, most prefer to do so. I have ordered extra copies of books one and two, so feel free to stop in and get started.

Newly released books that have arrived and are ready for checkout include the following selections that may have you questioning whether to party hardy:

-"The Rooftop Party" (a novel) by Ellen Meister, proclaimed by critics to be a "wickedly entertaining rom-com/murder mystery." Dana Barry, the Shopping Channel's star host, stops by the company's rooftop party to pitch an idea for a new show to the new CEO. But the new boss turns out to be a lecherous lout. Narrowly escaping the CEO's clutches, Dana grabs her drink, proceeds to the dance floor, and then blacks out. When she comes to, Dana learns that the CEO fell to his death, or was he pushed? If so, did she do it?

-"Crude Ambition" (a novel) by Patricia Holmes, a Texas author. Following a law firm recruiting party, a female summer intern is found battered and unconscious on the floor of a beachside house on Galveston Island. The only other woman attending the party rushes her to the hospital. The next day, though, the injured woman is gone without a trace. Those involved decide to keep silent, a decision they will regret years later as fallout is felt from the power centers of Houston law and oil to the fracking fields of South Texas to the Jersey Shore and Washington D.C.

Until next week, Happy Reading!