Library Lines ...

We are approaching the end of 2021 and are about to herald in 2022. Whatever you may think about the old year, now is the time for hope that a new year will be better. We will be closed tomorrow, Dec. 31, and will re-open on Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022 at 9 a.m.

We will begin work on our annual book sale which is held the last week of January. This event will begin Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022, and go through noon Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. We will set it up like we did last year, where some books, movies, and audio books are in our meeting room while the bulk of the offerings will be on our storage room shelving. Of course, the fiction will be alphabetized by author for your convenience.

As for books available for check out here at Rhoads Memorial Library, we have some recent releases that have been donated to us. They include:

-"The Last Mona Lisa" (a novel) by Jonathan Santlofer, focuses on the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre by museum worker Vincent Peruggia. During its two-year absence, many forgeries are created and sold by a duo of con artists, prompting art historians to speculate that the museum may be displaying a fake.

This book is deemed by critics to be a "story of heartstopping suspense as romantic and sexy as it is terrifying and thrilling...showing people so driven to acquire priceless works of art that they will stop at nothing to possess them."

-"The Orphan Collector" (a novel) by Ellen Marie Wiseman finds 13-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange leaving her infant twin brothers alone as she ventures out of their Philadelphia home to find food and supplies. Set in the fall of 1918 when the Spanish Flu is spreading rapidly, the youngsters face anti-German sentiment so bad that their father enlisted in the U.S. Army to prove his loyalty to their new country.

Pia cannot know that the babies will be gone when she returns home. She does not realize that neighbor Bernice Groves, lost in grief and bitterness after the death of her baby, believes doctors could have saved her son if they had not been so busy tending to hordes of immigrants. When Groves sees Pia leave the tenement, Groves decides to gather and transform orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are "true Americans."

It will be a long hard journey for Pia to figure out what happened and see that justice is done.

-"The Rainbow" (historical fiction) by Carly Schabowski is based on a true story. Isla is collecting photos for her beloved grandfather's 95th birthday when she discovers a faded newspaper article printed in German. It features two men in Nazi uniforms, one of which is her grandfather. Isla is stunned as she had grown up hearing about her grandfather's life as a child in pre-war Poland and how, as a young adult, he bravely fought the Germans.

Unable to question her grandfather due to his advanced dementia, Isla sets out to uncover the truth. She discovers a tale of childhood sweethearts torn apart by family duty, and how one young man risked his life, his love, and the respect of his own people to secretly fight for justice from inside the heart of the enemy itself.

A different type of book that has been donated to us is "The Book of Signing: A Handbook for Words and Phrases" by Christopher Brown. It, too, is available for checkout.

Have a safe and happy new year and we'll see you in 2022!