A Few Defining Stories from Olympic Games’ History

As the Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXXII Olympiad) rapidly approaches from Tokyo, Japan, we’re looking back on historic and defining moments throughout Olympics history — stories of hope, perseverance, bravery, and strength. The Summer Olympics begin July 23rd!

 

All of the titles featured here in this booklist we have in our collection or are available via SWAN! To see if an item is available to check out or to place a hold, click on the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Chariots of Fire

DVD

In the class-obsessed and religiously divided United Kingdom of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God’s glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart Sybil (Alice Krige) in his quest.

Race

DVD

This excellent bio-drama based on true events focuses on legendary black athlete Jesse Owens and his inspiring journey to overcome racism at home and abroad, culminating in his triumphant track-and-field performance at the 1936 Berlin

The Best of Men

DVD

The story of one remarkable doctor as he transforms the standards of care for paraplegics. Arriving at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1944, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann reinvigorates the lives of his staff and patients : he introduces athletics into the rehabilitation plan of his patients, paralyzed soldiers who have been cast-off and are facing death from neglect. Using sports, his patients learn to build not only physical strength, but self-respect and a sense of fulfillment. Dr. Guttmann established the Stoke Mandeville Games, the sporting event for the disabled that evolved into the Paralympic Games.

Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

Book by Jeremy Schaap

In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying & storm troopers an African-American son of sharecroppers won a staggering four Olympic gold medals and single-handedly crushed Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.

The boys in the boat: nine Americans and their epic quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Book by Daniel James Brown

Traces the amazing story of the rowing team that defeated elite rivals at Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics, sharing the experiences of their enigmatic coach, a visionary boat builder, and a homeless teen rower.

Fire on the track: Betty Robinson and the triumph of the early Olympic women

Book by Roseanne Montillo

The inspiring and irresistible true story of the women who broke barriers and finish-line ribbons in pursuit of Olympic Gold.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Prawdziwe historie

Masz dość czytania opowiadań? To jest lista książek o prawdziwych wydarzeniach i ludziach!

Wszystkie tytuły z tej listy książek mamy w naszej kolekcji! Aby sprawdzić, czy dany przedmiot jest dostępny do wypisania lub wstrzymania, kliknij zdjęcie okładki lub przycisk po prawej stronie opisu.

Franciszek : papież, który się uśmiecha

“Już od pierwszej chwili gdy pojawił się na najważniejszym balkonie na placu Świętego Piotra – Jego proste i szczere pozdrowienie „dobry wieczór” trafiło do serc milionów wiernych. Choć od tamtego czasu minęło wiele miesięcy – entuzjazm wobec Jego osoby nie słabnie – a wręcz umacnia się, docierając również do niewierzących. To opowieść o Papieżu, który odrzuca wszelki zbytek i blichtr, decydując się na skromne mieszkanie, by nie stracić bezpośredniego kontaktu z wiernymi i który swoim przykładem dał początek reformie Kościoła. To wielki Papież – wysłaniec Ewangelii, który wciąż jednak pozostaje skromnym proboszczem, przyjmując w darze stare renault 4 od pewnego księdza z prowincjonalnej parafii. To w końcu Papież, który się uśmiecha.”–Lubimyczytac.pl

Droga do wolnosci: rdzen nauk buddyzmu tybetanskiego

“Droga do wolnosci” Dalajlamy, otwierająca jego autorską serię \”Ścieżka ku oswieceniu\”, to subtelny i nacechowany wymowną głębią wykład nauk i pouczeń Buddy. Przebywający na uchodźstwie duchowy i polityczny przywódca Tybetu z niezrównaną prostotą i wdziękiem odkrywa istotę buddyzmu tybetańskiego zarówno przed nowicjuszami, jak i oddanymi wyznawcami.Dzieli się spokojnymi, prostymi refleksjami na temat smierci, reinkarnacji, karmy, Czterech Szlachetnych Prawd oraz kultywowania ideału bodhisattwy i dobrych uczynków: szczeroci, cierpliwosci, wysiłku, koncentracji i mądrosci. — nakanapie.pl

Becoming : moja historia

Michelle Obama opisuje doświadczenia, które ją ukształtowały– od dzieciństwa w południowym Chicago, przez lata pracy na kierowniczym stanowisku, kiedy godziła macierzyństwo z karierą, aż do czasu spędzonego w najsłynniejszym domu świata. Pisząc z niebywałą szczerością, odwagą i humorem, odkrywa kulisy swojego życia rodzinnego. Opisuje, jak Obamowie znaleźli się w centrum zainteresowania światowych mediów i jak wyglądało ich życie w Białym Domu przez osiem kluczowych lat, kiedy poznawała Amerykę, zaś Ameryka poznawała ją. To zaskakująco intymny rozrachunek życia kobiety wrażliwej i stanowczej, która konsekwentnie odmawiała spełniania oczekiwań innych i której historia zachęca, by pójść w jej ślady.

W szoku : moja droga od lekarki do pacjentki - cała prawda o służbie zdrowia

Wstrząsająca historia lekarki, która została pacjentką i odkryła skalę lekarskiej znieczulicy. Czego lekarze nam nie mówią? Czy zawsze podają nam właściwe leki? Czy przejmują się naszym stanem? Co tak naprawdę myślą o nas – pacjentach?

Lion : droga do domu

Piecioletni Saroo zostaje sam na dworcu kolejowym Szukajac starszego brata wsiada do przypadkowego pociagu i zmeczonyS zasypia Budzi sie poltora tysiaca kilometrow od domu w pieciomilionowej Kalkucie Nie pamieta skad pochodzi nie wie jak wrocic Walczy o przetrwanie w jednym z najbardziej przerazajacych miast swiata Spi na brudnych ulicach ucieka przed gangami zebrakow Adoptowany trafia do dalekiej Australii Mija dwadziescia piec lat Mysl o odnalezieniu prawdziwej rodziny nie daje Saroo spokoju Ma jednak tylko okruchy wspomnien I technologie XXI wieku ktora przyjdzie mu z pomoca

Sprzedana

“Kiedy Sophie Hayes spotkał tajemniczego nieznajomego bledi i uroczy, wiedziała chciał zmienić jej life– ale nie miała pojęcia, jak dużo. Na początku to było typowe wicher romans. Ale pewnego dnia bledi powiedziała Sophie, że miłość zawsze przychodzi na cena. bledi oszukane Sophie do podróży do Włoch, gdzie przymusowe ją sprzedaje swoje ciało na ulicach, aby pomóc mu spłacić duże zadłużenie. Kiedy odmówiła, bił ją, ukradł jej paszport i zamknął drzwi. Przerażona i zawstydzony Zofia pracowała niebezpieczne włoskie ulice bez reszty, skoro aż 30 klientów w nocy. była całkowicie na łasce bledi za żywności, odzieży i schronienia. bez pieniędzy, bez przyjaciół i bez rodziny, była w pułapce. Ale Sophie znaleźć siłę, by iść naprzód, przywiązanie do życia przez pojedynczą nić nadziei. że w jakiś sposób że ona znaleźć sposób na ucieczkę “

Małżeństwa królewskie. Jagiellonowie

Barwnie napisane dzieje miłości małżeństw dynastii Jagiellonów, wywodzącej się od Władysława II Jagiełły, wielkiego księcia litewskiego i króla Polski. W szczytowym okresie Jagiellonowie byli jedną z najpotężniejszych dynastii w Europie i w państwach, których sprawowali władzę, nastąpił też rozkwit kulturalny i gospodarczy.

Ameryka.pl : opowieści o polakach w USA

Każdy z nich miał własny American dream. Każdy musiał wziąć los w swoje ręce i ruszyć na podbój Dzikiego Zachodu naszych czasów. Uciekinierzy, wariaci, niespokojne dusze– Polacy, którzy w pogoni za marzeniami lub uciekając przed dotychczasowym życiem, wyjechali do Stanów. By spotkać bohaterów tej książki, autorka pokonała tysiące kilometrów amerykańskich dróg. Poznała Sebka, od dziesięciu lat szukającego żony w kastowym środowisku Chicago, gdzie obywatelstwo jest ważniejsze od miłości. Spotkała Marka, niegdyś króla disco polo, obecnie bezdomnego przesiadującego w nowojorskim Starbucksie. Rozmawiała z genialną prawniczką Olą, tropiącą największe błędy amerykańskiego sądownictwa. Odwiedziła właściciela najmodniejszej nowojorskiej restauracji, który w latach 80. przybył tu z Lublina z jednym plecakiem– a dziś, jak głoszą plotki, zdarza mu się odmówić stolika Seanowi Pennowi.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Reads for Fans of the PBS series “World on Fire”

Love World on Fire on PBS? World on Fire is an adrenalized, emotionally gripping and resonant World War II drama that follows the intertwining fates of ordinary people in five countries as they grapple with the effects of the war on their everyday lives. 

 

All of the titles featured here in this booklist we have in our collection or are available via SWAN! To see if an item is available to check out or to place a hold, click on the cover image or button to the right of the description.

The Only Woman in the Room

by Marie Benedict

Marie Benedict’s novel tells the incredible true story of actress and inventor Austrian born Hedy Lamarr. Leaving an abusive husband in 1937 she fled to Paris and then the United States where she became an acclaimed film actress and inventor of a revolutionary radio guidance system.

Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

Resistance Women tells the true story of Mildred Fish-Harnack, who after marrying a German economist, moved to Germany in 1929.  Not willing to be bystanders to the actions of the Nazi party, Mildred and her husband create the Red Orchestra, a group determined to bring down Hitler’s regime from within.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

This war drama, loosely based on Cleave’s grandparents’ story of love and conflicting loyalties, tells the story of three friends Mary, Tom and Alistair living in London during the Blitz.

The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

This powerful story of a Franciscan friar, turned husband, turned resistance leader is an emotionally gripping, beautifully written historical novel about hope, redemption, and one man’s search for light during the darkest times of World War II.

We Were the Lucky Ones

by Georgia Hunter

Based on an inspiring true story, this novel follows the saga of the Kurc family during World War II. Three generations are torn from their home in the wake of the Nazi invasion and they, despite overwhelming hardships, will stop at nothing to be reunited.

The Lost Girls of Paris

by Pam Jenoff

When Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase in Grand Central Station containing the photos of twelve female secret agents during the war, she becomes obsessed with learning their stories and fates.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

by Heather Morris

Based on the true story of the Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, Slovakian Jew Lale Sokolov.  Fluent in several languages, Lale is made the infamous camp’s tattooist, a position he uses to aid his fellow prisoners. He finds love and vows to survive the horrific conditions of the camp.

The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

In this exciting story, brave Russian bomber pilot Nina Markova and British journalist Ian Graham unite to track down The Huntress one of the most vicious murderers in the Nazi party.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

by Mark Sullivan

Despite Italian teenager Pino Lella’s intention to never become involved in war, he is drawn in after the destruction of his home in Milan. Beginning by assisting Jewish refugees escape through the Alps, Pino is later forced to enlist in the German army and soon takes on the dangerous mission of smuggling information to the Allies.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Rock & Roll Fiction

All of the titles featured here in this booklist we have in our collection! To see if an item is available to check out or to place a hold, click on the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Daisy Jones & The Six

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on Top of the Pops, the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon, and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68.

David Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness, and idealism. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?

A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

In the Before, when the government didn’t prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce’s connection to the world–her music, her purpose—is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery—no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she’ll have to do something she’s never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.

Loudmouth

by Robert Duncan

Thomas Ransom, born to a severely dysfunctional southern family transplanted to New York City, is left to his own devices by neglectful parents, and spends his childhood shadowing his criminally-inclined half-brother and roaming the city with hard-drinking teenage pals. He eventually finds an outlet as the flamboyant singer of a downtown rock band, and later as the young editor of the Detroit-based magazine that invented punk, only to return to New York, at the height of the 1970s bacchanal, and crash. But it isn’t music that saves him. It’s a soft-spoken painter, who turns out to be the most outrageous character of all. With echoes of Almost Famous and Just Kids, Loudmouth tracks an impassioned musician and writer out among the punks, hippies, and wild geniuses of rock when music was the center of the world.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

  • National Bestseller
  • National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
  • PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
  • New York Times Book Review Best Book

Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel

by Jeff Jackson

An epidemic of violence is sweeping the country: musicians are being murdered onstage in the middle of their sets by members of their audience. Are these random copycat killings, or is something more sinister at work? Has music itself become corrupted in a culture where everything is available, everybody is a “creative,” and attention spans have dwindled to nothing?

With its cast of ambitious bands, yearning fans, and enigmatic killers, Destroy All Monsters tells a haunted and romantic story of overdue endings and unlikely beginnings that will resonate with anybody who’s ever loved rock and roll.

Like a classic vinyl single, Destroy All Monsters has two sides, which can be read in either order. At the heart of Side A, “My Dark Ages,” is Xenie, a young woman who is repulsed by the violence of the epidemic but who still finds herself drawn deeper into the mystery. Side B, “Kill City,” follows an alternate history, featuring familiar characters in surprising roles, and burrows deeper into the methods and motivations of the murderers.

Hairstyles of the Damned

by Joe Meno

Hairstyles of the Damned is an honest, true-life depiction of growing up punk on Chicago’s south side: a study in the demons of racial intolerance, Catholic school conformism, and class repression. It is the story of the riotous exploits of Brian, a high school burnout, and his best friend, Gretchen, a punk rock girl fond of brawling. Based on the actual events surrounding a Chicago high school’s segregated prom, this work of fiction unflinchingly pursues the truth in discovering what it means to be your own person.

How to Build a Girl

by Caitlin Moran

What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn’t enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes—and build yourself.

It’s 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there’s no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde—fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer—like Jo in Little Women, or the Bröntes—but without the dying young bit.

By sixteen, she’s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk and working for a music paper. She’s writing pornographic letters to rock-stars, having all the kinds of sex with all kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.

But what happens when Johanna realizes she’s built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks, enough to build a girl after all?

Imagine The Bell Jar written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month! This is the celebration and recognition of the contributions and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States.

The month of May was officially designated as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month by the U.S. Congress in 1992. Learn more at asianpacificheritage.gov.

Scroll through the titles below to explore a booklist compiled by our staff that honors AAPI characters, authors, history, and culture! There’s something for all age groups — picture books, graphic novels, fiction, and non-fiction.

Fiction | Adult

Non-Fiction | Adult

Picture Books | Kids

Graphic Novels | Youth and Teens

Fiction | Teens

Fiction | Youth

You can find all of the titles above available in either our collection via the online catalog, or through our digital resources, OverDrive and Axis360.

Celebrating Shakespeare’s Birthday!

Happy 457th birthday to Mr. William Shakespeare! William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker), and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptized on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George’s Day. This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.

Here we’ve gathered up some the Bard of Avon’s most famous works!

  • All of the titles featured below we have in our collection or within the SWAN consortium.
  • To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image.

Contemporary Chicago Authors

Severance

by Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

by Michael Zapata

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes they must head to the storm-ravaged city for answers. What results is a brilliantly layered masterpiece—an ode to home, storytelling and the possibility of parallel worlds.

Northwood

by Maryse Meijer

Part fairy tale, part horror story, Northwood is a genre–breaking novella told in short, brilliant, beautifully strange passages. The narrator, a young woman, has fled to the forest to pursue her artwork in isolation. While there, she falls in love with a married man she meets at a country dance. The man is violent, their affair even more so. As she struggles to free herself, she questions the difference between desire and obsession—and the brutal nature of intimacy. Packaged with a cover and end papers by famed English artist Rufus Newell and inventive, white–on–black text treatments by award–winning designer Jonathan Yamakami, Northwood is a work of art as well as a literary marvel.

Stateway’s Garden

by Jasmon Drain

Before being torn down in 2007, the Stateway Gardens public housing projects on Chicago’s South Side were ridden with deprivation and crime. But for some, like Tracy, the shy, intelligent young boy at the center of this enthralling collection of linked stories, they are simply home. Set in the mid-1980s and taking readers up to the point of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects—a set of buildings similar in design to Stateway Gardens to the south—this collection gives an intimate look at the hopes, dreams, failures, and fortunes of a group of people growing up with the deck always stacked against them. Through Jasmon Drain’s sensitive and often playful prose, we see another side of what we have come to know as “the projects.”

Remembrance

by Rita Woods

Remembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there. Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life. Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers. 1857 New Orleansa city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper…. Remembrance.

Borrowed Time

by Tracy Clark

Sitting in cold cars for hours, serving lowlifes with summonses… being a P.I. means riding out a lot of slow patches. But sometimes the most familiar paths can lead straight to danger—like at Cass’s go-to diner, where new delivery guy Jung Byson wants to enlist her expertise. Jung’s friend, Tim Ayers, scion of a wealthy Chicago family, has been found dead, floating in Lake Michigan near his luxury boat. And Jung is convinced there’s a murderer on the loose…

The Children’s Blizzard

by Melanie Benjamin

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm?

At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.

The Lucky One

by Lori Rader-Day

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

If You Liked… “Bridgerton”

Bridgerton may be over (for now), but your obsession with gossipy period dramas is just getting started…

Can’t stop thinking about Bridgerton, that jaw-dropping finale, and now you’re wanting to dive into a book that will capture even a little bit of that Bridgerton magic? Look no further! We’ve collected 8 titles in the same vein as Bridgerton that will (hopefully!) tide you over until it’s time to return to our beloved London ton.

All of the titles featured here in this booklist we have in our collection. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.

The Duke and I

by Julia Quinn

In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable…but not too amiable. Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. She has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen. Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar. The plan works like a charm–at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: Love ignores every rule…

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency

by Bea Koch

There are hundreds of fascinating women who don’t fit history books limited perception of what was historically accurate for early 19th century England. Women like Dido Elizabeth Belle, whose mother was a slave but was raised by her white father’s family in England, Caroline Herschel, who acted as her brother’s assistant as he hunted the heavens for comets, and ended up discovering eight on her own, Anne Lister, who lived on her own terms with her common-law wife at Shibden Hall, and Judith Montefiore, a Jewish woman who wrote the first English language Kosher cookbook. Look beyond popular perception of the Regency into the even more vibrant, diverse, and fascinating historical truth.

A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby

by Vanessa Riley

When headstrong West Indian heiress Patience Jordan questioned her English husband’s mysterious suicide, she lost everything: her newborn son, Lionel, her fortune—and her freedom. Falsely imprisoned, she risks her life to be near her child—until The Widow’s Grace gets her hired as her own son’s nanny. But working for his unsuspecting new guardian, Busick Strathmore, Duke of Repington, has perils of its own. Especially when Patience discovers his military strictness belies an ex-rake of unswerving honor—and unexpected passion…

Wicked and the Wallflower

by Sarah MacLean

When Wicked Comes Calling . . . When a mysterious stranger finds his way into her bedchamber and offers his help in landing a husband, Lady Felicity Faircloth agrees to his suspicious terms—on one condition. She’s seen enough of the world to believe in passion, and won’t accept a marriage without it.
 
The Wallflower Makes a Dangerous Bargain . . . Bastard son of a duke and king of London’s dark streets, Devil has spent a lifetime wielding power and seizing opportunity, and the spinster wallflower is everything he needs to exact a revenge years in the making. All he must do is turn the plain little mouse into an irresistible temptress, set his trap, and destroy his enemy.

Bringing Down the Duke

by Evie Dunmore

England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women’s suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain’s politics at the Queen’s command. Her challenge: not to give in to the powerful attraction she can’t deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for.

A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem

by Manda Collins

England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of speculation when her latest article leads to an arrest in the murders plaguing London. The English believe women ought not to write about such vulgar things as crime, and a particularly attractive detective inspector is incensed that she’s interfered with his investigation. To escape her sudden notoriety, Katherine heads to the country-only to witness a murder upon her arrival.

Detective Inspector Andrew Eversham is appalled when Lady Katherine entangles herself in one of his cases-again. Her sensationalist reporting already nearly got him kicked off the police force, and he’ll be damned if he permits her to meddle a second time. Yet, her questions are awfully insightful, and he can’t deny his attraction to both her beauty and brains. As the clues point to a dangerous criminal, the two soon realize their best option is working together. But with their focus on the killer lurking in the shadows, neither is prepared for the other risk the case poses-to their hearts.

The Wallflower Wager

by Tessa Dare

Wealthy and ruthless, Gabriel Duke clawed his way from the lowliest slums to the pinnacle of high society–and now he wants to get even.  Loyal and passionate, Lady Penelope Campion never met a lost or wounded creature she wouldn’t take into her home and her heart.

When her imposing—and attractive—new neighbor demands she clear out the rescued animals, Penny sets him a challenge. She will part with her precious charges, if he can find them loving homes.

Done, Gabriel says. How hard can it be to find homes for a few kittens? And a two-legged dog. And a foul-mouthed parrot. And a goat, an otter, a hedgehog… Easier said than done. Soon he’s covered in cat hair, knee-deep in adorable, and bewitched by a shyly pretty spinster who defies his every attempt to resist. Now she’s set her mind and heart on saving him.

Lady Derring Takes a Lover

by Julie Anne Long

Delilah Swanpoole, Countess of Derring, learns the hard way that her husband, “Dear Dull Derring,” is a lot more interesting—and perfidious—dead than alive. It’s a devil of an inheritance, but in the grand ruins of the one building Derring left her, are the seeds of her liberation. And she vows never again to place herself at the mercy of a man.

But battle-hardened Captain Tristan Hardy is nothing if not merciless. When the charismatic naval hero tracks a notorious smuggler to a London boarding house known as the Rogue’s Palace, seducing the beautiful, blue-blooded proprietress to get his man seems like a small sacrifice.

They both believe love is a myth. But a desire beyond reason threatens to destroy the armor around their hearts. Now a shattering decision looms: Will Tristan betray his own code of honor…or choose a love that might be the truest thing he’s ever known?

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Happy National Craft Month!

Started in 1994, National Craft Month was designed to help people rediscover their creativity and learn about the wonderful world of crafting and all of its many benefits. 

With a broad range of crafts to choose from, National Craft Month inspires all kinds of mediums. From paper and wood to fabrics, paint and metal craft, the month is dedicated to creativity and inspiration.  Whatever motivates you, take your craft from idea to reality this month.

All of the titles featured here in this booklist we have in our collection. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Hoop-La!: 100 things to do with embroidery hoops

by Kirsty Neale

There are endless practical and decorative uses for the humble embroidery hoop: from pretty wall art and hanging mobiles to functional pin boards, key racks, mirrors and storage. Kirsty Neale explores the numerous different ways to decorate your hoops with a range of techniques including applique, embroidery, crochet, papercraft, painting, stamping, cross stitch and patchwork.

Crepe Paper Flowers: The Beginner's Guide to Making and Arranging Beautiful Blooms

by Lia Griffith

Crepe paper is the best material for creating paper flowers, especially for beginners. It’s forgiving and malleable–easy to cut, bend, curl, and shape into peony petals, daffodil trumpets, chrysanthemum blooms, and more. With 30 projects and an introduction to both crafting paper flowers and working with crepe paper, this book is full of inspiration and expert advice for beginners. If you have a Cricut Maker, you can download the templates to your machine so you can enjoy your own homemade bouquets in no time.

Parachute Cord Craft: Quick & Simple Instructions for 22 Cool Projects

by Samantha Grenier

Learn to weave and braid versatile parachute cord in an array of fashion colors to create attractive, useful accessories! 22 clever projects and step-by-step instructions for making fashionable bracelets and necklaces, belts, lanyards, dog collars, key fobs, and more. Discover the knots you need to know, get practical advice on tools and materials, learn the right way to melt and fuse the cut ends of your cord, and experiment with jewelry findings.

Duct Tape: 101 Adventurous Ideas for Art, Jewelry, Flowers, Wallets and More

by Forest Walker Davis

Sturdy and resistant, and with a myriad of interesting colors and patterns, duct tape is fast becoming a perfect crafting, home and DIY material. The book introduces this simple but versatile material and offers 101 creative projects to make.

DIY Crafts & Projects for Your Instant Pot: Lip Balm, Tie-Dye, Candles, and Dozens of Other Amazing Ideas

by David Murphy

What can you do with your Instant Pot? A lot more than dinner! Here are 50 projects anyone can make–handmade soap, infused liqueurs, tie-dye, and much more!

Paint Lab: 52 Exercises inspired by Artists, Materials, Time, Place, and Method

by Deborah Forman

Designed to inform and inspire new artists and rekindle passion for painting in experienced artists, this book offers a range of exercises broken down by theme and reinforces a fun and fearless approach to creating art.

Washi Tape: 101+ Ideas for Paper Crafts, Book Arts, Fashion, Decorating, Entertaining

by Courtney Cerruti

If you have never heard of washi tape, get ready to enter a bright new world of paper crafts! Originating in Japan, washi paper is stronger than wood-pulp paper making it perfect for use in projects like origami and scrapbooking. It’s safe to use almost anywhere and great fun for children!

Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts

by Martha Stewart

A comprehensive visual reference, this book covers everything a home sewer craves: the basics of sewing by hand or machine, along with appliqué, embroidery, quilting, dyeing, and printing craft techniques, and step-by-step instructions for more than 150 projects.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Award-Winning 21st Century Irish Fiction

All of the titles featured here in this booklist we have in our collection. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Hamnet

by Maggie O’Farrell

A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s 11 year old son Hamnet–a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain–and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor–penniless, bullied by a violent father–falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman–a wild creature who walks her family’s estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague.

Normal People

by Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Room

by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Milkman

by Anna Burns

In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes “interesting,” the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sister’s attempts to avoid him―and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend―rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.

Days Without End

by Sebastian Barry

Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.

Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own.
 
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.

Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall…

Eggshells

by Caitriona Lally

An unemployed orphan living in the house of her recently deceased great aunt in North Dublin, Vivian boldly goes through life doing things in her own peculiar way, whether that be eating blue food, cultivating ‘her smell’, wishing people happy Christmas in April, or putting an ad up for a friend called Penelope to check why it doesn’t rhyme with antelope. But behind her heroic charm and undeniable logic, something isn’t right. With each attempt to connect with a stranger or her estranged sister doomed to misunderstanding, someone should ask: is Vivian OK?

A poignant and delightful story of belonging that plays with the myth of the Changeling and takes us by the hand through Dublin. A poetic call for us all to accept each other and find the Vivian within.

From a Low and Quiet Sea

by Donal Ryan

For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom, will become lesser persons. If they flee, they will lose all they have known of home, for some intangible dream of refuge in some faraway land across the merciless sea.

Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she’s not Chloe, and Chloe took his heart away when she left him. There’s the secret his mother will never tell him. His granddad’s little sniping jokes are getting on his wick. And on top of all that, he has a bus to drive; those old folks from the home can’t wait all day.

The game was always the lifeblood coursing through John’s veins: manipulating people for his enjoyment, or his enrichment, or his spite. But it was never enough. The ghost of his beloved brother, and the bitter disappointment of his father, have shadowed him all his life. But now that lifeblood is slowing down, and he’s not sure if God will listen to his pleas for forgiveness. Three men, searching for some version of home, their lives moving inexorably towards a reckoning that will draw them all together.

Want more recommendations?

 

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!