The weather has definitely made me want to escape and as I can’t literally leave town and find someplace warm and sunny I’m escaping into books. I’m also dreaming of escape and we have some new travel books that are making me excited to visit some places not that far from home.
Try Top 100 Unusual Things to See in Ontario by Ron Brown. It includes a 2 story outhouse (just how would that work), Sloman’s school car (a schoolhouse train) as well as the disappearing river of Peterborough County. Or take a look at Insider’s Guide to South Dakota’s Black Hills and Badlands by T.D. Griffith and Dustin D. Floyd.
And if you are looking for some fiction to escape into and make you forget the spring that never was then try The Watsons and Emma Watson by Jane Austen and Joan Aiken. This is Jane Austen’s last novel that remained unfinished at her death. It has been finished by Joan Aiken. Emma Watson has all the fortitude and spirit of the true Jane Austen heroine and longs for the day when everything will be made right.
Travel from the halls of English manors to the halls of the boarding school in The Headmaster’s Dilemma by Louis Auchincloss. Michael Sayre is the handsome headmaster facing a lawsuit brought by fervent parents, and worse he is losing the support of the board of trustees and the senior faculty. How does he keep the school faithful to its beginnings and mission while righting the wrongs and moving forward?
History is rarely a bad place to escape into. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam takes up to East Pakistan in 1971 on the brink of the Bangladesh War of Independence. Meet Rehana Hague, a young widow with two almost grown children who has built a home for her children and now faces a heartbreaking dilemma to keep her family safe.
Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon is a novel of three lives fractured by civil war. Norma hosts Lost City Radio, a weekly radio show in which she reads the names of those who have gone missing. All listen and many of the lost are found and loved ones reunited. But Norma is hiding her own loss. Her husband disappeared at the end of the war. Will the young boy from the jungle provide clues?
This is our last Saturday open until after Labor Day. Summer hours begin on Monday, May 19. Summer hours are Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday, 10 to 6. The junior room is open Monday, Wednesday through Friday, 10 to 6 and Tuesday, 10 to 8. But don’t forget our online services available 24 hours a day seven days a week. Check them out at www.arrowhead.lib.mn.us/ifalls [1]. Some of the links do require a password or user identification and password. Please call the library during open hours to receive these or pick up a business card with the passwords on it.