New Arrivals
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Who Could Ever Love You
Who Could Ever Love You is an intimate, heartbreaking memoir of a father, a mother, and a family’s exile.
Mary Trump grew up in a family divided by its patriarch’s relentless drive for money and power. The daughter of Freddy Trump, the highly accomplished, dashing eldest son of wealthy real estate developer Fred Trump, and Linda Clapp, a flight attendant from a working-class family, Mary lived in the shadow of Freddy’s humiliation at the hands of his father.
Fred Trump embodied the ethos of the zero-sum game and among his five children, there could only be one winner. That was supposed to be Freddy, his namesake, but Fred found him wanting—too sensitive, too kind, too interested in pursuits beyond the realm of the real estate empire he was meant to inherit. In Donald, Fred found a kindred spirit, a “killer,” who would stop at nothing to get his own way.
Even after Freddy’s short-lived career as a professional pilot for TWA came to an end, he never stopped trying to gain his father’s approval. Finally, at the age of forty-two, he succumbed to Fred’s lethal contempt and died alone in an emergency room, with no family by his side.
In WHO COULD EVER LOVE YOU, Mary Trump brings us inside the twisted family whose patriarch ignored, froze out, and eventually destroyed his own. Freddy Trump’s decline into alcoholism and illness, along with Linda’s suffering after their divorce, left Mary dangerously vulnerable as a very young girl.
Inadequately and only conditionally loved, there were no adults in her life except for the father she loved, but lost before she could know him; and a mother abandoned by her ex-husband’s rich and powerful family who demanded her loyalty but left her with nothing.
With searching insight, poignant detail, and unsparing prose, Mary Trump reveals the cold, selfish cruelty that has come to define the Trump family thanks in large part to her uncle, whose malignant ambition has riven our nation and threatens the world. -
How to Read a Book
"The perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours....A reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world." --New York Times Book Review
"A beautiful, big-hearted treasure of a novel." --Lily King
National Bestseller * From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.
Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle...
Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.
Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.
Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn't yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland--Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman--their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.
How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.
"A deeply humane and touching novel; highly recommended for book clubs and fans of Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures." -- Booklist
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The Night We Lost Him
Named A Most Anticipated Book of the Fall by Time, Goodreads, and Brit + Co
An Oprah Daily Best New Thriller
In this riveting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me, estranged siblings discover their father has been keeping a secret for more than fifty years, one that may have been fatal...
Liame Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar—notably, a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast where he fell to his death.
The authorities rule the death accidental, but Nora and her estranged brother Sam have other ideas. As Nora and Sam form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.
With Laura Dave’s trademark blend of soulful suspense and evocative family drama, The Night We Lost Him is a riveting page-turner with a heartbreaking final twist that you will never see coming. -
Death at the Sign of the Rook
The highly anticipated return of "irresistible" (New York Times) private eye Jackson Brodie in the newest installment of the bestselling series hailed as "unputdownable" by Time
"How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie's world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson."-Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus Novels
Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night's end, a murderer will be revealed.
In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson's most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre--from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building.
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I Was A Teenage Slasher
A USA TODAY Bestseller
From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Adam Cesare and Grady Hendrix.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic. -
I'll Just Be Five More Minutes
"Despite being a published writer with a family, a gaggle of internet fans, and (most shockingly) a mortgage, Emily Farris could never get her sh*t together. To her, being bad at staying organized was just one of her many character flaws--that is, until she was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 35. Like many women and girls with undiagnosed ADHD, Emily spent her life internalizing criticisms about her lack of follow-through and carrying around a lot of shame as she tried to fit into a world designed for neurotypical brains. "I'll Just Be Five More Minutes" is a collection of honest, humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking personal essays about Emily's experiences as a woman with ADHD. Far more than simply classic ADHD stories about being too energetic at school or being called too scatterbrained, "I'll Just be Five More Minutes" is a portrait of modern American life in a neurodivergent brain. It's about complicated relationships with family and friends (including celebrity stalker). Feminism and a woman's right to control her own body. Sleeping too little and drinking too much. Starting a side hustle--and then starting another one (and another and another). Finding the love of your life and then fighting to keep him. And, of course, self-acceptance. These are the deeply relatable, possibly secondhand embarrassment-inducing, wide-ranging stories about not quite fitting into the world without understanding why--a feeling we can all relate to whether we're neurodivergent or not. An essay collection both entertaining and enlightening, "I'll Just Be Five More Minutes" is for people who have ADHD, for the people who know and love them, and for anyone looking for a good laugh as well as a good cry. But it's also more than that--it's a book on how to exist as a woman, a mom, and a person in this fast-paced, overwhelming world we (somewhat begrudgingly) call home"--
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Kill the Beast
The eleventh book in the New York Times best-selling Villains series follows the downfall of Disney's slickest, quickest, and smarmiest villain: Gaston.
He knew he was the best. He knew he was everyone's favorite guy.
You may think this tale as old as time has been told before.
You may know about the Beauty, and the Beast, and the curse they broke together. But some stories have more than one ending. Some stories have more than one villain.
Such is the story of Gaston. Growing up, young Gaston and the prince were brothers in all but blood. Their boyhood adventures led them throughout the many rooms of the castle, and into the deep woods beyond. The woods that were home to the legendary Beast of Gévaudan, a terrifying creature whose presence loomed larger than life in their imaginations.
Then one fateful night, a violent tragedy changed their lives--and their friendship--forever, setting each of them down a very different path: the first, of greed and entitlement, the second, of determination to right the wrongs of the past.
The prince, as we know, paid a price for his wicked ways. And Gaston, fueled by the magic of three meddling witches, grew ever more haunted by a singular mission: to become the hero who killed the Beast. -
Such Charming Liars
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The newest mystery from the author One of Us Is Lying, the Queen of thrillers, Karen M. McManus! When mother-daughter grifters set out on their final job, the heist gets deadly and dangerously personal.
For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie—except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.
Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job—at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father—a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.
Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone—except each other.
Or can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best. -
Not Nothing
"The book we all need at the time we all need it.” —Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award–winning author of The One and Only Ivan
In this multigenerational middle grade novel of hope, compassion, and forgiveness from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman that is as timely as it is timeless, a boy who has been assigned to spend his summer volunteering at a senior living facility learns unexpected lessons that change the trajectory of his life.
Alex is twelve, and he did something very, very bad. A judge sentences him to spend his summer volunteering at a retirement home where he’s bossed around by an annoying and self-important do-gooder named Maya-Jade. He hasn’t seen his mom in a year, his aunt and uncle don’t want him, and Shady Glen’s geriatric residents seem like zombies to him.
Josey is 107 and ready for his life to be over. He has evaded death many times, having survived ghettos, dragnets, and a concentration camp—all thanks to the heroism of a woman named Olka and his own ability to sew. But now he spends his days in room 206 at Shady Glen, refusing to speak and waiting (and waiting and waiting) to die. Until Alex knocks on Josey’s door…and Josey begins to tell Alex his story.
As Alex comes back again and again to hear more, an unlikely bond grows between them. Soon a new possibility opens up for Alex: Can he rise to the occasion of his life, even if it means confronting the worst thing that he’s ever done? -
By Any Other Name
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the co-author of Mad Honey comes an “inspiring” (Elle) novel about two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are both forced to hide behind another name.
“You’ll fall in love with Emilia Bassano, the unforgettable heroine based on a real woman that Picoult brings vividly to life in her brilliantly researched new novel.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Women
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.
In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.
Upcoming Events
2nd Annual Halloween Scavenger Hunt
It's that time of year again! Stop by the Barney Library to pick up the 2nd Annual Halloween Scavenger Hunt directions.
Oh Baby! Baby Storytime
For caregivers of babies ages 0 to 12 months. Registration required; registering for one class registers you for the whole session.
Pint- Sized Picassos
In Pint-Sized Picassos we share a story and explore a different art medium that will aim to focus on both early literacy and fine motor skills. Caregiver must accompany their child.
Afternoons at Bijou
Classic films and snacks, every Thursday afternoon!
Frankenstein (1931)
Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses. Starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, and Mae Clark. 1hr 10min.
Horses at the Library!
Ages 5-12.
Library News
Drop off new or gently used Halloween costumes for children, teens, and adults to the Children’s Department at the Farmington Library, 6 Monteith Drive until October 1st.*
HelpNow provides learning solutions for users of diverse needs and background. Students communicate with live tutors using an interactive whiteboard to chat, write, draw, copy/paste text or images and graph homework problems.
The Friends of the Farmington Libraries are pleased to announce a small sale of recently acquired books on East Asian History, Politics & Culture from the scholarly collection of a local retired Harvard & Trinity Professor.