Month: February 2023

Get Your Craft On with CreativeBug

February 17, 2023 Digital Resources

If you can't get enough of crafting, be sure to check out one of Algonquin Area Public Library's most exciting online resources, CreativeBug.com . The site contains a plethora of craft ideas, and projects, plus live and recorded classes covering everything from sewing, perfume-making, quilting, sketching, cooking, plant care, creating home decor, and so much more.

Choose from thousands of projects and crafts, access materials lists, and order supplies. There are one-time classes where you can try something new, multi-session classes for more elaborate projects, instruction for beginners, and deep-dives into technique for those who are more advanced. There are even classes for kids! CreativeBug's Resource and Blog pages offer downloadable patterns and instructions. Not sure what you want to create? Settle in with CBTV, and stream documentaries and demonstrations by renowned artists and crafters that are sure to inspire. Turn a dreary winter day into a chance to explore or rediscover your creativity, make a gift for yourself or a loved one, or even start a month-long creativity challenge.

Our Makerspace staff uses CreativeBug to find great ideas for craft programs, AAPLD patrons can access this resource from home, by visiting our Online Resources page, selecting CreativeBug.com, and entering an AAPLD library card number .

Discovering Digital: Black History Month

February 8, 2023 Digital Resources, Reading Suggestions

AAPLD's digital collections include hundreds of authors, making it easy to discover a great new voice. In honor of Black History Month, we're highlighting books by Black authors that you can find on our digital platforms, Libby, Hoopla, and Axis360. The platforms are easy to use; just download the free apps, enter your Algonquin Area Public Library District card number, create a password, and you're in!
Not an AAPLD cardholder? Check with your home library to learn which digital platforms you can access.

In addition to ebooks, our digital platforms offer downloadable audiobooks, that you can listen to on your phone, or in the car. Discover the ease and convenience of our digital collections!

Libby/Overdrive

Check out and download up to 15 titles at a time. Find new and bestselling titles and authors from all the major publishers. Titles circulate for 14 days and may be renewed if no one is waiting. If the book you want is already checked out, place a hold, and you will be notified when it is available to checkout.

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb- A mystery about a Black classical musician whose family heirloom violin is stolen on the eve of the most prestigious classical music competition in the world.

Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise. Then with the international Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—fast approaching, his prized family heirloom is stolen. Ray is determined to get it back. But now his family and the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray's great-grandfather are each claiming that the violin belongs to them. With the odds stacked against him and the pressure mounting, will Ray ever see his beloved violin again?

Available in ebook and downloadable audiobook.

Hoopla

Checkout up to 15 titles per month with your library card and a free hoopla account. Every title on hoopla is instantly available - no holds or waiting lists!

Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall - From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson, has been the pulse of Detroit’s famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city’s African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he is also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he’s rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era, including Ethel Waters, Billy Eckstein, and Count Basie. Ziggy is also the founder and dean of the Ziggy Johnson School of Theater. But now the doyen of Black Bottom is ready to hang up his many dapper hats.

As he lays dying in the black-owned-and-operated Kirkwood Hospital, Ziggy reflects on his life, the community that was the center of his world, and the remarkable people who helped shape it.

Inspired by the Catholic Saints Day Books, Ziggy curates his own list of Black Bottom’s venerable "52 Saints." Among them are a vulnerable Dinah Washington, a defiant Joe Louis, and a raucous Bricktop. Randall balances the stories of these larger-than-life "Saints" with local heroes who became household names, enthralling men and women whose unstoppable ambition, love of style, and faith in community made this black Midwestern neighborhood the rival of New York City’s Harlem.

Accompanying these “tributes” are thoughtfully paired cocktails—special drinks that capture the essence of each of Ziggy’s saints—libations as strong and satisfying as Alice Randall’s wholly original view of a place and time unlike any other.

Available in ebook or downloadable audiobook

Axis360

Axis360 allows you to check out and download up to 5 titles at a time. Find new and bestselling titles and authors from all the major publishers. Titles circulate for 14 days and may be renewed if no one is waiting. If the book you want is already checked out, place a hold, and you will be notified when it is available to checkout.

Three Girls From Bronzeville by Dawn Turner - They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South.

These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks’ business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures. And then fate intervenes, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There’s heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder.

Three Girls from Bronzeville is a memoir that chronicles Dawn’s attempt to find answers. It’s a celebration of sisterhood, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.

Available in ebook

Genealogy Reads – Memoirs

February 3, 2023 Book Lists, Genealogy, Reading Suggestions

Look for these memoirs at the library. You will be fascinated by these personal stories of genealogy and family history.

  • The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir by William C. Griffeth
  • Not My Father's Son: A Memoir by Alan Cumming
  • Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro
  • All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
  • American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Secret History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser
  • White Like Her: My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing by Gail Lukasik

Discover February’s Library Reads

February 1, 2023 Library Reads, Reading Suggestions

Winter Reading might be over, but there's still plenty of cold weather left, perfect for cozying up with a good book! As always, we at AAPLD have plenty of suggestions, including this month's Library Reads. If you're not familiar with Library Reads, they're ten new releases chosen by librarians each month as their favorites. Library Reads cover just about every genre, and are a great way to discover authors you might not have read before.
This month's selections include an eerie gothic tale of marriage, lies and secrets, a fun and flirty novel perfect for Dancing With The Stars fans, and the latest from best-selling author Rebecca Makkai; a novel about 20-year-old cold case solved by true crime fans, and it's impact on everyone involved.
Click here to see this month's Library Reads flyer, or stop by the Main Library, where recent Library Reads can be found on the square shelf beside the New Releases display.

Mystery/Horror

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi - Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after--and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.

But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor's extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo's dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife's secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage . . . or their lives.

Combining the lush, haunting atmosphere of Mexican Gothic with the dreamy enchantment of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a spellbinding and darkly romantic page-turner about love and lies, secrets and betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

Romance

Take The Lead by Alexis Daria - Gina Morales wants to make it big. In her four seasons on The Dance Off, she’s never even made it to the finals. But her latest partner, the sexy star of an Alaskan wilderness show, could be her chance. Who knew the strong, silent, survivalist-type had moves like that? She thinks Stone Nielson is her ticket to win it all—until her producer makes it clear they’re being set up for a showmance.

Joining a celebrity dance competition is the last thing Stone wants. However, he’ll endure anything to help his family, even as he fears revealing their secrets. While the fast pace of Los Angeles makes him long for the peace and privacy of home, he can’t hide his growing attraction for his dance partner. Neither wants to fake a romance for the cameras, but the explosive chemistry that flares between them is undeniable.

As Stone and Gina heat up the dance floor, the tabloids catch on to their developing romance. With the spotlight threatening to ruin everything, will they choose fame and fortune, or let love take the lead?

Mystery

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai - A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

In I Have Some Questions for You, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.

Debut Author!

The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz - Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement.

But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell—they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she’s desperate to discover the truth and save herself.

Releases February 21.