Summer’s Best Book Picks!

Summer’s Best Book Picks!

Join Adult Services staff, Thursday, May 29, at 7:00 p.m. to hear about the best new books for summer! We’ll have light refreshments and giveaways for a fun evening at the library.

Looking for a great read for your upcoming vacation, or maybe just a page turner to settle in for a lazy weekend? Not a problem! We have all the book suggestions you need. No matter what genre you like, we will provide great options for you. These titles can be used for our Summer Reading Program and Reading Marathon Challenges. Want personalized suggestions? Come with a favorite book or author in mind,  and we’ll offer ideas for what to read next.

There will also be refreshments and book give-aways! Registration is required, but open to all. Don’t miss this great night for book lovers.

Spice Club – May 2025 – Caraway

Spice Club – May 2025 – Caraway

Caraway seeds are the dried fruits of the Carum carvi plant, which belongs to the parsley family. Native to western Asia, Europe, and North Africa, these crescent-shaped brown seeds are commonly used as a spice. They have a warm, slightly sweet flavor with hints of anise, fennel, and citrus, offering a pungent, earthy taste with a touch of peppery licorice.

Culinary Uses: Popular in European cuisine, especially German, Hungarian, Austrian, and Scandinavian, caraway seeds are used in rye bread, sauerkraut, sausages, goulash, and cheese. It adds depth to vegetable stews, soups, roasted meats, and even baked goods like crackers and biscuits. When used medicinally, caraway can be made into a tea or soup or taken as a supplement.

Health Benefits: Caraway is known to support healthy digestion by relieving bloating, gas, and indigestion. It's also rich in antioxidants that protect the body from oxidative stress and contribute to overall wellness. With natural anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, caraway may help reduce inflammation and support immune health by fighting certain bacteria and fungi. You can also apply its essential oils to your skin.

Fun Facts: In European folklore, caraway was believed to prevent theft. People would keep caraway with valuables or even feed it to livestock and loved ones to keep them from
"wandering." During the 17th century, the sugar-coated seeds of caraway were consumed at the end of the meal to facilitate digestion.

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Thank You for a Sprouting 2025 Seed Library Season!

Thank You for a Sprouting 2025 Seed Library Season!

To our amazing Algonquin community of gardeners, thank you for making our 2025 Seed Library season a sprouting success!

It seems that you liked the new style put together by our team this season, and we hope your garden is thriving and full of life. From the moment the first packets went out to the final few picked up, your enthusiasm and love for gardening truly made this year’s program something special.

The Seed Library is now officially closed for the season, but we’ll be back in 2026 with more seeds to share and more opportunities to grow together.
Did you find success with the seeds in your garden? You’re always welcome to share your story with us on our social media channels or at the Adult Services Desk the next time you drop by.

Until then, happy gardening!

Meet This Month’s Featured Artist – Laura Ortoleva

Meet This Month’s Featured Artist – Laura Ortoleva

AAPLD welcomes local artist Laura Ortoleva, whose work will be displayed on the Art Wall at the Main Library during May.

A resident of Algonquin Township, Laura is an award winning political cartoonist, editorial illustrator and fine artist, whose work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, and at the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign. Laura's art is also sold at regional galleries, charitable auctions, and has been acquired by corporations and publishers. Anyone interested in purchasing Laura's work can contact her at happytrails7@earthlink.net

Learn more about Laura and her work:

Your background/training: I have a Masters in Communication, and Bachelors in Psychology, both from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. My career has been as a Fortune 500 and 100 Communications Strategist, focusing on the written and spoken word as well as visual communications in response to market challenges and opportunities. I am also a fine artist, and have been a political cartoonist and editorial illustrator for regional newspapers.

What inspires your work: I am inspired by nature, the divine and the human condition.

Your favorite artistic medium: colored pencil followed by pencil

What you want people to feel or think about when they view your work: As a fine artist, my artwork typically focuses on nature, the divine or the human condition. I would like people to feel good or amused when they look at my artwork. I do not create art to affect others, but strictly as a form of self-expression. If my work touches someone in any way, that is just an added bonus.

If you're a local artist interested in exhibiting your work, please submit samples of your work and contact information to social@aapld.org

Discover May’s Library Reads

Discover May’s Library Reads

May's Library Reads selections are here, full of great suggestions for your summer to-be-read list! For AAPLD cardholders who've signed up for the 2025 Reading Marathon 26 book challenge, we've highlighted books that fit our Reading Marathon categories.

Chosen by librarians across the country as their favorite new releases for the month of May, these books will keep you reading long into the night AND boost your Reading Marathon completions. Browse them here, or stop by the Main Library, and look for books with the Library Reads logo on the spine.

 

Reading Marathon Categories: Road on the Cover

Run For The Hills by Kevin Wilson - Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it’s mostly OK. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.

As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with each new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm?

Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.

Reading Marathon Category: Set Overseas

What Happens In Amsterdam by Rachel Lynn Solomon - Dani Dorfman has somehow made it to her thirties without knowing what she wants to do with her life. So when an office romance ends poorly and gets her fired, she applies for a job in Amsterdam, idly dreaming of escaping the mess she’s created, but never imagining she'll actually get it.

Except she does. By the end of her first week in Amsterdam, she’s never felt more adrift or alone. Then she crashes her bike into her high school ex-boyfriend—and suddenly life is blooming with new opportunities.

Wouter van Leeuwen was a Dutch exchange student Dani’s family hosted, a forbidden love that ended in a painful breakup. Years later, there’s still sizzling chemistry between them, and okay, maybe a little animosity. More importantly, Wouter needs to be married to inherit a gorgeous family home on a canal—and when Dani's job falls apart, she needs a visa. As the marriage of convenience pushes them together in unexpected ways, Dani must decide whether her new life is yet another mistake—or if it's worth taking a risk on a second chance.

 

Reading Marathon Category: Title= Family

Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay - In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.