Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. Happy early Halloween!  A few of the staff will be dressed up on Monday, so if you have time come on by and grab a piece of candy and show us your own fun costumes too.

Coming up on Friday, November 4th at 7 pm is a new program in cooperation with Kettle Restaurant: a Beer & Books tasting.  At the Kettle we’ll have fun drinks to try and while you’re sipping you can hear about some fabulous library reads that go great with your drink of choice.  We’ll have small appetizers too. You’ll be able to check the books out that night if you want. This is a ticketed event, so stop by Kettle or the library to buy your tickets.
              
Just in time for a thrilling Halloween read is Amber Smoke by Kristin Cast.  Kristin Cast is one half of the New York Times Bestseller writing duo with her mother, PC Cast.  Together they wrote the House of Night series starting when Kristin was in high school. Kristin has grown into her own adult fiction author and started a series called The Escaped in 2015, of which Amber Smoke is the first.   
              
This series is based on the Greek myths of the Furies, three sisters who acted as the hand of justice and jailers in the deepest level of the Underworld.  Together the Maiden, Mother, and Crone act as wardens over the condemned souls who would threaten to end the world with violence, rage, and sickness. For eons the three sisters have worked together, but one day the Maiden goes to watch the souls being judged worthy of either Elysium or Tartarus. She sees Galen, who heroically takes the torment meant for his son who inadvertently burned down a village, killing four people.  While serving his torture Maiden continues to visit and the two fall in love.  Hera grants them a son named Alek to keep recapture any escaped souls from Tartarus.  Up on earth in the modern day a young woman named Eva has been unknowingly named oracle, the human on earth assigned to help Alek on his missions to earth and back again.  Except, by the time Alek journeys to earth and learns his way around a modern world with cars and elevators Eva has been kidnapped by an evil soul escaped and turned incarnate. Will Alek find Eva in time to complete his mission? This is the first of a series, so it’s a good guess the answer is both yes and no. The library also has the second in the series.
                
You can get the book reviewed here at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit.  

Fairy tales have that elusive something that seems to stick with a person, long after hearing the familiar stories in childhood, or told with bright Disney animation.  Even darker, more exciting versions of the same fairy tales have made it to the small screen today, mostly on the ABC network. New fairy tales are an uncommon thing, but if you’d like to try a new one this week’s Port Pick is for you.

Audrey Niffenegger is best known for her book The Time Traveller’s Wife, that was made into a movie about 5 years ago. But in 2013 Niffenegger wrote and illustrated Raven Girl, a fairy tale for adults.  At just 79 pages with arresting etchings on nearly every page, this is not a long story and is certainly not too deep on the details.

It seems once upon a time, there was a Postman who delivered letters in a rural area.  One day he is handed a letter addressed somewhere he’s never been on his daily walk: Dripping Rocks on Raven’s Walk, East of East.  So down he goes to the coastline with dripping rocks where he finds a young raven who outside the nest.  Mistaking this for injury, he takes the raven home and ends up raising her.  The two fall in love, get married, and have a daughter, the Raven Girl. (Don’t think too hard about this – it is after all a fairy tale.) The Raven Girl is born with arms but speaks only the raven language.  At college she meets a doctor willing to perform the operation she’s always wanted, one that will give her wings instead of arms.  However, in her college classes a young boy has also fallen in love with Raven Girl, and unasked, makes himself her protector.  During an altercation in the hospital after the operation the boy pushes the doctor out a window.  Raven Girl leaps out the window to rescue the doctor and tries to fly on untested wings.  To hear the rest of the story, fly yourself on down to the Port Library and check this book out.

You can get the book reviewed here at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. Today is the last day of the library book sale, which ends at 2 pm. 

If you enjoy crime detective shows on TV or like reading about them in your favorite mystery series, I have another series to alert you to. Author Ruth Rendell first introduced the world to her detective, Inspector Reginald Wexford, in 1968.  If you didn’t catch on by the name, our protagonist is very British. Since starting the series Rendell has written 24 novels starring Inspector Wexford, the latest titled No Man’s Nightingale, published in 2015 and reviewed here. 

This late in the series Chief Inspector Wexford has retired, but is clearly not settled into retirement.  As a retirement project he takes up reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which isn’t progressing very rapidly. So when the inspector’s chatty housekeeper Maxine tells Wexford of the mysterious death of a nearby vicar, the inspector jumps at the chance to flex his investigative muscles again.  The female vicar, Sarah Hussain, has been found strangled to death in the vicarage. She most likely has people she’s not popular with as a woman working in a male-dominated profession.  Add her mixed race and outspoken church reformation ideas and there are plenty who have voiced their dislike, including the vicar’s warden. As Wexford tags along on the police investigation he notices a book lying on Hussain’s bedside table.  As he picks it up to read, he unthinkingly slips the temporary bookmark in his pocket.  After getting home Wexford realizes he’s made a grave error in removing evidence from a crime scene, but the letter turned bookmark helps to illuminate some of the hidden past of the slain vicar.

The library only has a few of the books in this series, so if you find yourself in need of more of the backstory of Inspector Wexford, be sure to ask about interlibrary loan.

You can get the book reviewed here at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

​Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit.  

Some books can be easily described by the action they contain: thrillers, murder mysteries, westerns.  But then there are another class of book altogether simply called novels.  These narratives usually focus on the internal emotional lives of their characters.  If this sounds like your kind of book this week’s Port Pick focuses on an author newish to library shelves: Emily Giffin, a New York Times bestelling author. 

Her latest novel, First Comes Love, centers around two sisters, Meredith and Josie. Both are in their mid-to-late thirties and live in the Atlanta area. Meredith is a lawyer and married with a toddler, while Josie is a single first grade teacher who lives rather impulsively. The two have never been particularly close sisters, but a family tragedy splinters their already contentious, if loving, relationship. Told in a series of flashbacks throughout the story, the reader learns that the family at one time had an older brother who died 15 years earlier in an unexpected car crash.  Each family member has dealt with older brother Daniel’s death differently.  The sisters’ mom has become more anxious for her adult children’s safety, and their dad fell off the wagon which caused a divorce.  Meredith is germ and safety obsessed, while holding a superior attitude toward her sister’s impulsive ways.  And Josie has refused to emotionally move on, which explains why she is still single at 37 after dating regularly.

The chapters in the book alternate between Meredith and Josie narrating, so the reader has a clear picture of how each sister is thinking during the story. Tensions come to a breaking point when Josie announces she plans to become pregnant by a sperm donor, while Meredith starts questioning the validity of her marriage. Both sisters ultimately learn that in all relationships, love comes first.

You can get the book reviewed here and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”