AT THE LIBRARY
New items are available at the Hancock County Public Library.
The following items are available at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Adult Fiction
“Carnegie Hill,” by Jonathan Vatner
At age 33, Penelope “Pepper” Bradford has no career, no passion and no children. Her intrusive parents still treat her like a child. Moving in with her fiancé Rick, an up-and-coming financier, and joining the co-op board give her some control over her life until her parents take a gut dislike to Rick and urge Pepper to call off the wedding. When, the week before the wedding, she discovers a trail of desperate text messages from Rick’s obsessed female client, Pepper realizes that her parents might be right. She looks to her older neighbors in the building for guidance, not realizing that their marriages are in crisis, too. Birdie and George’s bond frays after George is forced into retirement at 62. And Francis alienates Carol, his wife of 50 years, after being diagnosed with an inoperable heart condition. To her surprise, Pepper’s best model for love may be a clandestine gay romance between Caleb and Sergei, a black porter and a Russian doorman.
Adult Nonfiction
“Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924,” by Charles Emmerson
In Petrograd, a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to Siberia. A rancorous Russian exile returns to proclaim a workers’ revolution. In America, black soldiers who have served their country in Europe demand their rights at home. An Austrian war veteran trained by the German army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews. A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk into a celebrity. An American reporter living the high life in Paris searches out a new literary style. Lenin and Hitler, Josephine Baker and Ernest Hemingway, Rosa Luxemburg and Mustafa Kemal are some of the protagonists in this panorama of a world in turmoil. Revolutions and civil wars erupt across Europe. A red scare hits America. Women win the vote. Marching tunes are syncopated into jazz. Encompassing tragedy and humor, the author of “1913” brings this moment of historical transformation that molded the world we would come to inherit into focus.
