Bookin’ with Friends
All are welcome to join the Bookin’ with Friends book discussion group. This group typically meets on Monday evenings in the Community Room. Join them for great conversation led by librarian, Ruth Bumgarner
Written in the Stars
Humanities Kansas
2025 Reading Challenge topic: written in verse/poetry
Written in the Stars is a poetry chapbook produced by Humanities Kansas.
Kansans have long looked to the stars to define who we are. Ad astra per aspera, “To the stars through difficulty,” reveals our aspirational visions grounded in a prairie sensibility. Through poetry, Written in the Stars continues this look toward the celestial to find connections and inspiration.
The chapbook features 10 poems that reflect upon the stars and planets of the Kansas night sky with original illustrations by Matthew Willie Garcia. Edited by Megan Kaminski, the chapbook includes poetry by Traci Brimhall, Megan Kaminski, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Hyejung Kook, Ada Limon, Jesse Nathan, Elise Paschen, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, and Keving Young as well as essays by Megan Kaminski and Christopher Auner.
Copies of Written in the Stars are available at the library, free to Kansas residents, one per household while supplies last.
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman
March 31 6:30 pm @ the WPL
2025 Reading Challenge topic: set in another country
Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix up their own marriage. There’s a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.
Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.
Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.
How Much of These Hills Is Gold
C Pam Zhang
February 24 6:30 pm @ the WPL
2025 Reading Challenge topic: a western
An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape–trying not just to survive but to find a home.
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.
Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and re-imagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid
January 27th 6:30 pm @ WPL
2025 Reading Challenge topic: a number in the title
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.
Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.