La Quinta Public Library

Our Mystery Book Club met this past Wednesday, April 17th and shared some great reads with titles that featured either "Girl" or "Woman" in the title. Here is a quick description of the books we talked about, plus  the opinion of the person who read it : The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen After a child on a tour group in Chinatown finds a severed hand, Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles are called to the scene where the rest of the body is found on a nearby rooftop. They find monkey hair on the body and discover that this crime is connected to another crime from nineteen years ago when a murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. Their first suspect, a martial arts master who's connected to the massacre now seems to be the target of someone, or something, relentlessly evil. The person who read this one called it a real page-turner and said that she couldn't put it down. It's different from the show Rizzoli & Isles, but in a...

April is National Letter Writing Month!  I hope you'll take the time to maybe write a letter or two to a far away family member or to an old friend. If you want ideas of what to write or who to write to, check out the Write_On campaign which challenges you to write handwritten letters. To celebrate, here is a short list of epistolary novels that you can find here at the La Quinta Library!  Note: If you're like me and didn't know of this term until like a few months ago, an epistolary novel is one that is made up of letters or includes any kind of documented communication between characters (ex: text messages, diary entries, etc). Happy Reading! Jade, Reference Librarian Epistolary Novels The Supernatural Enhancements - Edgar Cantero The End of the Sentence - Maria Dahvana Headley & Kat Howard The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows Lesley Castle - Jane Austen The Historian -...

April is National Poetry Month! Interested in reading more poetry? Then check out this list of resources so you can start reading or listening to more today. Email newsletters Poetry Foundation Poets.org (produced by the Academy of American Poets) Knopf Poetry: Poem-A-Day - every day throughout April, they'll send you a free poem. Podcasts -  The Slowdown - Listen to a poem everyday, read by current U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith! Poetry Foundation  - There are 10 different podcasts you can choose to listen to! We've heard VS is a really good one.  The New Yorker: Poetry Podcast Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People) Social Media And if you are on Instagram a lot, check out this list of Instagram poetry accounts to follow from Book Riot. And be sure to check out our Instagram account as we're posting 3 poems to our Stories every week this month. If you want to check out our poetry collection at the library, check out the 811 ...

ICYMI: Here's our final recap featuring all the amazing women we shared about on our social media this week.  (In order of the picture below starting from center and then clockwise) Queen Arawelo  took the throne after the death of her father and changed the stereotypical gender roles from her kingdom by packing her government with women while the men stayed at home. While critics say she was a bit of a man hater, Somalia experience a long period of prosperity under her rule and she is regarded as one of the greatest rules in Somali history. Carla Hayden  is the 14th Librarian of Congress, appointed by President Obama and sworn in on September 14, 2016. She is the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. The Librarian of Congress manages a vast national collection of some 160 million works. While it's a somewhat obscure post, the Librarian wields considerable power behind the scenes, particularly in the area of copyright. Hayden recei...

ICYMI: Here's a recap for you featuring all the amazing women we shared about on our social media this week.  (In order of the picture below starting from the top left) Alice Ball became the first woman and the first African American to graduate with a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii in 1915. While working on her thesis, she developed the leading treatment for leprosy but sadly died two years after her discovery and the director of her program took credit for the findings. Historians discovered the truth in the 1970s and worked to ensure that she got the credit for her important discovery. On February 29, 2000, the University of Hawaii recognized her for her work and dedicated a plaque to her on campus. To read more about her, visit:  http://womenrockscience.tumblr.com/post/68918185810/meet-alice-ball-the-pharmaceutical-chemist-who Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) was a documentary photographer best known for her work during the Great Depression, bringing the ...

Our Mystery Book Club met yesterday and shared some great reads. Here is a quick description of the books we talked about, plus the opinion of the person who read it : The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware This book is about Hal, a down-on-her-luck young woman who reads fortunes at the pier. She is struggling to pay the bills and owes a debt to a loan shark. She receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance from her late grandmother. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money. Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it. While it was a page-turning read,the explanation of the mystery towards the end was difficult to follow and I had to reread it at least three times for it ...

Did you know that March is also Irish-American Heritage Month? Here's a list of adult nonfiction and fiction written by Irish-American or Irish authors! Click on the titles to learn more about the books or you know...place a request on one.  Happy Reading, Jade, Reference Librarian Books written by Irish-American or Irish authors The Gathering - Anne Enright The Witch Elm - Tana French The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín The Love Object: Selected Stories - Edna O'Brien Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt The Ninth Hour - Alice McDermott We Are Not Ourselves - Matthew Thomas The New York Stories - John O'Hara Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann Tender - Belinda McKeon The Wonder - Emma Donoghue Asking For It - Louise O'Neill Unraveling Oliver - Liz Nugent The Lesser Bohemians - Eimear McBride Skippy Dies - Paul Murray