Upcoming Events
Bring your imaginations and join us every week for a different building challenge!! All children ages 6 & up are invited to come out; no registration is needed. Our theme this week is...Pirates
Disclaimer(s)
Library Consent Statement for Photography and Video
Programs, events, and daily happenings sponsored by Handley Regional Library System may be photographed or recorded. Attendance at any sponsored program, event or general library use constitutes the consent of all attendees and the consent of the parents or legal guardians of any minor children in attendance, to the future broadcast, publication, and other use of photography or videos at the sole direction of Handley Regional Library System.
Wear your pajamas and bring your favorite stuffed animal to this special bedtime storytime as the lights go down. All Ages.
Let your little tinker and problem solve in this multisensory program based on a theme. Wear clothes you don't mind getting messy in! Ages 0-3.
Puppets lead us in an adventure!
Come to the Clarke County Library Children's Room for stories and fun! Miss Bonnie will share a new adventure with early readers and their families each week. All are welcome!
Disclaimer(s)
Library Consent Statement for Photography and Video
Programs, events, and daily happenings sponsored by Handley Regional Library System may be photographed or recorded. Attendance at any sponsored program, event or general library use constitutes the consent of all attendees and the consent of the parents or legal guardians of any minor children in attendance, to the future broadcast, publication, and other use of photography or videos at the sole direction of Handley Regional Library System.
Trit Trot to Bowman is an early literacy program for infants, 0-18 months, and their families and caregivers. Introduce your babe to the joys of books, language, movement, and music!
Disclaimer(s)
Library Consent Statement for Photography and Video
Programs, events, and daily happenings sponsored by Handley Regional Library System may be photographed or recorded. Attendance at any sponsored program, event or general library use constitutes the consent of all attendees and the consent of the parents or legal guardians of any minor children in attendance, to the future broadcast, publication, and other use of photography or videos at the sole direction of Handley Regional Library System.
Photography Notification
While we do allow professional photography inside the property of Handley Regional Library System, we do ask that we are notified ahead of time of photoshoots at 540.662.9041 x 25. Photography activities may be limited to specific areas due to reserved use and cannot impede any patron activity using the library.
Hooks and needles and fiber, oh my!
Whatever you craft (knit, crochet, embroidery, latch hook...), we invite you to bring your work in progress of any kind and enjoy the company of other crafters!
What's New
![Book covers of Prisoner's Throne, The Grandest Game, Fate Breaker, and Clarion Call. Header says New YA Series Releases.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2024-06/NEW%20YA%20SERIES%20RELEASES.png?itok=-oitQFxV)
New and Incoming YA Series and Sequel Releases
Waiting patiently for the next book in your favorite YA series? Find out which books have already been released and are available at the library and which you’ll have to wait a little bit longer for. Be sure to check out our Suggest a Title feature on the Handley Regional Library website that allows you to request books not yet in the library’s catalog.
![Rockin' Logo](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2024-06/Rockin%27%20the%20Library%20Logo.png?itok=wPEQV-zO)
Handley Welcomes Renowned Authors and Illustrators for an Exciting Celebration of Reading
The Handley Regional Library System is thrilled to announce "Rockin' the Library," a special event celebrating the joy of reading and creativity, in partnership with the Shenandoah University Children’s Literature Conference. The event will take place at the Handley Library's Mike Foreman Rotary Reading Garden on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, from 4:00pm to 7:00pm.
![Rockin' the Library](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2024-06/Rockin%20the%20Library%20-%20TV%20Slide%20%281%29.png?itok=p8wi9mS9)
All About Our Rockin' the Library Guests
What to Watch
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20 Days in Mariupol
An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.
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Monkey Man
Kid is an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city's sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
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Freelance
Ex-special forces operative Mason Pettis is stuck in a dead-end desk job when he reluctantly takes on a freelance gig to provide private security for washed-up journalist Claire Wellington as she interviews the ruthless but impeccably dressed dictator, Juan Venegas. When a military coup breaks out just as she's about to get the scoop of a lifetime, the unlikely trio must figure out how to survive the jungle AND each other to make it out alive!
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Nikki & Nora, Sister Sleuths
Fraternal twins Nikki and Nora are forced back into each other's lives when they inherit a detective agency. As they solve a murder, they realize that their differences could be their greatest advantage.
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Priscilla
When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a gentle best friend. Through Priscilla's eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla's long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.
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The Taste of Things
Cook Eugenie and her boss Dodin have grown fond of one another for over 20 years, and their romance gives rise to dishes that impress even the world's most illustrious chefs. When Dodin is faced with Eugenie's reluctance to commit, he begins to cook for her.
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Obi-wan Kenobi : the complete series
Obi-Wan Kenobi begins 10 years after the dramatic events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith where Obi-Wan Kenobi faced his greatest defeat the downfall and corruption of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, who turned to the dark side as evil Sith Lord Darth Vader.
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Dreaming whilst Black: Season 1
Kwabena quits his dead-end recruitment job to chase his dream of becoming a filmmaker and is thrown into a world of uncertainty. Having recently met the tantalizing Vanessa, he struggles to keep up with her taste for fancy restaurants and cocktail bars by secretly taking shifts as a fast-food delivery driver. Meanwhile, his cousin has a baby on the way, meaning he needs to find a new place to live.
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Ferrari
During the summer of 1957, bankruptcy looms over the company that Enzo Ferrari and his wife built 10 years earlier. He decides to roll the dice and wager it all on the iconic Mille Miglia, a treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy.
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The book of Clarence
Striving to find a better life, Clarence is enthralled by the power of the rising Messiah and soon risks everything to carve a path to a divine existence.
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Love Life
Taeko and her husband Jiro are living a peaceful existence with her young son Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with her pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping Park, who is deaf and currently homeless. With nuanced performances and craftsmanship, this is a melodramatic and moving meditation on grief and acceptance.
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Mikados : in history and today!
Features an impressive lineup, including narrow gauge locomotives on the East Broad Top, Durango & Silverton, and Cumbres & Tolter. Witness over 35 locomotives in action across seventeen states. Witness over 35 locomotives in action across seventeen states!
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Aquaman and the lost kingdom
After failing to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta wields the power of the mythic Black Trident to unleash an ancient and malevolent force. Hoping to end his reign of terror, Aquaman forges an unlikely alliance with his brother, Orm, the former king of Atlantis. Setting aside their differences, they join forces to protect their kingdom and save the world from irreversible destruction.
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The Mandalorian. [blu-ray] / The complete second season
The Mandalorian and the Child continue their journey through a dangerous galaxy.
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Carrot cake murder: a Hannah Swensen mystery
Hannah Swensen, everyone's favorite crime-solving baker, is back on the case when the discovery of a skeleton in an old building sparks a murder investigation.
Staff Picks
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By the time you read this: the space between Cheslie's smile and mental illness : her story in her own words
By the Time You Read This is the story former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst was about to publish before her tragic suicide. Her mother, April, wraps up the narrative by exploring the mental illness and depression that took her daughter's life. The text read, "By the time you get this . . ." This is the story of Cheslie Kryst, a former Miss USA, in her own words. When the world awoke on the morning of January 30, 2022, many were shocked to learn of the tragic death of former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst. For most people, the news was unfathomable. How could a young woman in the prime of her life--a pageant queen, accomplished attorney, extra correspondent, and tireless advocate for charity organizations--have been lost to the world so suddenly? The book shares the manuscript Cheslie wrote before her passing, her story in her own words--from the highest highs of passing two bar exams, winning Miss USA, and beginning an exciting career as an entertainment journalist to the lowest lows of heartbreak, betrayal, and persistent depression. When Cheslie's mother, April Simpkins, picks up the narrative, she shares for the first time what she experienced in the aftermath of Cheslie's suicide. When faced with such a devastating loss, how does a mother find a way to carry on? Whether you are someone who struggles to maintain your mental health, or you love someone who does, this book will share insight into a reality that impacts thousands of families every year--as well as provide hope for those who are left behind.
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Time shelter : a novel
An award-winning international sensation-with a second-act dystopian twist-Time Shelter is a tour de force set in a world clamoring for the past before it forgets. "At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created," begins Time Shelter's enigmatic narrator, who will go unnamed. "In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ." But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a "vagrant in time" who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century. In an apricot-colored building in Zurich, surrounded by curiously planted forget-me-nots, Gaustine has opened the first "clinic for the past," an institution that offers an inspired treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a past decade in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time to unlock what is left of their fading memories. Serving as Gaustine's assistant, the narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and even wisps of afternoon light. But as the charade becomes more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic to escape from the dead-end of their daily lives-a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Through sharply satirical, labyrinth-like vignettes reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka, the narrator recounts in breathtaking prose just how he became entrenched in a plot to stop time itself.
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Cinderwich
Who put Ellen in the blackgum tree?" Decades after trespassing children spotted the desiccated corpse wedged in the treetop, no one knows the answer. Kate Thrush and her former college professor, Dr. Judith Kane, travel to Cinderwich, Tennessee, in hopes that maybe it was their Ellen: Katie's lost aunt, Judith's long-gone lover. But they're not the only ones to have come here looking for closure. The people of Cinderwich, a town hardly more than a skeleton itself, are staunchly resistant to the outsiders' questions about Ellen and her killer. And the deeper the two women dig--the more rot they unearth--the closer they come to exhuming the evil that lies, hungering, at the roots of Cinderwich.
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Queen of the conquered
Sigourney Rose is the only surviving daughter of a noble lineage on the islands of Hans Lollik. When she was a child, her family was murdered by the islands' colonizers, who have massacred and enslaved generations of her people -- and now, Sigourney is ready to exact her revenge. When the childless king of the islands declares that he will choose his successor from amongst eligible noble families, Sigourney uses her ability to read and control minds to manipulate her way onto the royal island and into the ranks of the ruling colonizers. But when she arrives, prepared to fight for control of all the islands, Sigourney finds herself the target of a dangerous, unknown magic. Someone is killing off the ruling families to clear a path to the throne. As the bodies pile up and all eyes regard her with suspicion, Sigourney must find allies among her prey and the murderer among her peers... lest she become the next victim.
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Beholder
Athanasios "Athan" Bakirtzis has made it far in life relying on his charm and good looks, even securing an invitation to a mysterious penthouse soiree for New York City's artsy elite. But when he sneaks off to the bathroom, he hears a slam, followed by a scream. Athan peers outside, only to be pushed back in by a boy his age. The boy gravely tells him not to open the door, then closes Athan in. Outside the door, the party descends into chaos. Through hours of howls, laughter, and sobs, Athan stays hidden. When he finally emerges, he discovers a massacre where the corpses appear to have arranged themselves into a disturbingly elegant sculpture-and Athan's mysterious savior is nowhere to be found. Athan-the only known survivor-is now the primary suspect. In a race to prove his innocence, Athan is swept up in a supernatural mystery, one of secret occult societies and deadly eldritch horrors with rather distinctive taste. Something evil is waking up in the walls of New York City, and it's compelling victims toward violence, chaos, and self-destruction. Bound to him by a mysterious hereditary power, Athan has felt this evil hiding behind his reflection his entire life, watching him. Waiting. Now, it's taking over.
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One-shot Harry : a Harry Ingram mystery
Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King's Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kingslow, with whom he'd only just reconnected. The LAPD declares the car crash an accident, but when Ingram develops his photos there are signs of foul play. Ingram feels no choice but to play detective, even if it means putting his own life on the line. Armed with his wits, his camera, and occasionally his Colt .45, Harry Ingram plunges head-first into the seamier underbelly of LA society, tangling with racists, leftists, blackmailers, gangsters, zealots and lovers, all in the hope of finding something resembling justice for a friend.
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Loneliness & Company : a novel
Lee knows she's the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there's no doubt she'll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee is instead assigned to an unknown company in the dead city of New York, her life goals are completely upended. In this new role, Lee's task is to gather enough research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her clueless, outgoing roommate Veronika. But when the company reveals it's part of a classified government mission to solve loneliness-an emotion erased from society's lexicon decades ago-Lee's determination to prove herself kicks into overdrive, and she begins chasing bolder and more dangerous experiences to provide data for the AI. How far will Lee go to teach the algorithm? As the mysterious affliction spreads, Lee must decide what she's willing to give up for success and, along the way, learn what it means to be a true friend.
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The Beekeeper of Aleppo
Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again. Moving, powerful, and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo brings home the idea that the most ordinary of lives can be completely upended in unimaginable ways.
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Knife : meditations after an attempted murder
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring--and surviving--an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him. Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art--and finding the strength to stand up again.
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Children of virtue and vengeance
After Zélie and Amari bring magic back to the land of Orïsha, the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, forcing Zélie to fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.
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Sweet nightmare. vol. 01
Most schools are about being the best. This school? It's about being the worst. Calder Academy is where the rogue paranormals go. The ones who break the rules or lose control. And when that happens for vamps, werewolves, witches, and dark fae? It gets pretty freaking scary. I should know. Because I'm trapped here. Look, every seventeen-year-old girl thinks their mom is a tyrant. But mine just happens to run Calder Academy, which paints a giant target on my back. The way I make it through these dark halls is by steering clear of the things-and kids-who go bump in the night. Especially Jude Abernathy-Lee. But when a freak storm hits our isolated island, I'm stuck without a backup plan. The power is gone. The lights are out. And our worst nightmares are suddenly real-and out for blood. Now the only way to survive is to align myself with one evil to avoid the other. And the only thing worse than the idea of getting close to Jude? Secretly loving every minute of it.
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CHOP FRY WATCH LEARN: FU PEI-MEI AND THE MAKING OF MODERN CHINESE FOOD
In 1949, a young Chinese housewife arrived in Taiwan and transformed herself from a novice to a natural in the kitchen. She launched a career as a cookbook author and television cooking instructor that would last four decades. Years later, in America, flipping through her mother’s copies of Fu Pei-mei’s Chinese cookbooks, historian Michelle T. King discovered more than the recipes to meals of her childhood. She found, in Fu’s story and in her food, a vivid portal to another time, when a generation of middle-class, female home cooks navigated the tremendous postwar transformations taking place across the world.
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Silk : a history in three metamorphoses
In a gorgeous history that spans continents and millennia, Aarathi Prasad weaves together the complex story of the queen of fabrics. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global, natural, and cultural history (and future) of a unique material that has fascinated the world for thousands of years.
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Every living thing : the great and deadly race to know all life
"In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible--how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity, both fell far short of their goal. But in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet, and on humanity itself. The rivalry between these two unique, driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus, with the help of acolyte explorers he called "apostles" (only half of whom returned alive), gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate and homo sapiens--but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction, formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that, during their lifetimes, Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn"-- Provided by publisher.
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Hip-hop is history
When hip-hop first emerged in the 1970s, it wasn’t expected to become the cultural force it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a musical family in Philadelphia, it was everything. He stayed up late to hear the newest songs on the radio. He saved his money to buy vinyl as soon as it landed. He even started to try to make his own songs. That kid was Questlove, and decades later, he is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician, an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, a New York Times bestselling author, a producer, an entrepreneur, a cofounder of one of hip-hop’s defining acts (the Roots), and the genre’s unofficial in-house historian.
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The Last Election
The story focuses on two characters: Mikey Ricci, a political operative who has lost faith in traditional structures following the bitter races of 2016 and 2020; and Martha Kass, the anonymous tip supervisor of the New York Times. In 2023, Ricci becomes the campaign manager of a third-party candidate who runs on a popular, centrist platform and whose frank and honest manner stands in stark contrast to the candidates of the two major parties. Ricci faces off against the massive machinery of both political parties, as well as their invested media and dark money supporters--the source of true power in America. Even so, the candidate's message begins to gain ground. In the meantime, Kass stumbles upon a plot by the current Joint Chiefs of Staff to seize power in the anticipated chaos of the coming election. She hopes it is too improbable to be taken seriously. But as the idea that Ricci's candidate might win enough electors to upset the delicate balance of America's two-party system takes hold, the threat becomes frighteningly real. Events unfold at the frenetic pace of the campaign trail, and Kass and Ricci become unlikely allies as they bear witness to what might be the end of America as a democratic republic. If no candidate can accrue the coveted majority of 270 electors, who wins? The electoral system collapses in uncertainty as Congress's role in certification becomes unfathomably complex. When no one is certain who the winner is, the stage is set for a corrupt seizure of power. Will the American experiment end?
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Fruit of the Dead
An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island, about addiction and sex, family and independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld. Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she's in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears. Alternating between the two women's perspectives, Rachel Lyon's Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration, and America's own late capitalist mythos. Lyon's reinvention of Persephone and Demeter's story makes for a haunting and ecstatic novel that vibrates with lush abandon. Readers will not soon forget it.
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Like Love : Essays and Conversations
A career-spanning collection of inspiring, revelrous essays about art and artists. Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson's brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes, and critical essays, as well as several conversations with friends and idols, bring to life Nelson's passion for dialogue and dissent. The range of subjects is wide--from Prince to Carolee Schneemann to Matthew Barney to Lhasa de Sela to Kara Walker--but certain themes recur: intergenerational exchange; love and friendship; feminist and queer issues, especially as they shift over time; subversion, transgression, and perversity; the roles of the critic and of language in relation to visual and performance arts; forces that feed or impede certain bodies and creators; and the fruits and follies of a life spent devoted to making. Arranged chronologically, Like Love shows the writing, thinking, feeling, reading, looking, and conversing that occupied Nelson while writing iconic books such as Bluets and The Argonauts. As such, it is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson's own development, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.
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Creative Homes : Evocative, Eclectic and Carefully Curated Interiors
In Creative Homes, photographer Anna Malmberg and stylist Mari Strenghielm visit 12 unique and creative homes belonging to artists, designers, photographers, musicians, and more, many of them never before photographed. In each home, they discover how the interior reflects the creative endeavors and preoccupations of its inhabitants and gives an insight into their processes, inspirations, and way of life. The homeowners range from a couple of designers sharing a small London apartment who conceived and built their own furniture, lighting, and decorative details, to a textile artist and ceramist living in rustic seclusion on a Mallorcan farm surrounded by their artworks. Among others, Anna and Mari also explore the characterful studio/apartment of a Parisian sculptor, and the former monastery where a Sicilian artist lives and works. With glorious photographs and intriguing stories, Creative Homes is sure to inspire readers to both live, dream, and decorate creatively in their own homes.