The Book Drop

House Rules, by Jodi Piquolt.

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:31:00 +0000

When your son can’t look you in the eye . . . does that mean he’s guilty?

Jacob Hunt is a teen with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, though he is brilliant in many ways. But he has a special focus on one subject—forensic analysis. A police scanner in his room clues him in to crime scenes, and he’s always showing up and telling the cops what to do. And he’s usually right.

But when Jacob’s small hometown is rocked by a terrible murder, law enforcement comes to him. Jacob’s behaviors are hallmark Asperger’s, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. Suddenly the Hunt family, who only want to fit in, are directly in the spotlight. For Jacob’s mother, Emma, it’s a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it’s another indication why nothing is normal because of Jacob.

And over this small family, the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?

Library closing in August

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Gardendale Library will be closed from Saturday, August 13 to Saturday, August 27, while construction is going on at the library. Although staff will be here, we will not have access to the library phones or our computer system. If you need to renew items during this time, please call the renewal line on 205-226-3790, access your account online at www.jclc.org or call any of the other libraries in Jefferson County.

Gardendale items will not be available for holds until Monday, August 29 and requested items will need to be picked up at another library. If you have items set to come to Gardendale during that two week period, we will contact you soon about changing your pick up location.

During this two week period, the parking lot is being redesigned, which may mean there will be no access to the building to return items. All items can be returned to any of the other libraries in Jefferson County.

When we re-open, the parking lot traffic flow will be different and we will have a new temporary entrance to the library through the new part of the building.

Thank you for your patience during our construction process.

Monday Night BCB for September: The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:29:00 +0000

Product Description

For defense attorney Mickey Haller, the clock is always running. With two ex-wives, four Lincoln Town Cars that he uses as offices, and dozens of guilty clients, he can't afford to miss a trick. When he gets picked by a Beverly Hills rich boy arrested for assault, Mickey sees a franchise case: a nice, long, expensive trial with maximum billable hours--until it hurtles him into the last place he wants to be. Suddenly hustling, cynical Mickey Haller is confronted with pure evil and someone who may be truly innocent. Now, for a lawyer who has always gone for the easy score, getting justice means taking the deadliest risk of all.

Free Nook Class in September

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:04:00 +0000

Learn to use your Nook and download ebooks from the library. FREE!!!!

We will have a free day class at the Gardendale Public Library, on Friday, September 16th:

10-11 a.m. Nook Class
11-12 p.m. NookColor Class

The classes are presented by Barnes and Noble.
No registration is required.
Classes are free and open to the anyone with a Nook

or interested in learning more about Nooks/e-readers.
Call the Library at 205-631-6639 for more info.

Gardendale Library closing in October

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Gardendale Library will be CLOSED from Monday October 3 till construction is completed. (Hopefully, about 4 weeks.)

Patrons will still be able to return items to our outside book drop and staff will be here checking in those items.

Staff will also be trying to answer phones during this time. However, setting up our phone system will be part of this process and so we may not be able to take your call. If you need to renew items during this time, please call the renewal line on 205-226-3790, access your account online at www.jclc.org or you can call any of the libraries in Jefferson County.

Also Gardendale items will be available for holds and you will be able to pick up items requested through the online catalog.

Grand Re-Opening of the Gardendale Public Library

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Come join us for our Grand Re-Opening and Open House of the Gardendale Martha Moore Public Library Expansion and Renovation Project!

December 16 from 11am.

After the ribbon cutting, we will be offering tours of the entire library building, including the new Children's Department, Children's program room and also the staff areas that are usually closed to the public.

For you enjoyment we will be serving refreshments.

January Monday Night Book Club: Fragile by Lisa Unger

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:36:00 +0000

From Publishers Weekly

Set in the Hollows, a secluded town about 100 miles outside New York City, Unger's contemporary thriller offers solid entertainment, but lacks the tension of her 2008 stand-alone, Black Out. Psychologist Maggie Cooper and her husband, Det. Jones Cooper, disagree on how to handle their rebellious son, 17-year-old Rick, who prefers to spend time with his band or holed up with his girlfriend, Charlene Murray. When Charlene disappears one night after a fight with her mother, Maggie and Jones wonder if she ran off to Manhattan, but are reminded of the disappearance 20 years earlier of Sarah Meyers, whose mutilated body was found after she vanished on her way home from school. Though the alleged killer confessed, there are still unanswered questions, and Maggie and Jones find themselves forced to revisit the past as suspicion falls on Rick. Since the Hollows is so small, characters continually rehash secrets--and rumors--so that Unger relies too heavily on the community's interconnectedness to bolster her plot.

Gardendale Library Holiday Hours 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:54:00 +0000

Our opening hours will be changing for the holiday season. Please note the changes below :

Monday December 19
9am -6pm

Tuesday December 20
9am -6pm

Wednesday December 21
9am -5pm

Thursday December 22
9am -6pm

Friday December 23 - Monday December 26
CLOSED

Tuesday December 27
9am -6pm

Wednesday December 28
9am -5pm

Thursday December 29
9am -6pm

Friday December 30
9am -5pm

Saturday December 31 - Monday January 2
CLOSED

February Monday Night Book Club Book The Things We do for Love by Kristin Hannah

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:49:00 +0000

Book Description:

Years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive a child have broken more than Angie DeSaria’s heart. Following a painful divorce, she moves back to her small Pacific Northwest hometown and takes over management of her family’s restaurant. In West End, where life rises and falls like the tides, Angie’s fortunes will drastically change yet again when she meets and befriends a troubled young woman.

Angie hires Lauren Ribido because she sees something special in the seventeen-year-old. They quickly form a deep bond, and when Lauren is abandoned by her mother, Angie offers the girl a place to stay. But nothing could have prepared Angie for the far-reaching repercussions of this act of kindness. Together, these two women—one who longs for a child and the other who longs for a mother’s love—will be tested in ways that neither could have imagined.

March Monday Night Book Club Book: Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:40:00 +0000

Book Description

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles--and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

April Monday Night Book Club Book: I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Book Description

The beloved Fannie Flagg is back and at her irresistible and hilarious best in I Still Dream About You, a comic mystery romp through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, past, present, and future.

Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful real estate agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up in her present condition. She had been on her hopeful way to becoming Miss America and realizing her childhood dream of someday living in one of the elegant old homes on top of Red Mountain, with the adoring husband and the 2.5 children, but then something unexpected happened and changed everything.

Maggie graduated at the top of her class at charm school, can fold a napkin in more than forty-eight different ways, and can enter and exit a car gracefully, but all the finesse in the world cannot help her now. Since the legendary real estate dynamo Hazel Whisenknott, beloved founder of Red Mountain Realty, died five years ago, business has gone from bad to worse—and the future isn’t looking much better. But just when things seem completely hopeless, Maggie suddenly comes up with the perfect plan to solve it all.

As Maggie prepares to put her plan into action, we meet the cast of high-spirited characters around her. To Brenda Peoples, Maggie’s best friend and real estate partner, Maggie’s life seems easy as pie. Slender Maggie doesn’t have to worry about her figure, or about her Weight Watchers sponsor catching her at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. And Ethel Clipp, Red Mountain’s ancient and grumpy office manager with the bright purple hair, thinks the world of Maggie but has absolutely nothing nice to say about their rival Babs “The Beast of Birmingham” Bingington, the unscrupulous estate agent who hates Maggie and is determined to put her out of business.

Maggie has heartbreaking secrets in her past, but through a strange turn of events, she soon discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems—dead or alive—has at least one little secret.

I Still Dream About You is a wonderful novel that is equal parts Southern charm, murder mystery, and that perfect combination of comedy and old-fashioned wisdom that can be served up only by America’s own remarkable Fannie Flagg.

Household Money Management

noreply@blogger.com (Gina) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:20:00 +0000

Do you want to participate in a FREE financial class? Would you like to learn more about how to organize your finances, build an emergency fund, create budgets, how to get out of debt and more? If so then sign up today for our 5 week class!

This is a wonderful opportunity to learn under the tutelage of Mr. Jim Sweatt, who has taught a variety of financial classes in our community since 2002. Materials for the class and refreshments will be provided. Participants must commit to attend all 5 weeks. Classes will be held Thursdays starting April 5th - May 3rd from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Gardendale Library. A minimum of 10 participants are required for classes to be held. Mr. Sweatt will also be providing financial counseling privately before class for those who request it.

Don't hesitate to call with any questions you might have about the class. We hope you will call today to reserve your seat- 631-6639 (ask for Gina.)

National Library Week Mini Book Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:26:00 +0000

This week is National Library week and so to celebrate we are having a week long book sale. Stop by our meeting room and take a look. We have westerns, romances, cookbooks, biographies, children's books, movies, magazines and much, much more.

Adult Hardback Books - $2

Adult Paperback Books - $1

Children's and Young Adult Books - $1

Videos/DVDs/Audiobooks/CDs - $1

Magazines - Free!

Or fill a bag for $10

Getting the Most from Social Security

noreply@blogger.com (Gina) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Getting the Most from Social Security

Social Security can be a confusing decision making process. Come to the library Tuesday April 24th from 6:30-7:30 p.m. to hear Ricky Bruni, Financial Advisor talk on various Social Security topics. He'll also be available to answer any questions you might have. This is a great opportunity so make sure to join us for this free advice!

Some topics to be covered:

What are the right questions to ask during enrollment
How to take advantage of little known special provisions that can have a big impact on your benefits received
How to become better prepared to fully understand your financial situation and planning needs going forward
How to avoid common mistakes regarding SS benefits

No registration required.
Adult Services Meeting Room, Gardendale Public Library
Tuesday April 24th, 6:30-7:30 pm
631-6639

May Monday Night Book Club book: Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:32:00 +0000

Rose Mae Lolley's mother disappeared when she was eight, leaving Rose with a heap of old novels and a taste for dangerous men. Now, as demure Mrs. Ro Grandee, she's living the very life her mother abandoned. She's all but forgotten the girl she used to be-teenaged spitfire, Alabama heartbreaker, and a crack shot with a pistol-until an airport gypsy warns Rose it's time to find her way back to that brave, tough girl . . . or else. Armed with only her wit, her pawpy's ancient .45, and her dog Fat Gretel, Rose Mae hightails it out of Texas, running from a man who will never let her go, on a mission to find the mother who did.

Starring a minor character from Jackson's bestselling gods in Alabama, BACKSEAT SAINTS will dazzle readers with its stunning portrayal of the measures a mother will take to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will travel to satisfy the demands of forgiveness.

June Monday Night Book Club Book: Guilty by Karen Robards

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:35:00 +0000

In the newest novel from New York Times-bestselling author Karen Robards, a feisty female attorney's past comes back to haunt her. One cold November night when Kat White was fifteen years old, she and some friends held up a convenience store. In the heat of the moment, one of the others shot and killed an off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard. Kat and her pals fled the scene in a panic, and no one was caught. Sixteen years later, Kat-now Kate-has built a new life for herself. Now a single mom with an eight-year-old son, she works as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia DA's office. But her dark past rears its head when she walks into court one day and discovers that she is to prosecute Mario Castellanos, one of her friends from that terrible night. Kate is in a bind: even though Mario was the one who probably did commit the crime, he's counting on Kate to make sure he's not convicted. If she convinces the judge of his guilt, he'll claim that she was the one who killed the off-duty cop. Before real despair sets in, Mario is found dead-in her apartment, and with her pistol. When homicide detective Tom Braga shows up to investigate the murder, Kate is far from relieved; the two have clashed since she started working for the prosecutor's office. But when another man who knows the secret of Kate's past gets involved in the investigation, she learns that her life-and her son's-are in danger. Frantic, she realizes that she has nowhere to turn. Except, maybe, to Tom . . .

July Monday Night Book Club Book Darkness, My Old Friend

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Novelist Bethany Graves is recovering from a bitter divorce when she decides to move back to her small Northeastern hometown, The Hollows. There, she plans to write her next book and repair her relationship with her teenage daughter, Willow. But when Willow spots a caver digging what looks like a grave in the nearby woods, they becomes tangled up in an investigation that goes back over twenty-five years. Soon more townspeople are involved, from semi-retired cop Jones Cooper to local psychic Eloise Montgomery, whose dire visions warn that pursuing this case may just be the last thing they do.

August Monday night book club book: 9 Dragons by Michael Connelly

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:34:00 +0000

Book Description

Harry Bosch is assigned a homicide call in South L.A. that takes him to Fortune Liquors, where the Chinese owner has been shot to death behind the counter in an apparent robbery.

Joined by members of the department's Asian Crime Unit, Bosch relentlessly investigates the killing and soon identifies a suspect, a Los Angeles member of a Hong Kong triad. But before Harry can close in, he gets the word that his young daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, is missing.

Bosch drops everything to journey across the Pacific to find his daughter. Could her disappearance and the case be connected? With the stakes of the investigation so high and so personal, Bosch is up against the clock in a new city, where nothing is at it seems.

September Monday Night book club book :Sarah's Keys by Tatiana De Rosnay

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Book Description

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

October Monday Night Bookclub book: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

January Monday night Book club Book: Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:13:00 +0000

Georgia Bottoms may be Six Points, Alabama's finest feature--beautiful, worldly, a splendid cook and faithful churchgoer who cares for her aged mother and sells handmade quilts to her grateful neighbors.

Georgia also has a discreet side business, "entertaining" six local gentlemen at night. Judge Barnett on Sunday, Sheriff Allred on Friday, the doctor on Wednesday (Monday's are Georgia's own). Each gentleman gets a night tailored to his particular tastes; each has been trained to leave a "gift" to help Georgia get by, and each one thinks he is Georgia's only secret lover.

When Preacher Eugene Hendrix (Saturdays) decides he must confess their affair in front of his wife and the entire congregation, Georgia may be able to stop him in time. But one pin pulled out of her elaborately protected life may be all it takes to send the whole structure to hell in a hurry. Chin high, posture perfect, her Chanel handbag firmly clasped in her hand, Georgia sets out to save herself, her mama, and her particular notion of virtue from total ruin. Nothing in Six Points will ever be the same.

Written with hilarity, insight, and affection for the many failings of man - and womankind, Georgia Bottoms plumbs the irrepressible workings of the rebellious human heart. It is proof anew of why Stephen King called Childress's previous novel, One Mississippi, "the funniest novel I have read in ten years!"

February Monday Night BCB: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:39:00 +0000

“ I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways. (Book description taken from Amazon.com)

March Monday Night BCB: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:03:00 +0000

From Publishers Weekly

Ford's strained debut concerns Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. After Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel, the narrative shuttles between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth. Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father's anti-Japanese sentiment. Henry's adult life in 1986 is rather mechanically rendered, and Ford clumsily contrasts Henry's difficulty in communicating with his college-age son, Marty, with Henry's own alienation from his father, who was determined to Americanize him.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

April Monday night BCB: Dancing on Broken Glass by Ka Hancock

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:14:00 +0000

Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn’t have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They’re both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder; she, a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy’s twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there’s no denying their chemistry.

Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work—and they put their commitment in writing. Mickey will take his medication. Lucy won’t blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, there are good days and bad days—and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is.

June Monday Night Book Club Book: The Poet of Tolstoy by Sonny Brewer

noreply@blogger.com (Jenne) — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:26:00 +0000

The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain, the less you become afraid of death.” Leo Tolstoy spoke these words, and they became Henry Stuart’s raison d’etre. The Poet of Tolstoy Park is the unforgettable novel based on the true story of Henry Stuart’s life, which was reclaimed from his doctor’s belief that he would not live another year.

Henry responds to the news by slogging home barefoot in the rain. It’s 1925. The place: Canyon County, Idaho. Henry is sixty-seven, a retired professor and a widower who has been told a warmer climate would make the end more tolerable. San Diego would be a good choice.

Instead, Henry chose Fairhope, Alabama, a town with utopian ideals and a haven for strong-minded individualists. Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, and Clarence Darrow were among its inhabitants. Henry bought his own ten acres of piney woods outside Fairhope. Before dying, underscored by the writings of his beloved Tolstoy, Henry could begin to “perfect the soul awarded him” and rest in the faith that he, and all people, would succeed, “even if it took eons.” Human existence, Henry believed, continues in a perfect circle unmarred by flaws of personality, irrespective of blood and possessions and rank, and separate from organized religion. In Alabama, until his final breath, he would chase these high ideas.

But first, Henry had to answer up for leaving Idaho. Henry’s dearest friend and intellectual sparring partner, Pastor Will Webb, and Henry’s two adult sons, Thomas and Harvey, were baffled and angry that he would abandon them and move to the Deep South, living in a barn there while he built a round house of handmade concrete blocks. His new neighbors were perplexed by his eccentric behavior as well. On the coldest day of winter he was barefoot, a philosopher and poet with ideas and words to share with anyone who would listen. And, mysteriously, his “last few months” became years. He had gone looking for a place to learn lessons in dying, and, studiously advanced to claim a vigorous new life.

The Poet of Tolstoy Park is a moving and irresistible story, a guidebook of the mind and spirit that lays hold of the heart. Henry Stuart points the way through life’s puzzles for all of us, becoming in this timeless tale a character of such dimension that he seems more alive now than ever.

From the Hardcover edition.