Upcoming Events

This event is in the "Teen & Tween" group
This event is in the "Adult" group

Puzzle & Board Game Swap

All Day 6/3–7/31
Teen & Tween, Adult
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Adult Services Department
Age Group: Teen & Tween, Adult
Program Type: Community Events
Event Details:

Tired of completing the same puzzle or playing the same game? Swap out your gently used puzzle or board game for a new-to-you challenge all summer long at the Reference Desk!

This event is in the "Children" group

Read & Create: Ursula Upside Down

10:00am–10:45am
Children
Registration Required
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Program Room
Age Group: Children
Program Type: Arts & Crafts, Book Discussion, Hands On
Registration Required
Event Details:

Come and listen to Corey Tabor’s Ursula Upside Down. We will then create a paper plate fish craft to take home.

 

Disclaimer(s)

Safe Child Policy

Parents/caregivers of children 8 years and under are required to stay in the Youth Services Department for the duration of the program per library policy.

This event is in the "Adult" group
Registration Required
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Virtual Programming
Age Group: Adult
Program Type: Presentations
Registration Required
Event Details:

This is a virtual class led by Kristyn Slick. A recording will be emailed to all registrants after the program. Even if you are unable to attend the live event, please register if you would like to receive the recording.

This event is in the "Adult" group
Registration Required
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Program Room
Age Group: Adult
Program Type: Movies, Village Read
Registration Required
Event Details:

When a bored Holmes (Robert Stephens) eagerly takes the case of Gabrielle Valladon after an attempt on her life, the search for her missing husband leads to Loch Ness and the legendary monster.

This event is in the "Teen & Tween" group
This event is in the "Adult" group

Western Springs Writers' Society

7:00pm–8:30pm
Teen & Tween, Adult
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Board Room
Age Group: Teen & Tween, Adult
Program Type: Clubs & Groups
Event Details:

Have a writing itch? The Western Springs Writers' Society welcomes all writers from the community to discuss and hone their craft with other local writers. Whether this is your career or hobby, writers of all levels and genres are invited.

This event is in the "Children" group

Toddler Time (Mon @ 10 a.m.)

10:00am–10:30am
Children
Registration Required
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Storytime Room
Age Group: Children
Program Type: Storytimes
Registration Required
Event Details:

Please let us know in the special notes field if you are going to bring along a sibling for this storytime.

Disclaimer(s)

Storytime Accompanying Adults

This storytime works best if there is one child to one adult. Participation of caregivers with their child is important in order to help them learn while they are having fun.

New & Noteworthy

Staff Picks

Image for "The Mystery of Locked Rooms"

The Mystery of Locked Rooms

*Instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller!*

Crack the codes. Find the treasure. Escape the house.

From the acclaimed author of Scritch Scratch and What Lives in the Woods comes a action-packed adventure novel about three friends who team up to find a hidden treasure in an abandoned 1950's funhouse.

Twelve-year-old Sarah Greene wants nothing more from her seventh-grade year than to beat the hardest escape room left in her town with her best friends, West, and Hannah. But when a foreclosure notice shows up on Sarah's front door, everything changes. Since her father became ill two years ago, things have been bad, but not lose your house bad...until now.

Sarah feels helpless until the day Hannah mentions a treasure rumored to be hidden in the walls of an abandoned funhouse. According to legend, Hans, Stefan, and Karl Stein were orphaned at eight years old and lived with different families until they were able to reunite as adults. Their dream was to build the most epic funhouse in existence. They wanted their experience to be more than mirror mazes and optical illusions, so they not only created elaborate riddles and secret passages, but they also claimed to have hidden a treasure inside the funhouse.

Once in, Sarah, West, and Hannah realize the house is unlike any escape room they've attempted. There are challenges, yes, but they feel personal. Like the triplets knew who would get in. It seems impossible, but so does everything about the house. As soon as they're in she immediately worries that attempting the funhouse is a bad idea but Sarah has no choice but to continue, since her future is at stake.

 

"Trapdoors, secret passages, and riddles galore. I loved every second of it!" -- Max Brallier, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Kids on Earth

"Lindsay Currie has crafted a winning mystery with confounding codes, misleading clues, and the lure of hidden treasure. It's the ultimate escape room and will have you guessing until the final page." -- James Ponti, New York Times bestselling author of City Spies

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My Friends

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Goodreads • USA TODAY Marie Claire BookPage Literary Lifestyle Book Riot Sunset Magazine Totally Booked with Zibby Owens

#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

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Lavender House

A "Best Of" Book From: Amazon * Buzzfeed * Rainbow Reading * Library Journal * CrimeReads * BookPage * Book Riot * Autostraddle

A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House is Knives Out with a queer historical twist.

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret—but it's not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried they're keeping a murderer in.

Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept—his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.

Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He's seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn't extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy—and Irene’s death is only the beginning.

When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.

Dive into the full Evander Mills series: 

Lavender House
The Bell in the Fog
Rough Pages

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The Spellshop

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY AND INDIE BESTSELLER!
A #1 LibraryReads pick!
An Indie Next pick!

DELUXE EDITION—a gorgeous hardcover edition featuring beautiful lavender sprayed edges! 

The Spellshop is Sarah Beth Durst’s romantasy debut—a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love.

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.

When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.

In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.

But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.

Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.

Image for "Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder"

Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder

“Enormously fun, witty, and warm, Pomona Afton is the heiress-turned-underdog that you’ll definitely be rooting for.”—Kristin Perrin, nationally bestselling author of How to Solve Your own Murder

A spoiled heiress must investigate her grandmother’s death in order to gain back her trust fund, all while discovering how to be her own person and maybe even in falling in love in this rom-com meets murder mystery.

When Pomona Afton, Upper East Side hotel heiress, stumbles out of a gala and upon the scene of her grandmother’s murder, her first thought is that the society queen won’t be missed for her kind, cookie-baking ways. In fact, she was mean, greedy, and paranoid—so paranoid that she secretly slipped a clause into her will mandating that, should she die an unnatural death, all the family assets get frozen. And if the “unnatural death” isn’t explained? Those accounts stay frozen.

Practically overnight, Pomona is locked out of her penthouse with no other option than to move in with a roommate: Gabe, the irritable (yet handsome) son of her former nanny. Not only is his apartment cramped, but it doesn’t even have a doorman. Or a chef! Pom needs someone to solve this murder, like, yesterday, so she can get her trust fund back.

And Gabe? He needs this murder solved because that’s the only way his mother, who toiled for the Afton family for years, will ever get the retirement money she deserves. As Pom’s family clams up, blocking the police at every turn, Pom quickly realizes that if she wants her glamorous life back, she’s going to have to put on her big-girl Manolos and do it herself…with the help of Gabe, who she’s falling for more and more by the day.

Can Pomona Afton (who previously couldn’t solve a crossword in the bath on a hungover Sunday) actually solve this murder? And if she does return to her former life of luxury, will it be worth the possibility of losing Gabe?

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Weavers, Scribes, and Kings

A unique history of the ancient Near East that compellingly presents the life stories of kings, priestesses, merchants, bricklayers, and others

In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes readers on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to brickmakers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that people faced over time are explored through their own written words and the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived.

Rather than chronicling three thousand years of rulers and states, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings instead creates a tapestry of life stories through which readers will come to know specific individuals from many walks of life, and to understand their places within the broad history of events and institutions in the ancient Near East. These life stories are preserved on ancient clay tablets, which allow us to trace, for example, the career of a weaver as she advanced to become a supervisor of a workshop, listen to a king trying to persuade his generals to prepare for a siege, and feel the pain of a starving young couple and their four young children as they suffered through a time of famine. What might seem at first glance to be a remote and inaccessible ancient culture proves to be a comprehensible world, one that bequeathed to the modern world many of our institutions and beliefs, a truly fascinating place to visit.