Upcoming Events

This event is in the "Teen & Tween" group

Library Battle of the Books: Sign up

All Day 6/2–6/30
Teen & Tween
Registration Required
Offsite Event
Library Branch: Off Site
Age Group: Teen & Tween
Program Type: Book Discussion, Community Events
Registration Required
Event Details:

Registration begins June 2 - June 30

Competition: Wednesday, July 30, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m., at La Grange Park Public Library

Grades 5-8

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 "Adult" group

The History of Sherlock Holmes

7:00pm–8:30pm
Adult
Registration Required
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Program Room
Age Group: Adult
Program Type: Presentations, Village Read
Registration Required
Event Details:

Learn the true story of Sherlock Holmes, presented by British ex-pat John Gowing. Sherlock Holmes has captured the imagination of readers all over the world since his creation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This event is in the "Children" group
This event is in the "Families" group

Under the Stars

10:30am–11:15am
Children, Families
Registration Required
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Program Room
Age Group: Children, Families
Program Type: Performers
Registration Required
Event Details:

Join Spark the Firefly and her friends for a summer night in Firefly Grove. Gather around the campfire to sing songs, listen to stories and watch the stars.

This event is in the "Teen & Tween" group

Pokeball Pillow Kit

All Day
Teen & Tween
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Teen/Tween Room
Age Group: Teen & Tween
Program Type: Arts & Crafts, Hands On, Summer Reading
Event Details:

Sew your own plush felt Pokeball! No sewing experience necessary. Available in the Teen/Tween Room, while supplies last.

This event is in the "Adult" group

Knitting Circle

1:00pm–3:00pm
Adult
Library Branch: Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Room: Board Room
Age Group: Adult
Program Type: Arts & Crafts, Clubs & Groups

Knitting Circle

No charge, no registration: all knitters and crafters are welcome for conversation and inspiration. 

New & Noteworthy

Staff Picks

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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.

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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?

Image for "Weavers, Scribes, and Kings"

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.

Image for "Evvie Drake Starts Over: A Read with Jenna Pick"

Evvie Drake Starts Over: A Read with Jenna Pick

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • “Everything a romantic comedy should be: witty, relatable, and a little complicated.”—People

A heartfelt debut about the unlikely relationship between a young woman who’s lost her husband and a major league pitcher who’s lost his game.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR

In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.

When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out.

A joyful, hilarious, and hope-filled debut, Evvie Drake Starts Over will have you cheering for the two most unlikely comebacks of the year—and will leave you wanting more from Linda Holmes.

Praise for Evvie Drake Starts Over

“A quirky, sweet, and splendid story of a woman coming into her own.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six 

“Effortlessly enjoyable . . . [a] pitch-perfect . . . adult love story that is as romantic as it is real.”USA Today

“Charming, hopeful, and gently romantic . . . Evvie Drake is great company.”—Rainbow Rowell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park