Library News

Ryan Schlosser shaking hands with Doug Kuhn, with Ryan's grandfather, Liz, and local veteran Robert Gauthier, Sr.
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Grant Sweet Memorial Essay Contest 2024: Honoring Veterans through Connection and Learning

The 2024 Grant Sweet Memorial Essay Contest was a huge success! This contest encourages our local students to engage with, and learn from, our local service men and women.

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Michelle lecturing our Ale Together Now program in the Community Room.
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Ale Together Now: Fall Seasonals

As the days shorten and the weather continues to cool, we are celebrating the very best of harvest season by learning about fall seasonal ales!

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A man taking a picture of a group of friends, seated in lawn chairs and standing behind, on the South Lawn of the Library during a Summer Concert.
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Rethinking Libraries and the 2024-2028 Strategic Plan

Last fall's community surveys and group workshops at Cromaine Library led to the development of a thoughtful, elaborate Strategic Plan for 2024-2028, that is deeply rooted

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New at Cromaine

Book cover for "My Brother's Keeper"

My Brother's Keeper

A leading psychiatrist seeks to transform our understanding of mental health care and how it fits into larger social and economic forces—and proposes an effective and compassionate new framework for healing.

Mental health care in America has become nothing short of atrocious. Supposed developments in treatment methods and medication remain inaccessible to those who need them most. Countless people seeking treatment are routinely funneled into homelessness and prison while a mental health epidemic ravages younger generations. It seems obvious that the system is broken, but the tragic truth is that it is actually functioning exactly as intended, providing reliably enormous profits for the corporate entities who now manage mental healthcare.

It is easy to turn a blind eye. Most of us are more comfortable ducking our own fears about mental health and placing our faith in the rugged American individual and the free market, rather than confronting our own prejudices and misguided beliefs. Why did we choose to build such a disastrous system when every other industrialized nation has developed far better models? After decades of work in psychiatry, Dr. Nicholas Rosenlicht reveals how and why we arrived at this abysmal reality—and more importantly, how we can find our way out of it.

Timely and unflinching, and written with commanding prose and the deep knowledge of a mental health care veteran who categorically rejects corporate interests, Dr. Rosenlicht makes plain the disastrous outcomes of the for-profit mental health care model. Patients are “clients” and doctors are “providers,” stripping away the human element and emboldening shifty ethical and legal practices. Perhaps most insidious, the business model paints the mentally ill as the “other,” as people who just don’t want help, rather than someone who can’t afford care or even realize they need help as a consequence of their illness. But a path forward does exist. Mental illness is something that will touch all of us in some way, if not directly through those we know and love. Those who have already helped care for a loved one know that those who suffer from it have hopes, desires, and aspirations. A healthy solution means a healthier society. In the tradition of Andrew Solomon or Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score, My Brother's Keeper is a paradigm-shifting book that can help us find our way to real and lasting solutions.

Book cover for "Ghosts of Crook County"

Ghosts of Crook County

The true—and unsolved—story of unabashedly greedy men, their exploitation of Muscogee land, and the hunt for the ghost of a boy who may never have existed 

For readers of David Grann’s award-winning Killers of the Flower Moon

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma, these counterfeit tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land.

Writer and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County. Problem was, “Tommy Atkins,” the boy in question, had died years prior—if he ever lived at all.

Ghosts of Crook County traces Tommy’s mythologized life through Page’s relentless pursuit of his land. We meet Minnie Atkins and the two other women who claimed to be Tommy’s “real” mother. Minnie would testify a story of her son’s life and death that fulfilled the legal requirements for his land to be transferred to Page. And we meet Tommy himself—or the men who proclaimed themselves to be him, alive and well in court.

Through evocative storytelling, Cobb chronicles with unflinching precision the lasting effects of land-grabbing white men on Indigenous peoples. What emerges are the interconnected stories of unabashedly greedy men, the exploitation of Indigenous land, and the legacy of a boy who may never have existed.

Book cover for "Same As It Ever Was"

Same As It Ever Was

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NAMED A BEST BOOK BY PEOPLE AND PARADE * The New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had ("wonderfully immersive...deliciously absorbing"--NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.

"Infidelity, dysfunction, secrets - this family novel delivers."--The New York Times * "Lombardo has such a fine eye for the weft and warp of a family's fabric." --The Washington Post * "Witty and insightful...a powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self."-Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

Same As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the most beloved novels of the past decade. Featuring a memorably messy family and the multifaceted marriage at its heart, Lombardo's debut was dubbed "the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler" (The Guardian) and hailed as "ambitious and brilliantly written" (Washington Post). In this remarkable follow-up--another elegant and tumultuous story in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Celeste Ng--Lombardo introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, this time by way of her singularly complicated protagonist.

Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.

She's unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor's edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, --exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships--how they grow, change, and sometimes end--Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.

Book cover for "The Girl who was Taken"

The Girl who was Taken

Charlie Donlea, one of the most original new voices in suspense, returns with a haunting novel, laden with twists and high tension, about two abducted girls--one who returns, one who doesn't--and the forensics expert searching for answers.

Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are both high school seniors in the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. When they disappear from a beach party one warm summer night, police launch a massive search. No clues are found, and hope is almost lost until Megan miraculously surfaces after escaping from a bunker deep in the woods.

A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has turned Megan from local hero to national celebrity. It's a triumphant, inspiring story, except for one inconvenient detail: Nicole is still missing. Nicole's older sister Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole's body will be found, and it will be up to someone like Livia to analyze the evidence and finally determine her sister's fate. Instead, the first clue to Nicole's disappearance comes from another body that shows up in Livia's morgue--that of a young man connected to Nicole's past. Livia reaches out to Megan for help, hoping to learn more about the night the two were taken. Other girls have gone missing too, and Livia is increasingly certain the cases are connected.

But Megan knows more than she revealed in her blockbuster book. Flashes of memory are coming together, pointing to something darker and more monstrous than her chilling memoir describes. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you've been looking for.

PRAISE FOR CHARLIE DONLEA AND SUMMIT LAKE

"A gem of a mystery, fast‑paced and suspenseful." --Catherine Coulter, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Fans of contemporary suspense will enjoy this brisk read." --Booklist

"An exciting debut, with all the right touches, captivating from the first page to the last. There's a bright future ahead for this newcomer to the thriller genre--definitely a talent to watch." --Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author

"Donlea keeps readers guessing throughout. The whodunit plot is clever and compelling . . . for fans of nonstop mysteries with a twist." --Library Journal

"A swift, outstanding debut. Summit Lake engrossed me then knocked me cold. Charlie Donlea is a superb storyteller sure to damage the bestseller lists." --Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author

"With a soaring pace and teasing plot twists, Charlie Donlea's debut mystery is like a cool drink of water with a twist of lemon. It's refreshing to find a book that has such a well-developed plot and excellent writing to back it up." --BookPage

Book cover for "The Last One at the Wedding"

The Last One at the Wedding

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the author of the runaway hit, Hidden Pictures, comes a stunning new work of domestic suspense

“Part conspiracy thriller, part family drama, The Last One at the Wedding kept my heart racing and my mind reeling.” ―Riley Sager

"The ultimate middle-class Dad battles the 1% for his daughter's soul in the best thriller I've read all year." ―Grady Hendrix

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that delves deep into the heart of one family, The Last One at the Wedding is a work of brilliant suspense from a true modern master.

Book cover for "10 to 25"

10 to 25

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Acclaimed developmental psychologist David Yeager reveals the new science of motivating young people ages ten through twenty-five in this groundbreaking book that is a must-read for managers, parents, educators, coaches, and mentors everywhere.

“Ambitious and revelatory...10 to 25 offers baffled adults new approaches—and possibly new hope—during some of their families’ most difficult years.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Required reading for anyone who aspires to be a wise influence on the young people they care about.” —Angela Duckworth

“One of the most fascinating and important books of the past decade...It will change millions of lives.” —Carol Dweck

“This engaging, data-driven book is filled with practical insights.” —Adam Grant

Imagine a world in which Gen Xers, millennials, and boomers interact with young people in ways that leave them feeling inspired, enthusiastic, and ready to contribute—rather than disengaged, outraged, or overwhelmed. That world may be closer than you think. In this book based on cutting edge research, psychologist David Yeager explains how to stop fearing young people’s brains and hormones and start harnessing them.

Neuroscientists have discovered that around age ten, puberty spurs the brain to crave socially rewarding experiences, such as pride, admiration, and respect, and to become highly averse to social pain, such as humiliation or shame. As a result, young people are subtly reading between the lines of everything we say, trying to interpret the hidden implications of our words to find out if we are disrespecting or honoring them. Surprisingly, this sensitivity to status and respect continues into the mid-twenties. 10 to 25 helps adults develop an ear for the difference between the right and wrong way to respect young people and avoid frustrating patterns of miscommunication and conflict.

Yeager explains how to adopt what he terms the mentor mindset, which is a leadership style that’s attuned to young people’s need for status and respect. Anyone can adopt the mentor mindset by following a few highly effective and easy-to-learn practices such as validating young people’s perspectives (rather than dismissing them), asking them questions (rather than telling them what to do), being transparent about your beliefs and goals (rather than assuming that they will accurately guess your thoughts), and holding them to high standards (rather than coddling them). Yeager’s scientific experiments have shown these practices reduce a wide variety of behavior problems, including school dropout, unhealthy eating, stress, purposelessness, mental health problems, and more.

One of the biggest misconceptions about mentoring is that it takes up too much time. On the contrary, those who use the mentor mindset end up with more time. Through back-and-forth conversations, young people feel empowered, and managers can transfer responsibility to them. Young people in this age group are poised to learn, grow, and accomplish incredible things—if only we can tap into the basic neurobiological systems that drive their motivation and behavior.

An essential read for anyone who interacts with young people, 10 to 25 is a groundbreaking book that offers long-term strategies to help nurture well-adjusted, independent, accomplished young people who contribute to society in positive ways—all while making our own lives easier.