Library News

Red and pink flowers in Cromaine's sensory garden
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Explore Cromaine's Vegetable and Sensory Gardens, with Recipes!

In this special blog post, our Community Relations Coordinator Shelby walks us through the sensory and vegetable garden beds near the South Lawn of the Library. Learn about the plants she and Librarian Loni are growing in the gardens, as

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Ale Together Now: Mexican Clara Cervezas program image showing the presenter at the front of the room and guests sitting auditorium-style
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Ale Together Now: Mexican Clara Cervezas

Last week's Ale Together Now program focused on crisp, delicious Mexican lagers- a perfect beer style for summer! In the spirit of celebrating Mexican beers, friends and attendees Terri and Dan also brought in churros to share with the group.

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¡Salud! Vegan Mexican Cookbook: 150 Mouthwatering Recipes from Tamales to Churros book cover
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Explore International Cookbooks!

Getting adventurous in the kitchen is a great way to learn new cooking skills and try delicious new foods-- and what better way to get adventurous in the kitchen than exploring international cookbooks?

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New at Cromaine

Image for "The Briar Club"

The Briar Club

"Quinn evocatively balances the outward cheerfulness of the 1950s with historical observations exploring racism, misogyny, homophobia and political persecution in this sharply drawn, gripping novel." - People Magazine

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation's capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman's daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women's baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy's Red Scare.

Grace's weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

A beautiful, foil cover, first edition.

A Calamity of Souls book cover

A Calamity of Souls

Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci. 

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.

Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.  

Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.

Over a decade in the writing, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.

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Deliberate Cruelty

This glittering, “wild romp of a story, boldly and beautifully told” (Neal Thompson, author of The First Kennedys) explores the darkly intertwined fates of infamous socialite Ann Woodward and literary icon Truman Capote, sweeping us to the upper echelons of Manhattan’s high society—where falls from grace are all the more shocking. 

When Ann Woodward shot her husband, banking heir Billy Woodward, in the middle of the night in 1955, her life changed forever. Though she claimed she thought he was a prowler, few believed the woman who had risen from charismatic showgirl to popular socialite. Everyone had something to say about the scorching scandal afflicting one of the most rich and famous families of New York City, but no one was more obsessed with the tale than Truman Capote.

Acclaimed for his bestselling nonfiction book In Cold Blood, Capote was looking for new material and followed the scandal from beginning to end. Like Ann, he too had ascended from nobody to toast of the town, but he always felt like an outsider, even among the exclusive coterie of high society women who adored him. He decided the story of Ann’s turbulent marriage would be the basis of his masterpiece—a novel about the dysfunction and sordid secrets revealed to him by his high society “swans”—never thinking that it would eventually lead to Ann’s suicide and his own scandalous downfall.

“A 20th-century morality tale of enduring fascination” (Laura Thompson, author of The Heiresses), Deliberate Cruelty is a haunting cross between true crime and literary history that is perfect for fans of Furious Hours, Empty Mansions, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

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The Black Bird Oracle

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history—in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved All Souls series, hailed as “your next favorite fantasy read” (Harper’s Bazaar).

The Black Bird Oracle deftly explores the nexus of memory, history, and parenthood—the magic, pain, and promises mothers pass onto their children.”—Jodi Picoult

The stunning hardcover of The Black Bird Oracle features a custom-stamped case, beautiful endpapers, and a premium dust jacket!

Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.

Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana.

On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.

In this stunning new novel, grand in scope, Deborah Harkness deepens the beloved world of All Souls with powerful new magic and long-hidden secrets, and the path Diana finds at Ravenswood leads to the most consequential moments yet in this cherished series.

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We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay

"A delightful and sharp-witted tour through a lifetime's worth of travel exploits and misadventures. . . . Readers are bound to catch the travel bug."--Publishers Weekly

In this hilarious and often touching collection, the author, television writer, and producer takes us with him on travels across the globe.

Gary Janetti has gained a devoted following, with a huge audience on social media, and two bestselling collections of essays under his belt. His new collection will prompt laughter but also delighted recognition as Janetti tackles the absurdity and glory of travel.

In We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay, he shares stories of his varied trips around the world. Tag along as he enjoys an unexpectedly transformative stay at a rigorous Italian spa where he and his husband go from deep grumpiness to exaltation. Take a ride on the Orient Express to Venice and discover a surprising side of London, including a hilarious dinner with actress Maggie Smith. And pull up a deck chair to watch the entertainment as Gary embarks on a family cruise on the Queen Mary 2.

Interspersed with recollections of his trips are personal meditations on dining alone as well as journeys to such diverse destinations as Mykonos, Australia, a Noma pop-up, and other glamorous spots. Gary is unabashedly frank about his very exacting travel needs, and delivers practical advice on all aspects of the traveler's life, from very precise packing instructions, suggestions on how to get upgrades, and restaurant and hotel recommendations in his favorite cities.

Aspirational, charmingly acerbic, and as diverting as the best vacation can be, delivering both laughs and moments of sharp recognition, Gary's funny collection is the perfect getaway companion, for both seasoned nomads and curious armchair travelers.