Harlem Library

Congratulations to our grand prize winners for the summer reading program! In the K-3 age bracket Orion Cuts The Rope was the top reader finishing 166 books!

Alaura Hawley was the winner in the 4 - 6 grade bracket reading a total of 79 hours! Thanks to everyone who participated in the summer reading program.

Story Hour and Books and Babies will not meet again until after Labor Day. Lego Club will not meet August 18, but will start again August 25, 6 P.M. in the library meeting room. There will be no library board meeting this month.

The Book Challenge for August is to read a book set in the future or the distant past. Let us know what book you read and your name will be entered into a drawing for a gift certificate from a local business.

This week we feature new novels that focus on girls. With the popularity of “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn, there seems to be an abundance of works with ‘girl’ or ‘girls’ in the title.

“All the Missing Girls” is by Megan Miranda. Leaving her successful life back in Philadelphia, Nicolette Farrell goes home to Cooley Ridge to care for her father. She left ten years ago after her best friend Corrine disappeared. Now another girl goes missing; and she happens to be the one who was the alibi for all the primary people of interest in the disappearance of Corrine. This debut thriller works backwards, from Day 15 to Day 1, as Nic seeks to unravel the truth.

Heather Young has written “The Lost Girls.” In the summer of 1935 Emily Evans vanished from the family’s vacation home on a lake in Minnesota. The tragedy destroys her mother, who spends the rest of her life at the lake waiting for Emily to return. Emily’s two sisters also remain at the lake house keeping vigil for the lost child. Sixty-five years later the middle sister, Lucy, leaves the lake house to her grandniece, Justine. Hoping for a better life for herself and her children, Justine moves into the lake house. But the house is not the sanctuary she’s hoping for. Justine’s daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives with plans to take away her inheritance, and Justine’s former boyfriend has dangerous plans to get her back.

“The Girls” is a novel by Emma Cline. Evie Boyd lives in northern California during the turbulent era of the 1960’s. Drawn to a group of girls in the park and mesmerized by the older girl, Suzanne, Evie is soon part of a cult lead by a dangerous, charismatic leader. What Evie doesn’t realize is that she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence.

Gerry Schmitt is the author of “Little Girl Gone.” On cold winter night in an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, a baby is stolen from her home after the teenage babysitter is assaulted. With the perpetrator in the wind the trail is growing cold. Afton Tangler, family liaison officer with the police department, has never faced a case this brutal. As she digs deeper, Afton suspects the case in not isolated. If she doesn’t solve the crime soon more children may go missing.

Other titles for your reading pleasure include “Ghosts of War,” a Pike Logan thriller by Brad Taylor; a collection of stories by Alexander McCall Smith called “Chance Developments;” the final installment in the Long Earth series “The Long Cosmos” by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter; and Iris Johansen’s latest Eve Duncan novel “Night and Day.”