The following items are available at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Adult Fiction
“Two if by Sea” by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Hours after his wife perishes in the Christmas Eve tsunami in Brisbane, American expat and former police officer Frank Mercy joins his volunteer rescue unit and pulls a little boy from a submerged car with only seconds to spare. Instead of turning the boy, Ian, over to the Red Cross, Frank sidesteps the law and takes him home to the Midwestern farm where he grew up. Not long after, Frank begins to believe that Ian has an impossible telepathic gift; but his only wish is to protect the deeply frightened child.
As Frank struggles to start over, training horses as his father and grandfather did before him, he meets Claudia, someone with whom he can share his life and his fears for Ian. Both know it will be impossible to keep Ian’s gift a secret, and already, ominous coincidences have put Frank’s police instincts on high alert, as strangers who want Ian back trespass the quiet life at the family farm.
Adult Non-Fiction
“Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World” by Katherine Zoepf
For more than a decade, author Katherine Zoepf has lived and traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women.
Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West, did not exist in the Middle East. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social traditions in order to live independently, to delay marriage and to pursue professional goals. Thousands of devout girls and women are attending school and using their education to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective.
In Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Abu Dhabi, Zoepf documents complex societies in the midst of soul searching about the role of women and their place in society and women who must balance extreme standards of self-presentation with Islamic codes of virtue. “Excellent Daughters” brings us a new understanding of the changing Arab societies from 9/11 to the rise of ISIS and gives voice to the remarkable women at the forefront of this change.
Audio Book
“The Forgotten Room” by Lincoln Child
Jeremy Logan, an “enigmalogist” who specializes in solving supernatural problems, receives an urgent summons from the director of Lux, a respected think tank. One of Lux’s most distinguished doctors has violently attacked his assistant before ending his own life. Shaken by the incident and the evidence left behind from the doctor’s final project, Lux fears there is something sinister occurring within its walls and looks to Logan to investigate.
He quickly makes a surprising discovery: in a dormant wing of the estate, he uncovers a secret room, untouched for decades.
The room is a time capsule, filled with eerie machinery and obscure references to a top-secret experiment known as “Project S.” As Logan unravels its meaning, he begins to understand why the frightening project was suddenly abandoned and sealed off many years before.
