New items are available at the Hancock County Public Library.
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
“Green,” by Sam Graham-Felsen
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David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. Everybody teases him, girls ignore him and his hippie parents won’t even buy him a pair of Nikes let alone transfer him to a private school. With his chances of testing into the city’s best public high school at slim and none, it seems he’ll be friendless for the foreseeable future. So no one is more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings — a loner from the public housing project — sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Nerdy and neurotic, a Celtics fan whose favorite player is the gawky, white Larry Bird, he challenges Dave’s assumptions about black culture. Before long, Mar is coming over to Dave’s house every afternoon to watch vintage basketball tapes and plot their hustle to Harvard. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar’s. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave becomes aware of the breaks he’s been given that Mar has not.
Adult Nonfiction
“Renoir’s Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon,” by Catherine Hewitt
In the 1880s, Suzanne Valadon was considered the Impressionists’ most beautiful model. Born into poverty in rural France, her mother fled the provinces taking her to Montmartre. There, as a teenager Suzanne began posing for ― and having affairs with ― some of that era’s most renowned painters. Then Renoir discovered in her a talent she had been trying to conceal: the model was herself a talented artist. Some found her vibrant still lifes and frank portraits as shocking as her bohemian lifestyle. At 18, she gave birth to an illegitimate child, future painter Maurice Utrillo, but her friends Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas recognized her skill. Rebellious, opinionated and refusing to be confined by tradition or gender, her work was accepted to the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1894, an extraordinary achievement for a working-class woman with no formal art training.
