Off the Shelves – December 27

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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

“If You Leave Me,” by Crystal Hana Kim

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Crystal Hana Kim’s debut novel about war, family and forbidden love is the saga of two ill-fated lovers in Korea and the choices they’re forced to make in the years surrounding Korea’s civil war. When the communist-backed army from the north invades her home, 16-year-old Haemi Lee, along with her widowed mother and ailing brother, is forced to flee to a refugee camp along the coast. For a few hours each night, she escapes her family’s circumstances and makeshift home with her childhood friend, Kyunghwan. Focused on finishing school, Kyunghwan doesn’t realize his older, wealthier cousin Jisoo has his sights set on Haemi with a plan to marry her before joining the fight. But as Haemi becomes a wife and mother, her decision to forsake the boy she always loved for the security of her family sets off events that will reverberate for generations to come.

Adult Nonfiction

“Broadway: a History of New York City in Thirteen Miles,” by Fran Leadon

In the early 17th century, in a backwater Dutch colony, was a wide, muddy cow path that the settlers called the Brede Wegh. As the street grew longer, houses and taverns began to spring up alongside it. What was once New Amsterdam became New York; farmlands gave way to department stores, theaters, hotels and the perpetual traffic of the 20th century’s Great White Way. Today, Broadway almost feels inevitable, but over the past 400 years, thousands have tried to shape its path. Learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other; witness the construction of Trinity Church, the Flatiron Building and the burning of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum. Discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum. Along the way we meet Alexander Hamilton, Emma Goldman, Edgar Allan Poe, John James Audubon, “Bill the Butcher” Poole and the assorted real-estate speculators, impresarios and politicians who helped turn Broadway into New York’s commercial and cultural spine. “Broadway” traces the transformation of an avenue that has been both the “path of progress” and a “street of broken dreams,” home to parades and riots, startling wealth and appalling destitution.