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.
Fiction: “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead
“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked. To his customers and neighbors on 125th Street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his facade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time. Then, Freddie falls in with a crew that plans to rob the Hotel Theresa — the ‘Waldorf of Harlem’ — and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned. Now Ray has to cater to a new clientele, one made up of shady cops on the take, vicious minions of the local crime lord, and numerous other Harlem lowlifes.” — Provided by publisher.
Nonfiction: “Travels with George” by Nathaniel Philbrick
“Does George Washington still matter? The bestselling author argues for his unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through the former colonies, now an unsure nation. It’s a new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into one narrative. When George Washington became president in 1798, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about their lives and their feelings about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing — Americans. Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called “the infant woody country” — and to see for himself what it has become in the 230 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his travel companions (wife and puppy), Philbrick follows the tour of America that Washington went on after becoming President — an almost 2,000-mile journey from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York; a tour of New England; a venture out across Long Island; and into the hinterlands of Georgia, South Carolina; and North Carolina.”– Provided by publisher.
