Did you know: May 23, from 9 a.m.–1 p.m., the Friends of the Brandon Library will be holding a plant sale in Central Park to benefit the library. They will also be selling raffle tickets for Amateur’s Sports Bar and the Fit Factory Fitness Center!
New Fiction:
“The Language of Liars” by S.L. Huang. In his training as a spy, Ro was warned: you will always be living a lie. Jumping into a Star Eater's mind in the first place requires a moment of perfect psychic connection, and he has studied all his life to comprehend their species. Admires them, respects them, is reverent at the idea of being one of them — the only species physiologically capable of mining the element needed for light-year-spanning space travel. The species Ro's own small civilization, with its dwindling resources and withering reach, needs to know more about. It will feel real, his elders impressed upon him. It will never be real. But Ro's certainty runs deep: he will be different. He will be one of them. Is to understand to become, or will the act of understanding destroy them?
“Ghost Town” by Tom Perrotta. Jimmy Perrini lives in 1970s suburban New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, but a world apart. At the end of eighth grade, after tragedy strikes, Jimmy finds himself lost in a fog of grief that alienates him from friends and family, drifting instead into troubling friendships with two older teenagers: one a notorious local burnout with a fast car, an endless supply of weed, and a shaky grasp of reality; the other a smart, eccentric girl, whom Jimmy finds himself drawn to as they become entranced by her Ouija board, which may just offer the only salve to their grief.
“We Burned So Bright” by T.J. Klune. Husbands Don and Rodney have lived a good long life. Together they’ve experienced the highest highs of love and family, and lows so low that they felt like the end of the world. Now, the world is ending for real. A rogue black hole is coming for Earth and in a month everything and everyone they’ve ever known will be gone. Suddenly, they’re in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it’s all over.
“What Happened Next” by Edwin Hill. Charlie Kilgore was too young to remember anything about how events on the lake unfolded twenty-five years ago. He just knows what he’s been told: that his father stabbed a man to death, left Charlie’s mother critically wounded, and then disappeared, never to be seen again. Now Charlie believes there must be more to what happened. Using the shards of the story he’s uncovered so far as the heart of a true crime podcast, Charlie returns to his hometown in the foothills of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Old friends, family, authorities, and even collateral victims have moved on, and no one wants to dredge up what’s long forgotten. Except Charlie. He wants to know what could have transformed a quiet man into a monster.
“Everything in Color” by Stephanie Stalvey. Stephanie grew up in an evangelical community where love and obedience were overlapping themes. In this world, sin was inevitable, her body was a temptation, and desire was dangerous. But as she grew, built a life of her own, and fell in love with a young seminarian named James, the complexities of the human experience became impossible to ignore. Was God truly so exacting and judgmental? Could faith exist beyond these rigid borders? Could love be both passionate and pure?
New DVDs:
“Send Help” (rated R). Two colleagues become stranded on a deserted island, the only survivors of a plane crash. They must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, in a darkly humorous battle of wills and wits, to make it out alive.
“Wuthering Heights” (rated R) — A stylized interpretation of the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie.
“Rashomon” (NR) Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, director Akira Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people (including a medium and supposed ghost of a murdered samurai) recount different versions of the story of the samurai's murder and the rape of his wife.
