It’s always a good time to get a library card, but September is National Library Card sign up month, so it’s a particularly good time to get one now! Free books, free movies, free music, free computer use, free programs for all ages — what more do you need?

In case you’re looking for more incentives:

• 52 ways to use your library card from the American Library Association
• Kids in Cody signing up for their first library card this month get a free packet with a pencil, a sticker, and some other fun stuff!
• A library card also means you can access all the fabulous stuff on our Research page from anywhere you have internet access!

You can even sign up for a library card online. Remember to bring ID and proof of residence in Park County when you come in to get your card.

The image of miners with their children at a Labor Day celebration in Silverton, Colorado in 1942 comes from the American Memory Collection America from the Great Depression to WWII, which features the work of photographers from the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information.

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326].

Other Labor Day links:

• History of Labor Day from the US Department of Labor
• Proclamation of the Eight-Hour Workday
• Meeteetse Labor Day Photos from the McCracken Collection
• Wyoming labor laws (Title 27, or search for labor)
• Wyoming Department of Employment

Rich Boy by Sharon Pomerantz — In 1965, Robert Visniak sets off to leave his working-class Jewish upbringing behind, and he succeeds, with the help of connections from his wealthy college roommate. But the past is never really past, and when he runs into a girl from his old neighborhood, it all comes back to meet him.

In Harm’s Way by Ridley Pearson — The latest thriller (or noir-mystery, in Library Journal’s opinion) featuring Idaho sheriff Walt Fleming.

Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich — Stephanie Plum is back, and this time the trouble is her own family — specifically, her cousin Vinnie, whose bail bonds outfit she works for, has run up six-figure gambling debts and is now being held ransome. The usual supporting cast of whackos is on board.

Damaged: A Maggie O’Dell Novel by Alex Kava — A Coast Guard diver finds a metal container off the coast of Florida. Inside it are dead body parts. FBI agent Maggie O’Dell and Homeland Security deputy director Charlie Wurth are on the case, which is complicated by natural disasters and shady characters.

Star Island by Carl Hiaasen — “Singer” Cherry Pye has little in the way of actual talent, but thanks goodness she’s got an “undercover stunt double” to keep her in the public eye when she’s too wasted — or in rehab — to be out and about. But then a crazed photographer kidnaps the stunt double, and the usual Hiaasen hijinks ensue.

People of the Longhouse by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear — A saga of the Iriquois, circa 1400 BC, dealing, believe it or not, with many of the same challenges we face today.

The Garden of Betrayal by Lee Vance

Little Green by Loretta Stinson — It’s 1976, and sixteen year old Janie has been drifting for a couple of years now. When she drifts into an Oregon bar, they give her a job as a topless dancer, and when she drifts into a relationship with a drug dealer, he becomes abusive. Stinson’s debut novel tells the story of how Janie finally drifts into a new life, one with a lot more solidity, and staying power.

Cure by Robin Cook — Medical examiners Laura Montgomery and Jack Stapleton — and their son — are back, this time on the trail of a crime involving stem cells.

Scarlet Nights by Jude Devereaux — Sara Shaw is all ready to get married to her fiance, Greg Anders. Then three weeks before the wedding, he disappears — and another man shows up, a handsome cop who explains that Greg has a criminal past.

A Parallel Life by Ruth Hamilton — Twenty-one-year-old Harriet “Harrie” Compton-Milne tries to take care of her absent-minded scientist father, her plastic surgery addict mother, and her brother with severe OCD, all while longing to start her own life as a jeweler.

Overexposed by Susan Shapiro — Rachel has worked hard to escape her suburban Chicago past and become an artsy New Yorker. Her best friend Elizabeth, meanwhile, suddenly sheds her artsy New York upbringing to marry Rachel’s brother and become the perfect homemaker Rachel was always supposed to be. Find out how Rachel and Elizabeth make peace with their families and with each other in this comedy.

Tough Customer by Sandra Brown — 30 years ago, Caroline King and PI Dodge Hanley had a daughter whom Hanley has never seen since. Now Caroline has contacted him for help, because a crazed stalker is after their daughter.

The Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Liza Marklund — NYPD Detective Jacob Kanon goes to tour Europe — to see the sites his daughter’s killer — now also responsible for many other deaths — murdered his victims.

Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith

The Last Lie by Stephen White — Boulder psychologist Alan Gregory must piece together the odd dealings at his new neighbor’s house. He got off to a bad enough start after the neighbor claimed he was trespassing while walking his dogs. Now there’s an accusation of a rape that allegedly took place at a party there, and the victim is being counseled by a psychologist Alan supervises.

Crossfire by Dick Francis and Felix Francis — Captain Tom Forsyth is home from Afghanistan, minus a foot, which was lost to an IED. Back home, he gets drawn into trying to figure out who is blackmailing his mother, a horse trainer.

The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth — Former CIA director Paul Devereaux is the Cobra, and the president of the United States has just given him a blank check — told him to go after the South American drug cartels by any means necessary, no questions asked. Find out just what he does in this latest thriller from Forsyth.

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen — Hardscrabble Bay is on the coast of New Brunswick, and the lives of sisters Idella and Avis Hillock, starting in 1916 when their mother dies giving birth to their youngest sister and ending with their own old age in 1986, live up to the name of their home.

Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes — What happens when three generations of a dysfunctional upper-middle-class family gathered for Thanksgiving and a poor kid out to seek justice collide is the subject of Vanderbes’s second novel.

Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford — Sydney Stringfellow Branch was a young American swimmer who made her way to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where she fell in love with a German man. The onset of World War II made their relationship impossible, and Sydney came home and married an American who went off to fight in the Pacific. . . and then her German showed up at her doorstep. She recounts the choices she made in in this novel-as-memoir by NPR sports commentator (and novelist) Frank Deford.

Commuters: A Novel by Emily Gray Tedrowe — What happens when two seniors decide to get married, and their children all go into a tizzy? Read Tedrowe’s entertaining first novel to find out!

Burn: An Anna Pigeon Novel by Nevada Barr — Anna Pigeon is usually to be found solving mysteries deep in the wilderness of America’s national parks. Her latest escapade, however, takes her to the Jazz National Heritage Park in post-Katrina New Orleans, which turns out to be its own kind of wilderness.

I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman — “I’d know you anywhere.” Those are the words of a letter from a man on death row to 38-year-old Eliza Benedict, whom he kidnapped and held hostage twenty-three years ago. The letter shatters Eliza’s present-day calm, and the novel moves back and forth between how she copes in the present and that terrifying summer when she was 15.

Hangman by Faye Kellerman — The latest Decker & Lazarus mystery.

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs — The latest adventures of Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist.

Bad Boy by Peter Robinson — DCI Alan Banks’s daughter Tracy becomes enamored enough of Jaff McCready that she agrees to flee the country with him and a stolen weapon. What starts out as a lark soon becomes a hostage situation, though, and Banks, returning from holiday, must figure out how to rescue Tracy.

Body Work by Sara Paretsky — Chicago’s favorite PI V.I. Warshawski is back, this time investigating the murder of a woman known as The Body Artist, who performed at an avant-garde club downtown, allegedly shot by an Iraq War veteran.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen — Walter and Patty Berglund are a suburban St. Paul couple startled out of their quiet existence by the twists and turns of the 21st century, the escapades of their now-grown child, and the results of their own choices.

Nonfiction
The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry — The musical Chicago has been a hit on stage and screen, but did you know it was inspired by a true story? Perry tells it here.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

Ancient Visions: Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Wind River and Bighorn Country, Wyoming and Montana by Julie E. Francis and Lawrence L. Loendorf

The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means by Jeff Yeager — America’s greatest cheapskate is back with more money-saving tips.

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry — The latest installment in the life of the author of Lonesome Dove.

The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America by Stefanie Syman — From Emerson to exercise!

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell — Caldwell’s short memoir of her friendship with the writer Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story), who died of lung cancer in 2002, is about women’s friendships, writing, rowing, dogs, and much much more.

Participants in “Icons” will read and discuss Cash by Johnny Cash, Muhammad Ali by Thomas Hauser, Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 1, 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook, and Jane Fonda’s War by Mary Hershberger. The series is designed to examine what we think know about iconic American figures, as well as study how they used the power of their iconography to promote social change. Laura Crossett will lead the discussions.

The program is offered by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is sponsored by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the council’s programs, call 307-721-9243 or visit the council’s website at www.uwyo.edu/humanities.

Drop by between 11:00 and 2:00 and bring your lunch. We will have cookies and drinks, free books, fun balloon animals -– plus your prizes! If you can’t make it that day, come to the library any time after that.

Our Summer Reading Party for kids will be Thursday, August 5 at 12 noon in the Meeteetse School Cafeteria. Lunch will be served (it’s free!), prizes will be awarded, and there will be FREE swimming at the Meeteetse Community Pool at 1 p.m. following the party!

Grown ups, note you can still turn in tickets through August 5. Stay turned for information about when you can pick up your prizes. Thanks again to all the community members and sponsors who help make our reading programs such a huge success!

Also, as a reminder, the Meeteetse Branch Library will be closed Friday, August 6 for annual cleaning.

The Search by Nora Roberts — Fiona Bristow narrowly escaped a killer eight years ago. Now she leads a peaceful life training search and rescue dogs on a small island. Then the killer shows up again, and it’s up to Fiona — with the help of her dogs and Simon Doyle, a cabinetmaker who’s had his eye on her — to escape for good.

Kings of the Earth by John Clinch — Vernon, Audie, and Creed Proctor are three brothers who work their farm in rural upstate New York, largely cut off from the world but content. But when Vernon is found dead — possibly asphyxiated — suddenly the world comes to them, and their world starts to unravel.

Faithful Place by Tana French — Twenty two years ago, Frank Mackey and his girlfriend Rosie were going to meet and elope, but she never showed up. Now he’s a detective, and he learns that someone has found her suitcase — and her remains.

The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke — The latest Dave Robicheaux mystery.

Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner — Boston police detective D.D. Warren returns — this time to investigate a case where it turns out that children may be the perpetrators, not the victims.

A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory — After the murder of a local girl, twelve-year-old Joseph Vaughn and his friends form The Guardians, a group they hope will prevent similar tragedies in their small southern town. They can’t, of course, and the aftershocks of that time continue to haunt Joseph, until they show up again in force fifty years later, when he is working as a detective in Brooklyn.

They’re Watching by Gregg Hurwitz — Screenwriter Patrick Davis’s morning starts out ordinarily enough — coffee, breakfast, newspaper — and a DVD inside the newspaper — a DVD of Patrick and his wife going about their daily business in their own house, but shot by no one they know.

Dust to Dust, The Night Killer, Scattered Graves by Beverly Connor — A trio from a series of books about a forensic investigator which have been compared to the early Patricia Cornwell.

American Music by Jane Mendelsohn — Honor is a physical therapist; Milo is a severely injured Iraq War veteran that she is treating. The novel takes place over the course Milo’s treatment, and over the course of the other lives they begin to have visions of — other lives wherein, it seems, they were always connected to one another.

The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva — Art restorer and sometime detective Gabriel Allon takes on the case of a murdered art restorer and a recently discovered Rembrandt.

My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira — Mary Sutter is a midwife who desperately wants to become a doctor, but in upstate New York in 1860, that is an impossibility. When the Civil War breaks out, though, Mary travels to Washington, D.C. to assist a surgeon in a hospital there, and everything starts to change.

Father of the Rain by Lily King — Daley grows up in the Boston suburbs, watching her alcoholic father slowly — and sometimes boisterously — self-destruct. Now she is 29 and lives across the country and has made her own life for herself, but when her brother calls to say their father is dying she decides to go back and see what has become of him.

Lucy by Laurence Gonzales — Lucy is a child rescued by a primatologist from the jungles of the Congo and the war that is going on there. When they come back to Chicago, people initially figure Lucy is just making an adjustment to a new culture. But as time goes on, people start to wonder — is she entirely human? A what-if biological thriller about the possibilities that humans and apes are closer than we even think.

Sea Escape by Lynne Griffin — Laura and her mother Helen have been estranged for some time, but Laura goes back to care for Helen after she has a stroke, and while she is staying with her at her seaside cottage, she starts reading the voluminous correspondence between her mother and her long-dead father, a soldier turned war correspondent. Reading the letters both brings the women closer together and reveals secrets that both change and strengthen their ties.

Killer Instinct by Zoe Sharp — Charlie Fox is a motorcycle riding former army martial arts expert now working as a guard at a club, where things are anything but quiet. Lee Child wrote an introduction to this book by a British writer, and it’s garnered great reviews.

The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse — The Madonnas of Echo Park are neither pop stars nor Virgin Marys — instead, they are women of all ages trying to make it in the barrio neighborhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles in this breakout novel in stories that the author wrote in part as an apology to a girl he wouldn’t dance with many years ago because she was Mexican.

The Chill of Night by James Hayman — Dead lawyer stuffed in the trunk of her BMW. Witness is a teenager with schizophrenia. Freezing weather in Portland. All the set up for Detective Sargent Michael McCabe’s second outing.

The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais — A novel for anyone who loves food, restaurants, and the food business, about an Indian family that moves to France and tries to make a go of serving Indian cuisine in the Alps.

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman — An hour after their wedding, a young couple die in a car crash. Over the next four summers, their families — the bride’s family a wealthy clan from New York who have summered in Maine since the dawn of time; the groom’s a bunch lower-middle-class locals in the small Maine town — figure out how to deal with the tragedy, and with each other.

Nonfiction
No Way Down: Life and Death on K2 by Graham Bowley — A gripping account of the 2008 climbing season on the world’s second highest — and often considered deadliest — peak.

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham — A guide to raising 85% of your food in your back yard, with a focus on keeping your bottom line as low as possible.

Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, Visionary by Steve Friesen — A picture-rich history of the Scout.

Blindsided: Surviving a Grizzly Attack and Still Loving the Great Bear by Jim Cole and Tim Vandehey — Jim Cole tells the story of the day he was nearly killed by a grizzly in Yellowstone.

Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homestead by Philip Ackerman-Leist with illustrations by Erin Ackerman-Leist — For those who prefer to read about other people’s self-sufficiency experiments rather than running their own, this is a charming memoir about trying to live off the land in Vermont.

From the Stacks
An occasional feature highlighting books buried in the stacks that you really shouldn’t miss.
A Country Year: Living the Questions by Sue Hubbell — My cousin compares this book to Walden, and that’s not totally inapt, but Hubbell’s book is funnier, and more contemporary. It chronicles a little over a year of her life as a beekeeper in Missouri, her observations of the natural world, her dealings with her eccentric neighbors, and her truck, which goes by the moniker Press On Regardless.

Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman — Wideman was teaching at the University of Wyoming when he wrote this book back in 1984. I picked up a copy of a book of his short stories on a trip to the Grinnell College bookstore when I was in high school, but I had no idea until recently that there was a real life story behind some of the things he writes about in his fiction. Wideman grew up in the Pittsburgh ghetto but went on to become a distinguished writer and professor. His younger brother, meanwhile, went on to a life of crime, and is now serving a life sentence for murder. In this memoir, Wideman seeks to figure out how two boys from the same place — the same family — could end up in such different places.

Minutes from previous board meetings, as well as contact information for board members, is available on the Library Board page.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan — We don’t always learn the real stories of the people we know in real life; one of the pleasures of fiction is that we often do learn all about the characters even if, as is the case in this novel about a former punk rocker turned burned-out music executive and his kleptomaniac secretary and the pasts that brought them to the present and the futures they will one day inhabit.

Perfect Reader by Maggie Pouncey — When Flora goes to help deal with her college president father’s estate after his death, she discovers that he has also made her his literary executor, and that he has left behind a collection of erotic poems — poems addressed to his heretofore unknown about lover, who now wants to become part of Flora’s life.

The Prison Ship by Peter Tonkin — Richard Mariner and his daughter are in London just before the 2012 Olympics when terrorists attack a harbor near the museum they are visiting. They escape and save a man’s life — only they learn, once the man has left, that he is an internationally sought terrorist.

Final Target by Steven Gore — Your basic cop gets shot and whilst recovering his private investigator pal tries to clear his name while fending off everyone from Ukrainian gangsters to the Russian mafia to the FBI.

Whiplash by Catherine Coulter — Husband and wife FBI team Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock investigate the case of a Senator who claims he’s being haunted by his dead wife and a murder case involving the makers of an experimental cancer drug, where they are ably helped by a new crime-fighting duo.

The Rule of Nine by Steve Martini — Paul Madriani’s arch-rival Liquida Muerta (aka the Mexecutioner) teams up with a terrorist bent on attacking the United States. Can the California lawyer stop them?

So Cold the River by Michael Koryta — When someone hires you for a job that seems easy for money that’s too good to be true, it’s usually turns out not to be a good thing — and indeed that’s just what unemployed film maker Eric Shaw finds when a family hires him to go to West Baden, Indiana to make a documentary about their patriarch, an aging local entrepreneur. In this case, the unexpected element is a supernatural one. The latest from Koryta has been favorably compared to Stephen King and Peter Straub.

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth — A novel about the President’s vampire. No, really. In the world according to Farnsworth, the President has had a vampire sworn to protect him since the days of Andrew Jackson. Blood Oath, the first in a planned series, examines the adventures of the vampire in the present (fictional) day, but it’s really less a vampire novel than it is a political thriller. . . that just happens to have some paranormal elements.

The Spy by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott — The third adventure of Isaac Bell (after The Chase and The Wrecker) finds him looking into the mysterious deaths of US naval arms manufacturers in the days leading up to World War I.

The Bohemian Girl by Kenneth Cameron — In turn of the century England, expatriated American author General Denton is contact by a man who found a letter taped to the back of a painting he just bought — a letter from a woman asking for Denton’s help. A sequel to The Frightened Man. Recommended to Anne Perry fans.

Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson — The latest Walt Longmire mystery from our very own Craig Johnson.

Still Midnight by Denise Mina — And here’s one recommended by another Wyoming author, CJ Box, who writes “And although she’s getting better known, Denise Mina’s Still Midnight is a terrific showcase for her raw and brilliant characters and writing style. Mina is one of the few novelists who writes sentences so perfect I put the book down for a moment and say, ‘Damn, that was good.’” This novel involves two Glasgow lowlifes who try to kidnap a Muslim shopkeeper to make a quick buck and end up shooting his daughter in the process. Detective Sargent Alex Morrow tries to get to the bottom of it all.

Frankenstein: Lost Souls by Dean Koontz — Dean Koontz takes on the further adventures of Frankenstein’s monster. Need I say more?

The Anniversary Man by R.J. Ellroy — The Anniversary Man is a serial killer who replicates other murders on the anniversary of the date they took place. Serial killer survivor John Costello, reporter Karen Langley, and Detective Ray Irving of the NYPD are all after him, all for their own reasons.

The Passage by Justin Cronin — It’s the near future, and, as is often the case in the near future, the world is in shambles — war, terrorism, environmental disaster, and now a virus that, almost instantly, transforms most of humanity into destructive but nearly indestructible monsters. Among those spared are haunted FBI Agent Brad Wolgast and six-year-old Amy Harper Belafonte who must, somehow, find a way to save the remainder of humankind.

False Convictions by Tim Green — Dallas do-gooder attorney Casey Jordan takes on the case of a death-row inmate in New York after a philanthropist offers to make a $1 million donation to her free law practice. The inmate may well be innocent, but journalist Jake Carlson is not so sure about the philanthropist.

Bodily Harm by Robert Dugoni — Seattle attorney David Sloane is about to win a medical malpractice case in which a pediatrician is being held responsible for a child’s death — and then an eccentric toy designer comes forward and says that his toy, not yet done with safety testing, is actually the responsible party.

Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Objective by Eric Lustbader — The latest adventures of Jason Bourne.

Box 21 by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom — And here’s some Scandinavian crime fiction recommended by our own Craig Johnson. Line up for this gritty mystery set in the underworld of Stockholm if you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!

The Lion by Nelson DeMille — The fifth John Corey thriller finds the ex-NYPD detective turned special agent once again battling the Libyan terrorist who went after him in The Lion’s Game and who now, 18 months after 9/11, is going after the country.

Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker — Most guns found in Mexico come from the US, and in LA County Deputy Sheriff Charlie Hood’s latest outing, he’s sent to the border to try to help break up a particularly wicked cartel. This is another recommendation from CJ Box.

Insatiable by Meg Cabot — Meg Cabot (of The Princess Diaries). New York City. Vampires. Think Twilight, but with funny stuff.

Pray for Silence by Linda Castillo — Police Chief Kate Burkholder is sent to investigate the killings of an entire Amish family in a small Ohio town. A teenage daughter in the family had an affair with a non-Amish man; Kate left the faith herself after being raped by an Amish man when she was a teen. And she has a history, as well, with John Tomasetti, the detective from the city who has been sent to assist her.

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden — Tété is a slave on a plantation in Haiti, where she has a complicated relationship with her master, the plantation owner. When rebellion erupts in Haiti, they flee with his child and hers to Cuba and then to New Orleans. A powerful new historical novel from Allende.

Broken by Karin Slaughter — When you’re a character in a thriller, returning home for Thanksgiving never turns out to be a peaceful time with your family — and this is true of Dr. Sara Linton who, while visiting home, is drawn into the investigation of the murder of a local college student. To further complicate matters, Sara still blames Detective Lena Adams, who is in charge of the investigation, for the death of her husband. And then she calls Special Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in for further assistance, and he has to try to sort out the mess.

Work Song by Ivan Doig — Morrie Morgan (from The Whistling Season) finds himself drawn into a miner’s strike in Butte, Montana in 1919 in this lively story of the old West.

The Liar’s Lullaby by Meg Gardiner — San Francisco forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett takes on the case of the suicide — or was it murder? — of the ex-wife of the President, now a country music star but still, apparently, on the radar of those interested in the fate of the United States.

In the Name of Honor by Richard North Patterson — Brian McCarran, an army lieutenant from a famous military family who has just returned from Iraq, shoots and kills his commanding officer, Joe D’Abruzzo, who was married to Brian’s childhood friend Kate. The man charged with defending him was himself about to retire from military service, but instead he finds himself in the midst of this riveting and complex trial.

Private: Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, London, Chicago, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Rome by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro — Private is the name of a global (as you might guess from the subtitle) investigative team run by a former Marine helicopter pilot. Expect the usual lightning-speed plot thriller from Patterson.

Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen — Medical examiner Maura Isles and a friend go off on a spur-of-the-moment skiing trip, get caught in a storm, and hole up in a recently (there are still meals on the tables) abandoned Wyoming town called Kingdom Come. Some days later, her charred remains are found, and her partner and friends come to Wyoming to investigate.

Nonfiction

Point, Click and Save: Mashup Mom’s Guide to Saving and Making Money Online by Rachel Singer Gordon — Just what it says — tips on harnessing the power of the internet to find coupons, deals, and more. The author has a blog at MashupMom.com.

The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam by G. Willow Wilson — Conversion narratives are always fascinating, and perhaps they are even more so when they involve someone converting to something — here, the Muslim faith — that is foreign to us, and that has often been portrayed as hostile in recent years. Wilson talks about her work as an English teacher in Cairo and what led her to convert and eventually to marry an Egyptian man.

James Bama Sketchbook: A Seventy-Year Journey, Traveling from the Far East to the Old West by James Bama — Sketchbooks from the artist (who now lives on the North Fork).

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain — Rollicking good times (and food) with no holds barred from the author of The Nasty Bits and Kitchen Confidential.

Denial: A Memoir of Terror by Jessica Stern — Stern is a national security adviser, lecturer at Harvard, and expert on terrorism. In this memoir, she examines there heretofore unexamined roots of her own experiences with terror — a night when she was 15 years old and she and her younger sister were raped at gunpoint by an unknown intruder. The book earned starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly.

As always, you can still check your account, place holds, and explore our online resources.

And, in honor of Independence Day, please enjoy this exhibition on the creation of the Declaration of Independence from the Library of Congress, which includes this copy of the Declaration of Independence as printed in the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser in July 1776.