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Good Night, Irene

Good Night, Irene is a story of survival, camaraderie and courage that leaves readers cheering until the end.

Posted by on May 1, 2024

Women’s Rights: A Reading List for Teens

In honor of Women's History Month, we've selected titles focusing on the lives of women and girls throughout the past and into the present day. We hope these selections serve Read more...

Poverty & Hunger: A Reading List for Children and Families

Living in poverty means that people are often going without basic needs such as food, clothing, and adequate shelter. We hope these selections serve to educate and encourage a dialogue Read more...

Posted by on January 6, 2023

The Passenger

Bobby Western, son of a nuclear physicist who worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the atomic bomb, is a salvage diver based in New Orleans tasked with investigating a private plane Read more...

Posted by on November 7, 2022

Black Voices & Experiences: A Reading List for Adults

We hope these selections serve to educate and encourage a dialogue on topics of centering around Black voices, characters, and communities. The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. “A singular and Read more...

Posted by on February 4, 2022

The Conductors

Once conductors on the Underground Railroad, Hetty Rhodes and her husband, Benjy, now seek to find a new use for their cunning skills and their magic. Living in Philadelphia, everyone Read more...

Posted by on February 1, 2022

The Jane Austen Book Society

A group of Jane Austen fans come together in the sleepy town of Chawton to help save what is left of their beloved heroines legacy.

Posted by on November 30, 2021

Celebrating 100 Years: 1921

The Village of Westmont is celebrating its 100th birthday! Wonder what folks were reading before the library was even founded? These titles, now available in electronic formats, were the most Read more...

Posted by on November 18, 2021

Worker Rights: A Reading List for Children and Families

We hope these selections serve to educate and encourage a dialogue around worker’s rights and the labor movement both here in the United States and around the world.

Posted by on October 2, 2021

Worker Rights: A Reading List for Teens

We hope these selections serve to educate and encourage a dialogue around worker’s rights and the labor movement both here in the United States and around the world. Audacity by Read more...

Posted by on October 1, 2021

Serafina and the Black Cloak

Serafina has always been different and shut away. Living with her Pa in the basement at the Biltmore Estate she has never been allowed to interact with other people. One Read more...

Posted by on September 30, 2021

A Century of Reading: The 1980s

It was rad to be a kid in the 80s! Take a trip down memory lane with some books, movies, and music from the 1980s. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Read more...

Posted by on July 12, 2021

Juneteenth: A Collection of Films Available in Kanopy

Enjoy this selection of films made available by our partner, Kanopy, as we observe Juneteenth.

Posted by on June 19, 2021

A Century of Reading: The 1920s

Enjoy this selection of titles to highlight the breadth of work produced in the Roaring Twenties!

Posted by on June 1, 2021

Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Donner Dinner Party

Nathan Hales’ Hazardous Tales: Donner Dinner Party breaks down this squeamish story from history in a way that’s both historically accurate and child friendly. This graphic novel tells the story Read more...

Women’s History Month: A Reading List for Grade School

In honor of Women's History Month, we've selected titles focusing on the lives of women and girls throughout the past and into the present day. We hope these selections serve Read more...

Posted by on March 8, 2021

Black History Month: A Reading list for Grade School

Celebrate Black History Month with books by Black authors and writing focusing on Black characters, history, and culture. We hope these selections serve to educate and encourage a dialogue on Read more...

Black History Month: A Reading List for Children and Families

Celebrate Black History Month with books by Black authors and writing focusing on Black characters, history, and culture. We hope these selections serve to educate and encourage a dialogue on Read more...

Best of 2020: A Reading List for Teens

Some of the best YA books that were published in the year 2020. The featured titles were chosen from Librarians’ favorites and pulled from different best of lists. Cemetery Boys by Read more...

Posted by on January 7, 2021

One Community, Many Voices: A Grade School Reading List

This list is a great way to start your Westmont Reads experience. WPL librarians have selected titles for all ages by authors from a wide range of communities, backgrounds, experiences, Read more...

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

As a beautiful debutante in British society, 19 year old Clementine Hozier was reserved in the company of others. Often disliked due to the notoriety of her aristocratic parents, she Read more...

Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Killers of the Flower Moon is the tragic, and mostly untold, history of the killing of many Osage Indians in the early 20th century. During this time, the Osage were Read more...

When Mischief Came to Town

Fans of Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables will adore the story of 10-year-old Inge Marie Jensen; a spunky, recently orphaned girl who arrives at a dreary Danish island Read more...

Posted by on May 28, 2020

The Engineer’s Wife

The Engineer’s Wife is a historical fiction novel that opens up at the end of the Civil War. It follows the life of the suffragist, Emily Warren Roebling, and her Read more...

A Well-Behaved Woman : a Novel of the Vanderbilts

This is a story of one woman’s struggle to overcome infidelity, chauvinism, and crippling loss in the midst of New York’s Gilded Age. It is a story of fortune lost Read more...

Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code

This book begins with Grace Hopper as a young girl who breaks clocks simply to put them back together and find what makes them tick. With her parents’ support, she Read more...

Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing by Kay Haring

Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing is the story of the world famous pop artist. Written by his sister Kay Haring, the picture book takes a look at Read more...

Posted by on January 2, 2020

The World That We Knew

This novel begins in Berlin in 1941 and follows the life of a young Jewish girl, Lea, whose mother, Hanni, will do anything to keep her safe. She consults a Read more...

Posted by on November 5, 2019

Midwinterblood

Containing elements of mystery, horror, romance, history, and the paranormal, Midwinterblood is difficult to describe without giving too much away or just listing more descriptors like “sweeping” and “mystical.”

Posted by on March 26, 2019

The Sea Queen

Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and those interested in Norse history and culture will all find this historical fiction highly enjoyable, though liberal in its characterizations of Read more...

Posted by on November 13, 2018

Cover Image The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Audiobook

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Dr. James Shepard had an unusual day. It began with the suicide of Mrs. Farrows, a patient of his whom he suspects murdered her husband a year prior, and ended with Read more...

Posted by on October 29, 2018

Lincoln in the Bardo

Amidst the rising tensions of the Civil War, President Lincoln is dealing with more than the state of the country; his son Willie caught something akin to typhoid fever and Read more...

Posted by on August 25, 2018

The Great Wall

Viewers who want period accuracy and believable tales can skip this one.  For the rest, the story is entertaining, but not particularly surprising. 

Posted by on July 11, 2018

The Night Diary

Through a series of letters written to her deceased mother, shy, quiet, twelve year-old Nisha tells the story of her family’s journey from the newly-formed Pakistan to India in the Read more...

Posted by on July 11, 2018

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a sweeping, carefully plotted novel of politics and trade in Japan when the island nation closed its borders to all others. There Read more...

Posted by on May 1, 2018

Hermes: Tales of the Trickster

The Greek god of thieves, language, and travel comes to life in this vibrant addition to George O’Connor’s Olympians graphic novel series.

Posted by on March 22, 2018

Flame in the Mist

The prose is elegant and descriptive, and it's apparent much research was put into life in feudal Japan. If you're in the market for historical fiction in a nontraditional setting Read more...

Posted by on March 14, 2018

Fool

Fool is a funny, gossipy, irreverent, silly, irreverent, offbeat, high-drama – and did I mention, irreverent? – retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, from the perspective of the court jester.

Posted by on February 21, 2018

Clara Barton: Angel of the Battlefield

When their parents go through a divorce, 12 year old twins Maisie and Felix Robbins are forced to move from NYC to Rhode Island, and their lives feel bleak. To Read more...

Posted by on November 14, 2017

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy is a plot-driven story about friendship in the face of racism, inspired by the true history of Malaga Island. The often dramatic and intense tale has Read more...

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus illuminates Florentine history through the eyes of a precocious young woman who, more than anything, wishes to decide her own fate.

Posted by on July 31, 2017

Motor Girls

Should horseless carriages be powered by electricity, steam engines, or gasoline? An odd question today, but at the dawn of the 20th century it was a very real debate. Even Read more...

Posted by on May 4, 2017

Flashback Four #1: The Lincoln Project

Part history lesson, and part time-travel adventure story, this book could appeal to Dan Gutman fans and also to children who loved the Magic Tree House books, but are ready Read more...

Posted by on April 27, 2017

March

March is a trilogy of graphic novels by Congressman John Lewis. The series tells the story of the freedom marches that lead to the desegregation of the south and the Read more...

My Man Godfrey

I remember the night I first watched this movie years ago. I had come home and turned on the television, and My Man Godfrey was on a public station. I Read more...

Posted by on November 25, 2016

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