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  • 4 stars out of 5

The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza

         A free trip to Sicily, inheriting a whole plot of land, and uncovering bombshell family secrets were not on Sara Marsala’s bingo card for the year,...

Posted by on March 1, 2025

  • 5 stars out of 5

Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea

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...

Posted by on March 15, 2023

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...

  • 5 stars out of 5

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

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...

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...

  • 5 stars out of 5

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

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...

Posted by on February 1, 2022

  • 4 stars out of 5

The Jane Austen Book Society by Natalie Jenner

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...

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.

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...

Posted by on October 1, 2021

  • 5 stars out of 5

Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty

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...

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...

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

  • 4 stars out of 5

Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Donner Dinner Party by Nathan Hale

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...

Posted by on April 29, 2021

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

  • 4 stars out of 5

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict 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...

Posted by on November 17, 2020

  • 5 stars out of 5

Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

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...

Posted by on November 10, 2020

  • 4 stars out of 5

When Mischief Came to Town by Katrina Nannestad

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...

  • 4 stars out of 5

The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood

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...

Posted by on May 14, 2020

  • 4 stars out of 5

A Well-Behaved Woman : a Novel of the Vanderbilts by Therese Fowler

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...

Posted by on March 24, 2020

  • 5 stars out of 5

Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code by Laurie Wallmark

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...

Posted by on March 4, 2020

  • 5 stars out of 5

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

Posted by on January 2, 2020

  • 5 stars out of 5

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman

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...

Posted by on November 5, 2019

  • 5 stars out of 5

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

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.”

  • 5 stars out of 5

The Sea Queen by Linnea Hartsuyker

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...

  • 4 stars out of 5

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

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...

Posted by on October 29, 2018

  • 2 stars out of 5

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

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...

Posted by on August 25, 2018

  • 3 stars out of 5

The Great Wall by Yimou Zhang

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

  • 4 stars out of 5

The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani

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...

  • 4 stars out of 5

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

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...

Posted by on May 1, 2018

  • 4 stars out of 5

Hermes: Tales of the Trickster by George O’Connor

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

  • 4 stars out of 5

Flame in the Mist by Reneé Ahdieh

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...

Posted by on March 14, 2018

  • 4 stars out of 5

Fool by Christopher Moore

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

  • 3 stars out of 5

Clara Barton: Angel of the Battlefield by Ann Hood

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...

  • 3 stars out of 5

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt

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...

Posted by on October 5, 2017

  • 3 stars out of 5

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

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

  • 4 stars out of 5

Motor Girls by Sue Macy

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...

  • 4 stars out of 5

Flashback Four #1: The Lincoln Project by Dan Gutman

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...

  • 5 stars out of 5

March by John Lewis

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...

Posted by on April 13, 2017

  • 4 stars out of 5

My Man Godfrey by Gregory La Cava

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...

Posted by on November 25, 2016

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