Ring in the New Year with New Year's Eve-Themed Movies!

A night on the town is festive and fun but if you want, try a better alternative to ringing in the New Year than paying astronomical prices for restaurant fare or spending hours waiting to get into a bar.
You could stay in solo or with family or friends or both and watch one of these New Year's Eve-themed movies. Plus, when you watch a movie on New Year's Eve, you don't actually have to stay up until January 1st. So, whether you go out to celebrate or curl up inside to celebrate, here is a list of films you should watch this holiday season.

When Harry Met Sally (1989)
This is the classic, quintessential romantic comedy with the best NYE scene of all time. Swooping in at the last minute, Harry arrives at the hotel to announce his love for Sally in one of the best-ever romantic confessionals to ever grace the screen. Party goers surround them while they bring in the new year with a kiss.

New Year's Eve (2011)
An ensemble cast celebrates love, hope, forgiveness, second chances and fresh starts, in intertwining stories told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
This is a romantic comedy perfect for a night with your girlfriends. "New year, new you" is a mantra many of us will hear when the calendar rolls over to January 1, and that's the title character's initial philosophy. But you knew that!

Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
This screwball comedy caper from the Coen brothers picks up as Barnes, the CEO of Hudsucker Industries offs himself. On New Year's Eve, crushed by the weight of his responsibilities, Barnes heads to a hipster bar to drown his sorrows.

Boogie Nights (1997)
This is a drama about exiting the 1970s with a literal bang. The festivities are brought to a head at porno king Jack Horner's house for his annual New Year's party. Also, the idea of enduring another year, much less a decade with his adulterous wife is too much for assistant director Little Bill (William H. Macy) who finds her in bed with another man again.

Strange Days (1995)
This science fiction tech thriller follows Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a former LAPD cop who turns to trading in black market virtual reality memories. His end-of-year good tidings are hampered when he discovers a batch containing the murders of people he knows. The celebration portion of this film is a swanky soiree held by shifty chap, Philo Gant, at the prestigious Bonaventure Hotel for the city's high society crowd.

Trading Places (1983)
After watching this hit mistaken identity comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd, you might think twice before taking a train on New Year's Eve, especially if there is a gorilla on board.

Poseidon Adventure (1972)
This maritime disaster movie centers around a luxury liner bound for Athens from New York City. A preacher leads a group of passengers to safety through the bowels of the ship after it's struck by a tsunami. Look for the grandiose New Year's Eve dinner celebration in the ship's ballroom complete with a full ban;d, top notch cuisine and enough booze to sink a  . . . ahem.

Cheers to good films! Happy New Year's Eve and New Year too!

Kennedy Center Honors - 2016

Kennedy Center Honors will take place on December 4, 2016 and will air December 27 on CBS at 8:00 PM CT.

Martha Argerich (born June 5, 1941)

She is an Argentine pianist who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The family moved to Europe in 1955, where Argerich studied with Friedrich Gulda in Austria.  Her parents had diplomatic posts in the Argentine embassy in Vienna.

Argerich has won innumerable competitions including the Geneva International Music Competition and Ferruccio Busoni International Competition at the age of 16.  In 1965 she debuted in the United States in Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series.

She has won three Grammy awards in 2000, 2005, and 2006.  In 2012, she was voted into Gramophone's Hall of Fame.

Eagles (formed in Los Angeles in 1971)

The original members of the Eagles were Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner.  They have sold more than 150 million records.  Two of their albums, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) and Hotel California, are among the 20 best-selling albums in the United States.  The Eagles have won 6 Grammy Awards in 1975, 1977 (two awards), 1979, 2008, and 2009.

The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001.  In 1999, the Recording Industry of America honored the group with the Best Selling Album of the Century for Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975).  The Eagles were chosen last year for the Kennedy Center Honors, but because of Glenn Frey's poor health, the award was postponed.  He died a month later.

Al Pacino (born April 25, 1940)
Pacino is an American actor of stage and screen, filmmaker, and screenwriter.  He has won an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a British academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the National Medal of Arts.

He was first nominated for Best Actor for Serpico in 1973 and won for his role as a blind Lieutenant Colonel in Scent of a Woman in 1992.  He won Tony Awards for Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? and Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.

Mavis Staples (born July 10, 1939)
Staples was born in Chicago, Illion and began singing with her family in 1950.  She sang in local churches and appeared on a weekly radio show.  she made her fir solo "Crying in the chapel" for Epic Records in the late 1960s.

She perforned at the 33rd Kennedy Center Honors, won her first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album in 2011, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2011 from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and from Columbia College in Chicago in 2012.

James Taylor (born March 12, 1948)
James Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.  He was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where his father was a resident physician.  He has four siblings who are musicians and have recorded albums.

Taylor has won six Grammy Awards, including Best Pop Vocal Performance in 1971, 1977 and 2001, Best Pop Album in 1998, Best country collaboration with Vocals in 2003, and Grammy Award-sponsored MusiCares Person of the Year in 2006.  He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000.

Laurie Colwin

Warm and comforting, the lovely books of author Laurie Colwin were about urban life and relationships between those who thought they might never find love. Colwin was also a columnist for Gourmet magazine and wrote several books about food and cooking. Her writing is just the right amount of charming for a cold winter’s read.

Family Happiness
Polly lives happily until she finds herself in a sweet, but painful love affair with painter Lincoln Bennett.

Happy All the Time
A comedy of manners about two couples and how they find love.

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
About the joys of preparing and eating simple food.

The Christmas Book Flood

While we are trimming our trees, hanging our stockings, and getting ready for a visit from Santa Claus, the residents of Iceland are preparing for their own special holiday tradition--Jólabókaflóð, or Christmas Book Flood.  

The majority of the publishing in Iceland occurs between September and December, and a massive catalog of books--the Bókatíðindi--is available to everyone to peruse and make their selections.  Books are considered one of the greatest gifts to give, and most families exchange them on Christmas Eve, and then settle in for a long night of cozy reading.

Here are some of our favorite Icelandic authors and books about Iceland.  Check one out today and start your own winter reading tradition!

Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness 

A young Icelandic priest is sent to investigate the pastor at remote Snaefells Glacier and uncovers a mysterious and wild community full of phantasmagoria and eccentricity, in a provocative novel by the late Nobel laureate.








Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason

Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson heads up the investigation into the killing of a solitary man, found murdered in his Reykjavik apartment, only to discover that the victim has only two friends, one in prison and one missing for twenty-five years, and that the dead man had been accused but not convicted of a rape forty years earlier.  







The Whispering Muse by Sjón

Invited to sail on a Danish merchant ship in 1949, eccentric Icelander, Valdimar Haraldsson, discovers the second mate on the ship is none other than Caeneus, the hero of Greek mythology, who regales his fellow shipmates with tales of the Golden Fleece.








Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Based on the true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland in 1829, a young woman accused of murdering her master is sent to an isolated rural farm to await execution and tells the farmer's family her side of the story








Sagas of the Icelanders

Published in conjunction with the 1,000th anniversary of Leif Eriksson's voyage to America, the medieval Viking "Sagas" commemorate the adventures of the people who first settled Iceland and then braved the perils of the north Atlantic to explore Greenland and North America, in a volume that includes a preface by Jane Smiley.






Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss

Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in an English cathedral city. The resulting adventure was shaped by Iceland's economic collapse, which halved the value of her salary, by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull and by a collection of new friends.





   

NPR Best Books of 2016

With 2016 winding down there are many lists of the best book of the year coming out.  If you're looking for something good to read during your holiday breaks or while you stay inside out of the cold perusing some of these is a good place to start.  NPR has put out there list, and they offer a good sort-able list of genres.  Here are some selections from their fiction lists to consider picking up.

The Queen of the Night -
Alexander Chee

 Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer's chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.






The Wonder -
Emma Donoghue

Lib Wright, a young English nurse trained by the legendary Florence Nightingale, is sent to rural Ireland to observe Anna, a young girl who is said to have eaten nothing for four months. Lib fully expects to expose Anna's "fast" as a hoax, but her long hours with the girl erode all of her earlier assumptions about Anna, the Irish, and herself.







The Gustav Sonata - 
Rose Temain

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, an only child, and befriends Anton Zweibel, a Jewish boy his age. Moving backward to the Second World War years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and forward through the adult lives and careers of the two men, one who becomes a hotel owner, the other a concert pianist, this novel explores the intensity of a childhood friendship as it is lost, transformed, and regained over a lifetime.





Dark Matter -
Blake Crouch

One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something impossible. Is it this world or the other that's the dream? How can he possibly make it back to the family he loves?




Smoke: A Novel - 
Dan Vyleta

 In an alternate England, where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours from their bodies, Thomas, Charlie, and Livia notice that some people appear to be able to lie without triggering Smoke. As they dig deeper, they discover teachers who have mysterious ties to warring political factions, a sumptuous estate which hides attic rooms and laboratories, revolutionaries who are fighting against a secret police force. They begin to suspect that everything they have been taught about Smoke is a lie; but if that is a lie, what else about their world is lies? What is their place in the struggle between faith and reason, between good and evil? And who can they trust?



The Trespasser -
Tana French

 Being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she's there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she's getting close to the breaking point. Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers' quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed to a shine, and dead in her catalog-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner. There's nothing unusual about her--except that Antoinette's seen her somewhere before.



Another Brooklyn - 
Jacqueline Woodson

For August, running into a long-ago friend sets in motion resonant memories and transports her to a time and a place she thought she had mislaid: 1970s Brooklyn, where friendship was everything. August, Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi shared confidences as they ambled their neighborhood streets, a place where the girls believed that they were amazingly beautiful, brilliantly talented, with a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful promise there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where mothers disappeared, where fathers found religion, and where madness was a mere sunset away.

A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

This week marks the release of the newest Star Wars film, Rogue One, which takes place in between 2005’s Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and 1977’s original Star Wars film, Episode IV – A New Hope. It is the first Star Wars film to stray from the Skywalker family saga, though dedicated Star Wars fans know that the expanded universe has told stories from all over the galaxy. Here are a few Star Wars titles to enjoy, whether you’re counting down the minutes to Rogue One’s release, or just looking for a fun scifi adventure. 

• The Clone Wars
• Television Series. This animated series takes place in between Episode II - Attack of the Clones and Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. 
• Catalyst
• Novel. This new novel takes place before Rogue One and gives some background on some of the key new characters in the film. 
• Episode IV- A New Hope
• Movie. The blockbuster that started it all! Rogue One takes place just before A New Hope and ties in directly - so make sure you remember how it goes! 
• Vader Down
• Graphic Novel. Marvel's Star Wars comics feature a huge variety of your favorite Star Wars characters and take place all over the Star Wars timeline. This particular volume is in between A New Hope and Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back and shows the iconic Darth Vader at his most fearsome. 
• Heir to the Empire
• Novel. Known to many fans as "The Thrawn Trilogy", Heir to the Empire is the first of three novels and takes place shortly after Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. 

For even more Star Wars reads, stop at the Reader Services desk or browse the STAR WARS call number in our Science Fiction and Fantasy section. 

Quick Reads For Teens Who Don't Like To Read

Hate to read but have to because your mom, dad, or teachers tell you that you must? It's okay...you can admit it.  We won't judge.  In fact, we're here to make it easier on you because we can give a list of books that will entertain you, keep turning the pages, and best of all -- tell you a really good story.  So keep calm and read a QUICK READ book!

Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman -- Imagine being unable to move any part of your body and not being able to communicate in any way because you have severe cerebral palsy.  Imagine that you are brilliant, but attend special education classes at school because no one knows how smart you are.  Your family is living their lives around you but all you can do is watch.  You laugh and cry with them, but they don't know that.  Then one day your dad starts apologizing for how miserable your life must be and how much he wants to put you out of your misery.  You want to tell him -- scream to him -- that you're perfectly happy and love your life, but he can't know.  Suddenly, he's coming at you....


Shattering Glass by Gail Giles -- When Simon Glass, a high school student who is bullied by the popular kids, is suddenly befriended by them, he begins a friendship journey that transforms him into the school Prince Charming.  Simon becomes the most popular guy in school, one with his own agenda and plans to get back at the "friends" who changed him.  This is a suspenseful and fast-paced book that will keep you hooked.


Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt -- As a teen who just moved to a new town, with no friends, an abusive father, and a loser older brother, Doug Swieteck has everything stacked against him.  That is,  until he meets Lil Spicer--a sassy and smart girl. Together, they find themselves at the local library intrigued with a local mystery and somehow involved in a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage.


Twilight by Stephanie Meyer -- Sink your teeth into this vampire-loves-mortal-girl story.  Bella is new to her Forks, Washington high school, when she meets her lab partner, Edward.  He's a strange, dark, guy who appears to hate her but they are drawn to each other.  Edward wants to suck her blood, she just wants to kiss him.  Can these two survive their love for one another?  After you read this, you'll want to read the sequels: New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.  Like graphic novels?  We have Twilight in that version, too!

Turkey Crimes and Capers

This week take a break from the food prep and the shopping to read a Thanksgiving-themed mystery. It could be a good way to get you in the holiday spirit instead of a turkey-induced coma. Here is a short list in no particular order.  Enjoy!

Turkey Day Murder: A Lucy Stone Mystery by Leslie Meier
A Fatal Feast: A Novel by Jessica Fletcher
Dead Hot Shot: A Loon Lake Mystery by Victoria Houston
Bittersweet by Susan Wittig Albert
The Grave Soul by Ellen Hart
A Catered Thanksgiving by Isis CrawfordZero-Degree Murder by M. L. RowlandThankless In Death by J. D. Robb
Second-Hand Stiff by Sue Ann Jaffarian
Death Rides Again by Janice Hamrick
Skating Under the Wire by Joelle Charbonneau
Diva Runs Out of Thyme by Krista Davis

National Book Awards Announced November 16, 2016

Colson Whitehead has won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Underground Railroad.  A New York Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club pick, the book chronicles the daring survival story of a young plantation slave in Georgia who makes a desperate bid for freedom as she races through the Underground Railroad with a relentless slave-catcher close behind.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibrim X. Kendi won the nonfiction award.  A comprehensive history of anti-black racism, this book focuses on the lives of five major players in American history, including Cotton Mather and Thomas Jefferson, and highlights the debates that took place between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists.

The award for poetry went to Daniel Borzutzky for The Performance of Becoming Human.

Borzutzky's work draws connections between the U.S. and Latin America, specifically touching upon issues relating to border and immigration policies, economic disparity, political violence, and the disturbing rhetoric of capitalism and bureaucracies.

The award for Young People’s Literature went to Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell for the graphic memoir March: Book Three.

March: Book Three is the final book in Lewis's graphic memoir trilogy. The trilogy gives a first-hand account of the author's lifelong struggle for civil and human rights. It begins with Lewis's life as a child in rural Alabama and continues to his involvement in the Freedom Vote and Mississippi Freedom Summer campaigns, and the Selma to Montgomery march. While March: Book Three won the Award for Young People's Literature, the whole trilogy will be of interest to a broad audience, including adults.

The National Book Awards, which were established in 1950 and are presented by annually by the National Book Foundation. This year’s awards were open to American authors who published books between Dec. 1, 2015, and Nov. 30, 2016. 

Glenview Public Library - Opera Lectures (Winter)

Our winter opera lectures are again being given by the Opera Lovers Lecture Corps.  All our lectures are held on Thursdays in the Multipurpose Room from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm.

December 1 - The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Figaro, the count’s valet, and Susanna, the countess’ maid, are desperate to marry – but the count has designs on Susanna himself.

January 12 - Norma by Vincenzo Bellini

This tale involves a Druid priestess and the leader of the Roman invasion of ancient Gaul.  Their forbidden love and illegitimate children, plus his affair with a younger priestess, create all kinds of complications.

February 2 - Carmen by Georges Bizet

A hapless corporal, Don Jose gives up everything – fiancée, regiment, and honor – to be with Carmen, but his passion turns deadly when she jilts him for a glamorous toreador, Escamillo.  In the end, Carmen is killed by Don Jose

February 16 - Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Ilyich Tchikovsky

Meet Eugene Onegin – a self-indulgent St. Petersburg playboy.  He tarries with the sweet country girl Tatyana, then rebuffs her when she pours out her passion; he looks for sport with the fiancée of his best friend, and then kills him in a duel.  Years pass. Onegin meets Tatyana again, but she reject him.  Onegin is left alone.

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Historical Fiction- World War 11 Japanese-American Incarceration Camps

Over 127,000 United States citizens were imprisoned during World War 11. Their crime? Being of Japanese heritage. Even though there wasn't any actual evidence, Japanese-Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signed an executive order ordering the relocation of all Americans of Japanese heritage to concentration camps. While the American concentration camps never reached the levels of Nazi death camps as far as atrocities are concerned, they remain a dark mark on the nation's record of respecting civil liberties and cultural differences. Check out one of these historical fiction novels based on a little talked about historical fact.

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
A story told from five different points of view, accounts the experiences of Japanese-Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War 11 internment camps. (2002)

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
Irina is a young Moldavian immigrant with a troubled past. She works at an assisted living home where she meets, Alma, a Holocaust survivor. Alma falls in love Ichi, a young Japanese gardener, who survived Topaz, the Japanese internment camp.  Despite man's cruelty to one another, art, beauty and love prevail.  (2015)

Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield
After bombs stream down on Pearl Harbor, 14-year old Lucy Takeda and her mother, Miyako, are rounded up--along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans and taken to the Manzanar prison camp where they endure abuse and harsh living conditions until Miyako makes the ultimate sacrifice. (2013)

Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris
Violinist Maddie elopes with Lane Moritomo, the motivated son of Japanese immigrants, but after Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese, Lane is seen as the enemy and Maddie must sacrifice her Julliard ambitions when he is interned at a war relocation camp. (2012)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
When relics from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War 11 are uncovered during restorations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a mission that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment. (2009)

Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas
Her life turned upside-down when a Japanese internment camp is opened in their small Colorado town, Rennie witnesses the way her community places doubt on the newcomers when a young girl is murdered. (2007)

Color of the Sea by John Hamamura
Separated from his Japanese-American family and girlfriend by the internment practices of World War 11, martial arts master Sam Hamada is conscripted by the U.S. Army for a secret mission in Japan, where he finds himself torn between cultures. (2006)

Silent Honor by Danielle Steel
A Japanese girl living with her uncle in California to attend college, Hiroko becomes caught up in the horrors of World War 11 after the bombing of Pearl harbor when she and her uncle's family are forced into an internment camp with other Japanese-Americans. (1996)

The Man Booker Prize 2016 - And the Winner Is -

The Man Booker Prize is a highly coveted award which annually honors the author of an English language novel published in the United Kingdom in the current year by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. It was established in 1968. US authors became eligible in 2014 when the Booker Prize expanded to include submission of any novel that is written in English from anywhere in the world. It promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. The prize is the world's most important literary award and has the power to transform the fortune of the author as well as the publisher.

The 2016 Short List of Finalists:

This year's finalists included:
His Bloody Project - a historical thriller by the Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet;
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by the Canadian author Madeleine Thien, which explores the legacy of China's Cultural Revolution;
All That Man Is -  a collection of linked short stories about nine men in different phases of life by Canadian-British author David Szalay;
Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh, which centers on a self-loathing young woman who works in a juvenile prison in New England; and
Hot Milk - a coming of age story by Deborah Levy

And the 2016 Man Booker Prize Winner is -
The Sellout by Paul Beatty. It is published by small independent publisher Oneworld, who had their first win in 2015 with Marion James' A Brief History of Seven Killings. The author is a 54-year-old New York resident born in Los Angeles. He is the first American author to win the prize.The 2016 shortlist included two British, two US, one Canadian and one British-Canadian writer. Paul Beatty is the author of three novels - Slumberland, Tuff and the White Boy Shuffle, about a black surfer in Los Angeles in 1996 - and two books of poetry: Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker Deuce. He is also the editor of Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. Much of his writing explores recurring themes: human psychology, racial identity and our inability to escape the lingering effects of history.

The narrator of The Sellout is an African-American urban farmer and pot smoker who lives in a small town on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Brought up by a single father, a sociologist, the narrator grew up taking part in psychological studies about race. After his father is killed by the police during a traffic stop, the protagonist embarks on a controversial social experiment of his own, and ends up before the Supreme Court. He becomes a slave owner to a willing volunteer, an elderly man named Hominy Jenkins who once played understudy to Buckwheat on "The Little Rascals," and seeks to reinstate segregation in a local school.

The five Booker judges, who were unanimous in their decision, cited the novel's inventive comic approach to the thorny issues of racial identity and injustice. Check it out and see if you agree.

Horror Graphic Novels

As we creep past Halloween and prepare for the coming darkness of winter, curl up with one of these graphic novels and settle in for a bit of a scare.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill

The story of the Keyhouse, a New England mansion, with doors that transform all who walk through them...and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it opens the most terrible door of all.

American Vampire by Scott Snyder

A new vampire for a new century. Cunning, ruthless, and rattlesnake mean, Skinner Sweet has a reputation for cussedness as long as he is ornery. As the first vampire conceived on American soil, however, he's not your usual creature of the night. Stronger, fiercer and powered by the sun, Sweet is the first of a new breed of bloodsucker: the American Vampire. Forty-five years after rising from his grave, Sweet finds himself in 1920s Los Angeles, where the young and beautiful are drawn like moths to the burning lights of Hollywood. Something beyond simple human greed is at work here, however, as struggling young actress Pearl Jones is about to discover. When her movie-star dreams are transformed into a bloody nightmare, Sweet provides her only chance for survival as well as the power to take revenge.

From Hell by Alan Moore

From Hell is the story of Jack the Ripper, perhaps the most infamous man in the annals of murder. Detailing the events leading up to the Whitechapel killings and the cover-up that followed, From Hell is a meditation on the mind of a madman whose savagery and violence gave birth to the 20th century. The serialized story, presented in its entirety in this volume, has garnered widespread attention from critics and scholars. Often regarded as one of the most significant graphic novels ever published, From Hell combines meticulous research with educated speculation, resulting in a masterpiece of historical fiction both compelling and terrifying. This new edition, which has been completely re-mastered, is certainly the finest edition of the book produced to date.

Arkham Asylum: Madness by Sam Kieth

It is the House on Haunted Hill. It is the Last House on the Left. It is the place that Batman's most dangerous and psychotic villains call 'home,' and you are cordially invited to spend 24 hours within its walls. It takes a special type of person to end up here, no matter what side of the law you're on, or what your job is. For when the midnight hour approaches, all hope is abandoned and inmates and workers alike will wish for the daylight-- and for their sanity. Pray you get out before the darkness comes. Pray you get out before your shift is over. Pray that you do not go mad

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the young sorceress Sabrina Spellman finds herself at a crossroads, having to choose between an unearthly destiny and her mortal boyfriend, Harvey. But a foe from her family's past has arrived in Greendale, Madame Satan, and she has her own deadly agenda.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months society has crumbled--no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living

Toyko Ghoul by Sui Ishida

Ghouls live among us, the same as normal people in every way, except their craving for human flesh. Ken Kaneki is an ordinary college student until a violent encounter turns him into the first half-human half-ghoul hybrid. Trapped between two worlds, he must survive ghoul turf wars, learn more about ghoul society, and master his new powers.

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery by Miles Hyman

In a graphic-novel adaptation of the classic spine-tingler, the grandson of the story's original author depicts the eerie town and their shocking ritual in detailed four-color panels that breathe new life into the iconic tale.

Want to read some comics but don't want to leave the house? Did you know Hoopla offers comics? All you need is an internet connection and your library card. Check out their selection of horror comics now!