The library would like to wish everyone an early Merry Christmas.
Just a reminder, be sure and come in this week and load up on books as the library will be closed December 13 to December 26, 2021. We are reopening on December 27 at 9:30 a.m. If you need to recheck an item or help with the Overdrive or Libby e-book app, just give us a call at 580-795-2749.
Sometimes all you need is one person to really see you. Piper Parrish’s life on Frick Island--a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay--is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: her beloved husband, Tom, is dead.
When Tom’s crab boat capsized and his body wasn’t recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her, cooking him breakfast, walking him to the docks each morning, meeting him for their standard Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab. And what were the townspeople to do but go along with their beloved widowed Piper? Anders Caldwell’s career is not going well.
A young ambitious journalist, he’d rather hoped he’d be a national award-winning podcaster by now, rather than writing fluff pieces for a small-town newspaper. But when he gets an assignment to travel to the remote Frick Island and cover their boring annual Cake Walk fundraiser, he stumbles upon a much more fascinating tale: an entire town pretending to see and interact with a man who does not actually exist.
Determined it’s the careermaking story he’s been needing for his podcast, Anders returns to the island to begin covert research and spend more time with the enigmatic Piper--but he has no idea out of all the lives he’s about to upend, it’s his that will change the most. Colleen Oakley’s novel “The Invisible Husband of Frick Island” is an unforgettable love story about an eccentric community, a grieving widow, and an outsider who slowly learns that sometimes faith is more important than the facts.
Each December, the faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with holiday decorations. The entire campus glitters with Christmas lights, save for one dark spot: the home of Professor Peter Shandy.
But after years of resisting the school’s Illumination festival, Shandy suddenly snaps, installing a millionwatt display of flashing lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his neighbors mad. Then the horticulturalist flees town, planning to spend Christmas on a tramp steamer.
It’s not long before he feels guilty about his prank and returns home to find his lights extinguished--and a dead librarian in his living room. Hoping to avoid a scandal, the school’s head asks Shandy, sometimes detective, to investigate the matter quietly.
After all, Christmas is big business, and the town needs the cash infusion that typically comes with the Illumination. But as Shandy will soon find out, there’s a dark side to even the whitest of white Christmases. “Rest You Merry” by Charlotte MacLeod is a humorous, and delightful Christmas read.