April’s Simply Held Fiction Picks

Changes are coming to Simply Held starting July 1, 2024, but before that happens we wanted to share our April fiction picks for our patrons that are already signed up! Starting July 1, there will only be four fiction picks for you to choose from: diverse debuts, graphic novel, historical fiction, and international fiction. Our fiction picks are chosen quarterly and are available in regular print only. If you would like to update your selections or are a new patron who wants to receive picks from any of those four categories, sign up for Simply Held through our website!

Below you will find information provided by the publishers and authors on the titles we have selected for April from the following categories: Diverse Debuts, Graphic Novel, Historical Fiction, International Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Out of This World, Overcoming Adversity, Rainbow Reads, Stranger Things, and Young Adult.

Diverse Debuts:

Diverse Debuts: Debut fiction novel by a BIPOC author.

Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks

How much of their lineage is one family willing to unearth in order to participate in the nation’s first federal reparations program?

Every American waits with bated breath to see whether or not the country’s first female president will pass the Forgiveness Act. The bill would allow Black families to claim up to $175,000 if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves, and for ambitious single mother Willie Revel the bill could be a long-awaited form of redemption. A decade ago, Willie gave up her burgeoning journalism career to help run her father’s struggling construction company in Philadelphia and she has reluctantly put family first, without being able to forget who she might have become. Now she’s back living with her parents and her young daughter while trying to keep her family from going into bankruptcy. Could the Forgiveness Act uncover her forgotten roots while also helping save their beloved home and her father’s life’s work?

In order to qualify, she must first prove that the Revels are descended from slaves, but the rest of the family isn’t as eager to dig up the past. Her mother is adopted, her father doesn’t trust the government and believes working with a morally corrupt employer is the better way to save their business, and her daughter is just trying to make it through the fifth grade at her elite private school without attracting unwanted attention. It’s up to Willie to verify their ancestry and save her family—but as she delves into their history, Willie begins to learn just how complicated family and forgiveness can be.

With powerful insight and moving prose, Acts of Forgiveness asks how history shapes who we become and considers the weight of success when it is achieved despite incredible odds—and ultimately what leaving behind a legacy truly means. – Ballantine Books

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Graphic Novel:

Graphic Novel: Fiction novel for adults of any subgenre with diverse characters depicted by color illustrations, sketches, and photographs.

My Picture Diary by Fujiwara Maki, translated by Ryan Holmberg

The wife of Japan’s most lauded manga-ka documents a year in their lives with her own artistry.

In 1981, Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary about daily life with her son and husband, the legendary manga author Tsuge Yoshiharu. Publishing was not her original intention. “I wanted to record our family’s daily life while our son, Shosuke, was small. But as 8mm cameras were too expensive and we were poor, I decided on the picture diary format instead. I figured Shosuke would enjoy reading it when he got older.”

Drawn in a simple, personable style, and covering the same years fictionalized in Tsuge’s final masterpiece The Man Without Talent, Fujiwara’s journal focuses on the joys of daily life amidst the stresses of childrearing, housekeeping, and managing a depressed husband. A touching and inspiring testimony of one Japanese woman’s resilience, My Picture Diary is also an important glimpse of the enigma that is Tsuge. Fujiwara’s diary is unsparing. It provides a stark picture of the gender divide in their household: Tsuge sleeps until noon and does practically nothing. He never compliments her cooking, and dictates how money is spent. Not once is he shown drawing. And yet, Fujiwara remains surprisingly empathetic toward her mercurial husband.

Translated by Ryan Holmberg, this edition sheds light on Fujiwara’s life, her own career in art, writing, and underground theater, and her extensive influence upon her husband’s celebrated manga. – Drawn and Quarterly

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Historical Fiction:

Historical Fiction: Historical fiction novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway. Far from home, Pirbhai commits a brutal act in the name of survival that will haunt him and his family for years to come.

So begins Janika Oza’s masterful, richly told epic, where the embers of this desperate act are fanned into flame over four generations, four continents, throughout the twentieth century. Pirbhai’s children are born in Uganda during the waning days of British colonial rule, and as the country moves toward independence, his granddaughters, three sisters, come of age in a divided nation. Latika is an aspiring journalist, who will put everything on the line for what she believes in; Mayuri’s ambitions will take her farther away from home than she ever imagined; and fearless Kiya will have to carry the weight of her family’s silence and secrets.

In 1972, the entire family is forced to flee under Idi Amin’s military dictatorship. Pirbhai’s grandchildren are now scattered across the world, struggling to find their way back to each other. One day a letter arrives with news that makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy, to secure their own place in the world. – Grand Central Publishing

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International Fiction:

International Fiction: Fiction novel originally written in another language with BIPOC main character(s).

The End of August by Yu Miri; translated by Morgan Giles

From the National Book Award winning author, an extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation.

In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-cheol was a running prodigy and a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. But he would have had to run under the Japanese flag.

Nearly a century later, his granddaughter is living in Japan and training to run a marathon herself. She summons Korean shamans to hold an intense, transcendent ritual to connect with Lee Woo-cheol. When his ghost appears, alongside those of his brother Lee Woo-Gun, and their young neighbor, who was forced to become a comfort woman to Japanese soldiers stationed in China during World War II, she must uncover their stories to free their souls. What she discovers is at the heart of this sweeping, majestic novel about a family that endured death, love, betrayal, war, political upheaval, and ghosts, both vengeful and wistful.

A poetic masterpiece that is a feat of historical fiction, epic family saga, and mind-bending story-telling acrobatics, The End of August is a marathon of literature. – Riverhead Books

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Juvenile Fiction:

Juvenile Fiction: Fiction chapter book with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for children 7-11

Green by Alex Gino

Green is lucky. They’ve got a supportive dad, friendly neighbors, and good friends. They’ve figured out a lot of things . . . but they can’t figure out what to do about Ronnie.

Ronnie’s a boy who’s been in Green’s class for awhile. He’s sweet. Funny. And lately, Green’s heart has raced a little faster whenever he’s around.

Green is pretty sure about their own feelings. But they have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how Ronnie feels.

When Green doesn’t get a part in the school musical – a very untraditional version of The Wizard of Oz – they join the crew to work alongside Ronnie.

Is this a good idea?

Green’s about to find out. . . . – Alex Gino

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Out of this World:

Out of this World: Science fiction novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

Counterweight by Djuna; translated by Anton Hur

On the fictional island of Patusan—and much to the ire of the Patusan natives—the Korean conglomerate LK is constructing an elevator into Earth’s orbit, gradually turning this one-time tropical resort town into a teeming travel hub: a gateway to and from our planet. Up in space, holding the elevator’s “spider cable” taut, is a mass of space junk known as the counterweight. And stashed within that junk is a trove of crucial data: a memory fragment left by LK’s former CEO, the control of which will determine the company’s—and humanity’s—future.

Racing up the elevator to retrieve the data is a host of rival forces: Mac, the novel’s narrator and LK’s chief of External Affairs, increasingly disillusioned with his employer; the everyman Choi Gangwu, unwittingly at the center of Mac’s investigations; the former CEO’s brilliant niece and power-hungry son; and Rex Tamaki, a violent officer in LK’s Security Division. They’re all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implants called Worms, and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect Patusan’s sovereignty.

Originally conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hard-boiled detective fiction, and part parable of South Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects. – Pantheon

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Overcoming Adversity:

Overcoming Adversity: Fiction novel with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for people 14 and older.

The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis

Two bold, utopic communities are at the heart of Ayana Mathis’s searing follow-up to her bestselling debut, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. Bonaparte, Alabama – once 10,000 glorious Black-owned acres – is now a ghost town vanishing to depopulation, crooked developers, and an eerie mist closing in on its shoreline. Dutchess Carson, Bonaparte’s fiery, tough-talking protector, fights to keep its remaining one thousand acres in the hands of the last five residents. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, her estranged daughter Ava is drawn into Ark – a seductive, radical group with a commitment to Black self-determination in the spirit of the Black Panthers and MOVE, with a dash of the Weather Underground’s violent zeal. Ava’s eleven-year-old son Toussaint wants out – his future awaits him on his grandmother’s land, where the sounds of cicada and frog song might save him if only he can make it there.

In Mathis’s electrifying novel, Bonaparte is both mythic landscape and spiritual inheritance, and 1980s Philadelphia is its raw, darkly glittering counterpoint. The Unsettled is a spellbinding portrait of two fierce women reckoning with the steep cost of resistance: What legacy will we leave our children? Where can we be free? – Knopf

This title is also available in large print.

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Rainbow Reads:

Rainbow reads: Fiction novel with LGBTQ+ main character(s).

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men.

Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—and they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much. – Grove

This title is also available in large print.

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Stranger Things:

Stranger Things: Horror novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.

Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.

When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.

Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.

But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers—and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever. – Del Rey

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Young Adult Fiction:

Young Adult Fiction: Fiction chapter book with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for children 14 and older.

This Town is On Fire by Pamela N. Harris

A lot is up in the air in Naomi Henry’s life: her spot as a varsity cheer flier, her classmates’ reaction to the debut of her natural hair, and her crush on the guy who’s always been like a brother to her. With so much uncertainty, she feels lucky to have a best friend like Kylie to keep her grounded. After all, they’re practically sisters—Naomi’s mom took care of Kylie and her twin brother for years.

But then a video of Kylie calling the cops on two Black teens in a shopping store parking lot goes viral. Naomi is shaken, and her town is reeling from the publicity. While Naomi tries to reckon with Kylie, the other Black students in their high school are questioning their friendship, and her former friends are wondering where this new “woke” Naomi came from. Although Naomi wants to stand by her best friend, she now can’t help but see everything in a different light.

As tensions in her town escalate, Naomi finds herself engaging in protests that are on the cusp of being illegal. And then a bomb explodes, and someone is found dead. Will Naomi be caught in the center of the blast? – Quill Tree Books

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Join Simply Held to have the newest Fiction picks automatically put on hold for you every quarter.

Library Closed for Good Friday

All three Davenport Public Library locations will be closed Friday, March 29th in observance of Good Friday. All three buildings will reopen with regular business hours on Saturday, March 30th: Main (321 Main Street) 9am to 5:30pm, Eastern (6000 Eastern Avenue) 9am to 5:30pm, and Fairmount (3000 N Fairmount St) 9am to 5:30pm.

Even though our physical locations will be closed, you can still access free digital content for all ages. Your Davenport Public Library card gives you access to free eBooks, digital audiobooks, magazines, movies, and music through LibbyFreegalTumbleBooksQC Beats, and Kanopy!

Have a safe and happy holiday!

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris

Are you wanting to read something outside your comfort zone? Book clubs are an excellent way to expand your reading palette! Lucky for you, the Davenport Public Library has a wide number of different book clubs for you to join. My latest read, The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris, is the April selection for See YA, an adult book club that reads young adult titles.

The author includes a content warning on her website regarding the heavy topics covered in The Cost of Knowing. These topics include: racism, anxiety, depression, poverty, anti-Black violence, self-harm, parental & sibling death, and mentions of slavery and police brutality. If any of these are triggering to you, feel free to scroll to the bottom of this blog post to learn what the next book is that See YA will be discussing. If you’ve decided to give this book a try, below is a brief description to tell you more.

Alex Rufus is trying. He has been through a lot in his sixteen years of life. Right now he’s juggling his job at the local ice cream shop, his relationship with his girlfriend Talia, and protecting his younger brother Isaiah. In his quest to be perfect in all aspects of his life, Alex finds himself struggling, falling short of almost everyone’s expectations of him.

One major hindrance is that Alex can see the future. Every single time he touches an object or person, he is thrust into a vision of that thing. He sees the future of his car, his hoodie, the ice cream scoop he uses at work, and his future with Talia. That one freaks him out the most. In his vision of Talia, they are on the verge of breaking up with her looking at him with the most hatred in her eyes that he has ever seen. Alex spends his time cursing these visions, wishing that they would stop distracting him so that he could live an anxious-free ordinary life.

Alex’s desire to get rid of these visions increases when touching a photograph calls forth a vision of his younger brother Isaiah’s fast approaching death. Everything changes. Alex is desperate to find a way to break himself from these visions and change the future. Wanting more time with Isaiah, time that he knows he won’t get, he reaches out, bringing up memories of the past while looking for more ways of connection. Growing up as young Black men in America, Alex and Isaiah have had to wrestle with their pasts and their futures, but with such a short amount of time left, Alex is willing to try anything to win this battle against time and death.

This title is also available as a CD audiobook.

See YA (2024)

Join the adult book club with a teen book twist. See why so many teen books are being turned into movies and are taking over the bestseller lists. Registration is not required. Books are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Eastern Branch. The club meets the first Wednesday of the month at the Eastern Branch at 6:30pm. You can find more information about See YA by visiting LibCal, our online event calendar.

If you’re interested in joining See YA, we will be meeting Wednesday, April 3rd at 6:30pm at the Davenport Public Library | Eastern Avenue Branch to discuss The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris.

April 3: The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris
May 1: Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
June 5: The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

Women’s History Month Reading Challenge 2024

Celebrate Women’s History Month! Log your reading and complete activities to earn badges throughout the challenge. Earn an entry into a drawing for one of our grand prizes for every badge earned.

This reading challenge is live on Beanstack from March 1, 2024 to March 31, 2024. Curious what you need to do? Sign up on Beanstack today either online or on the app!

Needs ideas about what to read? Try any of these women’s history books.

Juvenile Nonfiction

Cut!: how Lotte Reiniger and a pair of scissors revolutionized animation by C.E. Winters

Jovita wore pants: the story of a Mexican freedom fighter by Aida Salazar

Little Rosetta and the talking guitar: the musical story of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the woman who invented rock and roll by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow

Love is loud: how Diane Nash led the Civil Rights Movement by Sandra Neil Wallace

To boldy go: how Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek helped advance civil rights by Angela Dalton

The Van Buren Sisters vs. the pants police by Jennifer Fox

The woman in the moon: how Margaret Hamilton helped fly the first astronauts to the moon by Richard Maurer

Adult Nonfiction

Brooding over Bloody Revenge: enslaved women’s lethal resistance by Nikki Marie Taylor

The exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the fight for women in science by Kate Zernike

Looking through the speculum: examining the women’s health movement by Judith A. Houck

The Lost Princess: women writers and the history of classic fairy tales by Anne E. Duggan

Madame Restell: the life, death, and resurrection of old New York’s most fabulous, fearless, and infamous abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory

Proving Ground: the untold story of the six women who programmed the world’s first modern computer by Kathy Kleiman

A Rome of one’s own: the forgotten women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon

The six: the untold story of America’s first women astronauts by Loren Grush

Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism by Brooke Kroeger

Young queens: three Renaissance women and the price of power by Leah L. Chang

Social Work Spotlight: Quad Cities Open Network IRIS Resource Hub

Quad Cities Open Network IRIS Resource Hub

This month, our resource spotlight is on the Quad Cities Open Network (QCON), a collaboration of over 116 Health and Human service organizations. Their shared mission is to bolster community well-being through a robust human services sector. Quad Cities Open Network maintains an Information and Referral Hub that assists agencies in connecting Quad Citizens to the resources they need.

Established in 2020, The Quad Cities Open Network Hub utilizes IRIS, an information and referral tool created by the University of Kansas to facilitate warm hand offs between providers as Quad Citizens in a person-centered way. The hub has evolved to include eighty-five human service providers. These organizations work with QCON to simplify services and referrals, ensuring seamless support for individuals and families in the Quad Cities. According to Cecelia Bailey, QCON Executive Director, ‘navigating community resources during a crisis can be overwhelming’. The IRIS hub’s primary goal is to create a centralized access point, providing individuals and families with a single-entry point to connect to the most relevant resources or services tailored to their needs.

Within the hub, each organization is detailed with an explanation of their services, facilitating efficient referrals. This streamlined process identifies available services and ensures that client’s needs are appropriately addressed, minimizing service gaps and allowing for easy follow-up. Effective communication among the organizations within IRIS is crucial in bridging service gaps. QCON aims to expand the platform to foster a collaborative environment where member agencies complement each other.

The vast network of providers empowers community members, and as the number of participating agencies grows, QCON strives to make a substantial impact through its Resource Hub. The hub’s significance becomes evident during natural disasters as a crucial centralized entry point for coordinating emergency support and resources. Notably, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was pivotal in providing a centralized hub for individuals and families to access emergency support and resources.

QCON envisions the Hub as a new standard for information and referral systems, serving as a best practice model for other communities. By collecting data on service gaps and overlaps, QCON aims to inform member agencies, fostering greater collaboration across a sector with finite resources.

All organizations in the Quad Cities committed to serving the local communities are welcome to become part of the IRIS platform. By participating in this initiative, you not only increase awareness for the valuable services you provide but also facilitate smoother referrals. This, in turn, promotes a more interconnected and supportive community where collaboration and communication thrive for the benefit of all. If you want to learn more about how to join IRIS and partner with QCON, please email TheOpenNetworkQC@gmail.com.

Library Closed for President’s Day

All three Davenport Public Library locations will be closed Monday, February 19th in observance of President’s Day. All three buildings will reopen with regular business hours on Tuesday, February 20th: Main (321 Main Street) 9am to 5:30pm, Eastern (6000 Eastern Avenue) 9am to 8:00pm, and Fairmount (3000 N Fairmount St) noon to 8:00pm.

Even though our physical locations will be closed, you can still access free digital content for all ages. Your Davenport Public Library card gives you access to free eBooks, digital audiobooks, magazines, movies, and music through LibbyFreegalTumbleBooksQC Beats, and Kanopy!

Have a safe and happy holiday!

We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez

“Because the world doesn’t care how much pain you are in, or what terrible thing has happened to you. It continues. Morning comes, whether you want it to or not.”
― Jenny Torres Sanchez, We Are Not From Here

I haven’t read a quote that epitomizes a book quite as well as the above quote does for Jenny Torres Sanchez’s newest young adult fiction title, We Are Not From Here. Pulga, Chico, and Pequeña don’t have much, but they have each other. The small town where they have grown up isn’t the best town, but they know what they are up against. When danger comes at the three, alone they are lost, but together they realize that the only option they have left is to run. The threats come right to their doors leaving them with no other option: they have to leave their families and their country. In a desperate bid to survive, Pulga, Chico, and Pequeña cross from Guatemala through Mexico along the route of La Bestia, surfing atop this deadly freight train that will deliver them to the United States if they are lucky enough to stay alive. All they have are each other, the bags on their backs, and the need to have a better life. Outrunning the darkness chasing them will be the hardest thing these three do in their lives.

This book is a painfully relevant and devastating read. It shook me to the core, yet had me unable to put the book down. Jenny Torres Sanchez discusses the lives of migrants at the United States southern border with vivid realism, not shying away from the devastating and deadly realities that many immigrant families face. She is brutally honest while telling this incredibly timely story.

This title is also available as a CD Audiobook and in Spanish.

Want to talk about We Are Not From Here with others? Join See YA! See YA is our adult book club with a teen book twist. See why so many teen books are being turned into movies and are taking over the best seller lists. Registration is not required. Books are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Eastern Avenue library. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at Eastern at 6:30pm.  Our next four months of books are listed below:

March 6 – We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez

April 3 – The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris

May 1 – Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

June 5 – The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

Black History Month Challenge 2024

Celebrate Black History Month! This month, learn more about Black history, celebrate Black authors and illustrators, and explore Black history through the arts. Log your reading and activities throughout the month to earn badges and tickets to enter into our prize drawings!

This reading challenge is live on Beanstack from February 1st, 2024 to March 2, 2024. Curious what you need to do? Sign up on Beanstack today either online or on the app!

 

Needs ideas about what to read? Try any of these Black history books

Juvenile Nonfiction

I am Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford

Seeking Freedom: The Untold Story of Frances Monroe and the Ending of Slavery in America by Selene Castrovilla

Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi

Young, Gifted and Black, Too by Jamia Wilson

Young Adult Nonfiction

And We Rise: The Civil Rights Movement in Poems by Erica Martin

The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 by Tim Madigan

Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by himself by Lesley Younge

Revolution in Our Time: the Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon

Stolen Justice: The Struggle for African American Voting Rights by Lawrence Goldstone

Adult Nonfiction

Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation by Kris Manjapra

Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western by Mia Mask

Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip through the Living History of Black Resistance by Alvin D. Hall

Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy, and a Quest to Honor America’s first Black Generals by Doug Melville

Twice As Hard: The Stories of Black Women who Fought to Become Physicians from the Civil War to the 21st Century by Jasmine Brown

New QC Beats Albums

Three new albums are now available on QC Beats! Check out Say It Again by Subatlantic, Witness Trees by David G. Smith, and Running Man by Running Man.

QC Beats is an online streaming audio collection of original music featuring Quad Cities musicians and artists. QC Beats is a collaboration between Davenport Public Library, Bettendorf Public Library, and St. Ambrose University.

 

Library Closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

All three Davenport Public Library locations will be closed Monday, January 15th in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. All three buildings will reopen with the regular hours on Tuesday, January 16th: Main (321 Main Street) 9am to 5:30pm, Eastern (6000 Eastern Avenue) 9am to 8:00pm, and Fairmount (3000 N Fairmount St) noon to 8:00pm.

Even though our physical locations will be closed, you can still access free digital content for all ages. Your Davenport Public Library card gives you access to free eBooks, digital audiobooks, magazines, movies, and music through LibbyFreegalTumbleBooksQC Beats, and Kanopy!

Have a safe and happy holiday!