Book of the Week (6/1/2026)

Skyland: A Novel by Ann Joslin Williams (Islandport Press, 2026)

When Celia is murdered by a troubled young man from across the street, her husband Henry and daughters Nora and Lucy are left to navigate the unthinkable in their small town of Kittery, Maine. Desperate to help his daughters heal, Henry sends the girls to spend the summer at Skyland Farm, a remote artists' retreat in the New Hampshire mountains run by his beloved cousin Franny.

But the girls, feeling abandoned, struggle to find their footing among the resident artists. Nora grapples with her complicated feelings about Blake, the young man who destroyed their lives, while forming a new bond with a young sculptor. Lucy, the sole witness to the murder, retreats into silence and the mysterious world of a painting above her bed. Back in Maine, Henry battles his own grief and faces his greatest test when he becomes entangled with Blake's alcoholic mother, threatening his twelve years of sobriety.

As the family struggles separately with their trauma, the buried details of that terrible day slowly surface. When Nora makes a desperate midnight drive home to confront her father, their journey becomes a reckoning that will either destroy what remains of their family or finally allow them to face their loss together.

Set against the rugged beauty of coastal Maine and the mountainous landscape of New Hampshire, Skyland reveals how art, nature, and unexpected friendships can slowly guide us back from the brink―and how families can find their way to one another even after the unthinkable. -- Publishers blurb

About the author:

Ann Joslin Williams is the author of the novel Down From Cascom Mountain, and a collection of linked short stories The Woman in the Woods. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, the New Hampshire Writers’ Project Literary Awards, and the Stegner Program at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in many journals including The Sun, Carve, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor emerita of English at the University of New Hampshire. She enjoys spending time in Alexandria, New Hampshire at her family cabin, hiking in the White Mountains and enjoying the outdoors with her partner John.

Join Ann at Gibson's Bookstore on Tuesday, July 14, 2026 at 6:30 pm where she will be presenting her newest novel!

Dublin Literary Award Winner 2026

Gliff by Ali Smith has been selected as the winner of the 2026 Dublin Literary Award.

About the Book:

"An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world.

Add two children. And a horse.

From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever." --Publisher's blurb

Book of the Week (5/25/2026)

Midnight Curfew by Penelope Douglas (Berkley, 2026)

Summertime is off-season in southern Florida. Families leave their homes to escape the heat, the streets are empty, and the nights are quiet. Perfect time for a little mischief while the police aren’t looking.

As the middle Jaeger brother, Dallas was often lost in the shuffle growing up. Now a man, he’s prideful of his community on the wrong side of the tracks—Sanoa Bay—and aggressively protective of his land and his inner circle. He’s hungry and ready for a fight.

Callum Ames has a reputation in St. Carmen, the affluent neighborhood abutting Sanoa Bay. The hottest. The most popular. Rich. Powerful. Strong. The one all the women want. After four years away, he’s back, but for all his bravado, he’s got one major secret: he doesn’t want a woman.

Summer is also storm season. Heat, wind, rain…

And a lockdown.  

In a desperate bid to impress his influential father, Callum suggests a curfew to hinder their rivals in the Bay.

Unfortunately, the Jaegers don’t like rules.

As Dallas and Callum face off and engage, out for each other’s blood, they can’t stop the consuming fire between them and the outcome they already see coming…

The storm of the century. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Penelope Douglas is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Their books have been translated into twenty languages and include the Fall Away series, the Hellbent series, the Devil’s Night series, and the stand-alones Misconduct, Punk 57, Birthday Girl, Credence, and Tryst Six Venom. They live in New Hampshire with their husband and daughter.

Book of the Week (5/18/2026)

Pretty Evil New England: True Stories of Violent Vixens and Murderous Matriarchs by Sue Coletta (Globe Pequot Publishing, 2020)

For four centuries, New England has been a cradle of crime and murder—from the Salem witch trials to the modern-day mafia. Nineteenth century New England was the hunting ground of five female serial killers: Jane Toppan, Lydia Sherman, Nellie Webb, Harriet E. Nason, and Sarah Jane Robinson.

Female killers are often portrayed as caricatures: Black Widows, Angels of Death, or Femme Fatales. But the real stories of these women are much more complex. In Pretty Evil New England, true crime author Sue Coletta tells the story of these five women, from broken childhoods, to first brushes with death, and she examines the overwhelming urges that propelled these women to take the lives of a combined total of more than one-hundred innocent victims. The murders, investigations, trials, and ultimate verdicts will stun and surprise readers as they live vicariously through the killers and the would-be victims that lived to tell their stories. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Sue Coletta is an award-winning crime writer and an active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Her backlist includes psychological thrillers, the Mayhem Series books, psychological thriller/mysteries, Grafton County Series, and true crime/narrative nonfiction, Pretty Evil New England. Sue lives with her husband in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.

Book of the Week (5/11/2026)

Dead Horse Soup: Frank Barker's Klondike Gold Rush by Thomas Haynes (Historical Society of Cheshire County, 2026)

Frank Barker first learned about the rush to the Klondike gold fields through his local Keene, New Hampshire newspapers. For months, beginning on July 17, 1897, the almost daily references to the Klondike promoted a story that anyone with the right fortitude and determination could find gold. As a young working-class man seeking adventure and wealth after living through the depression of the mid 1890s, this was an opportunity he was not going to pass up.

For seven months Frank Barker planned his trip to the Klondike, which included finding the right people to accompany him, organizing what food, tools, and equipment to bring, transportation, and raising enough money to cover the expedition’s costs.

With his plans complete, Frank Barker leads his three partners on a once in a lifetime adventure to live out their dreams of becoming wealthy miners, while enduring the many hardships on their two-year quest for gold in the Klondike.

After reading about the gold rush to the Klondike through his local Keene, New Hampshire newspapers, Frank Barker begins to dream about becoming a wealthy gold miner. After much planning, Barker’s dream turns real in February of 1898, when he leads three partners on a once in a lifetime adventure to the Klondike. Using Barker’s own words from the letters he wrote home and the photographs he took of the journey, his story reveals the excitement and hardships they experience on their two-year quest for gold in the Klondike. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Tom Haynes is a Keene, NH author. Previous works include "The Power of Water : the History of Water Powered Mills in the Monadnock Region" in which he was editor.

2026 Great Stone Face Award winner!

Faker by Gordon Korman is the winner of this year's Great Stone Face Award with almost 400 votes!

"Trey knows how the trick works: His dad gets him into a school full of kids with rich parents. Trey makes friends, and his father makes connections. Soon, there’s the con, where Trey’s dad suckers the other parents into giving him money for one of his schemes. Once the money’s in the bank, Trey, his sister, and their dad go on the run … until they set up somewhere else and start again.

Trey believes his father when he says no one’s getting hurt. After all, these parents have money to spare. Still, Trey’s getting tired of running … and lying … and never having a friend longer than a few months. But how do you get your family to stop lying when your lives depend on it?" --Publisher's blurb

For more information about this award, visit: https://www.nhlibrarians.org/CLNH-Book-Awards

2026 Isinglass & Flume Award winners!

The votes are in and the 2026 Isinglass and Flume Award winners have been announced!

This year's Isinglass (7th and 8th grade) winner is:

 Under the Surface by Diana Urban

"Ruby is terrified to cave to her feelings for Sean and risk him crushing her heart.

Sean is pumped to spend a week with Ruby in Paris on their senior class trip, and he’ll wait however long until she’s ready to take things further.

But when Ruby’s best friend sneaks out the first night to meet a mysterious French boy, Ruby goes after her with two classmates, but caves to another temptation: attending mystery boy’s exclusive party in the Paris catacombs, the intricate web of tunnels beneath the city, home to six million long-dead Parisians. Only they never reach the party.

Underground, as something sinister chases them, they get lost in the endless maze of bones, uncovering dark secrets about the catacombs…..and each other. And if they can’t find a way out, they’ll die in the dark beneath the City of Light.

Aboveground, Sean races to find the girl he loves as a media frenzy over the four missing teens begins." -- Publisher's blurb

 

This year's Flume (9th-12th grade) winner is:

The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall

"Hollis Beckwith isn’t trying to get a girl—she’s just trying to get by. For a fat, broke girl with anxiety, the start of senior year brings enough to worry about. And besides, she already has a boyfriend: Chris. Their relationship isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s comfortable and familiar, and Hollis wants it to survive beyond senior year. To prove she’s a girlfriend worth keeping, Hollis decides to learn Chris’s favorite tabletop role-playing game, Secrets & Sorcery—but his unfortunate “No Girlfriends at the Table” rule means she’ll need to find her own group if she wants in.

Enter: Gloria Castañeda and her all-girls game of S&S! Crowded at the table in Gloria’s cozy Ohio apartment, the six girls battle twisted magic in-game and become fast friends outside it. With her character as armor, Hollis starts to believe that maybe she can be more than just fat, anxious, and a little lost.

But then an in-game crush develops between Hollis’s character and the bard played by charismatic Aini Amin-Shaw, whose wide, cocky grin makes Hollis’s stomach flutter. As their gentle flirting sparks into something deeper, Hollis is no longer sure what she wants…or if she’s content to just play pretend." -- Publisher's blurb

Please keep encouraging teens to apply for the Flume and Isinglass Committee! 

Teen Application Link: https://forms.gle/MRUupeXa4WxNgqYs7

Librarian Application Link: https://forms.gle/3VLKDzaLxtY9NW8o6

Teen Recommendation Link: https://forms.gle/MsTdS3VkirFoH5Yd9