Library News

Michelle lecturing our Ale Together Now program in the Community Room.
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Ale Together Now: Back to Basics - Water!

We went back to basics for our most recent Ale Together Now program, exploring how water contributes to beer and how it is used in the brewing process.

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A castle with a blue sky and the text "Fairytale Writing and Art Contest" in blue
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Fairytale Writing and Art Contest: 2025!

Our annual Fairytale Writing and Art Contest has concluded, and once again, we received fantastic entries!

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A graphic of an orange cookbook with a measuring cup and a wooden spoon.
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Recipe Club and Potluck: November 2025

November's Recipe Club and Potluck program featured a variety of delicious, cozy recipes!

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New at Cromaine

Book cover for "You Can Make This!"

You Can Make This!

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Angela Kinsey and extraordinary home chef Joshua Snyder, the couple behind the “wholesome and charming” (Mashable) Baking with Josh and Ange, this family-friendly cookbook featuring more than a hundred recipes—from festive breakfasts to decadent desserts and everything in between—is filled with delicious and warmhearted recipes for every occasion. 

Angela and Josh have curated their most treasured dishes in this warmhearted collection of enticing recipes for home chefs at any skill level. These meals, sides, snacks, and treats are easy to make and even easier to enjoy. 

Find your new favorite weeknight dinner (perhaps marinated skirt steak with chimichurri, or sheet pan chicken and steak fajitas), and discover the perfect soup or side to bring to your next potluck (maybe honey sriracha brussels sprouts, or lemon chicken soup with toasted orzo). Reimagine breakfast for a crowd (think bakery-style granola or the ultimate overnight French toast casserole) and wow your party guests with the perfect dip or appetizer (dig into irresistible Tex-Mex queso, or inimitable Frito chili pie). Angela and Josh have a cookie for every occasion (from cinnamon roll cookies to lemon meltaways to stacked s’mores brownie delights) and will take your cakes and cupcakes to the next level (slice up some gooey chocolate pudding cake, or nosh on lemon-filled cupcakes with toasted meringue). Not to mention muffins, salads, brownies, pies, and so much more to fill your plate. 

Whether you’re looking for inspiration for tonight’s meal, planning ahead for holiday hosting, or hoping to whip up something special for a celebratory night in, Josh and Angela have a story and a recipe for you. And rest assured, with these simple, delicious, and foolproof recipes, you can make this! 

Book cover for "Indian Country"

Indian Country

In this fearless novel from the award-winning author of Girls Burn Brighter, a couple from India—so different from generations of white colonialists who came before them—move to Montana, only to discover how brutal and unforgiving hubris can be.

“Rao’s prose is so controlled it feels as if she’s drawing a masterly bow across violin strings.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A powerful statement on race, colonialism and tradition.”—Ms. Magazine

Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organization that helps street children, often lost to the world of poverty and human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges.

Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam.

Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar's white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister back in India, whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place.

When a colleague of Sagar's is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man's arrogance and expansionism?

Just like the Ganges river that dominates Sagar's dreams, throughout the novel run short historical stories of settlers who conquered both the west and India, and who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand.

A bold, ambitious, stunningly beautiful yet brutal novel about colonialism, westward expansion, and the ramifications of both still rippling out today, Indian Country is a tour de force modern-day classic.

Book cover for "The First Eight"

The First Eight

From one of America's most venerable politicians, The First Eight is an extraordinary work of living history: the powerful, untold story of the pioneering Black politicians from South Carolina who were elected to Congress in the aftermath of the Civil War, and a revealing explanation of why it took nearly a century before the ninth, James Clyburn, was elected.

Today, South Carolina congressman James E. Clyburn is renowned as a Democratic kingmaker and our nation's most august Black political leader. But behind him stand eight other remarkable men: the first Black politicians to go to Congress from his home state, and who blazed a path for his own ascent. Since his own arrival in Congress in the early nineties, Congressman Clyburn has been guided by the wisdom and example of these men, and also instructed by their struggles--especially with the demon of American racism. South Carolina's first eight Black congressmen all rose to office following the Civil War and emancipation, but then the dark veil of Jim Crow fell across the South. It would take nearly a century before the ninth Black representative, Clyburn himself, was elected.

In The First Eight, Congressman Clyburn shares these men's stories, and their message of liberty, with the nation they served. Among them are Joseph Rainey, the first Black politician to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in our nation's history, who was born enslaved in 1832; Robert Smalls, iconic for his heroism during the Civil War, when he fled the Confederacy, stole a ship, and fought for the Union Army; and Richard Cain, who ran a widely read newspaper for Black South Carolinians and is associated with the Emanuel AME Church, one of the oldest and most distinguished Black churches in America, and where neo-Nazi Dylan Roof killed nine Black congregants in a mass shooting in 2015. Through the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and challenges that all nine men faced, Congressman Clyburn reveals a whole new way of understanding the period between the Civil War and the present.

A unique blend of history and memoir, The First Eight is both a monument to the legacies of these eight trailblazing Americans, and also a clear-eyed appraisal of how far we've come, and how far we have left to go, in our nation's ongoing struggle for true democracy.

Book cover for "Bread of Angels"

Bread of Angels

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A radiant new memoir from artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award winner Just Kids

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, THE NEW YORKER

“God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life. A post–World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex where we enter the child’s world of the imagination. Smith, the captain of her loyal and beloved sibling army, vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises, and searches for sacred silver pennies.

The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years where the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative role models as she begins to write poetry then lyrics, ultimately merging both into the songs of iconic recordings such as Horses, Wave, and Easter.

She leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, with whom she creates a life of devotion and adventure on a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Here, she invents a room of her own, a low table, a Persian cup, inkwell and pen, entering at dawn to write. The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical maps and charting new adventures as they start a family.

A series of profound losses mark her life. Grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life and, finally, writing again—the one constant in a life driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Smith on the road again, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.

Book cover for "Beasts of Carnaval"

Beasts of Carnaval

"From the lush setting to the evocative prose to the can't-look-away characters, this is one of my most anticipated novels of the year." --NPR

"Come for the fantasy; stay for the vengeance, and enjoy the beauty of both." --Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange the Dreamer and Daughter of Smoke & Bone

For fans of The Night Circus, this sweeping historical fantasy set in a lush, Puerto Rico-inspired world, uses magical realism to combine Caribbean carnaval culture and the mythology of the Taíno--the Indigenous people of the region--in a gripping exploration of community, reclamation, and healing in defiance of a violent past.

When night descends, el Carnaval de Bestias rises. 

Within the shores of Isla Bestia, guests from around the world discover a utopia of ever-changing performances, sumptuous feasts and beautiful monsters. Many enter, but few ever leave--the wine is simply too sweet, the music too fine and the revelry endless.

Sofía, a freedwoman from a nearby colonized island, cares little for this revelry. Born an enslaved mestiza on a tobacco plantation, she has neither wealth nor title, only a scholarly pragmatism and a hunger for answers. She travels to el Carnaval de Bestias in search of her twin brother, who disappeared five years ago. 

There's a world of wonder waiting for her on the shores of this legendary island, one wherein conquerors profit from Sofia's ancestral lands and her people's labor. But surrounded by her former enslavers, she finds something familiar in the performances--whispers of the island's native tongue, music and stories from her Taike'ri ancestors...a culture long hidden in the shadows, thrust into the light.

As the nights pass, her mind begins unraveling, drowning in the unnatural, almost sentient thrall of Carnaval. And the sense that someone is watching her grows. To find her brother and break free, Sofia must peel back the glamorous curtain and face those behind Carnaval, before she too loses herself to the island...

What you can expect in BEASTS OF CARNVAL:

  • Indigenous Taíno Mythology
  • Themes of Decolonization + Reclamation
  • Atmospheric Island Setting
  • Carnival Culture & Vejigantes
  • Caribbean + Latine Adult Fantasy
  • Historical Fantasy with Magical Realism
  • The Revelry Never Ends
Book cover for "The Zorg"

The Zorg

"A book of great importance and one that will likely become a classic." - New York Times Book Review

A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2025

From the Pulitzer Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Perfect for fans of David Grann’s The Wager and The Wide, Wide Sea by Hampton Sides

In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning “care”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.

By the time its journey ends, the Zorg would become the first undeniable argument against slavery.

When a series of unpredictable weather events and navigational errors led to the Zorg sailing off course and running low on supplies, the ship's captain threw more than a hundred slaves overboard in order to save the crew and the most valuable slaves. The ship's owners then claimed their loss on insurance, a first for slaves who had not been killed due to insurrection or died of natural causes.

The insurers refused to pay due to the higher than usual mortality rate of the slaves on board, leading to a trial which initially found in their favor, in which the Chief Justice compared the slaves to horses. Thanks to the outrage of one man present in court that day, a retrial was held. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery in a courtroom case that boiled down to a simple yet profound question: Were the Africans on board people or cargo?

What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history―sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States.

The Zorg is the astonishing yet little-known true story of the most consequential ship that ever crossed the Atlantic.