Upcoming Events

This event is in the "Hamilton Library" group.

Indoor Scavenger Hunt

All Day 11/1 - 11/27
Hamilton Library
Library Branch: Hamilton Library
Age Group: Children
Program Type: Entertainment & Games
Event Details:

Nov 1 - 30

  Ages 5 - 11

This event is in the "Oxford Library" group.

Bookend Painting Contest

All Day 11/1 - 11/30
Oxford Library
Library Branch: Oxford Library
Age Group: Teens
Program Type: Arts & Crafts
Event Details:

Nov 1 - 30

  Ages 12 - 18

  Teen artists and book lovers are invited to paint a bookend with your design. Community members will vote for the best during the first week of December. 

This event is in the "Lane Community Technology Center" group.

3D Printed Car Take & Make

All Day 11/4 - 11/9
Lane Community Technology Center
Library Branch: Lane Community Technology Center
Age Group: Children, Teens, Adults
Program Type: Arts & Crafts
Event Details:

Nov 4 - 9

  All ages

  Visit the Tech Center any time this week to receive a 3D printed take & make kit and build a wind-up toy car! (Limit 3 per household, while supplies last.)

This event is in the "Fairfield Library" group.

LGBTQIA+ Book Club

6:00pm - 7:00pm
Fairfield Library
Registration
Library Branch: Fairfield Library
Room: Fairfield Computer Lab
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Books & Reading
Registration Required
Event Details:

This book club features a wide range of queer books with prominent LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC representation. Readers will have a chance to connect with community partners in a safe space, learn from others and share experiences.

This event is in the "Hamilton Library" group.

Only Murders in the Library

6:00pm - 7:45pm
Hamilton Library
Library Branch: Hamilton Library
Room: Hamilton Meeting Room
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Games
Event Details:

Listen to a true crime podcast and then come to join the discussion! This quarter we are covering the case of Kristen Smart's murder in 1996 and the subsequent trial of Paul Flores in 2022. 

This event is in the "Fairfield Library" group.

*Family Story Time

6:30pm - 7:30pm
Fairfield Library
Library Branch: Fairfield Library
Room: Fairfield Meeting Room
Age Group: Children
Program Type: Story Time
Event Details:

Families

  Explore fun stories, songs and rhymes in this interactive story time geared towards ages 2 - 6. (Thursday story times are repeats of Wednesday sessions.)

Disclaimer(s)

* Participants must be accompanied by a parent or caregiver.

New, Coming Soon & Bestsellers

Image for "By the Fire We Carry"

By the Fire We Carry

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Impeccably researched. . . . A fascinating book and an important one." -- Washington Post

"[A] brilliant, kaleidoscopic debut. . . . Nagle's narrative is lucid and moving. . . . A showstopper." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

Most Anticipated Book of the Fall: Washington Post, People, Los Angeles Times, Parade, Bustle, Book Riot

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests--in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn't have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle's own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.

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Becoming Little Shell

A People Magazine "Best New Book of the Month"
 

A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2024

"I'm in awe of Chris La Tray's storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multilayered narrative from threads of personal, family, community, tribal, and national histories."--Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother's consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage.

When La Tray attended his grandfather's funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. "Who were they?" he wondered, and "Why was I never allowed to know them?" Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists, elders, and historians, La Tray embarks on a journey into his family's past, discovering along the way a larger story of the complicated history of Indigenous communities--as well as the devastating effects of colonialism that continue to ripple through surviving generations. And as he comes to embrace his full identity, he eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, joining their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition.

Both personal and historical, Becoming Little Shell is a testament to the power of storytelling, to family and legacy, and to finding home. Infused with candor, heart, wisdom, and an abiding love for a place and a people, Chris La Tray's remarkable journey is both revelatory and redemptive.

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Wandering Stars

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.

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The Indian Card

A groundbreaking and deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment, and what it means to be Native American in the United States 

“Candid, unflinching . . . Her thorough excavation of the painful history that gave rise to rigid enrollment policies is a courageous gift to our understanding of contemporary Native life.” —The Whiting Foundation Jury 

Who is Indian enough?

To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded—increasing 85 percent in just ten years—the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe.

In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity—the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children—she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today’s Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.

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Where They Last Saw Her

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the award-winning author of the Cash Blackbear series comes a compelling novel of a Native American woman who learns of the disappearance of one of her own and decides enough is enough. 

All they heard was her scream.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring.

Things are different now for Quill than when she was a lonely girl. Her friends Punk and Gaylyn are two women who don’t know what it means to quit; her loving husband, Crow, and their two beautiful children challenge her to be better every day. So when she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it—starting with investigating the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes.

As Quill closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends, family? As Quill puts everything on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being considered invisible.

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The Serviceberry

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”

As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer is donating her advance payments from this book as a reciprocal gift, back to the land, for land protection, restoration, and justice.

Image for "The Mighty Red"

The Mighty Red

A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION

In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.

History is a flood. The mighty red . . .

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.

Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter's and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.

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A Snake Falls to Earth

Newbery Honor Winner

National Indie Bestseller

National Book Award Longlist

Minneapolis Star Tribune Best of the Year

Publishers Weekly Best of the Year

Kirkus Best the Year

Apple Best of the Year

Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best

New York Public Library's Best of the Year

Autostraddle's Best Queer Books of the Year



"A spellbinding tale."--Texas Monthly



"Genre-bending."--TIME



"Undeniably charming."--Tor.com



★ "Evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling."--Kirkus (starred)



★ "Fun, imaginative, and deeply immersive, this story will be long in the minds of readers."--Publishers Weekly (starred)



★ "Magical, stunning, and wholly original."--Booklist (starred)



"A highly descriptive story which absorbs the audience into its world, readers will become invested in reading until the very end."--School Library Connection



A Snake Falls to Earth is a breathtaking work of Indigenous futurism. Darcie Little Badger draws on traditional Lipan Apache storytelling structure to weave another unforgettable tale of monsters, magic, and family. It is not to be missed.



Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories.



Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.



Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries.



And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.