Upcoming Events

This event is in the "Adults" group
This event is in the "Families" group

Moms with Moms Group

10:00am–11:00am
Adults, Families
Health & Movement
Library Branch: Allendale Township Library
Room: Meeting Room
Age Group: Adults, Families
Program Type: Health & Movement
Event Details:

All moms and children welcome! Join this maternal support group for play time and bonding with other mothers. Includes free coffee and tea.

This event is in the "Adults" group

Knitting for Allendale

2:00pm–4:00pm
Adults
Arts & Crafts
Library Branch: Allendale Township Library
Room: Meeting Room
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Arts & Crafts
Event Details:

Join us for a relaxing couple hours of knitting or crocheting for a local cause. Yarn, hooks and needles included, but feel free to bring your own or some to share.

This event is in the "Youth" group
This event is in the "Babies (Ages 0-2)" group
This event is in the "Children (Ages 2-6)" group

Play N Learn

10:00am–11:00am
Youth, Babies (Ages 0-2), Children (Ages 2-6)
Educational Skills, Games, Storytime
Library Branch: Allendale Township Library
Room: Meeting Room
Age Group: Youth, Babies (Ages 0-2), Children (Ages 2-6)
Program Type: Educational Skills, Games, Storytime
Event Details:

Play N Learns are programs based on a children's book, with a story, finger plays, crafts, and activities centered around the book. Each family receives a free book to take home. Presented by Ottawa Area ISD.

Disclaimer(s)

Accompanying Caregiver

This program is designed for children and an accompanying caregiver. Please plan to attend and be engaged with your child for this program.

This event is in the "Adults" group
This event is in the "Families" group

Moms with Moms Group

10:00am–11:00am
Adults, Families
Health & Movement
Library Branch: Allendale Township Library
Room: Meeting Room
Age Group: Adults, Families
Program Type: Health & Movement
Event Details:

All moms and children welcome! Join this maternal support group for play time and bonding with other mothers. Includes free coffee and tea.

This event is in the "Youth" group
This event is in the "Teens (Ages 11-18)" group

Candy Cane Taste Test (for teens)

2:00pm–3:00pm
Youth, Teens (Ages 11-18)
Food, Games
Open
Registration Required
Library Branch: Allendale Township Library
Room: Meeting Room
Age Group: Youth, Teens (Ages 11-18)
Program Type: Food, Games
Registration Required
Event Details:

Do you have what it... tastes? Join us for a taste testing of unique candy cane flavors. Food allergens may be present. For ages 11-18. Registration required.

Disclaimer(s)

Food allergens

Food allergens may be present.

This event is in the "Youth" group
This event is in the "Babies (Ages 0-2)" group
This event is in the "Children (Ages 2-6)" group
This event is in the "School Age (Ages 6-10)" group
This event is in the "Teens (Ages 11-18)" group
This event is in the "Adults" group
This event is in the "Families" group
This event is in the "All Ages" group

Drop-In Craft: Card Decorating

10:00am–7:00pm
Youth, Babies (Ages 0-2), Children (Ages 2-6), School Age (Ages 6-10), Teens (Ages 11-18), Adults, Families, All Ages
Arts & Crafts
Library Branch: Allendale Township Library
Room: Meeting Room
Age Group: Youth, Babies (Ages 0-2), Children (Ages 2-6), School Age (Ages 6-10), Teens (Ages 11-18), Adults, Families, All Ages
Program Type: Arts & Crafts
Event Details:

Drop in anytime between 10 AM and 7 PM to decorate holiday cards! All supplies provided. For all ages.

Staff Picks

Image for "The Idaho Four"

The Idaho Four

Instant #1 New York Times bestseller!



"A vivid portrait...a sensitive tribute...a paean to youth, community, and the tenacity of local law enforcement." --New York Times 



"A mesmerizing read and a great detective story, yet sadly all true...With their book The Idaho Four, James Patterson and Vicky Ward have written perhaps the definitive account of the murders--a disturbing, necessary portrait of a killer and his victims." --Guardian



"New revelations...James Patterson and Vicky Ward reveal new details and attempt to lift the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the Idaho college murders case for more than two years." --Good Morning America



"This is much more than a true crime book. It's a vivid exploration of the range of human response when faceless terror strikes. It's a portrait of America in this polarized moment." --Town & Country



"A lot of brand-new reporting. Clears up a number of mysteries." --Morning Joe



The murders of four innocent college students attending the University of Idaho left us all with so many questions. Now, after more than 300 interviews, James Patterson and prize-winning journalist Vicky Ward finally have the answers.



We know what it was like to live in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022, the day of the cold-blooded killings. We know what the local police and FBI did right. And what they did wrong. We've learned so much about the four heartbroken families--the Mogens, Goncalveses, Kernodles, and Chapins. And we have the backstory for Bryan Kohberger, brilliant grad student, loner, apparent incel.



Now you are the jury. The evidence is in.



You've watched the Prime documentary, One Night in Idaho, now read the "clearest profile yet of the twisted quadruple killer and his motives" (New York Post).

Image for "Everything Is Tuberculosis"

Everything Is Tuberculosis

Instant #1 New York Times bestseller! • #1 Washington Post bestseller! • #1 Indie Bestseller! • USA Today Bestseller!

John Green, acclaimed author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

“The real magic of Green’s writing is the deeply considerate, human touch that goes into every word.” –The Associated Press

″Told with the intelligence, wit, and tragedy that have become hallmarks of the author’s work.... This is the story of us.” –Slate

“Earnest and empathetic.” –The New York Times

Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be­came fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

Image for "The Way of Kings"

The Way of Kings

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive, begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths:

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.

Other Tor books by Brandon Sanderson

The Cosmere
The Stormlight Archive
The Way of Kings
Words of Radiance
Edgedancer (novella)
Oathbringer
Dawnshard (novella)
Rhythm of War

The Mistborn Saga
The Original Trilogy
Mistborn
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages

Wax and Wayne
The Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
The Bands of Mourning
The Lost Metal

Other Cosmere novels
Elantris
Warbreaker
Tress of the Emerald Sea
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
The Sunlit Man

Collection
Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series
Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians
The Scrivener's Bones
The Knights of Crystallia
The Shattered Lens
The Dark Talent
Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians (with Janci Patterson)

Other novels
The Rithmatist
Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds
The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

Other books by Brandon Sanderson

The Reckoners
Steelheart
Firefight
Calamity

Skyward
Skyward
Starsight
Cytonic
Skyward Flight (with Janci Patterson)
Defiant

Image for "Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club)"

Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club)

Oprah’s Book Club Pick * New Yorker Best Books of 2025 * 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist * Kirkus Best Books of 2025 * Real Simple Best Books of 2025 * Washington Post Noteable Fiction 2025 * NPR's 2025 "Books We Love" * Minnesota Star Tribune 20 Best of 2025 *

“I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!”—Oprah Winfrey

“The most of-the-moment novel I’ve read all year, and it’s the book of the summer.”—Real Simple

“If you want an engaging novel sure to spark great discussion about that thorny [AI] future, this is it.”Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"A gripping, impossibly timely thriller." —one of NPR's "Books We Love"

A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.

 

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI. 
 

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

 

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The Measure

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope--read with us." --Jenna Bush Hager

A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they'll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn't have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.

Image for "The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches"

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“This is one of my coziest reads of the last year, and I find myself thinking about its enchanted setting all the time.”−Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author

USA TODAY BESTSELLER • A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family—and a new love—changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she’s used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and…Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he’s concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when peril comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn’t know she was looking for....

Image for "We Live Here Now"

We Live Here Now

Limited edition printing with stenciled edges
USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "Atmospheric, immersive, surprising and as dark as wet tires." —New York Times Book Review

“Brilliant. . . The twist completely blew my mind. I adored every page.” —Lisa Jewell

Award-winning author of New York Times bestselling breakout novel (and hit Netflix show) Behind Her Eyes returns with a haunting Gothic novel about a house—and a marriage—gone terribly wrong.

After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking—and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong.

Old boards creak at night, fires go out, and books fall from the shelves, and all of it stems from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room. But these things happen only when Emily’s alone, so are they happening at all? She’s still medically fragile; her postsepsis condition can cause hallucinatory side effects, which means she can’t fully trust her own senses. Freddie doesn’t notice anything odd and is happy with their chance at a fresh start.

Emily, however, starts to believe that the house is being haunted by someone who was murdered in it, though she can find no evidence of a wrongful death. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge.

But if the house has secrets, so do Emily and her husband.

And they live here now. 

“All marriages have secrets. All houses have a past. But not like this one. This is Sarah Pinborough at her mind-bending best.”
—Ruth Ware, bestselling author of One Perfect Couple

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Every Living Thing

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth

“[An] engaging and thought-provoking book, one focused on the theatrical politics and often deeply troubling science that shape our definitions of life on Earth.”—The New York Times

“A fluent and engaging account of the eighteenth-century origins of Darwinism before Darwin.”—The Wall Street Journal 

WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?

Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.

In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.

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Babel

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War

"Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out." -- Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation--also known as Babel.

Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working--the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars--has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide...

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

ALL first edition copies will be signed by the author! Signed copies available while supplies last.

“Unmissable... Nobody can write like V. E. Schwab” —Jodi Picoult

#1 New York Times bestseller • #1 USA Today bestseller • #1 National Indie bestseller • #1 IndieNext List, June 2025

A MOST ANTICIPATED Pick from USA Today • New York Times Book Review • US Weekly • ELLE • TIME • Betches • AutoStraddle• Katie Couric Media • Men’s Health • Woman’s World • Reader’s Digest • Goodreads • Paste Magazine • The Nerd Daily • BookRiot • Bookbub • ScreenRant • The Portalist • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal

The new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger from V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life—how it ends, and how it starts.

"Schwab has impressively woven a compelling character drama and feminist critique into a horror thriller...sumptuous descriptions of place and time, and the slow-burn melodrama between each of the women... a tale told sharply but sweetly enough it goes down as easy as that happy-hour cocktail that, surprisingly, knocks you flat." —New York Times 

“Schwab sends you whirling through a dizzying kaleidoscopic adventure through centuries filled with love, loss, art and war—all the while dazzling your senses with hundreds of tiny magical moments along the way.” —Naomi Novik

Image for "Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick"

Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • From the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

The stunning hardcover of Atmosphere features beautiful endpapers and a premium dust jacket!

“Thrilling . . . heartbreaking . . . uplifting . . . the fast-paced, emotionally charged story of one ambitious young woman, finding both her voice and her passion.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Women

“NASA? Space missions? The ’80s? This is a collection of all the things I love.”—Andy Weir, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.