Prepare your to-be-read list because we’ve compiled the most circulated items this year from different areas of the library!
Here is what our community loved the most from Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, Children’s Fiction, the Children’s Item Collection, Young Adult, and Movie categories. The descriptions were taken from the library catalog or book publisher.
Enjoy!
Adult Fiction 📚📚
📚The Four Winds: A Novel by Kristin Hannah. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
📚Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She’s barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world — until the unthinkable happens.
📚The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly. Defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is charged with murder and can’t make the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge. Mickey elects to defend himself and must strategize and build his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles, all the while looking over his shoulder, as an officer of the court he is an instant target. Mickey knows he’s been framed. Now, with the help of his trusted team, he has to figure out who has plotted to destroy his life and why. Then he has to go before a judge and jury and prove his innocence.
📚The Return by Nicholas Sparks. Moving into a family beekeeper cabin in New Bern, North Carolina to recuperate from war injuries, Trevor Benson, an Afghanistan veteran, falls in love with deputy sheriff Natalie Masterson while working with Callie, a sullen local teen, to investigate the mystery of his grandfather’s death.
📚Daylight by David Baldacci. For many long years, Atlee Pine was tormented by uncertainty after her twin sister, Mercy, was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Now, just as Atlee is pressured to end her investigation into Mercy’s disappearance, she finally gets her most promising breakthrough yet: the identity of her sister’s kidnapper, Ito Vincenzo. With time running out, Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum race to Vincenzo’s last known location in Trenton, New Jersey – and unknowingly stumble straight into John Puller’s case, blowing his arrest during a drug ring investigation involving a military installation.
📚Hideaway by Nora Roberts. Caitlyn Sullivan had come from a long line of Hollywood royalty. At nine, she was already a star―yet still an innocent child who loved to play hide and seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared. Cate was a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors. Dillon Cooper was shocked to find the bloodied, exhausted girl huddled in his house―but when the teenager and his family heard her story they provided refuge. Cate’s ordeal, though, was far from over.
📚Fair warning by Michael Connelly. When a woman with whom he shared a one-night stand is found brutally murdered, veteran reporter Jack McEvoy tracks a serial killer who has been operating under the radar.
📚The Russian by James Patterson. Weeks before NYPD Detective Michael Bennett is to marry his longtime love, Mary Catherine, an assassin announces his presence in the city with a string of grisly murders. Each victim is a young woman. And each has been killed in a manner as precise as it was gruesome. Tasked with working alongside the FBI, Bennett and his gung-ho new partner uncover multiple cold-case homicides across the country that fit the same distinctive pattern – proving the perpetrator they seek is as experienced at ending lives as he is at evading detection.
📚The Guardians by John Grisham. In Seabrook Florida, Keith Russo, a young lawyer is shot to death. Quincy Miller, a young black man who was once a client of Russo’s, is charged and convicted. For 22 years, Miller maintains his innocence from inside prison. Finally, Guardian Ministries takes on Miller’s case, but the Episcopal minister in charge gets more than he bargained for as powerful people do not want Miller exonerated.
📚The Awakening by Nora Roberts. Breen Kelly hates her job and has massive student loan debt and lately, she has noticed a silver-haired man following her. While house-sitting for her mother, she finds records of a multimillion-dollar inheritance in her name. When she flies to Ireland to claim what is rightfully hers, she enters a magical land of faeries, elves, and mermaids. In this new land, she will embrace powers she never knew she had.
Adult Non-Fiction 📚📚
📚A Promised Land by Barack Obama. In the first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from a young man searching for his identity to the leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
📚Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta. Debunks common myths about aging and cognitive decline, explores whether there’s a “best” diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it’s healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from “super-brained” people who are in their eighties and nineties, and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer’s, answers all your questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline.
📚Untamed by Glennon Doyle. Part intimate memoir and part galvanizing wake-up call, the author shows women how they can begin to trust themselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with their bodies, honor their anger and heartbreak, and unleash their truest, wildest instincts so that they become women who can finally look at themselves and say: There She Is.
📚Caste: the Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more.
📚Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep — spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way. This book presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.
📚White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo. Analyzes defensive moves that white people make when racially challenged, how these actions protect racial inequality, and presents strategies for engaging more constructively in these conversations.
📚Becoming by Michelle Obama. An intimate memoir by the former First Lady chronicles the experiences that have shaped her remarkable life, from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago through her setbacks and achievements in the White House.
📚If You Tell: a True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen. Sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori band together to escape their sadistic mother’s unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors, which resulted in multiple murders.
📚Educated: a Memoir by Tara Westover. Traces the author’s experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family’s paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.
📚Cure Tooth Decay: Heal & Prevent Cavities with Nutrition by Ramiel Nagel. There is a holistic alternative to conventional dental treatments which can help you heal tooth pain, reduce tooth infections, halt tooth decay and inhibit gum disease. Learn about a flexible whole foods dietary program pioneered by the head of research at the National Dental Association, Weston Price D.D.S., that proved 90-95% effective in halting cavities.
Children’s Fiction📚📚
The most circulated children’s fiction booklist was dominated by a graphic novel series by Dav Pilkey. See what the hype is all about by reserving a copy today!
📚Cat Kid Comic Club by Dav Pilkey. Li’l Petey, Flippy, and Molly introduce twenty-one rambunctious, funny, and talented baby frogs to the art of comic-making.
📚The Deep End by Jeff Kinney. On their cross-country camping trip, Greg Heffley and his family find themselves stranded at an RV park that’s not exactly a summertime paradise, and when the skies open up and the water starts to rise, the Heffleys wonder if they can save their vacation–or if they’re already in too deep.
📚Grime and Punishment by Dav Pilkey. The Supa Buddies bamboozled the baddies, but all’s not right in the world. Dog Man has a new problem to pound, and he’s going to need his entire pack to help him. Will he go barking up the wrong tree?
📚Dog Man and Cat Kid by Dav Pilkey. The heroic hound with a real nose for justice now has a furry feline sidekick, and together they have a mystery to sniff out! When a new kitty sitter arrives and a glamorous movie starlet goes missing, it’s up to Dog Man and Cat Kid to save the day! Will these heroes stay hot on the trail, or will Petey, the World’s Most Evil Cat, send them barking up the wrong tree?
📚For Whom the Ball Rolls by Dav Pilkey. The Supa Buddies have been working hard to help Dog Man overcome his bad habits. But when his obsessions turn to fears, Dog Man finds himself the target of an all-new supervillain! Meanwhile, Petey the Cat has been released from jail and starts a new life with Li’l Petey. But when Petey’s own father arrives, Petey must face his past to understand the difference between being good and doing good.
Children’s Item Collection 🔎🔎
Some of the most popular items from the library’s children’s collection were our fun-filled backpacks and activity sets. Reserve yours today!
🔎MicroDirect 1080p HD handheld digital microscope. A handheld digital microscope that connects directly to a monitor or projector for 1080p HD streaming video. Includes optional Celestron MicroDirect HD Capture software allowing users to record and save 720p videos and save still images directly to PC (Window OS only). — The World of Microscopes: A Practical Introduction with Projects and Activities: Covers different types of microscopes and includes suggestions for projects.
🔎Backpack: Road Trip. A backpack with an atlas, a labyrinth game, travel game cards, and bingo cards to pass the time on a long car ride.
🔎Time activity set. A kit to help children learn time telling skills such as: identify the hour and minute hands; learn analog and digital time; learn to tell time in hours, half-hours, and quarter hours; schedules and sequencing; learn how to write time.
🔎Backpack: Dinosaur. A dinosaur backpack with two board books and a bag filled with 16 mix and match dinosaur pieces. Dinosaur Dance!: Features rhyming verse and silly dancing dinosaurs. Baby Dinosaur: A touch and feel book featuring different dinosaurs and textures. Magnetic Mix or Match Dinosaurs: 4 dinosaurs with magnetic parts to mix and match.
🔎Backpack: Robot. A robot backpack with two board books and a bag filled with building pieces. Twinkle, Twinkle, Robot Beep: A robo-twist on the classic nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Look At Me, I’m a Robot: What kind of robot am I? Quiet or noisy? Happy or sad? A book that is also a mask. Clip and Create building pieces: Chunky clip-together pieces in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.
🔎3-letter word-building puzzles. Reinforces word-building skills with colorful puzzles. Each puzzle features a familiar 3-letter word, plus a corresponding picture. Children just fit the pieces together to complete the picture and build simple words at the same time.
🔎Colorful mineral collection kit. 15 specimens in box and list of names of rocks.
🔎Backpack: Cat. A cat backpack with two board books, three egg shakers, a cat hand puppet, and rhyme sheets. Who’s that Cat?: Follow this cat around the house to see what kind of trouble it can stir up. How messy can one cat be? Who Flies, Cat the Cat?: Join this spunky feline as she introduces the very youngest readers to fun concepts like flying.
🔎Backpack: Dog. A dog backpack with two board books, Zoo Crew Memory Game, a dog hand puppet, and rhyme sheets. Where’s Spot?: Lift the flaps and search for Spot. Dog & Friends Shapes: Have fun with Dog and his friends as they discover lots of different shapes. Zoo Crew Memory Game: Includes 48 durable cards for 24 matching characters. Encourages memory, matching, and turn-taking skills. Whoever finds the most pairs wins.
🔎Backpack: Unicorn. A unicorn backpack with two board books and a unicorn hand puppet. Where’s My Unicorn: Follow the colorful hoofprints to find the missing unicorn. Pat-a-Cake Unicorn: Make new unicorn friends with touch and feel pages.
Young Adult 📚📚
📚The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. Eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow prepares to mentor the female tribute from District 12 in the tenth Hunger Games, with the fate of his family hanging on the slim chance that he can help her win the Games.
📚The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.
📚Divergent by Veronica Roth. Beatrice Pryor lives in a dystopian Chicago, which is divided into five factions devoted to different virtues. On a set day every year, sixteen-year-olds must select which faction they will devote the rest of their lives to. Beatrice must choose between staying with her family and being who she really is. Beatrice also has a secret, one she has been warned can mean death if exposed. Now, Beatrice will be forced to make tough choices that can determine the course of her future.
📚The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
📚Nook. O’Fallon Public Library: Young Adult. An electronic book reader pre-loaded with dozens of popular young adult titles.
📚We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. Spending the summers on her family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer.
📚The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel- a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
📚To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
📚Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. Katniss Everdeen’s having survived the Hunger games twice makes her a target of the Capitol and President Snow, as well as a hero to the rebels who will succeed only if Katniss is willing to put aside her personal feelings of anger and distrust and serve as their pawn. She must accept responsibility for countless lives in order to change the course of the future of Panem. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.
📚Legend by Marie Lu. In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June, the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common enemy.
Movies 🎥
The most circulated movie in O’Fallon’s collection was News of the World starring Tom Hanks. Five years after the Civil War, Captain Kidd moves from town to town as a storyteller. In Texas, he crosses paths with Johanna, a ten-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier. She is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will. Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles, the two will face tremendous challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home.
🎥Wonder Woman 1984 starring Gal Gadot. Fast forward to the 1980s as Wonder Woman faces all-new foes: The Cheetah and Max Lord.
🎥Spider-Man. Far From Home starring Tom Holland. Peter Parker, our friendly neighborhood Super Hero decides to join his best friends Ned, MJ, and the rest of the gang on a European vacation. However, Peter’s plan to leave super heroics behind for a few weeks are quickly scrapped when he begrudgingly agrees to help Nick Fury uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent!
🎥Knives Out starring Daniel Craig. A tribute to mystery mastermind Agatha Christie and a fun, modern-day murder mystery where everyone is a suspect. When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan’s dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan’s untimely death.
🎥It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks. Based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. After a jaded magazine writer is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning about kindness, love, and forgiveness from America’s most beloved neighbor.
The O'Fallon Public Library News 