Reviews

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Iago M. has won first place in the 12-14 age group for the Scary Stories 2021 Youth Writing Contest with his piece "The Trapdoor"

Oliver’s antique shop was not exceptional in any way. It did not have much inventory, what it sold did not hold much significance, it was not even the most popular antique shop on the street. This meant nothing to Oliver. When he opened the front door to the shop in the morning, he was at the crossroads to a thousand worlds.

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Ripley N. has won second place in the 13-19 age group for the Scary Stories 2021 Youth Writing Contest with their piece "What Happened in Glen Forest"

Omnes una manet nox. That’s what it said on the invitation. Cole didn’t know much Latin, but he knew that said one, night or dark, and omnes. Many? Whatever it meant, Cole was in.

The frontier has long felt like a fixture of the collective American psyche, and literature featuring western characters facing the struggles of the rural life has been around since the late 1800s. These western novels often featured tough characters with a firm sense of moral justice and skill with a gun. This archetypical character has continued into modern writing, but in recent decades has made the leap out of the western genre and into thrillers and mysteries in the form of rural law enforcement.

For those in the (literary) know, Tuesdays are the traditional day where publishers release new titles into the world. Here at the library, we get patrons who always want to know what the new, hot, word-of-mouth books are. They scan the New Releases shelf, they stalk the "new titles" portion of our website, and want to be ahead of the curve and, above all, NOT be number 582 on the waiting list.

Valentine, by Elizabeth Wetmore is a hauntingly powerful, and beautiful debut novel set in Odessa, Texas in 1976. Wetmore has created four main characters with deep narratives, and all intertwined in ways that make the reader truly understand them in various ways. The detailed characterizations help to draw an accurate divide between age, class and race in west Texas in the mid-1970’s.

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Marcia Hurlow has won our open category writing contest on the theme of Tails and Tales with her piece "Olfaction." 

Marcia L. Hurlow's first full-length collection of poetry, Anomie, won the Edges Prize. She also has five chapbooks. More than 400 of her individual poems have appeared in literary magazines, including Poetry, Chicago Review, River Styx, Poetry East, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, Stand, Cold Mountain, Zone 3 and The Journal, among others. She is co-editor of Kansas City Voices.

Appropriate for beginning sewists looking to try quilting, Urban Quilting is a straightforward guide to creating modern quilts for the home.  The first section of the book covers basic techniques like fabric selection, ironing, rotary cutting, seam allowances, quilt construction, and binding.  The second section describes how to make the individual quilts. Each quilt can be made in three sizes and quilts are rated by difficulty from beginner to advanced beginner.  The patterns are modern, featuring bright solids and bold geometric shapes. Recommended.

An excellent collection of ten workshops and tutorials from popular modern quilters (including Denyse Schmidt, Cheryl Arkison, Heather Jones, and Angela Walters) on a variety of topics. Several workshops explore color, modern quilting methods for using solids and prints, working with circles, and large scale designs. Other workshops focus on specific techniques like paper piecing and improvisation patchwork. The last workshop is a study of modern quilts that shows quilts from many of the influential modern quilters.

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Cameron V. has won second place in the 8 and under age group for the Summer 2021 Youth Writing Contest with his piece "A Happy Jackalope, a Sneaky Werewolf, and the Scary Nightmare Moon." 

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Julieta V. has won first place in the 9-12 age group for the Summer 2021 Youth Writing Contest with her piece "Alicorn"