Did you know that this week is Libraries Week in the UK?
To celebrate our librarians have come up with a list of books which explore the definitions and significance of libraries - spanning a great range of genres including fantasy, poetry, graphic novels, sci-fi and historical fiction!
We've also attached their blurbs here so you can look into our selection before your next visit.
Challenge yourself by picking something new and perhaps reconsider the role and definition of the library!
THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY - MATT HAIG
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY - GENEVIEVE COGMAN
Irene must be at the top of her game or she'll be off the case - permanently...
Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book. Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested - the laws of nature of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene's new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own. Soon, she's up to her eyebrows in a heady mix of danger, clues and secret societies. Yet failure is not an option - the nature of reality itself is at stake.
THE LIBRARIAN OF AUSCHWITZ - ANTONIO ITURBE
Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezin ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp.
When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious books the prisoners have managed to smuggle past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the secret librarian of Auschwitz, responsible for the safekeeping of the small collection of titles, as well as the 'living books' - prisoners who know certain stories so well, they too can be 'borrowed to educate the children in the camp. But books are extremely dangerous. They make people think. And nowhere are they more dangerous than in Block 31 of Auschwitz, the children's block, where the slightest transgression can result in execution, no matter how young the transgressor.
Based on the incredible and moving true story of Dita Kraus, holocaust survivor and secret librarian for the children's block in Auschwitz.
INK AND BONE - RACHEL CAINE
Rachel Caine rewrites history, creating a dangerous world where the Great Library of Alexandria has survived the test of time. In 48 AD, a fire set by the troops of Julius Caesar destroyed much of the Great Library of Alexandria. It was the first of several disasters that resulted in the destruction of the accumulated knowledge of the ancient world. But what if the fire had been stopped? What would the Library have become? Fast forward: the Great Library is now a separate country, protected by its own standing army. It has brown into a vast power, with unquestioned and unrivalled supremacy. Jess Brightwell, seventeen and very smart, with a gift for mechanical engineering, has been sent into the Great Library as a spy for his criminal family.
STRANGE THE DREAMER - LAINI TAYLOR
Strange the Dreamer is the story of: - the aftermath of a war between gods and men - a mysterious city stripped of its name - a mythic hero with blood on his hands - a young librarian with a singular dream - a girl every bit as perilous and she is imperiled - alchemy and blood candy, nightmares and godspawn, moths and monsters, friendship and treachery, love and carnage.
THE BOOK THIEF - MARKUS ZUSAK
Here is a small fact - you are going to die.
1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.
Some important information - this novel is narrated by Death.
It's a small story, about: a girl, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.
Another thing you should know - Death will visit The Book Thief three times.
THE GIRL WHO BECAME A TREE - JOSEPH COELHO
A story told in poems about a young girl deeply affected by her father's death, finds herself in a strange library and a dark forest as she grapples with her loss. Daphne is unbearably sad and adrift. She feels the painful loss of her father acutely and seeks solace in the security of her local library and the escape her phone screen provides by blocking out the world around her. As Daphne tries to make sense of what has happened she recalls memories of shared times and stories past, and in facing the darkness she finds a way back from the tangle of fear and confusion, to feel connected once more with her friends and family.
FAHRENHEIT 451 - RAY RADBURY
(GN also available)
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen, Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage, Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound f the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down the dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future, 'Fahrenheit 451' stands alongside Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New Word' as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.
LIRAEL - GARTH NIX
THE DEVIL MAKES THREE - TORI BOVALINO
When Tess and Eliot stumble upon an ancient book hidden in a secret tunnel beneath their school library, they accidentally release a devil from his book-bound prison, and he'll stop at nothing to stay free. He'll manipulate all the ink in the library books to do his bidding, he'll murder in the stacks, and he'll need to bleed into every inch of Tess's life until his freedom is permanent. Forced to work together, Tess and Eliot have to find a way to re-trap the devil before he kills everyone they know and love, including, increasingly, each other. And compared to what the devil has in store for them, school stress suddenly doesn't seem so bad after all. This is a fast-paced YA crossover/gothic horror debut, with a strong romance and an eerie, page-turning plot that will make this a great choice for fans of VE Schwab and Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith.
Libraries Week: 4th-10th October 2021
