Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife

Love gothic horror? Don’t love horror but want to read something suitably spooky for Halloween? You have come to the right place! Kay Chronister’s haunting, atmospheric The Bog Wife is most definitely horror but not of the blood-and-guts slasher variety.

Thanks so much to Kelli for suggesting the book to me! I enjoyed it very much!

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Exploring Our Digital Tools: October

We have a lot of fantastic digital resources, many of them courtesy of the Arkansas State Library. Because we’re a library in Arkansas, we have access to their Traveler Database. For this entire year, every month, we’re going to look at the different features available on these databases. For this month, we’re going to focus on social science and US government databases!

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Celebrate Berryville: October

The year 2025 promises to be a historic one for the Berryville Public library and, by extension, for the town of Berryville. We broke ground on the new library in April, so the library should be finished in the spring of 2026. Preparation for the new building has made us at the Berryville Library nostalgic and reflective, not just about the library’s history but also about the town’s history. Other seminal moments in Berryville Library history occurred in 1938 and 1978, so we’ll be looking back this year on what Berryville was like then, as well as what it is like now, as we also look to the future.

For October, we’re looking at where Berryville gathers and plays, both in the past and present.

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Jo Harkin’s The Pretender

Thanks so much to Julie for kindly adding this book to the collection at my request! It is an unusual and compelling novel that I highly recommend for fans of historical fiction, particularly the early Tudor period! If you know your history, you probably see the word Tudor and think of Queen Elizabeth I or her father Henry VIII and his six wives. And you’d be right, but if you really know your history, you may also think of Henry’s father, Henry VII. This novel is set during Henry VII’s reign and the late War of the Roses and focuses on Lambeth Simnel, a little-known claimant to the throne.

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Book Buzz: Horror, Historical Fiction, Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, Montana, An Experimental Thriller, The Prairie, Hawaii, Spinach, and a Safari Gone Wrong

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For October, we’re looking at vampire horror, historical fiction spanning the 1800s and 1900s, literary fiction, a twisty new thriller with an unusual premise, ecologically themed nonfiction, a story of a spinach empire, and an audiobook about a safari that takes a murderous turn.

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