WCPL October Newsletter

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Welcome to the Washington County Public Library Newsletter!

This newsletter includes upcoming events at our local library branches and community partners, book reviews, and spotlights parts of our collection.

The Washington County Public Library is a countywide

library system with 7 branches: Barlow, Belpre, Beverly, Lafayette,

Local History & Genealogy Archives, Marietta,

and New Matamoras, as well as a Bookmobile.

Take time to browse our Event Calendar to see what’s going on at your local library. Since not everything libraries do fits into a calendar format, make sure to look at our branches’ social media pages so you don’t miss out!

Stock the Shelves Challenge

October 13-November 12

We are competing for $26,000 in awards in the Marietta Community Foundation's 2025 Nonprofit Challenge. Help us secure one of the TOP 5 spots by donating!

1 POINT - Non-perishable food items (ex., peanut butter, canned goods, cereal)

2 POINTS - Personal care items (ex., shampoo, feminine hygiene products, diapers)

Please drop your items off at any Washington County Public Library Branch by Wednesday, November 12, so we have time to count them and drop them off to MCF!

Don't miss these upcoming book discussions for adults at our branches!

Stop by the library to check out a

copy of the book or see if its available

on Libby or Hoopla.

Barlow

Monday, November 10 at 1 pm

"The Art of Arranging Flowers"
by Lynne Branard

Belpre

Friday, November 14 at 5 pm

"Swift & Saddled"

by Lila Sage

Friday, November 21 at 5 pm

"Welcome to the
Hyunam-Dong Bookshop"

by Huang Bo-Reu

Beverly

Monday, November 10 at Noon

"The Library of Lost and Found"

by Phaedra Patrick

Lafayette

Wednesday, November 12 at 10 am

"Remarkably Bright Creatures"
by Shelby Van Pelt

Marietta

Wednesday, November 19 at 3 pm

"The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared"

by Jonas Jonasson

Wednesday, November 19 at 6 pm

"The Bourbon King"

by Bob Batchelor

AGES 21+ at Over the Moon Pub & Pizza

Oak Grove Cemetery Tour:
MOVers and Shakers
Saturday, October 25 at 10 am

Join us for “MOVers and Shakers” at Oak Grove Cemetery. This event is open to all ages, and no registration is required. Brought to you in partnership with The Castle.
The list of accomplishments of Mid-Ohio Valley (MOV) residents and their impact on our city, state, and country is truly impressive. This tour will recount the lives and accomplishments of just a few of our town’s most talented community leaders, including: Anchorage owner Douglas Putnam; Ohio Governor,
US Congressman, Klondike prospector, and oil producer George White; prominent oil producer and banker John Dinsmoor; the Murray family, who founded a three-generation manufacturing business called The Airolite Company, and philanthropists William & Betsey (Gates) Mills.

Questions? Call 740-373-1057 x606.

Marietta Branch

Party Saturday

Saturday, November 1 at 10:30 am

Join us for a wicked good time with a movie, as well as swag, games, themed crafts, and a snack, on Saturday, November 1, at starting at 10:30 am. While supplies last.

This event is open to all ages
and no registration is required.
Questions? Call 740-373-1057.

New Matamoras Branch

Book Tasting

Monday, November 3, 2-4 pm

On Monday, November 3, between 2 and 4 pm, adults ages 18+ can stop by and “taste” some new books! Tasting different authors each month. Books are set out buffet style. Everyone is encouraged to take books home with them to sample. Snacks and conversation are provided.

No registration is required.

Questions? Call 740-865-3386.

Barlow Branch

The Barlow Friends of the Library Monthly Used Book Sale will be held on Thursday, November 6, 9 am-5 pm, Friday, November 7, 9 am- 5 pm, and Saturday, November 8, 10 am-1 pm in the library basement. The Barlow Branch Library is located at 45 White Oak Professional Center, Vincent, OH.

Beverly Branch

Family Friendly, Funny, Ventriloquist

Thursday, November 6 at 6 pm

On Thursday, November 6, at 6 pm,

Ventriloquist Doug Mickan will perform at Riverbend Family Dining. Ventriloquist Doug Mickan has been entertaining audiences of ALL ages for over 30 years. Let Doug & his friends make your evening one they will remember for a long time to come. No registration is required. Riverbend Family Dining is located

at 415 Fifth Street, Beverly.

Questions? Call 740-984-4060.

Campus Martius Museum

Discovering History
Friday, November 7 at Noon

On Friday, November 7, at noon, Dr. Brandon Downing from Marietta College will discuss the early period in American history, focusing on the time around the Seven Years' War.

This event is sponsored by the Washington County Public Library and is FREE and open to the public.

Click here for more information.

All Washington County Public Library Branches
will be CLOSED for
Veterans Day on
Tuesday, November 11.

Belpre Branch

Pixel Art Mini Masterpieces

Friday, November 21 at 6 pm

Adults and Teens ages 11+, come make your own mini masterpiece with pixelized versions of famous works of art. These 5x7 pieces should take about an hour to complete. Please call 740-423-8381 to register.

Dear New York,

by Brandon Stanton

"A breathtaking new book from the #1 bestselling author of Humans of New York and one of the great storytellers of our time―Dear New York is a love letter to the streets, stories, and souls that define the heart of the city and its people.

Creator of the global sensation “Humans of New York” and author of four #1 New York Times bestsellers, Brandon Stanton has shown us a unique side of our communities, our neighbors, and ourselves. Now, he takes us further and deeper than he’s ever gone before.

Opening with a deeply moving prologue that reads like a train ride through the city, the book expands into nearly five hundred full-color pages of portraits and stories from every corner of the city. With more than 75-percent of the photographs and stories in Dear New York having never been published before, there’s a new discovery on every page.

Embracing all five boroughs, Dear New York is a book filled with contradictions, yet brimming with life. It is an unprecedented portrait of the world’s greatest city, and a personal tribute to the people who provide its soul."

Gone Before Goodbye

by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben

"Maggie McCabe is teetering on the brink. A highly skilled and renowned Army combat surgeon, she has always lived life at the edge, where she could make the most impact. And it was all going to plan…until it wasn’t.

Upside down after a devastating series of tragedies leads to her medical license being revoked, Maggie has lost her purpose, but not her nerve or her passion. At her lowest point, she is thrown a lifeline by a former colleague, an elite plastic surgeon whose anonymous clientele demand the best care money can buy, as well as absolute discretion.

Halfway across the globe, sequestered in the lap of luxury and cutting-edge technology, one of the world’s most mysterious men requires unconventional medical assistance. Desperate, and one of the few surgeons in the world skilled enough to take this job, Maggie enters his realm of unspeakable opulence and fulfills her end of the agreement. But when the patient suddenly disappears while still under her care, Maggie must become a fugitive herself—or she will be the next one who is…"

Guilty by Definition

by Susie Dent

"Oxford, England. After a decade abroad, Martha Thornhill has returned home to the city whose ancient institutions have long defined her family. But the ghosts she had thought to be at rest seem to have been waiting for her to return. When an anonymous letter is delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary, where Martha is a newly hired senior editor, it's rapidly clear that this is not the usual lexicographical enquiry. Instead, the coded letter hints at secrets and lies linked to a particular year.

The date can mean only one, the summer Martha's brilliant older sister Charlie went missing.

When more letters arrive, Martha and her team pull apart the complex clues within them, and soon, the mystery becomes ever more insistent and troubling. Because it seems Charlie had been keeping a powerful secret, and someone may be trying to lead the lexicographers towards the truth that will unravel the mystery of her disappearance. But other forces are no less desperate to keep their secrets well and truly buried, and Martha and her team must crack the codes before it's too late."

Paper Girl

by Beth Macy

"The town of Urbana, Ohio was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the 70’s and 80’s, certainly not for her family. Her dad was an alcoholic who only fitfully worked, and people called him the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy enough economy, and there were middle class kids at school whose families became her role models. People in Urbana were proud of their schools, and the library, and the history of their town, an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Macy loved Urbana, and though she was able to make it to college on a Pell Grant and then follow a career in journalism that took her far away, she still clung gratefully to the hometown that helped raise her. On the surface it was still picture-postcard cute.

But as Macy’s mother’s health began its final descent in 2020, on more frequent visits home to Ohio, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened in ways she couldn’t process. Beth grew up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was like civic glue, mirroring the community back to itself. Now there was no local paper, no paper girl, and precious little civic glue. Yes, a lot of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, along with all that went with it. But that was an old story that didn’t begin to cover the forces turning her town into a poorer and angrier place. High school graduation rates were plummeting as absenteeism soared in the public schools and in the workplace. A mental health crisis gripped the small city, along with a litany of other pathologies. Urbana’s pride in its institutions was parents were opting to home school, or transferring their kids elsewhere, in record numbers. Even more painfully, many of her own family members and old friends had gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracies like QAnon, and worse. What happened to Urbana?

This was not an assignment Beth Macy ever wanted to take, but she felt she had no choice. Two years ago, she began to return regularly, to deploy everything she’d learned to figure her hometown out. The result is an astonishment, a book that takes us into the heart of one specific place and through it brings into focus in a new way our most urgent set of national issues."

Twice

by Mitch Albom

"When he is eight years old, Alfie Logan discovers the magical ability to get a second chance at everything. He can undo any moment and live it again. The one he must accept the consequences of his second try—for better or worse.

He grows up correcting his mistakes and saving himself from adolescent embarrassments. He even takes foolishly dangerous risks, just to see what it’s like to come close to death, before tapping back to safety.

Eventually, Alfie turns his gift to his love life, studying his crushes and going back to make himself more appealing. In time, he falls deeply in love with Gianna, the woman he believes is the one. He seems to find contentment.

But as the years pass, Alfie’s eye begins to wander. Which is when he learns a lone caveat to his once he undoes a love, that person can never fall in love with him again. Knowing if he gives into to temptation, he will risk losing what he has with Gianna, Alfie makes a choice that changes his life forever.

The book begins many years later, after an ailing Alfie is arrested for allegedly cheating and winning millions at a casino roulette wheel. As a curious detective interrogates him, he slowly uncovers Alfie’s incredible story, and its most unlikely conclusion."

The Women of Wild Hill

by Kirsten Miller

"There are places on earth where nature’s powers gather. Girls raised there are bequeathed strange gifts. A few have powers so dark that they fear to use them. Such a place is Wild Hill, on the tip of Long Island. For centuries, the ghost of a witch murdered by colonists claimed the beautiful and fertile Wild Hill…until a young Scottish woman with strange gifts arrived. Sadie Duncan was allowed to stay.

Five generations of Sadie’s descendants called Wild Hill home, each generation more powerful than the last. Then, in the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, the last of the Duncans, once prophesized to be the most powerful of their kind, abandoned their ancestral home.

One of them, Brigid Laguerre moved to California and turned her dark gift into fame and fortune. Her sister, Phoebe, settled on a ranch in Texas, where women visit in secret for her tonics and cures. Phoebe’s daughter, Sybil, has become a famous chef. Seemingly powerless, Sibyl has never been told of the Duncan bloodline.

Now Brigid, Phoebe, and Sibyl have been brought to Wild Hill to discover their family legacy. The Old One, furious at the path mankind has taken, has chosen three powerful witches to turn the tide. The Duncans will fulfill their destinies—but only if they can set aside their grievances and come together as a family."

November First Friday:

Cheers to Charity
Friday, November 7, 5-9 pm

Downtown First Friday events take place the first Friday of every month from 5 to 9 pm, February through December. Highlights of these events include shops open late, local artists and musicians, area organizations, and various happenings around town. Each First Friday is a celebration of our local community and an opportunity for locals, tourists, and area groups to show their support for our town, have fun, and enjoy the beauty of vibrant, historic downtown Marietta! Plus, thanks to Artsbridge and others, each First Friday features Kid Central on the lawn of the Armory with fun activities for kiddos to enjoy.

Marietta College’s

Anderson Hancock Planetarium

Scheduled Events

Galileo: The Power of the Telescope
Thursday, November 13 at 7 pm

Marietta College is excited to offer a free, public showing of “Galileo: The Power of the Telescope” at 7:00 p.m., Thursday, November 13th, in the Anderson Hancock Planetarium.
The film takes the audience back in time to Pisa, Italy, to experience Galileo’s early experiments with gravity and the laws of motion, his advocacy of the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun, and his work with early telescopes. We see how his keen observations culminated in “The Starry Messenger,” an early masterpiece in which Galileo described all his dazzling discoveries in a straightforward, easy to understand way.
Each public show includes a live presentation about the current night sky, followed by the full-dome planetarium video and a Q&A period. Donations are welcome, however educational experiences in our planetarium are free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.st-come, first-served basis.

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Washington County Public Library
615 Fifth St.

Marietta, OH 45750
Phone: 740-373-1057

www.wcplib.info