Staff Inservice Closing

All Library branches will be closed on Wednesday, November 13th for Staff Inservice Day

Upcoming Events

This event is in the "Adults" group.

Spice Club: Togarashi

11/01/2024 @ 9:00am - 11/12/2024 @ 5:00pm
Adults
Main Library
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: Take Home - Main Library
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Developing Skills, Home & Garden, Additional Program Format, Take Home
Event Details:

Whether you’re a foodie or just interested in trying something new – Spice Club is for you! Pick up a new spice kit at the beginning of each month.

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Teens" group.
This event is in the "Adults" group.

Adult Take-Home Craft @ Main: Birdseed Cookies

11/01/2024 @ 9:00am - 11/12/2024 @ 9:00pm
Teens, Adults
Main Library
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: Take Home - Main Library
Age Group: Teens, Adults
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Crafts & Hobbies, Additional Program Format, Take Home
Event Details:

 

 

Come grab a kit to make some hanging bird feeder cookies made from birdseed.

 

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.

Old McDonald's Farm Crafts

11/06/2024 @ 9:00am - 11/09/2024 @ 2:00pm
Children
Turner Community Library
Library Branch: Turner Community Library
Room: Take Home - Turner Community Library
Age Group: Children
Program Type: Entertainment & Culture, Crafts & Hobbies, Holiday, Additional Program Format, Take Home
Event Details:

Scarecrow Sign (Limited) 

Ceramic Pig (Limited)

Farm Animal Sewing Kit (Limited) 

Craft Stick Barn

Fuzzy Snoopy Magnet 

Tissue Acorn

Beaded Corn 

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Children" group.

Bilingual Craft Time / Manualidad Bilingüe - Milagritos Painting

5:00pm - 6:00pm
Children
South Branch Library
Library Branch: South Branch Library
Room: Storytime Room - South Branch Library
Age Group: Children
Program Type: Developing Skills, Language Learning, Entertainment & Culture, Crafts & Hobbies, Additional Program Format, Multilingual, Spanish
Event Details:

You're invited to our weekly fun craft! Experiment with a variety of art mediums and explore new skills every week. Parents and older siblings are encouraged to participate for some fun quality family time!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Adults" group.

Antojitos Mexicanos

5:00pm - 7:00pm
Adults
Main Library
Cancelled
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: 1st Floor Program Room - Main Library
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Developing Skills, Cultural, Multilingual, Spanish
Event Details:

Join us at the Kansas City Kansas Public Library, Main Library in learning a new recipe to try in your kitchen!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

This event is in the "Adults" group.

Antojitos Mexicanos

5:00pm - 7:00pm
Adults
Main Library
Cancelled
Registration
Library Branch: Main Library
Room: 1st Floor Program Room - Main Library
Age Group: Adults
Program Type: Developing Skills, Cultural, Multilingual, Spanish
Event Details:

Join us at the Kansas City Kansas Public Library, Main Library in learning a new recipe to try in your kitchen!

Disclaimer(s)

Library programs, events, and classes are photographed or videotaped for promotional purposes or to document library activities.  Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed. 

Los programas de la biblioteca, eventos y clases son fotografiados o filmados con fines promocionales o para documentar las actividades de la biblioteca. Notificar al personal de la biblioteca si prefiere no ser fotografiado.

 

New & Noteworthy

The Kansas Collection

The Kansas Room is open on Tuesdays from 9am-noon and on Thursdays from 1-4pm.

View the Collection

Collage of historic photos and documents from the Kansas Collection

Staff Picks: Halloween Reads

Image for "A Werewolf's Guide to Seducing a Vampire"

A Werewolf's Guide to Seducing a Vampire

Ben Rosewood never meant to be bound to a vampire succubus, especially one as sexy-yet-terrifying as Eleonore Bettencourt-Devereux, but he has to admit there are some fang-tastic perks….

Werewolf Ben Rosewood is happy with his life. One hundred percent. Everything is fine. His business, Ben’s Plant Emporium, is thriving, and he’s even expanding the shop. His anxiety disorder is…well, it’s been better, but that comes with the territory of running a business and having beastly urges every full moon, right? As for romance—who has the time? Though his family is desperate to see him settled, Ben is fine approaching forty as a single werewolf. But after drunkenly bidding on and winning a supposedly-possessed crystal on eBay one night, he finds himself face-to-face with a beautiful yet angry vampire.

Eleonore Bettencourt-Devereux is a rare breed—a vampire succubus born from two elite European bloodlines during medieval times. Thanks to an evil witch, she’s been stuck in a crystal since she was thirty, forced to obey orders from the possessor of the rock. Eleonore's been dreaming of breaking the spell and severing the witch’s head for centuries. But did this witch really sell her to someone new, and for only ninety-nine cents?

Eleonore would claw this werewolf’s heart out and eat it, if only the binding spell would allow her to. But Eleonore and Ben soon realize they can help each other with both vengeful and less hostile needs. And why not have a little fun along the way?

Image for "Sleep Tight"

Sleep Tight

The sole survivor of a serial killer might hold the key to stopping a new spree of murders in this propulsive horror thriller in the vein of The Black Phone and The Whisper Man.

Dark and twisting at every turn, fans of Catriona Ward will love this chilling new tale from the deviously inventive horror author that Peter Farris calls the "clear heir to Stephen King.”

Beware the one who got away . . . 

Father Silence once terrorized the rural town of Twisted Tree, disguising himself as a priest to prey on the most vulnerable members of society. When the police finally found his "House of Horrors," they uncovered nineteen bodies and one survivor–a boy now locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane.

Nearly two decades later, Father Silence is finally put to death, but by the next morning, the detective who made the original arrest is found dead. A new serial killer is taking credit for the murder and calling himself the Outcast.

The detective’s daughter, Tess Claibourne, is a detective herself, haunted by childhood trauma and horrified by the death of her father and the resurgence of Father Silence’s legacy.

When Tess’s daughter is kidnapped by the Outcast, Tess is forced to face her worst fears and long-buried memories. With no leads to follow, she travels back to Twisted Tree to visit the boy who survived and see what secrets might be buried in the tangled web of his broken mind.

With captivating prose and an old-school horror flair, Sleep Tight is a must-read, haunting tale from a true master of the genre.

Image for "A Sunny Place for Shady People"

A Sunny Place for Shady People

A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “Buenos Aires’s sorceress of horror” (Samanta Schweblin, The New York Times)

“Entertaining, political and exquisitely gruesome, these stories summon terror against the backdrop of everyday horrors. . . . A queen of horror delivers more delightfully twisted stories.”—Los Angeles Times

“As vivid and essential as Kafka’s tales.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women.

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.

Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”

Image for "The Bog Wife"

The Bog Wife

"A lush, beautifully written novel about trying to be a person in our strange world . . . Pick this one up for its exquisite characterization, decaying settings and a dash of Southern gothic horror." —Kiersten White, The New York Times Book Review

A “haunting, brilliant” Appalachian folktale evoking the Southern gothic suspense of Sharp Objects and the eco spine-tinglers of Jeff Vandermeer (Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts)

Five siblings in West Virginia unearth long-buried secrets when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured

Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.

Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.

At once a gothic eco-horror, a psychological drama, and a family saga, The Bog Wife is a propulsive read for fans of Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell, and Matt Bell that speaks to what is knowable and unknowable within a family history and how to know when it is time to move forward.

Image for "Hampton Heights"

Hampton Heights

"Splendid . . . what really sells this imaginative, scary, verge-of-growing-up tale is its characters, each with a distinct voice and personality. . . . Kois' surprising second novel is a natural for fans of the character-based horror fiction of Grady Hendrix or Paul Tremblay and will win him a whole new sphere of readers." --Booklist

"Marvelous, tender, and unpredictable, Hampton Heights captures the uncanniness and discomfort of early adolescence. There's a pinch of Ray Bradbury, a soupçon of Stephen King, a dash of fairy tale logic, but Dan Kois makes something entirely his own out of this familiar and always pleasurable territory."--Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

"Like Stand by Me mixed with Stranger Things and The Twilight Zone, Hampton Heights is a rollicking chronicle of youth set loose among mystery and monsters. Dan Kois deftly conjures a boundless world that's chilling, wondrous, and delightful."--Adam Sternbergh, author of The Eden Test

From the author of the Washington Post notable novel Vintage Contemporaries, something completely unexpected: a hair-raising and rollicking adventure set on one night in 1987, when six paperboys must confront a slew of monsters as well as their own personal demons in a haunted Midwestern neighborhood.

On a cold winter's evening in 1987, six middle-school paperboys wander an unfamiliar Milwaukee neighborhood, selling newspaper subscriptions, fueled by their manager Kevin's promises of cash bonuses and dinner at Burger King. But the freaks come out at night in Hampton Heights. Sent out into the neighborhood in pairs, the boys will encounter a host of primordial monsters--and triumph over them.

Sigmone, who is bussed to a white school, is stuck with Joel, a white kid who idolizes Black culture. Mark, who's wrestling with his sexuality, joins his secret crush, Ryan. Nishu and Al are outsiders; one is a second-generation immigrant, the other a poor kid in a rich school. Over the course of one eventful evening, the three pairs will encounter the wild things of Hampton Heights--werewolves, witches with a centuries-old story to tell, and a creepy, ancient monster who feeds on memories. Meanwhile, Kevin is having an adventure of his own, seducing a beautiful woman in the neighborhood's tavern . . . but who is actually in control?

Funny, thrilling, outrageous, and sneakily beautiful, Dan Kois's Hampton Heights captures without sentimentality the dreams and fears of teenage boys in a tender horror-comedy about camaraderie, bravery, vulnerability, and the terrifying prospect of growing up.

Image for "Can't Help Falling in Love"

Can't Help Falling in Love

A struggling waitress and the heir to a major Seattle company stumble into a high-profile fake engagement while simultaneously trying to keep up with their own love lives in this flirty fall rom-com! 

Lexi Danby is looking for some no-strings, fall fun. Once a college track star, she was forced to drop out when her father passed away. Now she’s trying to make ends meet while putting herself through school and caring for her grieving mother. When her comically bad waitressing lands her directly in the path of a handsome, charming stranger named Will, Lexi may just have found the distraction she’s been looking for. Their first date looks promising until a misunderstanding at a party thrusts Lexi and Will into a fake engagement they can’t talk themselves out of. And Will turns out to be a member of Seattle royalty.

Will Grand is heir to a major company, and Seattle’s most eligible bachelor. But he’s been placed in charge of an important merger with a company that values family above all else, and needs to show them that he’s settled down. While a fake engagement is advantageous from a business standpoint, it’s not so great for a budding relationship with a woman who’s wary of commitment. With a woman who Will is beginning to care about much more than he could have anticipated.

As Lexi gets a taste of Will’s glamorous world and the pair keeps up the pretense of their fake engagement for the press, they decide to see where a more casual relationship takes them out of the spotlight. And amid apple picking in comfy flannels, outdoor breweries in the crisp air, and fun Halloween preparations, Lexi starts to realize the scariest part of the season might just be taking a chance on love.

"Sophie Sullivan consistently crafts romances to root for." -Courtney Kae, author of In the Event of Love and In the Case of Heartbreak