Upcoming Events

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

Textile Tuesdays

1:00pm–3:00pm
Teens, Adults
South Branch Library
This event is in the "Teens" group

LGBTQ+ Visibility Celebration

5:30pm–7:00pm
Teens
Main Library
Seats Available
Registration Required
This event is in the "Children" group

Nature Storytime

9:30am–10:00am
Children
Mr. & Mrs. F. L. Schlagle Library

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

Recently Added Titles

book cover for "When the Forest Breathes"

When the Forest Breathes

The author of Finding the Mother Tree and scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees, Suzanne Simard now offers a powerful vision for saving our forests based on nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal.

"A masterclass on the inner workings of forests. . . . This is science as an act of love for the world.” —Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters

Raised in a family of loggers committed to sensible forest stewardship, trailblazing ecologist Suzanne Simard has watched as timber companies leave forests at higher risk for wildfires, water crises, and plant and animal extinction. But her research has the potential to chart a new course. The forest, she reveals, is a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration—from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones—that hold the key to protecting our forests. Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, Simard examines how human interventions—particularly destruction of the overstory's mother trees—endanger new growth and longevity. If we can honor the tools that trees have honed for sharing intergenerational wisdom, she argues, we can protect these sacred places for many years to come.

As she considers how older living things facilitate the conditions for new growth to flourish, Simard faces parallel rhythms of loss and regeneration in her own life, watching her two daughters grow into adults and savoring her final days with her ailing mother. Animated by wonder for our forests and the intricate practices of caretaking that have long sustained them, When the Forest Breathes is a vital reminder of all the natural world has to teach us about adaptability, resilience, and community.

Book Cover for "Son of Nobody"

Son of Nobody

"The most famous stories of the Trojan War and its aftermath are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But these were not the only tales of the war sung to ancient audiences by bards-there were others, now vanished but for echoes and fragments, collected in what has come to be known as the Epic Cycle. In SON OF NOBODY, one such tale is the Psoad: an epic that follows the son of a goatherd, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight on the beaches of Troy. Psoas meets his doom, and the epic poem of his life is lost to time-until another man on a foreign shore, a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. A truly daring feat of imagination, SON OF NOBODY is a novel composed in two voices: the first, a series of fragments from antiquity that tell the story of Troy from a lost, alt-Homeric tradition; the second, the voice of a modern-day scholar, Harlow Donne, who assembles and comments on these fragments while navigating a conflict of his own. Obsessed with his discovery, Donne still can't seem to let go of his family's past-he weaves together the tale of uncovering ancient papyri, faded codices, and broken cuneiform tablets with memories of his daughter as a child and his wife before their separation. Donne translates and writes in the heartfelt modes of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, as the paralell stories offer a poignant glimpse into both the follies of failed relationships and of battle. SON OF NOBODY upends the regal perspective of traditional epics, and by grappling with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and the modern worlds, it shows "that the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues."