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  • Writer's pictureMichael Bleming

Recommended Reading from the Library



The Atlantic County Library System/Hammonton is located at 451 South Egg Harbor Road and may be reached by calling (609) 561-2264. Many library services are available 24/7 at www.atlanticlibrary.org.


The in-person storytimes and other events resumed in July. The library is committed to providing a safe environment. In-person events will follow government recommendations for health and safety and have been redesigned to create a sanitary environment that allows for physical distancing. Face masks for anyone over the age of 2 will still be required for any indoor activities until further notice.


To view our calendar of events, visit atlanticlibrary.evanced.info. Registration required for all programs.


Recommended Reading: Upcoming titles that will be circulating in our collection soon:


Cloud Cuckoo Land

A Novel by Anthony Doerr


Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.


Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.


The Wish

A Novel by Nicholas Sparks


1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at 16 to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she met Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce showed her how much there was to love about the wind-swept beach town—and introduced her to photography, a passion that would define the rest of her life.


By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him.


As they count down the last days of the season together, she begins to tell him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier—and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.

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