Larry Grieco, Librarian.  A new novel by multiple-award-winning author Dennis Lehane is always a reason to rejoice. His latest book is World Gone By, and tells the story of a former crime boss who has graduated to consigliere to the “infamous” Bartolo Crime Family, with interests in Tampa, Boston, and Cuba.

A decade earlier Joe Coughlin’s wife was killed in “a cascade of bullets.” Now, though, he has assumed the guise of a successful Tampa businessman, while navigating his way through “the ruthless, rapidly expanding mob world controlled by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.” When a rumor surfaces that someone wants Joe dead, he becomes consumed with finding out just who is after him—before it’s too late.

This is not your run-of-the-mill crime thriller. In Lehane’s hands the story and characters unfold in an engrossing, gripping manner. Several of his previous books have become major motion pictures, including Moonlight Mile; Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River and Shutter Island.

Jill Dawson is a British writer who, like Lehane, has won numerous awards for her novels. Her latest is The Tell-tale Heart, about Patrick Dobson, a divorced 50-ish academic and a world-class philanderer. He rakishly juggles his ex-wife, former mistress, as well as a scorned girl friend (a much younger member of the faculty.) He has two children who he readily admits to being a terrible father to.

His girl friend is bringing charges of sexual harassment against him, and he suddenly has a massive heart attack. Patrick’s doctor prescribes a heart transplant, the sooner the better, and he receives the heart of a teenage boy killed in a motorcycle accident. His body accepts the transplanted heart, but ironically, it’s Patrick’s old life that seems to suddenly reject him.

After the operation Patrick begins “thinking in ways that are unfamiliar to him.” In short, he begins to have feelings, particularly about the people in his life. He feels empathy. He goes out of his way to be caring and sensitive. Then Patrick “longs to know the story of this heart that is now his own.” This is a wonderful novel that will have you firmly in its grasp until you reach the end.

Now we turn to the tiny Scottish village of Lochdubh, in the Scottish Highlands, the locale for M.C. Beaton’s Sergeant Hamish Macbeth series. The latest in the series of Macbeth’s cases is called Death of a Liar, and conveys the story of the untimely death by foul means of a woman in the nearby village of Cromish.

Sergeant Macbeth at first received a report from the woman that she was brutally attacked by a criminal who is now on the loose. When Macbeth investigated he found that she was lying about the whole incident. Then the same woman called him again to report an intruder, and this time he advised her to “go and see a psychiatrist about her compulsion to lie.”

Well, you can surmise the next thing to occur—she is found dead in her home. It’s up to Macbeth to figure out what happened and “sort through the tangled web of lies.” New York Times Book Review: “It’s always a pleasure to return to Lochdubh, the picturesque village in the Scottish Highlands.”

Now is the time to register for the 2015 Summer Reading Program, for kids from birth to ninth grade! It all began last week and will run until Saturday, August 8, the day of our big ice cream social! Kids can sign up any time during the summer and collect prizes of their own choice every week in which they read at least one book.

This year’s theme is Catch a Dragon By the Tale! Come one, come all—there’s plenty of dragons to go around. The summer reading program has been one of the highlights of the Gilpin County Public Library for many years now, and if the advance registration is any indication, this summer may be the best ever!