We always like to meet up with our members, and to chat with everyone! We have more than 300 libraries across our twelve counties, and we want to work with everyone to be sure you connect to us and to each other. You are all doing such useful work, and it’s good to talk with other people who do what you do.

On Tuesday we went to St. John’s to hear author Chris Abani talk about his poetry and his writing. The talk was called Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics and Human Rights . We met up to distribute the tickets CMLE reserved, and sat together for the reading and Q&A event.

I did not know about his books before this event was announced, and it was so interesting to discover them! There are a few books linked below, so you can browse them yourself.

We are already planning two more author member events in this series at St. Ben’s. Let us know if you want to go to either or both, and we will get tickets for us all! Email at admin @ cmle.org.

• Shena McAuliffe: Public Reading: October 24, 2019 Upper Gorecki 7:00 PM
• Sally Wen Mao: Her reading will take place on February 4th in Upper Gorecki at 7:00 PM.

All the books shown below have Amazon.com links. If you click on one, and buy a book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percentage of their profits. Thank you for your support – it really helps us a lot!

The Secret History of Las Vegas: A Novel ” Before he can retire, Las Vegas detective Salazar is determined to solve a recent spate of murders. When he encounters a pair of conjoined twins with a container of blood near their car, he’s sure he has apprehended the killers, and enlists the help of Dr. Sunil Singh, a South African transplant who specializes in the study of psychopaths. As Sunil tries to crack the twins, the implications of his research grow darker. Haunted by his betrayal of loved ones back home during apartheid, he seeks solace in the love of Asia, a prostitute with hopes of escaping that life. But Sunil’s own troubled past is fast on his heels in the form of a would-be assassin. “

The Face: Cartography of the Void ” In The Face: Cartography of the Void, acclaimed Nigerian-born author and poet Chris Abani has given us a profound and gorgeously wrought short memoir that navigates the stories written upon his own face. Beginning with his early childhood immersed in the Igbo culture of West Africa, Abani unfurls a lushly poetic, insightful, and funny narrative that investigates the roles that race, culture, and language play in fashioning our sense of self. “

Lagos Noir “In the introduction to this excellent anthology, Abani welcomes readers to Lagos, Nigeria, a city of more than 21 million and an amazing amalgam of wealth, poverty, corruption, humor, bravery, and tragedy. Abani and a dozen other contributors tell stories that are both unique to Lagos and universal in their humanity…This entry stands as one of the strongest recent additions to Akashic’s popular noir series.”