This article was submitted by Evangeline Cessna, local history librarian at the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library.

This week we are featuring New Media Player titles located in our A/V Department.

First up is The Brontë Sisters Collection featuring Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, is the story of Catherine Earnshaw who’s torn between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar. Her choice leads Heathcliff to heap vengeance on the next generation. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë tells the story of a plain, intelligent, and steadfast governess who finds herself tending the ward of the charismatic and moody Mr. Rochester. Their growing love is shattered by dark secrets from Rochester’s past. In Agnes Grey, Agnes’s father suffers professionally and withdraws from his family with a bout of depression. Agnes takes a position as a governess with a wealthy family to help her family financially. Unfortunately, the family she works for treats her cruelly and strips Agnes of her dignity and faith in humanity.

An Insignificant Case is the latest thriller by Phillip Margolin. Charlie Webb has been described as “a leaky boat floating down the stream of life.” He’s a third-rate lawyer who graduated from a third-rate law school and has led an unremarkable life. He couldn’t get hired by a law firm, so he opened his own and began taking cases of a dubious nature. Until he’s appointed to be the attorney for a decidedly crackpot artist who calls himself Guido Sabatini (born Lawrence Weiss). Sabatini has been arrested – again – for breaking into a restaurant and stealing back a painting he sold them because he was insulted by where it was displayed. Not knowing what else Sabatini has stolen, Webb negotiates the return of the painting and ‘other items’ for the owner dropping charges against Sabatini. But the contents of a flash drive threaten very powerful figures who are determined to retrieve it, the restaurant owner (Gretchen Hall) and her driver (Yuri Makarov) are being investigated for the sex trafficking of minors. A minor theft case becomes a double homicide and Charlie Webb finds himself with the biggest and most dangerous case of his life.

Liane Moriarty ponders the question, “If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?” in her latest Here One Moment. Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103! —and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant, handsome guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.” Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly phenomenal.

Go As a River is a novel by Shelley Read. This sweeping epic of one young woman’s journey is set against the harsh reality of mid-century Colorado. One autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash is delivering late season peaches from her family’s farm when she runs into a young man asking for directions. Her answer unknowingly alters the course of both their young lives. Trice decisions and courageous acts send Victoria far from the only home she has known and toward a confrontation with loss, hope, and the limits of her own strength. This is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.

Next, we have The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak. Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic and determined to finally make things right. He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

Finally, there’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl—a literary devotional that follows the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As she moves through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”