While the inaugural Lebanon County Reads campaign launched in 2018, planning for Lebanon County’s own community read campaign began a year prior. All six Lebanon County public libraries support the campaign which runs from summer through early fall and culminates in the title selection’s author’s visit in the Fall. We hope you’ll read with us and check out the special events affiliated with the campaign!

You’re invited to vote on the title you want to read with us in 2024! Voting is open March 13, 2024, and runs through April 17, 2024. You may vote online via the ‘vote!’ button on this page or if you prefer to vote via paper ballot, please visit your local library to obtain one. Whether by paper ballot or by online ballot, please vote only once. The winning title will be announced on May 1, 2024, on Lebanon County libraries’ social media.

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Here are the 2024 finalists!

The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters: A True Story of Family Fiction by Julie Klam 

Part memoir and part confessional, and told with the wit and honesty that are hallmarks of Klam’s books, The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters is the fascinating and funny true story of one writer’s journey into her family’s past, the truths she brings to light, and what she learns about herself along the way. 

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd 

When Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with a seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, his daughter, Nell, can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence…because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way. 

The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley 

Daunis Fontaine agrees to go undercover in the FBI’s investigation into a lethal new drug impacting her Ojibwe community. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims. Now, as the deceptions―and deaths―keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Ojibwe woman and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known. 

Horse by Geraldine Brooks 

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism. 

The House is On Fire by Rachel Beanland

Richmond, Virginia 1811. The theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell. One floor away, in the “colored gallery,” Cecily Patterson is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater’s managers, he’ll be offered a permanent job. On the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. As news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

Ripple: A Long Strange Search For A Killer by Jim Cosgrove 

For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to identify “the boy in the woods,” a young man whose body had been discovered in a fishing village called Murrells Inlet. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank McGonigle’s family searched for him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of every long-haired hitchhiker they passed. After many years, Frank McGonigle was finally found — and identified as “the boy in the woods.” Jim Cosgrove, a McGonigle family friend and investigative journalist, picked up the trail of Frank’s cold case and began uncovering connections to a ruthless local crime boss and blunders by the threadbare sheriff’s department.

 

 

2023 — Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

2022Mercy House by Alena Dillon

2020/21Running With Sherman: The Donkey With The Heart Of A Hero by Christopher McDougall

2019 – The Baker’s Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan

2018 – America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie