The numbers are in! Rock County/Luverne library patrons checked out 83,866 items in 2004, almost 5,000 more than the previous year. That is excellent. Here are more surprising facts. The library meeting room was used 326 times. The Internet computers were used 2,990 times. Citizens made 8,890 photocopies and computer printouts. 144 microfilm copies were made. Library patrons paid $4,350 in late fees and lost book charges, money that goes right back into the library fund. There are 4,941 library cardholders in Rock County. We are in the business of information, education, and recreation. Your patronage has made the library successful in its mission. The librarians are happy. It is commonly known that a happy librarian buys more best-selling books than an unhappy librarian. So let’s check out the new bookshelf and see how happy I really am. "Honeymoon," by James Patterson. When FBI agent John O’Hara first sees Nora Sinclair, she seems perfect. She has the looks, the career, the clothes and the sophistication. She doesn’t just attract men, she enthralls them. So why is the FBI so interested in Nora Sinclair? Mysterious things are happening to people around her, especially the men. When a young investment banker dies of baffling causes, agent O'Hara immediately suspects the only witness, the banker's fiancé, Ms. Sinclair. There is something dangerous about her; something that lures him at the same time it fills him with fear. Agent O'Hara keeps closing in, but the stronger his case, the less he knows whether he's pursuing justice or his own fatal obsession. "The Ivy Chronicles," by Karen Quinn. When Park Avenue mom Ivy Ames finds she’s been downsized from her high-powered corporate job and her marriage, she swiftly realizes that she’s going to need a whole new way to support herself and her two private-school daughters. At first she does the obvious thing: she panics. Then she decides to put her years of marketing savvy to work and dreams up a brilliant new business — helping upscale New Yorkers get their little darlings into the most exclusive kindergartens in the city. Ivy enters a parent-eat-parent world where the egos are directly proportional to their owners’ enormous incomes. These are her best clients: — Lilith Radmore-Stein, a newspaper mogul willing to risk her entire empire in a demented effort to get her son admitted to Harvard Day School. — Omar Kutcher, a cold-blooded mob boss who seeks Ivy’s counsel on whether to bump off or pay off the powers-that-be to get his "little pistol" into the city’s best all-girls Catholic school. — Stu Needleman, Ivy’s most obnoxious client, who threatens to ruin her if she won’t help his four-year-old daughter cheat on her kindergarten entrance exam. Alert: The library will be closed on Monday, Feb. 21, in observance of President’s Day.
