The workshops will cover a range of areas designed to help job seekers. The complete schedule is as follows:

• Thursday, September 16 – Resume Writing Review. Attendees will participate in a round table discussion of resume writing in general, including how to address key word search techniques. Chronological and functional resume samples will also be analyzed. Participates are encouraged to bring their existing resumes for confidential one-on-one critique.
• Thursday, September 23 – Cover and Thank You Letter Review. A group discussion and analysis of various letter-writing samples. A review of acceptable formats will be included.
• Thursday, September 30 – Interview Workshop. An interactive and informal question and answer session where participants will role-play typical interview questions and how best to answer them. The seminar will also include ways to avoid job candidates’ most common interview mistakes.
• Thursday, October 7 – Online Job Search and Resume Submittal Workshop. An analysis and discussion of numerous search strategies, including job alerts, job boards, job aggregators and company employment pages. The session will include a discussion of how to best utilize these web sites for submitting one’s resume.
• Thursday, October 14 – Changing Careers: Reinventing Yourself in Today’s Job Market. Transitioning into a new profession can be a challenging and daunting undertaking. This session will explore various strategies to help make the transition from one industry to another a smooth one. This is a group discussion where everyone’s experiences and opinions are welcomed.
• Thursday, October 21 – Salary and Benefits Negotiating. For many, discussing compensation with employers is a risky and uncomfortable endeavor, yet it is imperative that people have the necessary tools to advocate for themselves. Is the salary commensurate with your market value? Can allowances be made with respect to additional vacation time and increased stock options? Strategies will be discussed to help bolster confidence and gain knowledge as it relates to business negotiations.

The employment workshops are funded by the Friends of the Library.

Beebe Library also maintains an extensive Career and College collection with resources for job seekers including guides to writing resumes and cover letters and other aspects of the job search.

For further information, phone 781-246-6334, x102.

Mother Goose on the Loose Story Times will begin at Beebe Library in September. Registration begins Tuesday, Sept. 7. Parents can apply for story time online (beginning Sept. 7). You can also register in person or by phone at 781-246-6334, extension 3. Applicants are asked to indicate their preferred session and a second choice.

The Library intends for every Wakefield child to be able to attend at least one of the four six-week story time sessions offered during the school year: Fall, Winter 1, Winter 2, or Spring. The library strives to accommodate each registrant’s first scheduling choice. In any given session, the library gives priority to any Wakefield child who is not registered for another session.

Regretfully, we do not provide library services, including story times, to residents of communities without certified libraries. Nonresidents from communities with certified libraries are wait-listed until five days before the start of a session.

>(Note: During Winter 1, Thursday story times begin a week early on November 4 due to two holidays that take place on Thursdays this year. Thursday sessions last seven weeks instead of eight during Winter 1.)

Lapsit: for pre-walkers, 3 months up to a year old and a caretaker. You and your baby will listen to stories, learn songs, finger plays, nursery rhymes and play with other babies. Please make other arrangements for older children so you and your baby can enjoy this special time together. Lapsit will be offered at the following times:

Fall Session, September 23 – October 28: Thursdays at 9:30 a.m.
Winter 1, November 10 – December 15: Wednesdays at 11 a.m.
Winter 2, January 12-February 16: Wednesdays at 11 a.m.
Spring, March 10 – April 14: Thursdays at 11 a.m.

Walkers and Talkers: for walking children up to 35 months and caretakers. Build your child’s early literacy skills. Children will learn songs, play games, learn nursery rhymes and finger plays, and listen to simple stories. Children must be accompanied by a caretaker. The schedule for Walkers and Talkers is:

Fall Session, September 21 – October 29: Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m., Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m., Thursdays at 11 a.m. and Fridays at 11 a.m.
Winter 1, November 4 – December 17: Tuesdays at 11 a.m., Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m., Thursdays at 11 a.m. and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. (No program on November 5.)
Winter 2, January 11 – February 18: Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m., Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m., Thursdays at 9:30 a.m. and Fridays at 11 a.m.
Spring, March 8 – April 15: Tuesdays at 11 a.m., Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m., Thursdays at 9:30 a.m. and Fridays at 9:30 a.m.
Three and Four Year-Olds. Help your child build literacy skills. Children will listen to stories, learn songs, finger plays and games, and do a simple craft. Parents must remain in the building while child attends program. The schedule for this age group follows.
Fall Session, September 21 – October 29: Tuesdays at 11 a.m. and Fridays at 9:30 a.m.
Winter 1, November 4 – December 17: Thursdays at 9:30 a.m., Fridays at 11 a.m. (No program on November 5.)
Winter 2, January 11 – February 18: Tuesdays at 11 a.m. and Fridays at 9:30 a.m.
Spring, March 8 – April 15: Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. and Fridays at 11 a.m.

Four and Five Year-Olds. Children will build their listening comprehension and storytelling abilities, learn songs and do a craft. Caretakers must remain in the building, but allow the children to participate in the program alone. The schedule for this age group follows.

Fall Session, September 22 – October 27: Wednesdays at 11 a.m.
Winter 1, November 9 – December 14: Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m.
Winter 2, January 13 – February 17: Thursdays at 11 a.m.
Spring, March 9 – April 13: Wednesdays at 11 a.m.

Another mystery set in South Africa is Deon Meyer’s Blood Safari. Emma Le Roux hires a personal security expert when her believed-dead brother is named as a suspect in the murders of five people. Full of page-turning tension, this will strongly appeal to mystery and suspense fans seeking intelligent, hard-boiled action.
Jassy Mackenzie’s Random Violence is the first in a series. Returning to South Africa after living in England for ten years following her policeman father’s murder, PI Jade de Jong agrees to help her father’s former partner investigate a series of carjacking cases and discovers a pattern that may have a link to her father’s death. Grim, gritty, and violent, the novel offers a revealing view of modern South Africa.

Do you enjoying reading something terrifying and entertaining? Try F.G. Cottam’s The House of Lost Souls. Ten years ago, rumors of human sacrifice, ghosts, and magic were just that—until journalist Paul Seaton confronted unspeakable evil at the abandoned Fischer House and barely escaped with his life. Still haunted by his loss, he is asked to return to prevent the house from claiming more unsuspecting souls.

Here is a great zombie story combining the undead with high school football. Its publisher describes the books as Friday Night Lights meets Dawn of the Dead. In Ryan Brown’s Play Dead, after a rival team causes his football squad’s bus to crash, killing all the players. This is a fast-paced, thrilling, and terribly funny debut by former actor Brown.

If being frightened is appealing, then Brian Evanson’s Last Days will give you your fix. Through spare language, a noir sensibility, and macabre humor, the author crafts a compulsively readable nightmare that asks, “How do you know the moment when you cease to be human?” If you enjoyed Stephen King’s Misery, this one may be for you.

Want something a bit less serious? Imagine five very different women stuck together in a Florida hotel room after a terrible storm shuts down the entire area. Kris Radish does just that in Hearts on a String. The author deftly juggles the different personalities and throws in some wacky side story lines. Radish also wrote The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (2009) and always writes a compelling and pleasing story.

Jennifer Ross’s Icing on the Cupcake is a first novel that highlights realistic characters and funny situations. Texas Southern belle Ansley is on the brink of getting engaged but her cattiness and downright meanness have gotten the best of her, and she finds herself fiancé-less as well as friendless. When she runs off to NYC to live with her estranged grandmother, she realizes that it is time to find a purpose for her life and turn things around.

Looking for a Love Story by Louise Shaffer is terrific at weaving contemporary and historical family stories. In this novel, the author mixes the stories of Francesca who is a blocked writer whose marriage unexpectedly crumbles and the story of a Depression-era husband-and-wife vaudeville team in need of a ghost writer. Other great titles by this author are Family Acts (2007) and Serendipity (2009).

The Empress of Mars by the late Kage Baker is a Science Fiction novel of fun and high adventure. The British Arena Company abandoned its colonies on Mars when it couldn’t make a profit. Now they want them back, and it is up to Mary Griffith, her three daughters, and the other misfit denizens of Mary’s bar, the only one on Mars, to stop the company as peacefully as they can.

Paolo Bacigalpi’s The Windup Girl gives the Science Fiction reader a sobering and nuanced vision of a future Bangkok teetering on the edge of disaster. In this inhospitable environment, a disparate group of characters calculates how to survive. Fans of Charles Stross’s Accelerando will want to check this novel out.

All of the content in ARRC has been created by certified technicians from the ASE (National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence).

To access this service click on the “Online Databases” link on the “Quick Links” menu. Please contact the Reference Department at 781-246-6334 x2 or email@wakefieldlibrary.org if you have questions, or for help getting started.

Ben Stiller stars in Greenberg, as a single, fortyish man deliberately doing nothing. In search of a place to restart his life, he agrees to housesit for his brother in LA and tries to reconnect with his former bandmate and successful ex-girlfriend. But old friends aren’t necessarily still best friends, and Greenberg soon finds himself forging a connection with his brother’s personal assistant, Florence. Greenberg has come to realize that he may at last have found a reason to be happy. Co-starring Chris Messina, Greta Gerwig and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Hot Tub Time Machine stars John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Crispin Glover, Lizzy Caplan and Chevy Chase. When a group of middle-aged men travel to a ski resort seeking a temporary escape from their failed, miserable lives, a drunken accident in a hot tub sends them back to 1986, where they get a chance to relive a night from the past and possibly change their futures forever.

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Harriet Vanger disappeared forty years ago from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found and her beloved uncle is convinced she was murdered and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced investigative journalist Mickael Blomkvist and the tattooed and troubled yet resourceful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate.

In Stolen, Detective Tom Adkins is a devoted cop haunted by the unsolved disappearance of his young son eight years earlier. But when Adkins discovers the buried remains of a boy who was brutally murdered more than half a century ago, he becomes obsessed with investigating the long-forgotten crime. Is the 1958 mystery surrounding down-on-his-luck family man Matthew Wakefield and his own abducted son linked in any way to Adkins’ tragedy? Starring Jon Hamm, Josh Lucas, James Van der Beek, Jimmy Bennett and Jessica Chastain.

In She’s Out of My League, average guy Kirk (Jay Baruchel) can’t believe his luck when, against all odds, Molly, a successful and outrageously gorgeous babe, falls for him. Kirk is stunned and so are his friends, his family, and even his ex-girlfriend. Now, he must go to great lengths to figure out how to make the relationship work and prove to himself and everyone else that she is not out of his league. Co-starring Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller, Alice Eve, Nate Torrence, Krysten Ritter, Geoff Stults and Lindsay Sloane.

For a list of other new feature film DVDs at Beebe Library, go to wakefieldlibrary.org/lists/autonewvideo.htm. Feature film DVDs can be rented for $1 per week.

This debut by Tom Hinshelwood may remind some of Robert Ludlum’s spy thrillers. In The Killer, top assassin Victor accomplishes an assignment but a hit squad waiting for him lets Victor know his client has betrayed him. Hunting that client with two assassins, the CIA, and Russian Special Forces on his trail keeps Victor running from London to Moscow to Tanzania. Victor’s introspective analysis of his lonely life gives the reader a break between the relentless pace of nonstop shoot-outs.
Mike Lawson brings his political fixer, Joe DeMarco, out for a fifth outing in this series that began with The Inside Ring (2005) in House Justice. When a CIA officer in Iran is captured and murdered because of a congressional leak, the Speaker of the House sends DeMarco to find out who is responsible. One step behind an unknown killer, Joe works with the beautiful CIA agent Angela DeCaprio to find the leakers, who are being tracked and killed one by one. Lawson has honed his skills as a political thriller writer and produces a fast-moving, cynical but moral tale.

Louise Penny introduced us to the Canadian village of Three Pines and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec in Still Life(2006). In her fifth in this series, The Brutal Telling, Gamache and his team are back in Three Pines investigating the murder of a hermit. This is a true gem of a series that should not be missed by readers who like good plotting, compelling characters, and stunning settings.
If Fantasy is your addiction of choice for lazy reading by the pool, then Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker will enthrall you. The ruler of Idris balks at fulfilling a longstanding treaty that requires sending his accomplished favorite daughter, Vivenna, to marry the mysterious god-king of a rival kingdom. He instead replaces Vivenna with Siri, his headstrong and disposable younger daughter. This is a Fantasy author that should not be missed!

Historical fiction fans will be captivated by the grandeur and treachery of Ancient Rome vividly brought to life in Michelle Moran’s tale of the last of the Egyptian Ptolemys in Cleopatra’s Daughter. Following the deaths of their parents, Antony and Cleopatra, ten-year-old Selene and her twin brother, Alexander, have been taken to Rome and placed in the home of Octavia, sister to Octavian and Anthony’s abandoned wife. Through Selene’s eyes, readers are given an intimate view of the imperial family as Octavian consolidates his powers and finally becomes the Emperor Augustine.
Sandra Dallas’s Prayers for Sale takes place in 1936 in an isolated Colorado mining town. The hardy miners’ wives who have eked out an existence in the town of Middle Swan can be difficult, and for newcomer Nit Spindle, friendly prospects are grim. When she sees the elderly Hennie Comfort’s rickety old “prayers for sale” sign, she stops to buy a prayer and, surprisingly, gains a friend. Fans of Lee Sue Monk Kidd and Kaye Gibbons will love this story.

Beth Harbison’s Thin, Rich, Pretty is a fast and fun read by the author of Hope in a Jar (2009). Holly and Nicola became fast friends at summer camp 20 years ago, united in their hatred of rich, spoiled Lexi, who loved making fun of the shy Nicola and the overweight Holly. When the three all meet up again in their late thirties, secrets from summer camp come to the surface, and they realize it’s time to grow up, each in her own way.

One of the things that attracted Jaclyn to the Beebe Library job was the fact that it involves both customer service and working with data.

“I liked that the job would combine customer service and statistical work,” she says. “Plus, Wakefield is a beautiful town with a nice library.”

A native of Westfield, Jaclyn now resides in Beverly. When she’s not working, she spends her time reading, cooking and gardening.