Happy New Year from the Harlem Public Library! We are thankful for the opportunity to serve you this past year and look forward to even better things in 2020.

The staff have come up with some goals for the upcoming year: 1. Greater use of digital services by staff and patrons. 2. More teen involvement in the library. 3. Increased attendance at all programming. 4. Higher circulation of all materials.

We hope you set a goal to visit the library more and see what services you can take advantage of.

Have you completed the December Book Challenge to reread your favorite book? If so, contact the library so your name can be entered to win a gift certificate from a local business. Have your read at least 52 books in the past year? Congratulations! Let the library know and you may be the lucky winner of the 2019 Reading Challenge gift basket including a $25 Visa gift card.

The Book Challenge for January is to read a book with an ugly cover! The library has decided not to have a reading challenge for 2020.

The new Book Club selection is “Beneath a Scarlet Sky” by Mark Sullivan. You may pick up your copy the week of December 30 with the first discussion January 6, 4 P.M. Watch for the upcoming on-line book club selection on our Facebook page.

Children’s programming will resume the first week of January. Story time for ages 0-5 and their parents/caregivers meets Tuesday, January 7, 10 A.M. at the library.

Elementary students are invited to After School Squad on Wednesday, January 8, 3:30 P.M. Lego Club for all ages meets on Thursday, January 9, 4:30 P.M. All programming is free. Call the library for more information.

The library will be offering parenting classes is the next few weeks. Watch for more information.

Start the year off with a new book or two from the library. “No Judgments” is by Meg Cabot. Bree Beckham leaves Manhattan to start over in Little Bridge, the tiny island in the Florida Keys that was her family’s favorite vacation spot. When a Category 5 hurricane strikes Bree is determined to stay believing she has everything she needs to wait out the storm. As the storm worsens Bree worries about the pets left behind and she plans to save as many as she can. Help arrives in the form of her boss’s nephew, Drew Hartwell. But When Bree’s ex shows up, she must ask herself if she is truly over him.

Susan Choi is the author of “Trust Exercise.” In the early 1980’s students at a highly competitive suburban school for the fine arts fill their days with competition, practice and performance. In this turbulent existence David and Sarah fall head-over-heels for each other. When the outside world penetrates the school’s walls a spiral of events turns their world upside down. What happened to David and Sarah and their friends? Readers will have to wait until the final stunning coda of the story to learn the truth.

A new biography is “Polly Pry: The Woman Who Wrote the West” by Julia Bricklin. In 1900 Leonel Ross Campbell became the first female reporter for the Denver Post. Known as Polly Pry she got her start not only writing the news, but inventing it. Campbell would become a respected journalist and activist fighting for the rights of the underserved.

A new thriller from John Connolly is “A Book of Bones.” On a lonely moor in northeast England the body of a young woman is found. In the south a girl lies buried beneath an Iron Age mound. The ruins of a human skull are uncovered in the southeast. Each is a thought to be the result of a sacrifice. Charlie Parker is determined to track those who would cast the world into darkness.

Other new selections include “The Shape of Night” by Tess Gerritsen, “A Cruel Deception,” a Bess Crawford mystery by Charles Todd, and “The Loyal One,” part of the Walnut Creek series by Shelley Shepard Gray.

The United States Census will take place in 2020. Watch for census facts and information in upcoming columns.