Sutherland Shire Libraries News

A great result from our first MakerSpace meetup!

Michael H., who first experimented with CAD (computer-assisted design) at our MakerSpace Essentials: CAD Basics session, has already solved a number of home repair problems with 3D printing technology. Using "123D Design" (a free CAD program from www.123dapp.com/design) he designed two custom models and brought them along to our meetup at Sutherland Library. Self-professed tech nerd Angus helped set them up for printing and Michael took home PLA (Polylactic acid) prototypes the same night.
Project one was a replacement handle for a knife, it was eventually printed in two parts using ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), which Michael processed in Acetone. After some research he also recommended using Araldite epoxy adhesive to combine metal and ABS.
The second model was a design for a broken vacuum cleaner part. A replacement was not going to be easy to find. Rather than throwing away the whole machine, Michael recreated the piece in "123D Design", and – voila – it fit perfectly!

There was more than just 3D printing happening at the MakerSpace. One participant worked on soldering an amplifier he is constructing using vintage 1960s valves (and I hope he returns so I can understand that sentence – stay tuned). There was also sewing, cross-stitching and a whole lot more to explore.

If these projects sound right up your alley, or you're a maker/crafty type looking to create something new, join us this month, fresh after the Easter holidays, on the 29th of March. Details, including an equipment list, can be found here: http://bit.ly/1PQwwj3

For a taste of what we’ve been creating in the MakerSpace, follow us on Instagram:
www.instagram.com/sutherlandshirelibraries

- Dasha

Celebrate International Women's Day today, Tuesday 8 March, by some reading books by Australian women authors.  Check out these suggestions...

Debut
Hotel Du Barry / Leslie Truffle
Heartbreak, joy and nefarious doings at London's luxurious HOTEL DU BARRY. A book for lovers of fine gin, murderous impulses and Jonas Jonasson.
When a laughing baby is found amongst the Hotel du Barry's billowing sheets, tucked up in an expensive pair of ladies' bloomers and neatly pegged to the laundry line, the hotel staff resolve to keep the child. The hotel's owner, Daniel du Barry, still mourning the loss of his lover in an automobile accident, adopts the little girl, names her after his favourite champagne and seeks consolation in fatherhood. Cat du Barry grows up beloved by both hotel staff and guests, equally at home in the ninth floor premium suite as she is in the labyrinth below stairs.
Years later when Daniel du Barry dies in sinister circumstances, Cat determines to solve the mystery with the assistance of her extended hotel family.
From hotel detective to roguish Irish gigolo, from compassionate housekeeper to foxy chamber maid, each will play their wicked part in this novel that will charm, amuse and delight.

Short Stories
My hearts are your hearts : twenty new stories and their origins / Carmel Bird
What are the hares getting up to among the sunflowers? Who is paying $6000 for a raincoat? The priest is good, kind, adored, believed - but can the schoolgirl trust him? Who kills his wife and dumps the body in the pool? What if you find your death was listed long ago online? With lightness in the telling, with subtle harmonies and rhythms in the sentences, subversive wit, tender observation - these new stories from one of Australia's foremost storytellers explore the mysterious workings of the heart. Accompanied by the author's comments on the stories' origins and themes, as well as insights into the creative process, this is the first in Spineless Wonders' new series, FICTION PLUS. A must for lovers of short fiction - for readers and for writers.

 Literary
The light on the water / Olga Lorenzo

Recently divorced and trying to make sense of her new life, Anne takes her daughter Aida on an overnight bushwalk in the moody wilderness of Wilsons Promontory. In a split second, Aida disappears and a frantic Anne scrambles for help. Some of the emergency trackers who search for Aida already doubt Anne's story.

Nearly two years later and still tormented by remorse and grief, Anne is charged with her daughter's murder. Witnesses have come forward, offering evidence which points to her guilt. She is stalked by the media and shunned by friends, former colleagues and neighbours.

On bail and awaiting trial, Anne works to reconstruct her last hours with Aida. She remembers the sun high in the sky, the bush noisy with insects, and her own anxiety, as oppressive as the heat haze.

A superbly written and conceived literary work about the best and the worst aspects of family life, this story asks difficult questions about society, the media, and our rush to judgement.

Biography
Plain-speaking Jane / Jane Caro
Jane Caro is known for saying what she thinks across the news and entertainment media. In an era where public figures talk about themselves as brands, and manage every moment accordingly, this is not just refreshing, it's, well, radical.

Unafraid to apply that razor-sharp insight to her own life, Jane reveals that she was not a model child or a faultless parent, and she's a better person for it; that asking for help is a skill worth mastering; and that in her long and successful career in advertising, she was bullied by some of the wittiest men in Australia.

Jane also talks frankly about her battle with anxiety, offering assurance and hope to the one-in-three Australian women affected by the condition. Jane shows that anxiety is not a life sentence, and that on the other side lies the ultimate reward: the freedom to do as we please.

Dystopian
The natural way of things / Charlotte Woods
Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of a desert. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girls, forced to wear strange uniforms, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious armed jailers and a 'nurse'. The girls all have something in common, but what is it? What crime has brought them here from the city? Who is the mysterious security company responsible for this desolate place with its brutal rules, its total isolation from the contemporary world? Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. They pray for rescue - but when the food starts running out it becomes clear that the jailers have also become the jailed. The girls can only rescue themselves.

Thriller
Darkest Place/ Jaye Ford
Carly Townsend is starting over after a decade of tragedy and pain. In a new town and a new apartment she's determined to leave the memories and failures of her past behind.

However that dream is shattered in the dead of night when she is woken by the shadow of a man next to her bed, silently watching her. And it happens week after week.

Yet there is no way an intruder could have entered the apartment. It's on the fourth floor, the doors are locked and there is no evidence that anyone has been inside.

With the police doubting her story, and her psychologist suggesting it's all just a dream, Carly is on her own. And being alone isn't so appealing when you're scared to go to sleep . . .

Contemporary
 Hold/Kirsten Tranter
A haunting, hypnotic and enticing novel of grief and desire, by one of Australia's finest, most assured novelists.
Three years ago, Shelley's lover, Conrad, died in a surfing accident. Now, still in a state of subdued grief, Shelley has just moved into an old Victorian terrace in Paddington with David, her new partner, trying for a new beginning. At home one morning, Shelley discovers a door to a small intriguing room, which is not on the plans. There is a window, a fireplace and a beautiful chandelier. But nothing else.
When Shelley meets a man who seems to be Conrad's uncanny double, the mysterious room begins to dominate her world, becoming a focus for her secret fantasies and fears, offering an escape which also threatens to become a trap.

Novella
The girl with the dogs/ Anna Funder
The Girl with the Dogs is a poignantly beautiful novella about what's really precious in life, from Miles Franklin Award-winning Anna Funder, author of All That I Am. Amid the debris of their friends' marriages, Tess and Dan have hit the middle years relatively unscathed. But Tess senses she's at a hinge moment, poised between the life she thought she wanted and the one she long ago decided against. The demands of her Sydney family seem unrelenting: an uneasy teenage daughter, a father who has just been placed in care, the impending sale of her childhood home. Sent to London for a conference, she's unable to resist the pull of that relinquished life. What, she wonders, would it be like now? And might it have suited her better after all?

Romance 
Kakadu Sunset/ Annie Seaton
In the ancient lands of Kakadu, it's not just the crocodiles you should be afraid of...Helicopter pilot Ellie Porter loves her job. Soaring above the glorious Kakadu National Park, she feels freed from the heavy losses of her beloved family farm and the questions around her father's suicide. But when a search-and-rescue mission on the boundary of the older property reveals unusual excavation works, Ellie vows to investigate.The last thing she needs is her bad-tempered co-pilot, Kane McClaren, interfering. The son of the current owners of the farm, her attraction to him is a distraction she can't afford, especially when someone threatens to put a stop to her inquiries - but any means necessary.Ellie will have to trust Kane if she is to have any hope of uncovering the truth of what is really going on. Between Ellie's damage and Kane's secrets, can they find a way to open up to each other before the shadowy forces shut her up...for good?

In the news
Numbered / Amy Andrews & Ros Baxter
Mathematician and many-time Loser in Love Poppy Devine believes in being prepared. So when she discovers she has breast cancer, all she has to do is dust off the carefully numbered bucket list she prepared years before with her best friend Julia. There are only two problems: Quentin, a gorgeous younger man with rock-star ambitions, wasn't on her list. And take-a-risk Julia, has suddenly come over all disapproving.

Who could forget the dramatic footage of surfing star, Mick Fanning’s close encounter with a shark at Jeffreys Bay last July? But Fanning is not the only Australian sporting champion to survive a shark attack.

Emmie Pickering (1887-1970) of Oatley was from a large family of talented rowers. In March 1912, spectator boats and onlookers crowded the Parramatta River and cheered Emmie on to a thrilling victory over six-time winner, Gertie Lewis, during the Australian Ladies Sculling Championships.

But this was not Emmie’s most exciting race.

Two years later Emmie and her brother, Stanley, were training on the Georges River when a huge triangular fin glided between their outriggers. As Stan yelled “Row for your life!” a fifteen foot shark suddenly surfaced, showed its jaws and repeatedly charged their boats as Emmie and her brother dashed for the shore before leaping to safety on the sand. “It was a lucky escape,” said Emmie, “and I really think Stan and I are lucky to be alive.”

Emmie claimed the title of Australian ladies sculling champion for more than 20 years. Tragically, Stan was killed in 1917 whilst fighting on the Western Front. His name is inscribed on the war memorial at Oatley.

For more historical photographs of the Sutherland Shire visit sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/history

Many of the events we hear about and see via news services and social media are not just randomly happening. The circumstances that allowed them to happen have often been building for years, decades and even centuries.
Asbestos scare... sees student's uniforms removed...this headline from February might prompt some to wonder why asbestos is so feared!

Migrant crisis: Australia opens it's doors to Syrian refugees Did you know that the current Syrian refugee crisis has been building since the Syrian uprising in 2011? Turkey has had refugee camps full of Syrians for the last 5 years!


Festival Pill testing trial to begin...vows drug expert...find out the back story behind the headlines. Why are we talking about this? What are the pros and cons? Is it done elsewhere?

TIP: Use your Sutherland Library membership number to log in and follow the links to World History in Context content.

Find this and many similar resources on the Sutherland Shire Libraries website under Digital Collections > Research Databeases










Images provided via Britannica Image Quest

Because of Miss Bridgerton, by Julia Quinn
There were Bridgertons before the eight alphabetically named siblings. In this first of a new prequel series, we go back to where it all began. . . from New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn.
Billie Bridgerton and George Rokesby are neighbors and have known each other (and driven each other crazy) all of their lives. Billie is far from your average shrinking wallflower - in fact, she's a total tomboy, fearless and bold... until circumstances take her out of Kent and put her in a more traditional social setting, where suddenly she's quite out of her element.
George is his family's eldest son, and as such he can't join the military to serve his country as two of his younger brothers have. He hates this. So when George finds himself thrown back together with Billie, passions flare - just not the romantic kind. And yet, there's something about Billie that George can't deny he finds tempting rather than irritating. It may turn out that this match made in hell is not so intolerable after all...

Fool Me Once, by Harlan Coben
Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe—who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to? To find the answer, Maya must finally come to terms with deep secrets and deceit in her own past before she can face the unbelievable truth about her husband—and herself.


The Madwoman Upstairs, by Catherine Lowell
Think you know Charlotte, Emily & Anne? Think again. Samantha Whipple is the last remaining descendent of the illustrious Brontë family, of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre fame. After losing her father, a brilliant author in his own right, it is up to Samantha to piece together the mysterious family inheritance lurking somewhere in her past - yet the only clues she has at her disposal are the Brontë's own novels. With the aid of her handsome but inscrutable Oxford tutor, Samantha must repurpose the tools of literature to unearth an untold family legacy, and in the process, finds herself face to face with what may be literature's greatest secret.
The Nest, by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.
Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they’ve envisioned?

The summer before the war by Helen Simsion
East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England's brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha's husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent sabre rattling over the Balkans won't come to anything. And Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master.

When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more free thinking – and attractive – than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing.