NHFT virtual book club meeting #30 - No Good Deed

After our visit to the Ashokan Reservoir, in upstate New York, with John Langan's delightfully scary The Fisherman, we are returning to more familiar territory for our 30th book club read, David Jackson's UK set thriller, One Good Deed.

Elliott has never thought of himself as a hero. Until one dark night he meets Rebecca, a scared and vulnerable young woman who needs his help. There's a man harassing her, following her; would he mind pretending to be her boyfriend, just while she walks home, to put him off?

And that is that - just a favour for a stranger - until there is a knock at Elliott's door. It's the man who was following Rebecca. He claims he's her ex-boyfriend, but it's clear that he's been stalking her. He's obsessed, dangerously so. He wants Rebecca, and he will do anything to have her.

When Elliott eventually tries to tell him the truth, the man doesn't believe him. The only way to save himself is to get Rebecca to explain. There's just one problem: Rebecca is nowhere to be found. And now it looks like one good deed will cost Elliott everything...

‘One Good Deed is an addictive, fast-paced and suspenseful thriller. If you like your thrillers action-packed and nail-bitingly tense and/or you love a cat-loving antihero to root for, One Good Deed should be at the top of your shopping list.’ Kelly Van Damme (Goodreads)

We'll be meeting on Thursday 14th of December via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there... 

Isebrook Library opening hours: 3rd November 2023

Isebrook Library will not open until 11.30 am on Friday 3rd November.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

NHFT virtual book club meeting #29 - The Fisherman

Following on from our visit to Japan and the world of the gig economy in Kikuko Tsumara's There's no such thing as an easy job, things are taking a darker turn in our creepy Halloween read (and Bram Stoker award winner), The Fisherman by John Langan.

In upstate New York, within the woods, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked and fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true.

When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Creek and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss them. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir.

It’s a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

‘What starts as a slow, melancholy tale gains momentum and drops you headfirst into a churning nightmare from which you might escape, but you’ll never forget” - Richard Kadrey (author)

‘The Fisherman is a treasure, the kind of book you just want to snuggle up and shiver through. I can’t say enough good things about the confidence, the patience, the satisfying cumulative power of this book. It was a pleasure to read from the first page to the last’ - Victor LaValle (author)

We'll be meeting on Thursday 16th of November  via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there... 

We are recruiting - could you be our next Library Services Manager?

Due to the retirement of the current post holder, we are looking to recruit a librarian to manage the library service for Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital.

This is a great opportunity to shape services for community, mental health, and acute staff, across the county, ensuring knowledge and evidence are available and accessible to support clinical practice, management, education, research, continuing professional development and all decision making across the organisations we serve.

The service has a well-established team of experienced professional and para-professional staff across three sites, and you would be working for an outstanding trust that understands the value of what the library service offers, within a supportive management structure.

We are looking for a professionally qualified librarian with extensive experience in health to lead on the library service across both trusts. You will be proactive, adaptable and able to identify opportunities for further embedding service provision into the organisations we serve.

For more information about the role, contact details and to apply, please see the vacancies section of the Trust web site.

NHFT virtual book club meeting #28 - There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

Following on from our absinthe soaked visit to fog-shrouded San Francisco in Jonathan Moore's twisty psychological thriller, The Poison Artist, we are moving across the Pacific to Japan in the shape of award winning author Kikuko Tsumura's surreal comic novel, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job.

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking.

She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place?

As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful...

"An irreverent but thoughtful voice, with light echoes of Haruki Murakami... the book is uncannily timely... a novel as smart as is quietly funny" - Financial Times

'Quietly hilarious and deeply attuned to the uncanny rhythms and deadpan absurdity of the daily grind' - Sharlene Teo

The next meeting will be Thursday the 5th of October at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there...

Library catalogue and system out of action Tuesday 29th of August

Our library management system, Koha, along with our online catalogue and our self-issue machines, will be out of action from 7:00 am on Tuesday the 29th of August. This is for a system upgrade.

We expect the the upgrade will be completed and the system up and running again by lunch time, although it may be longer, depending on how the process goes.

During this time users will not be able to search our catalogue or renew their books.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

August bank holiday closure

 All the Libraries will be unstaffed on Monday the 28th of August for the bank holiday.

24 hour access will be available as usual to registered members via our swipe card system at the Richmond Library.

The Berrywood and Isebrook Libraries will be closed over the bank holiday.

We reopen as normal on Tuesday the 29th at all of our sites.

NHFT virtual book club meeting #27 - The Poison Artist

After our visit to revolutionary France with Madame Tussaud in Edward Carey's Little, we are moving to a contemporary, fog-shrouded San Francisco in the shape of Jonathan Moore's twisty psychological thriller, The Poison Artist.

Caleb Maddox is a toxicologist who just wants to drown his sorrows after an ugly breakup with his girlfriend

At a bar he meets the beautiful and bewitching Emmeline who has a taste for absinthe but then vanishes into the night.

He must find her.

As his search begins, Caleb becomes entangled in a serial-murder investigation. The police have been fishing men from the bay, and the post-mortems are inconclusive. One of the victims vanished from the bar the night Caleb met Emmeline. When questioned, Caleb can’t offer any information, nor does he tell them he’s been secretly helping the city’s medical examiner, an old friend, study the chemical evidence on the victims’ remains. 

The search for the killer soon entwines with Caleb’s hunt for Emmeline, and the closer he gets to each, the more dangerous his world becomes...

'An electrifying read... I haven't read anything so terrifying since Red Dragon.’ Stephen King

The next meeting will be Thursday the 24th of August at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

The NHFT Virtual Book Club - the video!

We were really pleased to be asked to take part in the 2023 Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival to talk about the virtual book club and our love of reading.

You can find more about all the books we have shared on our blog or watch the video on YouTube from the Wellbeing Festival.

Health Information Week - children's health

Today is the last day of the Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival and day 5 of Health Information Week #HIW2023.

Today’s headliner is Gok Wan, who has talked in the past about childhood obesity and bullying. This ties in with the theme for #HIW203 which is Children’s health.

You can access a range of books from the library on various aspects of children’s health, see our catalogue at https://nhft.koha-ptfs.co.uk/

There are also online resources you can access such as:

• Better Health, Healthier Families: https://www.nhs.uk/healthier-families/
  
  
• Young Minds: https://www.youngminds.org.uk/
  
  
• Action for Children: https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/
  
  
• Podcasts from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health: https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/podcasts      

Health Information Week - mental health and wellbeing

It is Health Information Week #HIW2023 and today is all about mental health and wellbeing, which ties in nicely with the Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival which started on Monday.

Do you know how the library can support your mental health and wellbeing?

•  Leisure collection: find your summer reading here! A mix of fiction (including the virtual book club books) and non-fiction books supported by the Northamptonshire Health Charitable Fund.
  
  
• Your Health collection: includes how to reduce stress, menopause management and using nature for wellbeing.
  
  
• Lots of other books on topics such as managing stress, anxiety, overcoming depression, men’s  health, being happy and wellbeing (both clinical and non-clinical).
  
  
• Games: alternatively why not try a game in a team meeting for a fun and different way to learn? Try the Working stress game or the Teams that care game.

 Find all these on the library catalogue https://nhft.koha-ptfs.co.uk/

A reading list for Pride Month

June is Pride Month and to celebrate we have put together a reading list of all the resources we have to support our LGBTQ+ colleagues, patients and the wider community.

These are available for all staff and students in Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital to borrow from the libraries.

The list contains a mixture of clinical, management and healthcare related titles (both in print and electronic), as well as fiction and nonfiction books from our leisure reading collections with an LGBTQ+ theme.

You can find the reading list on our catalogue here.