There’s no let-up at the Family Library during the summer!

So many of you are taking advantage of our services, whether that be popping into our mobile library as we travel island-wide or enjoying direct home deliveries of books for those who are housebound.

From our oldest outreach client who is over 100, to some of our youngest babies, it has been wonderful in recent weeks to receive such feedback from residents who benefit from unique combination of services.

Our hub at the Family Library continues to thrive and is a daily sea of colour and excitement with our continued classes, including Sing and Sign, Stickyfingers, Toddle Tots, Story Box and Teddy Time.

We have also been developing and building on other initiatives such as Throw Back Thursday, Jolly Music, Family Quiz Questions, Kitchen Kapers and Super Science.

Thanks to all of you who joined in and shared with us our exciting online programme of fun activities. It has been so important to keep in touch with you all, both new friends and the members we know so well.

Watch this space also for our bespoke summer reading scheme.

Plans are being finalised for the initiative, which will run during the school summer break, and is an informative, fun and creative way to encourage your children to read.

Registration forms will soon be available from the Family Library.

Thanks also to all our supporters who has started this petition, showing your support for the Family Library and the services we provide. The reaction is heartening to see.

https://www.change.org/p/isle-of-man-save-the-family-library

In the meantime, to keep up-to-date and to find out more, check out the Family Library page on Facebook, visit www.familylibrary.im or call the library on 640650.

Book review: 'The Liar's Daughter', by Rona Halsall

Featuring a slow-burning, yet compulsively gripping plot and a series of twists and turns you wouldn’t see coming, ’The Liar’s Daughter’ is sure to keep Manx author Rona Halsall’s many fans hooked.

Eva lives at home with her step-mother, caring for her father, who has dementia.

She gets a call out of the blue one morning to hear that her sister has suffered an accident and is in hospital. Only, as far as Eva is concerned, she doesn’t have her sister.

What follows turns Eva’s life upside down as she tries to unpick her family life, discovering what is real and what is false and finding out some unsettling truths along the way.

Rona has won legions of fans around the world for her pacey, rapid fire plots and her knack of being able to turn the most innocuous story on its head with a flick of her pen, and the Liar’s Daughter does not disappoint.

The difference in this, her seventh novel is that she really puts the reader through the wringer.

’The Liar’s Daughter’ is darker in tone than her previous books and is very much a slow burner.

The plot ambles along at a fairly pedestrian pace until the twist rears its head.

Part of the suspense in reading her books is waiting for the inevitable change in plot, and this one is a twist you will not see coming.

At times disturbing and unsettling, it is nonetheless an absorbing and compulsive read.