2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

East Brunswick Public Library is closed August 31 - September 2 in observance of the Labor Day Weekend Holiday.

Adults

Elevator Memoir-1955

Elevator Memoir-1955 (a Short Story Contest entry by Donna Lee Goldberg)

 

No Lackawanna train Fridays.

Instead, Mommy drives from Orange to Newark to pick up Daddy at his office.

Parked, we run to the elevator bank, press the button to call the elevator car. Then the uniformed attendant opens the folding gate. We enter.

She closes the gate, cranks the control wheel to launch us to the seventh floor. We fly.

Using the wheel, she breaks and pulls the gate, the doors open.

Daaaaaady!!!!!

My Friend

My Friend by Franklin Cota (a Short Story Contest entry)

 

She was beautiful and kind the way you want your friends to be. We were inseparable. I followed her everywhere. I used to think that she was an angel sent to be my friend.

“Then where are my wings?” she would say with a laugh.

My family moved away and I lost contact with her.

Until my twenty-first birthday when I received seven long white feathers in the mail.

Elevator Memoir-1955

Elevator memoir 1955

No Lackawanna train Fridays.
Instead, Mommy drives from Orange to Newark to pick up Daddy at his office.
Parked, we run to the elevator bank, press the button to call the elevator car. Then the uniformed attendant opens the folding gate. We enter.
She closes the gate, cranks the control wheel to launch us to the seventh floor. We fly.
Using the wheel, she breaks and pulls the gate, the doors open.
Daaaaaady!!!!!
 

Gone

Gone by Lee Ann Smith (a Short Story Contest entry)

Candle stubs flicker on the table, wax dripping. A bottle of Cabernet stands open by one of the two place settings. A wine glass lays on the tablecloth, its contents spreading, deep blood red. In the kitchen, an alarm blares as smoke billows from the oven.

We made it look sudden, violent, unexpected. When the fire department shows up, they’ll call the police. We’ll be miles away. We knew this day would come.

My Friend

She was beautiful and kind the way you want your friends to be. We were inseparable. I followed her everywhere. I used to think that she was an angel sent to be my friend.
“Then where are my wings?” she would say with a laugh.
My family moved away and I lost contact with her.
Until my twenty-first birthday when I received seven long white feathers in the mail.

Gone

Candle stubs flicker on the table, wax dripping. A bottle of Cabernet stands open by one of the two place settings. A wine glass lays on the tablecloth, its contents spreading, deep blood red. In the kitchen, an alarm blares as smoke billows from the oven.

We made it look sudden, violent, unexpected. When the fire department shows up, they’ll call the police. We’ll be miles away. We knew this day would come.

Saint X

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison's body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men, employees at the resort, are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. It turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only sad return home to broken lives.

The End of the Day

Bill Clegg returns with a deeply moving, emotionally resonant novel about the complicated bonds and breaking points of female friendship, the corrosive forces of secrets, the heartbeat of longing, and the redemption found in forgiveness.