We sure apologize for the inconvenience, but feel confident that the new webpage will meet the needs of our patrons in a more contemporary and informative way. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the library staff @ 337-363-1369.

Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years–since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.

On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both cases eventually went cold.

Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic’s life and offers her something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

And this new novel…

Nineteen-year-old Zippy can hardly believe it: she’s the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin, “San Francisco’s Finest Department Store.” Every week, she rotates her three spruced-up Salvation Army outfits and Vaseline-shined pumps; still, she’s thrilled to walk those pumps through the employee entrance five days a week as she saves to buy something new. For a girl who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store with her mother and her mother’s madcap boyfriend, Howard; a girl who wanted to go to college but had no help in figuring out how; I. Magnin represents a real chance for a better and more elegant life. Or, at the very least, a more interesting one.

Zippy may not be in school, but she’s about to get an education that will stick with her for decades. Her fellow salesgirls (lifetime professionals) run the gamut from mean and indifferent to caring and helpful. The cosmetics ladies on the first floor share both samples and advice (“only date a man with a Rolex”); and her new roommate, Raquel, an ambitious lawyer, tells Zippy she can lose ten pounds easy if she joins Raquel in eating only every other day. Just when Zippy thinks she’s getting a handle on how to be an adult woman in 1985, two surprises threaten both her sense of self and her coveted position at I. Magnin.

Set in the Day-Glo colors of 1980s San Francisco, Shopgirls is an intoxicating novel of self-discovery, outrageous fashion, and family both biological and found.

NOTICE OF A PUBLIC MEETING

EVANGELINE PARISH LIBRARY BOARD OF CONTROL

MEETING AGENDA

THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2025

4:00 pm Board of Control Meeting

916 W. Main St., Ville Platte, LA  70586

Notice: This meeting that will be live-streamed via our YouTube channel:

www.youtube.com@evangelineparishlibraryboard

(If you have a disability, please notify us ahead of time for accommodations)

1. Opening Business

1. Call to Order, Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance
2. Roll Call
3. Approval/Amendment of Agenda
4. Approval of Minutes from Previous Meeting
5. Public Comments on Agenda Items

1. Old Business
2. Update on the Legacy Tree fundraising sales on behalf of the Friends of the Library
3. Update on the new storage shed at the Basile Branch library
4. Update on plans to expand the program rooms of the Turkey Creek and Pine Prairie branches in 2025. To date the plans have been picked up by contractors Cody Fontenot and Oliver Celestine to prepare quotes on that are due by August 15^th.
5. Update on replacing carpet at the Turkey Branch Library. Review attached quotes: Deshotel’s Floor Covering, Celestine Construction, LeBleu Flooring.

1. New Business

1. Discuss turning over the old Basile Branch building to the Police Jury: utility transfers and insurance cancellation by the end of July.
2. Discuss preparations for the Library Tax Continuation Election. We’ve been advised by the bonding attorney with Louisiana Lagniappe that the Evangeline Parish Police Jury is the governing body with the authority to call this election, so they will prepare a resolution for the Jury to approve and sign off on to begin the process. See the first public publication in the Gazette (attached). Also, August 4^th is the next Police Jury public hearing @ 4:30 and the general meeting at 6 pm where we will learn more.
3. Review and discuss the attached quotes to purchase a truck to be used by maintenance personal only.
4. Request approval to renew the Amtrust BOP and Liability insurance policies for all locations. This quote will be adjusted when we remove the old Basile Branch location later this month.
5. Discuss changes potential changes to our Meeting Room Policy for the Ville Platte Branch.
6. Request to close the libraries for an All Staff Day on Wednesday, August 6^th.
7. 2025 training requirements for Board members: Cyber Security, Sexual Harassment Prevention & Ethics

1. Reports

1. Financial Report
2. Facilities Report
3. Outreach Report

• Next Board Meeting is September 8, 2025 @ 4 pm, Ville Platte Branch

• Adjournment  

The Ville Platte Branch is proud to host a

book talk / signing for local author

JORDAN LAHAYE FONTENOT

Tuesday, July 22, 2025 @ 2 pm

The Multipurpose Room.

Coffee will be served 🙂

Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse…

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?

As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever…

Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance and the untamed magic of the sea.

And a new Reese’s Book Club Pick…

A young American woman navigates class, lies, and love amid London’s jet-set elite.

I would arrive, blank like a sheet of notebook paper, and write myself new.

Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library–its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind–that fairy-tale life still out of reach.

Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men–one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna’s struggle to outrun her past. It’s like she’s stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?

Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you’ve left behind.