In 2013 with the introduction of a new library management system, Spydus, the reservations service was reinvented as a click-and-collect process to rival that of any commercial organisation. We can now supply most titles that are in stock within a very short time, and in December 2017 the annual statistics showed that 79% of reservations were supplied within seven days.

You may place a reservation on any title that’s in stock via our online catalogue. If we don’t own the book you want, you can make a free suggestion through your online account, just login in and click on the make a stock suggestion link. We don’t guarantee to supply everything but we’ll do our best. And don’t forget that we have two eLibrary platforms, Overdrive and Cloud Library, from which you can download ebooks and eAudiobooks … and, now, even eMagazines.

So, what have you been reserving in the last year?

 

Lee Child

Night School/The Midnight Line                

We got mobbed for the new Lee Child title, Night School, published at the end of 2016, and then along came The Midnight Line in 2017. His hero Jack Reacher is perennially popular. They’ve both had readers queueing for most of the year in spite of there being more than 30 copies of each in stock.

 

Robert Harris

Munich

Robert Harris followed up his massive 2016 hit Conclave (38 hardback copies in stock, still going strong) with Munich, a novel set in 1938 featuring the two main characters on different sides of the diplomatic table at the conference called to discuss Hitler’s aim to annex the Sudetenland. This is another title we had to buy in numerous extra copies to satisfy the demand. Both titles are also available from our Digital Library.

 

Sarah Perry

The Essex Serpent

Sarah Perry won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Book of the Year at the British Book Awards for this gothic tale set in 1893. It was also nominated for the Costa and Wellcome Prizes. Our 56 copies are still doing well…and it’s the most popular title on our eBook platform Cloud Library.

 

Mick Herron

London Rules

Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb will hit our shelves again this month in the fifth title of this thriller series, London Rules. These were a bit of a slow burner at first but you took to him very quickly. One copy of Spook Street (no.4) has been on loan to 19 different people since last February. We already have 20 of you patiently waiting and we are getting books to you as fast as we can.

 

Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the train

The sustained demand for this one amazed us all. At the height of the Hawkins Hysteria we had 40 hardback copies and every single one of them was on loan, with other users waiting impatiently. It racked up more than 700 reservations in total!

 

 

Tim Marshall

Prisoners of Geography

Prisoners of Geography: ten maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics was a real surprise in the popularity stakes. It was first published in 2015 and hasn’t been off the reserve shelf since. Readers were still lining up when the paperback edition was published in 2016.

 

J D Vance

Hillbilly elegy

Growing up in America’s Rust Belt was a struggle even before the banks made a mess of everything.  J D Vance, a Yale graduate and former marine writes about his own family’s lives in Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis. The book made the New York Times bestseller list in 2016 and came to this country in 2017 where it was eagerly awaited.

 

 

Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens and Homo Deus

Sapiens and Homo Deus by this Israeli professor of history have proved tremendously popular among those of you not afraid to try a more challenging read. We have 10 copies of each title and at present they are all out on loan. They have also been popular on the eLibrary.

 

 

 

 

So, the next time you read a review or see something interesting in a bookshop – go online and have a look at what’s on offer from your local library. It’s just a click away!