The Friends of Princetown Library

18/04/2026

📚 Love your local library?

The Friends of Princetown Library may be a small team, but we’re a mighty one — a group of volunteers who give a little of our time to help keep our wonderful library thriving. Whether it’s raising funds for activities, organising community events, or simply championing the library and all it offers, we’re here because we believe Princetown deserves a vibrant, welcoming library at its heart.

If you’re passionate about libraries and want to see ours continue to grow and remain a vital part of the community, we’d love your support.

📅 Join us at our AGM
🗓 May 2nd
⏰ 11:15am

Your voice, your ideas, and even a small amount of your time can make a huge difference. Let’s keep Princetown Library strong together. 💛📖

05/04/2026

Tracy Chevalier’s The Glassmaker follows the life of Orsola Rosso, a young woman born into a family of glassmakers on the Venetian island of Murano. Although women are forbidden from working in the glasshouses, Orsola possesses a natural talent and an irresistible pull toward the craft.

As she secretly hones her skills, her life becomes intertwined with the shifting tides of Venetian history—plague, political upheaval, artistic innovation, and the rise and fall of the city’s fortunes. Across decades, Orsola’s passion for glass shapes her relationships, her identity, and her quiet rebellion against the constraints placed on her.

The novel blends artistry, history, and a touch of the uncanny as Orsola’s life stretches across centuries, allowing her to witness the evolution of Venice and the enduring power of creativity.

05/04/2026

For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to accept the limits of what he can do.

Never before has aging been such an important topic. The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but, as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.

03/03/2026

When the Harrington family discovers an abandoned baby deep in the shady woods, they decide to keep her a secret and raise her as their own.

But within days a body is found in the grounds of their house and their perfect new family implodes.

Years later, Sylvie, seeking answers to nagging questions about her life, is drawn into the wild beautiful woods where nothing is quite what it seems.

Will she unearth the truth?

And dare she reveal it?

03/03/2026

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet - Lost on the left, Found on the right - and the two never seem to balance.

Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, Jackson attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected...

Kate Atkinson, Sunday Times bestseller, September 2024

26/02/2026

26/02/2026

Welcoming our new library assistant to Princetown Library

We are welcoming Steve Newland to Princetown Library from 28th February. Steve is finding out all about the library, supported by his colleagues at Tavistock Library, so do call in and say 'hello' when you have time!

05/02/2026

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

05/02/2026

Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn't rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed su***de after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke's death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend's crime.

03/12/2025

🎉✨ You’re Invited! ✨🎉

Join us for the Princetown Encounters Launch Event

📍 Duchy Hotel, Princetown
🗓️ Thursday, December 4th
⏰ 4:00 – 5:00 PM

Come and be part of this exciting new beginning! We’ll celebrate together with light refreshments and, of course, a delicious cake 🍰.

Bring your curiosity, your friends, and your community spirit – we can’t wait to see you there!

02/12/2025

Devon Libraries are consulting on the future shape of the library service across the county. Please use the link below to read through their proposals and have your say.

Here in Princetown we are lucky to still have our fantastic library which is a vibrant hub for the whole community but which would benefit from additional users.

While it's future is not threatened at the moment it could so easily be lost in the future as public spending is continually cut.

Access the consultation here: https://devonlibraries.commonplace.is/