The library is collecting used eyeglasses for the Lions Club.

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Preschool storytimes are scheduled Jan. 13, “Rubber Ducky Day,” and Jan. 27, “Playful Penguins.” Storytimes are 10-10:30 a.m.

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Large-print books and magazines are needed for the senior outreach program. Western, historical fiction and more are sought.

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A great way to honor or memorialize someone is through the amazon.com wish list. Visit the Web site at www.amazon.com and click on “Gifts & Wish Lists” right abocve the search box. In the “Find someone’s wish list” search box on the right side of the screen, search for Lampasas Public Library.

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The book sale shelves are fully stocked. There is a large selection of adult and children’s books for sale.

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Recent donations have been given in memory of Jack Hamel, Jack Ray Allen and Mary Jane Bowman. A donation also was received in honor and appreciation of Pat Millican and Mike Martin.

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New books at the library:

“From Luby’s to the Legislature,” by Suzanna Gratia Hupp. On Oct. 16, 1991, Suzanna Gratia Hupp witnessed the tragic shooting of 23 people at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen. Among them were her parents. Ironically, she had decided against carrying a small revolver -- that could have dramatically changed the day’s events -- in her purse that day out of a fear of losing her chiropractor’s license if caught possessing a weapon.

In her autobiography, Mrs. Hupp chronicles her evolution from a small-town chiropractor into a national icon for the right to armed self-defense.

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“A Friend of the Family,” by Lauren Grodstein. Pete Denizoff has spent years working toward a life that would be, by all measures, deemed successful. A skilled internist, he’s built a thriving practice in suburban New Jersey. He has a devoted wife, a network of close friends, an impressive house and a son, Alec, on whom he’s pinned all his hopes. Pete has afforded Alec every opportunity, bailed him out of close calls with the law, and even ensured his acceptance into a good college. But Pete never counted on the wild card: Laura, his best friend’s daughter -- 10 years older than Alec, irresistibly beautiful, with a past so shocking that it’s never been spoken of.

When Laura sets her sights on Alec, Pete sees his plans for his son not just unraveling, but being destroyed completely. Believing he has only the best of intentions, Pete sets out to derail this romance and rescue his son. He could never have foreseen how his whole world would shatter in the process.

* * * “13 1/2,” by Nevada Barr. In Jackson Square in the French Quarter, a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home -- a safe life for her and her two daughters.

When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect who is helping to rebuild her adopted city, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood, and two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present.

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“The Lacuna,” by Barbara Kingsolver. Born in the U.S., reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico -- from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City -- Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gosspi, and a risk of terrible violence.

Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach -- the lacuna -- between truth and public presumption.

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“The Penny,” by Joyce Meyer. Jenny Blake has a theory about life: big decisions often don’t amount to much, but little decisions sometimes transform everything. Her theory proves true the summer of 1955, when 14-year-old Jenny makes the decision to pick up a penny imbedded in asphalt and consequently ends up stopping a robbery, getting a job and meeting a friend who changes her life forever.

Jenny and Miss Shaw form a friendship that dares both of them to confront secrets in their pasts -- secrets that threaten to destroy them. Jenny helps Miss Shaw open up to the community around her, while Miss Shaw teaches Jenny to meet even life’s most painful challenges with confidence and faith. This unexpected relationship transforms both characters in ways neither could have anticipated, and the ripple effect that begins in the summer of the penny goes on to bring new life to the people around them, showing how God works on the smallest details.

* * * Other new books at the library: “Plum Pudding Murder,” by Joanna Fluke. “Execution Dock,” by Anne Perry. “Death and Honesty,” by Cynthia Riggs.

“Whiplash,” by Dale Brown. “Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful,” by Phil Griffin.