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The next Friends of the Library bag book sale is coming up. Fill a bag for $7 (bags provided at the door). Choose from books for all ages, DVDs, music CDs, audiobooks and magazines. Puzzles are sold separately. Only cash or check is accepted. Here is the book sale schedule for the remainder of 2026:
October
Monday, Oct. 19, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 9 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 22, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
December
One-day sale (date TBD)
The book sale is located in the book sale room (on the lower level of the library), which is wheelchair accessible. You can access it from the library’s main entrance via steps or from the lower-level parking (no steps). We are located at 498 Jefferson St., Mifflintown. You can find directions to the library on our website. Call us at (717) 436-6378 with any questions.
Can't make the book sale that week? Stop in every Monday morning (9 a.m. to noon) for the Book Cellar. Each item is individually priced as follows: $2 for hardbacks, $1 for soft covers, $1 for CDs, music, DVDs, audiobooks, craft magazines, 25¢ for other magazines and $5 for postcards.
As always, please spread the word to friends and relatives about the Friends of the Library, who provide wonderful support to our great library.
Book donations to the library
The Friends book sale is supported by your generous donations of books, movies, and more. We accept book donations during the library's regular business hours. We accept gently used books, DVDs and music CDs. We do not accept faded/yellow/red/battered/moldy books, textbooks, encyclopedias, VHS tapes or magazines.
Once donated, the books become the library’s property and are evaluated in the same manner as purchased materials. Materials that are useful to the library collection are retained, and other materials are placed in the book sale or disposed of in whatever manner the library deems best. The donor is not notified about the final disposition of the book. The library cannot guarantee or ensure that donated items will be added to the library collection.
Book of the week!
If you are going to read one book, give this one a try...
Dark Screens: Hackers and Heroes in the Shadowy World of Ransomware by Anja Shortland
(New adult nonfiction: true crime, cybercrime, privacy, technology) 288 pages.
In a nutshell: Delving into the terrifying economy of ransomware.
During finals week this year, Penn State students across the Commonwealth, along with roughly 30 million users, were locked out of their Canvas accounts after a ransomware attack. Canvas is a web-based learning management system used by thousands of colleges, universities, and school districts worldwide to post grades, host course materials and manage assignments. This breach, so close to home, made ransomware attacks especially disturbing to me.
Shortland, professor of political economy at King's College London, makes a persuasive case for the dangerous fragility of our interconnected digital world. Shortland traces the origins of hacking and loose, experimental communities in 1963, when enthusiasts used audio tones to access commercial telephone networks as early online social spaces. These self-styled explorers, largely harmless, gave way as the internet expanded to far more predatory actors.
By 1989, new extortionist ransomware hackers emerged, evolving into a lucrative criminal enterprise with the power to disrupt modern life at scale. The book's central conflict, between IT professionals and criminal hackers, is a struggle between adversaries "cut from the same cloth." Both sides deploy similar skills across contested digital terrain, though many ransomware groups remain operationally sloppy, prone to unforced errors that limit their effectiveness.
The author's broader analysis is incisive: "Cybercrime can be viewed as the shadow twin of the vast wealth of the tech elites and the (savvy, lucky or well-connected) shareholders who invested in their ventures." A parallel service economy has flourished alongside this shadow world. Private resolution firms arose to help victims "keep quiet, pay fast, help clients with the decryption." By 2021, ransomware was acknowledged as a national security threat.
Still, criminals remain confident. A mastermind declares, "This business works, and will always work." The danger, Shortland suggests, is normalization, when "most citizens have become accustomed to the idea that their addresses and Social Security numbers are sloshing around the darknet alongside those of hundreds of millions of others."
Bottom line: A sharp, fast-moving examination of ransomware and the criminal ecosystems that sustain it.
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Vince Giordano has been the librarian and director of the Juniata County Library since April 2015.