Beach Week

Beach Week by Susan Coll
Beach Week means seven whole days of debauched celebration, a time-honored tradition in which the D.C. suburbs' newest high school grads flock to Chelsea Beach --bereft of adult supervision. In this warmhearted comedy, ten teenage girls plot an unhinged blowout the likes of which their young lives have never seen.

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth
Zach Barrows is an ambitious young White House staffer whose career takes an unexpected turn when he's partnered with Nathaniel Cade, a secret agent sworn to protect the President. But Cade is no ordinary civil servant. A vampire bound by a special blood oath, Cade has spent more than 140 years in service to the president, battling nightmares before they can break into the daylight world of the American dream.

Amandine by Marlena de Blasi
Set against the backdrop of Europe as it moves inexorably toward World War II, Amandine follows a young orphan's journey in search of her heritage. The story opens in Krakow in 1931, as a baby girl is conceived out of wedlock, the byproduct of a foolish heart and a tragic inheritance. The child's grandmother, a countess, believes that she is protecting her daughter when she claims that the baby didn't survive. In truth, however, she deposits the infant at a remote convent in the French countryside, leaving her with a great sum of money and in the care of a young governess named Solange.

The Possibility of Everything

The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman
In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her marriage, her profession, and her place in the larger world. Feeling vulnerable and isolated, she was primed for change. Into her stagnant routine dropped Dodo, her three-year-old daughter Maya's curiously disruptive imaginary friend. Confused and worried about how to handle Dodo's apparent hold on their daughter, Edelman and her husband made the unlikely choice to take her to Belize, hoping the Maya healers there might help banish Dodo--and, as they came to understand, all he represented--from their lives.

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friendships, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska by Heather Lende
Anyone who has written both the obituaries and the social column for her local newspaper knows a thing or two about life and death; anyone who filed those stories in a remote Alaskan town is intimately acquainted with the precariousness of our journey here on Earth. In her bestselling first book, Heather Lende invited us into breathtakingly beautiful Haines. Since then, a near-fatal bicycle collision with a truck has given Lende a few more reasons to consider matters both spiritual and temporal. Like so much of life in Haines, Lende's recovery was a community effort.

Marks of Cain by Tom Knox
When David Martinex, a young lawyer, receives an ancient map from his dying grandfather, the mysteries of his past begin to open up before him. The map leads David into the heart of the dangerous Basque mountains, where a genetic curse lies buried and a frightening secret about the Western world's past is hidden.

Try a Playaway!

The library has new playaways! A playaway is an audiobook already downloaded onto a MP3 player that you can check out, plug your own earphones into and enjoy! Great for working out, going for a jog, or just tuning out the world and listening to a great book.

Our newest edition to our collection is Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
Shay Bourne shattered June Nealon's life when he murdered her husband and daughter. Now, as New Hampshire's first death row inmate in 58 years, his last request is one he believes might bring him salvation. Shay wants to donate his heart to June's other ailing daughter. But since he is scheduled for lethal injection, the scenario is not possible.

Let's Make a Deal

Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me by Howie Mandel
A frank, funny, no-holds-barred memoir that reveals the Deal or No Deal host's ongoing struggle with OCD and ADHD-- and how it has shaped his life and career. Eleven years ago, Mandel first told the world about his "germophobia." He's recently started discussing his adult ADHD as well. Now, for the first time, he reveals the details of his struggle with these challenging disorders.

Blues Dancing by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
For the last twenty years, the beautiful Verdi Mae has led a comfortable life with Rowe, the conservative professor who rescued her from addiction when she was an undergrad. But her world is about to shift when the smell of butter lingers in the air and Johnson--the boy from the back streets of Philadelphia who pulled her into the fire of passion and all the shadows cast from it--returns to town.

The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer
Suddenly faced with the potential dissolution of his marriage and the end of his quiet, settled life, reluctant spy Milo Weaver has no choice but to return to his old job as a "tourist" for the CIA. Before he can get back to the dirty work of espionage, however, he has to prove his worth to his new bosses, who know little of Milo's background and less about who is pulling the strings in the government above their heads.

Place a Book on Hold!

See something you like in this blog?
This blog is connected with the Ventress Memorial Library in Marshfield, MA. If you have a library card in the Old Colony Library Network (OCLN), place any of these titles on hold by logging into your account at www.ocln.org.

Literary Figures

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
For the millions who cherish Little Women.... McNees deftly mixes fact and fiction as she imagines a summer lost to history, carefully purged from Louisa's letters and journals, a summer that would change the course of Louisa's writing career--and inspire the story of love and heartbreak between Jo and Teddy "Laurie" Laurence, Jo's devoted neighbor and kindred spirit.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin
Alice Liddell Hargreave's life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother and widow, she's experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only "Alice." Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year--the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.
(Sidenote from Amy: Being a huge fan of anything Alice in Wonderland, I recently picked this novel up and absolutely loved it. Even though it is fiction, the author does a wonderful job of blending historical facts with fictional accents.)

Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman
The slow growth of Jane Austen's fame, from niche interest in the mid-nineteenth century to a figure who enjoys the sort of popular affection usually reserved for girl-next-door movie stars, makes a fascinating biography that adds significantly to our image of the beloved novelist.

Churchill by Paul Johnson
For the eminent historian Paul Johnson, Winston Churchill remains an enigma and a challenge. Soldier, parliamentarian, prime minister, orator, painter, writer, husband, and leader-- all of these facets combined to make Churchill one of the most complex and fascinating personalities in history.