New Young Adult this week!

Virals by Kathy Reichs
Adventure has always been in fourteen-year-old Tory Brennan's blood. After all, she is the niece of the world-famous forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. So when she moves to middle of nowhere Morris Island, South Carolina, to live with a marine biologist she's never known, Tory does the best she can to adjust to her new life. There she meets a group of local kids who are just as "Sci-Phile" as she is--science geeks who've grown up exploring the backwoods marshlands of nearby Loggerhead Island. But there's something strange going on at the Loggerhead Research Institute...maybe even something deadly. After rescuing a stray wolfdog pup from a top-secret lab, Tory and her friends are exposed to a rare strain of canine parvovirus, changing them--and their DNA--forever.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner. What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program--or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan--or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

Fire by Kristin Cashore
It is not a peaceful time in the Dells. Young King Nash clings to the throne, while rebel lords, in the north and south, build armies to unseat him. War is coming. The mountains and forests are filled with spies and thieves. This is where Fire lives, a girl whose startling appearance is impossibly irresistible and who can control the minds of everyone around her. Everyone...except Prince Brigan.

Teen Pick of the Week: A Confusion of Princes

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix
You'd think being a Prince in a vast intergalactic empire would be about as good as it gets. Particularly when Princes are faster, smarter, and stronger than normal humans. Not to mention being mostly immortal. But it isn't as great as it sounds. Princes need to be hard to kill--as Khemri learns the minute he becomes one--for they are always in danger. Their greatest threat? Other Princes. Every Prince wants to become Emperor, and the surest way to do so is to kill, dishonor, or sideline any potential competitor. There are rules, but as Khemri discovers, rules can be bent and even broken. There are also mysteries. Khemri is drawn into the hidden workings of the Empire and is dispatched on a secret mission. In the ruins of space battle he meets a young woman, called Raine, who challenges his view of the Empire, of Princes, and of himself.

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NY Times Top Five Bestsellers

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
A woman disappears on her fifth anniversary; is her husband a killer?

Sweet Talk by Julie Garwood
An I.R.S. officer and an F.B.I. agent fight corruption, and a mutual attraction, while investigating a Ponzi scheme.

Where We Belong by Emily Giffin
A woman's successful life is disrupted by the appearance of an 18-year-old girl with a link to her past.

Charon's Claw by R.A. Salvatore
In book 3 of the Neverwinter Saga, Drizzt and Dahlia plot revenge against the Netherese lord Herzgo Alegni.

Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz
Odd Thomas, who can communicate with the dead, explores the mysteries of an old estate now owned by a billionaire.

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Teen Pick of the Week!

The Book of Spells: A Private Prequel by Kate Brian
The year is 1915 when sixteen-year-old Eliza Williams arrives at the Billings School for Girls in Easton, Connecticut. Her parents expect her to learn the qualities of a graceful, dutiful wife. But Eliza and her housemates have a dangerous secret: They're witches. After finding a dusty, leather-bound spell book, the Billings Girls form a secret coven. Bonded in sisterhood, they cast spells--cursing their headmistress with laryngitis, brewing potions to bolster their courage before dances, and conjuring beautiful dresses out of old rags. The girls taste freedom and power for the first time, but what starts out as innocent fun turns sinister when one of the spells has an unexpected--and deadly--consequence. Magic could bring Eliza everything she's ever wanted...but it could also destroy everything she holds dear.

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Fathers, Piano Prodigies, and Haunted Memories

Light from a Distant Star by Mary McGarry Morris
It's early summer and Nellie Peck is on the cusp of adolescence--gangly, awkward, full of questions, but keenly observant and wiser than many adults in her life. The person she most admires is her father, Benjamin, a man of great integrity. His family's century-old hardware store is failing, and Nellie's mother has to go back to work. Meanwhile, Nellie's older half sister has launched an unsettling search for her birth father, and Nelie is often saddled through the long, hot days with her timid younger brother, Henry, whom she is determined to toughen up--herself as well. When violence erupts in the quiet Peck house, the prime suspect seems obvious. And although Nellie knows who the real murderer is, she is soon silenced by fear and the threat of scandal. The truth, as she sees it, is shocking and unthinkable, and with everyone's eyes riveted on her in the courtroom, Nellie finds herself seized with doubt.

A Million Heavens by John Brandon
On the top floor of a small desert hospital, an unlikely piano prodigy lies in a coma, attended to by his helpless father. Outside the clinic, a motley vigil assembles beneath a reluctant New Mexico winter--strangers in search of answers or escape, all watched by a disconsolate wolf on his nightly rounds. And above them, a would-be angel sits captive in a holding cell of the afterlife, finishing the work he began on earth, writing the songs that could free him.

Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
Haunted by memories of the Great War, failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate--the Savoyard Plantation--and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted. But under the facade of summer socials and small-town charm, there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice.

Teen Pick of the Week: After the Snow

After the Snow by S.D. Crockett
The oceans stopped working long before Willo was born, so a world of ice and snow is the only one he's ever known. But Willo is good at surviving. He watches the animals, learns their ways, and traps them for food and their furs. His father says that their family a beacon of hope, living on their own beyond the government's approval, but Willo doesn't really care about that sort of thing. Until the day he returns from trapping to find his family gone. Unused to being Number One and worried about scavengers, Willo loads what he can onto sleds and sets off to find refuge on the top of a mountain. There he will build shelter and devise a plan for getting his family back. But on the way, he discovers a young girl and her brother, abandoned and starving. What he does then will jeopardize his chances of survival--and alter the course of his destiny.

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Love, Economic Struggle, and Small Towns

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
This spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 and Bronxville, New York, in 2012--a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author's Armenian heritage, making it his most personal novel to date.

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds.

Juliet in August by Dianne Warren
The town of Juliet. Population 1,011. A blink-and-you-miss-it kind of town--a dusty oasis on the edge of a vast stretch of sand. It's easy to believe that nothing of consequence takes place here. But the hills vibrate with life and the town's heart beats in the rich stories of its people.

Teen Pick of the Week: Theodore Boone The Accused

Theodore Boone: The Accused by John Grisham
Big trouble is brewing for Theodore Boone. While all of Strattenburg anxiously awaits the new trial of infamous murder suspect Pete Duffy, problems arise for their own kid lawyer. There's been a robbery and Theo is the accused. His reputation is on the line, and with the evidence building against him--and dangerous threats looming--Theo will do whatever it takes to prove his innocence--even if it means breaking a few rules.

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New Pick of the Week!

Playing with Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book by Jason Thompson
In these pages, Jason Thompson has curated an extensive and artistic range of both achievable upcycled crafts made from books and book pages and an amazing gallery that contains thought-provoking and beautiful works that transform books into art. The content encompasses a wide range of techniques and step-by-step projects that deconstruct and rebuild books and their parts into unique upcycled objects. The book combines in equal measure bookbinding, woodworking, paper crafting, origami, and textiles and decorative arts techniques, along with a healthy dose of experimentation and fun. The beautiful high-end presentation and stunning photography make this book a delightful, must-have volume for any book-loving artist or art-loving book collector.

About the Author:  Jason Thompson is the founder of Rag & Bone Bindery in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a bookbinding studio dedicated to creating unique hand-bound books and albums for gift and stationery industries.

Teen Pick of the Week: Divergent

If you liked The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins try Divergent!

Divergent by Veronica Roth
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year; all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

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