Thursday, March 29, 2012

New York Times Bestsellers

Put your name on hold for any of these New York Times Bestsellers by clicking on the titles!

Number 1 this week is Jodi Picoult's new book Lone Wolf. The children of a man who studies wolves must make difficult decisions when he is seriously injured in an accident.

Number 5 this week is Private Games by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan. Peter Knight pursues a murderer who is trying to destroy the London Olympics.

Number 10 this week is The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice. Anne Rice is back with a tale about the making of a modern werewolf.

Number 6 and 7 are Jonathan Kellerman's Victims and Defending Jacob by William Landay. In Kellerman's book, the Los Angeles psychologist-detective Alex Delaware and the detective Milo Sturgis track down a homicidal maniac. Landay's book is about an assistant district attorney's life that is shaken when his 14-year-old son is accused of murder.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: Bloodrose

Bloodrose by Andrea Cremer
Calla has always welcomed war. But now that the final battle is upon her, there's more at stake than fighting. There's saving Ren, even if it incurs Shay's wrath. There's keeping Ansel safe, even if he's been branded a traitor. There's proving herself as the pack's alpha, facing unnamable horrors, and ridding the world of the Keeper's magic once and for all. And then there's deciding what to do when the war ends. If Calla makes it out alive, that is. In the final installment of the Nightshade trilogy, Andrea Cremer creates a novel with twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat until its final pages.

Check out the first and second book in this trilogy; Nightshade and Wolfsbane by Andrea Cremer.

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

Read a great teen book recently? Want to recommend it as Teen Pick of the Week? Email me!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Mystery, Science Fiction, and the Future

Death Island Style by Maggie Toussaint
Recent widow MaryBeth Cashour moved six hundred miles to escape memories of her late mother's betrayal and her husband's mysterious death. While beachcombing for seashells to use at her artsy Christmas shop, MaryBeth finds a corpse rolling in the surf on Sandy Shores Island. When detectives uncover a connection between the murdered man and MaryBeth, she's their prime suspect. It's not her fault the dead guy had one of her hand-painted Christmas sharks in his pocket--she doesn't even know him. Besides, lots of people from the Mid-Atlantic region vacation in coastal Georgia. She insists it's a coincidence he's here. The cops don't believe her. As her world comes unglued, MaryBeth strips the shellac from her memories, discovering secrets that endanger her life. But time to prove her innocence is running out faster than a riptide. The killer is crafting up a new murder--MaryBeth's.

The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vince
In a lab at the edge of the galaxy, in search of an ancient archive, scientists unwittingly unleash the Blight: this vast, destructive entity rampages through the Zones of Throught, subverting digital intelligence and devastating countless worlds and races throughout the Beyond. One ship, carrying the children of the scientists, seeks haven on an obscure world in the Slow Zone, only to find medieval kingdoms of group-animals--the Tines--at war with one another. Another ship, itself fleeing the Blight, follows their ship's distress signal to Tines World and helps end the war, saving most of the Children. Ten years later, Ravna Bergsndot, the lone surviving human adult living among the Tines, has revived most of the hundred and fifty children who remain in coldsleep. Now, Tinish packs and human beings live together in peace in the Domain. With dark alliances swirling in both human and Tinish circles, the survival of the Tines World depends on Ravna. And Ravna has enemies, unseen...awaiting their moment.

City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
Forty or so years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the North Rises, and the eerie bogs of the Big Nothin' that the city really lives. For years it has all been under the control of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. They say Hartnett's old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: Twilight Director's Notebook

Twilight Director's Notebook: The Story of How We Made the Movie based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer by Catherine Hardwicke
This is the inside story from the director, "In this book, you'll follow me through the creative process that went into making Stephenie Meyer's hypnotic novel come alive on-screen. Get the inside scoop on the wardrobe, storyboard sketches, behind-the-scenes photographs, and personal notes about making my favorite scenes."

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

Read a great teen book recently? Want to recommend it as Teen Pick of the Week? Email me!

Friday, March 16, 2012

India, Food, and James Brown

India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Akash Kapur
The son of an Indian father and an American mother, Akash Kapur spent his formative years in India and his early adulthood in the United States. In 2003, having established a life in the West, he returned to his birth country for good, eager to be part of its exciting growth and modernization. What he found was a nation even more transformed than he imagined, where the changes were fundamentally altering Indian society, for better and sometimes for worse. To further understand these changes, he sought out the Indians experiencing them firsthand--young and old, across classes, in cities, and in the countryside. The result is a rich tapestry of live being altered by economic development, and a fascinating insider's look at many of the most important forces shaping our world today.

Taste What You're Missing: The Passionate Eater's Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good by Barb Stuckey
Whether it's a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup, maple-cured bacon sizzling hot from the pan, or a salted caramel coated in dark chocolate, you know when food tastes good to you. But you many not know the amazing story behind why you love some foods and can't tolerate others. Now, in Taste What You're Missing, the first book that demystifies the science of taste, you'll learn how your individual biology, genetics, and brain create a personal experience of everything you taste--and how you can make the most of it.

The One: The Life and Music of James Brown by RJ Smith
Forget Elvis Presley. Forget Bob Dylan. Forget the Beatles. The most important musician of the twentieth century was James Brown. Full of unprecedented research and never-before-heard interviews, The One is a portrait of a man whose fascinating life helps us understand the music he made. The musical genius, who all but created funk and dominated R & B and pop, was born into abject poverty in South Carolina and raised in rural Georgia amid violent racial tensions. He grew up in a brothel owned by his aunt, landed in juvenile prison at age sixteen, and upon his release met his first bandmates, members of the group that would become the Famous Flames. From the Chitlin' Circuit to the Apollo Theater, Brown amassed fourty-four Billboard Top 40 hit singles, played up to 350 shows a year at his peak, and was a showman like no other.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: Two Truth and a Lie

Two Truths and A Lie by Sara Shepard
Two months before I died, my best friend's brother disappeared. I have no idea where Thayer went or why he left, but I know it's my fault. I did a lot of horrible things while I was alive, things that made people hate me, maybe enough to kill me. Desperate to solve my murder, my long-lost twin, Emma, is pretending to be me an unraveling the many mysteries I left behind--my cryptic journal, my tangled love life, the dangerous Lying Game pranks I played. She's uncovered my friends' darkest secrets, but she's never had the chance to dig into Thayer's past--until now. Thayer's back and Emma has to move fast to figure out if he's after revenge...or if he's already gotten it.

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

Read a great teen book recently? Want to recommend it as Teen Pick of the Week? Email me!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Large Print: Mystery and Shadow

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith
At a remote cattle post two cows have been killed, and Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's No. 1 Lady Detective, is asked to investigate by a rather frightened and furtive gentleman. Mma Ramotswe is haunted by a vision of her dear old white van, and Grace Makutsi witnesses it as well. One of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's apprentices may have gotten a girl pregnant and has run away. It is up to Precious to help sort things out. Add to the mix Violet Sephotho's newly launched run for the Botswana Parliament and a pair of perfect wedding shoes--will wedding bells finally ring for Phuti Radiphuti and Grace Mukutsi?

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz
The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon's dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents the Pendleton's magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten. But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton's past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again.

Teen Pick of the Week: Pathfinder

Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card
Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg's strange talent for seeing paths of people's pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father kept from him--secrets about Rigg's own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain.

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

Read a great teen book recently? Want to recommend it as Teen Pick of the Week? Email me!

Friday, March 2, 2012

Oz, Monsters, and Delta Force

Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire
Once peaceful and prosperous, the spectacular Land of Oz is knotted with social unrest: The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. And look who's knocking at the door. It's none other than Dorothy. Yes. That Dorothy. Yet amidst all this chaos, Elphaba's granddaughter, the tiny green baby born at the close of Son of a Witch, has come of age. Now it is up to Rain to take up her broom--and her legacy--in an Oz wracked by war.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, where her hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mom, Vi, still lives. Willie expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for generations, but the monster's death changes the fabric of the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Even further, Willie learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie: he wasn't the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.

Black Site by Dalton Fury
After September 11, 2001, Delta Force troop commander Dalton Fury was given the secret mission to hunt down and kill the most-wanted man in the world, the details of which were recounted in his extraordinary New York Times bestseller Kill Bin Laden. Now Fury draws upon his hard-won combat experience--and his gift for true-to-life storytelling--in a thriller that's as close to reality as readers can get.