Until next year...

Amy Rosa, Head of Circulation Services is leaving the library this month. Check back in 2014 for an updated blog with the new Head of Circulation Services.

Best wishes, Marshfield patrons!

Back in the Fall!

The New Books Blog will be coming back in September! Look for our new Teen Picks of the Week and Fiction Picks of the Week then!

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Tides of Memory

Sidney Sheldon's The Tides of Memory by Tilly Bagshawe

The conservative party's newest superstar, Alexia De Vere has worked hard to realize her political ambitions. The brilliant and ruthless wife of wealthy aristocrat Teddy De Vere, Alexia relishes her power and the control it gives her to shape and destroy lives. Yet success has also demanded sacrifice. Her daughter, Roxie, a bitter young woman confined to a wheelchair after a failed suicide attempt blames Alexia for ruining her life. Alexia's dashing son, Michael, is risking the family's good name to jump-start his entrepreneurial dreams. Thankfully, Alexia has Teddy, her devoted husband who will stop at nothing to protect her. But beneath Alexia De Vere's gilded life and formidable facade lie secrets that are ugly, dirty, and deadly.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Panic

Panic by Sharon Draper


Diamond knows not to talk to strangers. But just once couldn't hurt. Right?


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

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Science Fiction Pick of the Week: Wolfhound Century

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins

Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist--and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs, and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Happy Families

Happy Families by Tanita Davis

Teenage twins Ysabel and Justin Nicholas are lucky. Ysabel's jewerly designs have already caught the eyes of the art world, and Justin's intelligence and drive are sure to gain him entrance into an excellent college. They even like their parents. They're the ultimate happy family, or so they believe, until they learn that their father has been keeping a secret from them, a secret that will change everything.

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein

A lush, exquisitely rendered meditation on war, The Gods of Heavenly Punishment tells the story of several families, American and Japanese, their loves and infidelities, their dreams and losses, and how they are all connected by one of the most devastating acts of war in human history.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Unnaturalists

The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent

Vespa Nyx wants nothing more than to spend her life cataloging Unnaturals in her father's Museum of Unnatural History. There is nothing she enjoys more than studying a stuffed Sphinx, or mounting a delicate sylphid. But as she nears seventeen, the dreaded need to become respectable, find a husband, and settle down looms heavily. Just as she is resigning herself to a mundane life, a series of mysterious accidents reveal a terrifying truth: Vespa may be New London's only surviving witch. And in New London, witchcraft is the greatest imaginable heresy, punishable by death. Tiffany Trent writes a thrilling story with a dash of romance, a dollop of adventure, and a world you will never forget.

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

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Two Bestselling Authors: Cussler and Steel

The Striker by Clive Cussler

It is 1902, and a bright, inexperienced young named Isaac Bell, only two years out of his apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, has an urgent message for his boss. Hired to hunt for radical unionist saboteurs in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident that makes him think that something else is going on, that provocateurs are at work and bigger stakes are in play.

Until the End of Time by Danielle Steel

Bill is a dedicated young lawyer working at his family's prestigious New York firm, who leaves everything he trained for to follow his dream and become a minister in rural Wyoming; Jenny, his wife, is a stylist whose heart and soul are interested in fashion. She leaves the milieu and the life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever. Fast forward thirty-eight years, Robert is a hard-working independent book publisher in Manhattan, who has given up all personal life to build his struggling business. He is looking for one big hit to publish. Lillibet is a young Amish woman, living as though in the seventeenth century, caring for her widowed father and three brothers on their family farm. In secret at night, by candlelight, she has written the novel that burns within her, and gets it into Robert's hands, wrapped in her hand-stitched apron. He falls in love first with the book, and then with the woman he has never met.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Scarlet

Scarlet: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She's trying to break out of prison--even though if she succeeds, she'll be the Commonwealth's most wanted fugitive. Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit's grandmother is missing. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information about her grandmother's whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: Traps

Traps by Mackenzie Bezos

In this tautly woven tour de force, the paths of four very different women intersect, briefly but significantly, in ways that will change each of them forever. Dana is a beautiful young security guard trained in special ops who can disarm a bomb or suture a wound but is terrified of committing to the man she loves. Lynn is a fiercely independent older woman living alone in Nevada and running a ranch for rescued dogs. Jessica is a reclusive movie star and mother of two whose father keeps selling her out to the paparazzi. Vivian is a seventeen-year-old prostitute who will do anything to protect her twin babies. Bezos brings deep intelligence and rich texture to her portraits of four women whose fates, though only tangentially connected, are linked in miraculous ways.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Legacy

Legacy by Molly Cochran

When Katy Jessevar's widowed father exiles her to a boarding school in Whitfield, Massachusetts, fate opens the door to her future and her past. Katy soon learns that like many of the old families in town, her never-spoken-of mother was from a notorious witching line, and that she, too, possesses the special powers. With dark forces converging on Whitfield, it's up to Katy to unravel her family's many secrets to save the boy she loves--and the town itself--from destruction.

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

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Nonfiction Pick of the Week: The Missing Ink

The Missing Ink by Philip Hensher

When Philip Hensher realized that he didn't know what a close friend's handwriting looked like ("bold or crabbed, sloping or upright, italic or rounded, elegant or slapdash"), he felt that something essential was missing from their friendship. It dawned on him that having abandoned pen and paper for keyboards, we have lost one of the ways by which we come to recognize and know another person. People have written by hand for thousands of years--how, Hensher wondered, have they learned this skill, and what part has it played in their lives? The Missing Ink tells the story of this endangered art.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Prettiest Doll

Prettiest Doll by Gina Willner-Pardo

Everyone says Olivia is pretty. She has been winning beauty pageants since she was three. Now, at thirteen, she's preparing for the Prettiest Doll competition. It should be just another pageant, except that somehow it isn't. Liv is afraid that "pretty" is all people see when they look at her. She wants to know she's more than that. She gets a chance to find out when she meets a runaway named Dan, who looks much younger than his fifteen years. Together they set off for what turns out to be a journey of discovery, finding out about family secrets, each other, and themselves. The story of two teens making their way in the world preoccupied with physical appearance sparkles with wry humor, a first romance, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the world of beauty pageants.

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

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Mystery Pick of the Week: Dogstar Rising

Dogstar Rising by Parker Bilal

The unsolved murders of young boys are fanning the embers of religious hatred in the city. As tensions mount, Makana, a private investigator who fled his home in Sudan a decade ago, has a premonition that history may be about to repeat itself. Hired to investigate threats made against a hapless travel agent, Makana finds himself drawn to Meera, a woman who knows what it is like to lose everything--and who needs his help. But Makana's troubled past is trying to lay claim to him once again, this time in the form of a businessman with a powerful secret.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Fire in the Streets

Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon
 The Times: 1968
The Place: Chicago
Maxie is a Black Panther -- or at least she wants to be one. She believes in the movement. She wants to belong. She wants to join the struggle. But everyone keeps telling her she's too young. She's allowed to help out in the office, but she certainly can't help patrol the streets. However, Maxie's convinced that is she tries a little harder, she can prove to the rest of them--and to Sam, her former boyfriend-- that she has what it takes to join the organization full-time. Then Maxie learns that there is a traitor in their midst--someone who's talking to the police--and she thinks that if she can figure out who it is, it may be her ticket to becoming a real Panther. But when she learns the truth, the knowledge threatens to destroy the world. Maxie has finally discovered what she'll have to do to become a Panther, but it is worth the ultimate price?

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: You & I, Me & You

You and I, Me and You by Mary Janice Davidson

Candice (and her sisters) has moved in with Patrick, and everything is better than she could have ever dreamed. Except why does this dreamy Dr. Gallo keep popping up unexpectedly in her fantasies? When her pleasantly steady love life suddenly starts looking pretty darn shaky, Candice and her sisters find themselves knee-deep in a new case that brings the escaped Threefer Killers back onto the scene. The stakes are higher, the danger more real, the hijinks more hilarious, and the love and passion are more delicious than ever.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Etiquette & Espionage

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carringer

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners--and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but the also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage--in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

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New in Large Print: Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage by Stuart Woods

Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan and pleased to receive an unexpected visit from Holly Barker, now an assistant director at the CIA. Holly is glad to leave the staid environs of the capital for New York, but her sojourn isn't only for pleasure. An explosive incident requires her immediate attention--and Stone's investigative expertise. What initially appears to be a clear-cut case becomes increasingly complex--and dangerous. For in the secretive world of government intelligence, national interests all too often conflict with turf wars, and extreme wealth allows even the most pursued rivals to slip through the cracks.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse

Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss

Phillip's sophomore year is off to a rough start. One of his best friends ditches him for a group of douchebags. His track coach singles him out for personalized, torturous training sessions. And his dad decides to clean out all of the emergency supplies from the basement, even though the world could end in disaster at any moment...and even though those supplies are all Phillip has left from his dead mom. Not that he wants to talk about her. Then Phillip meets Rebekah. Not only is she unconventionally hot and smart, but she might like him back. As Phillip gets closer to Rebekah, he tries harder and harder to turn himself into the kind of person he thinks she wants him to be. But the question is: Can he become that person? And does he really want to?

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: The Riptide Ultra-Glide

The Riptide Ultra-Glide by Tim Dorsey

Welcome to Paradise! Freshly laid-off Wisconsinities Patrick and Barbara McDougall are going to sunny Florida for a modest romantic vacation. But the motel they picked isn't quite a pastel paradise, and they have to be midwesterners and make the best of a bad situation. Except bad goes tow rose, and a string of misfortunes renders them unable to leave the state. Meanwhile, the next Mexican-American War is being fought, this time in Fort Lauderdale, between the Kentucky mafia and the Oxy cartel over control of the lucrative pain clinic market. Latinos are turning up dead, hillbillies are wandering the beach trampling sand castles, and cops continue arresting doctors wriggling out of office windows. But it's never really a party until Serge and Coleman arrive. Cruising down U.S. 1, Captain Florida and his perpetually altered sidekick are on the mission to film their best reality show ever!

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Shadows

Shadows: The Ashes Trilogy by Ilsa Bick

Even before the EMPs brought down the world, Alex was on the run from the demons of her past and the monster living in her head. After the world was gone, she believed Rule could be a sanctuary for her and those she'd come to love. But she was wrong. Now Alex is in the fight of her life against the adults, who would use her, the survivors, who don't trust her, and the Changed, who would eat her alive. Welcome to Shadows, the second book in the haunting apocalyptic Ashes Trilogy: where no one is safe and humans may be the worst of the monsters.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Tragedy Paper

The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban

Tim MacBeth is a seventeen-year-old albino and a recent transfer to the prestigious Irving School, where the motto is "Enter here to be and find a friend." Tim does not expect to find a friend; all he really wants to do is escape his senior year unnoticed. Despite his efforts to blend into the background, he finds himself falling for the quintessential it-girl Vanessa Sheller, girlfriend of Irving's most popular boy. To Tim's surprise, Vanessa is into him too, but she can kiss her social status good-bye if anyone finds out. Tim and Vanessa begin a clandestine relationship while looming over them is the Tragedy Paper, Irving's version of a senior-year thesis, assigned by the school's least forgiving teacher, Mr. Simon.

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil by Alexander McCall Smith

In this story, von Igelfeld experiences a series of new adventures. First, he finds that his academic rival Detlev-Amadeus Unterholzer has been winning undeserved recognition, a situation that must be addressed. Then von Igelfeld stumbles toward a romance with Frau Benz, a charming widow who owns for very own Schloss and a fleet of handsome cars--that is, until a faux pas lands him on the curb. Later, while on the annual student study retreat in the Alps, von Igelfeld fearlessly plunges 3,000 feet into mountaineering history, and turns his survival into the subject of inspirational lectures. Finally, at a dinner party, he is the only kind soul who can aid an unfortunate dachshund whose sticky wheels are in need of lubrication.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: Fuse

If you liked The Hunger Games....

Fuse by Julianna Baggott

To be a Pure is to be perfect, untouched by Detonations that scarred the earth and sheltered inside the paradise that is the Dome. But Partridge escaped to the outside world, where Wretches struggle to survive amid smoke and ash. Now, at the command of Partridge's father, the Dome is unleashing nightmare after nightmare upon the Wretches in an effort to get him back. At Partridge's side is a small band of those united against the Dome: Lyda, the warrior; Bradwell, the revolutionary; El Capitan, the guard; and Pressia, the young woman whose mysterious past ties her to Partridge in ways she never could have imagined. Long ago a plan was hatched that could mean the earth's ultimate doom. Now only Partridge and Pressia can set things right.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Girl in the Park

The Girl in the Park by Mariah Fredericks

When Wendy Geller's body is found in New York's Central Park the morning after a rager, newspaper headlines scream: WHO WAS WENDY GELLER? Life of a Party Girl Ends in Violence
But Rain, once Wendy's best friend, knows Wendy wasn't just another wild girl from an elite prep school. Wendy was the girl with the great smile and the huge heart. The girl who ate unbaked cookie dough and faked a fainting spell in H&M as a prank. Who told quiet Rain not to be afraid to share her thoughts with the world. As Rain struggles to separate the girl she knew from the tangle of headlines and vicious gossip, she becomes determined to discover who killed her friend. But if Rain--always a listener, a bystander--really wants to help Wendy, she knows she'll have to speak up.

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: As Sweet As Honey

As Sweet As Honey by Indira Ganesan

The island is filled with exotic flora and fauna and perfumed air. A large family compound is presided over by a benign, stalwart grandmother. There is a very tall South Asian heroine with the astonishing un-Indian name of Meterling, who has found love at last in the shape of a short, round, elegant Englishman who wears white suits. There are also numerous aunts, uncles, and young cousins--among them, Mina, grown now, and telling the story of a marriage ceremony that ends with a widowed bride who, in the midst of her grief, discovers she is pregnant. While enjoying their own games and growing pains, Mina and her young cousins follow every nuance of gossip, trying to puzzle out what is going on with their favorite aunt, particularly when the groom's cousin arrives from England and begins to woo her. As Meterling--torn between Eastern and Western ideas of love and family, duty and loyalty--struggles to make a new life, we become as entranced with this family, its adventures and complications, as Mina is.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Boy on Cinnamon Street

The Boy on Cinnamon Street by Phoebe Stone

Seventh grader Louise Terrace has a secret admirer. He sends her notes when she needs cheering up, and draws chalk hearts on the sidewalk outside her apartment. It should be the perfect romance...but somehow they never meet up. It's the same with gymnastics. Louise is a natural champion. She can do cartwheels all day long and even backflips on the balance beam. She should be captain of the school team...but somehow it doesn't work out. There's something holding Louise back, a family secret from her past so heartbreaking that it's got her frozen inside. And it's going to take a miraculous spring to thaw her out again.

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

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Science Fiction Pick of the Week: A Memory of Light

A Memory of Light  by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

In the Field of Merrilor the rulers of the nations gather to join behind Rand al'Thor, or to stop his plan to break the seals on the Dark One's prison--which may be a sign of his madness, or the last hope for humankind. Egwene, the Amyrlin Seat, leans toward the former. All humanity is in perill--and the outcome will be decided in Shayol Ghul itself. The Wheel is turning, and the Age is coming to its end. The Last Battle will determine the fate of the world. For twenty years The Wheel of Time has enthralled more than forty million readers in over thirty languages. A Memory of Light brings this majestic fantasy creation to its richly satisfying conclusion.

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

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Mark of Athena

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan

Annabeth is terrified. Just when she's about to be reunited with Percy--after six months of being apart, thanks to Hera--it looks like Camp Jupiter is preparing for war. As Annabeth and her friends Jason, Piper, and Leo fly in on the Argo II, she can't blame the Roman demigods for thinking the ship is a Greek weapon. With its steaming bronze dragon figurehead, Leo's fantastical creation doesn't appear friendly. Annabeth hopes that the sight of their praetor Jason on desk will reassure the Romans that the visitors from Camp Half-Blood are coming in peace. And that's only one of her worries. In her pocket, Annabeth carries a gift from her mother that came with an unnerving command: Follow the Mark of Athena. Avenge me. Annabeth already feels weighed down by the prophecy that will send seven demigods on a quest to find--and close--the Doors of Death. What more does Athena want from her?

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Fiction Pick of the Week: Warm Bodies Movie Tie-In!

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

R is having a no-life crisis--he is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but his is a little different from his fellow Dead. He may occasionally eat people, but he'd rather be riding abandoned airport escalators, listening to Sinatra in the cozy 747 he calls home, or collecting souvenirs from the ruins of civilization. And then he meets a girl. First as his captive, then his reluctant house guest, Julie is a blast of living color in R's gray landscape, and something inside him begins to bloom. He doesn't want to eat this girl--although she looks delicious--he wants to protect her. But their unlikely bond will cause ripples they can't imagine, and their hopeless world won't change without a fight.

Movie playing in theaters tomorrow!

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Teen Pick of the Week: Beautiful Creatures Movie Tie-In!

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever. Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

Coming out in Theaters on February 14, 2013!

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Fiction Pick of the Week: The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga

In the Walking Dead universe, there is no greater villain than The Governor. The despot who runs the walled-off town of Woodbury, he has his own sick sense of justice, whether it's forcing prisoners to battle zombies in an arena for the townspeople's amusement or chopping off the appendages of those who cross him. This is the story of Philip Blake, his daughter Penny, and his brother Brian. Along with two of Philip's friends, this ragtag group of survivors attempts to make it to Atlanta as the zombie apocalypse rages around them. But as their journey becomes more and more dangerous, Philip will realize that he must do whatever it takes to save his friends and family...and his own soul in the process.

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Teen Pick of the Week: A World Away

A World Away by Nancy Grossman

 Sixteen-year-old Eliza Miller has never made a phone call, never tried on a pair of jeans, never sat in a darkened theater waiting for a movie to start. She's never even talked to someone her age who isn't Amish, like her. When she leaves her close-knit family to spend the summer as a nanny in a suburb of Chicago, a part of her can't wait to leave behind everything she knows. She can't imagine the secrets she will uncover, the friends she will make, the surprises and temptations of a way of life so different from her own. Every minute Eliza spends with her new friend Josh feels as good as listening to music for the first time, and she wonders whether there might be a place for her in this world. But as summer wanes, she misses the people she has left behind and the Plain life she once took for granted. Eliza will have to decide for herself where she belongs. Whichever choice she makes, she knows she will lose someone she loves.

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Fiction Pick of the Week: Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini
In a life that spanned nearly a century and witness some of the momentous events in American history, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave. She earned her freedom by the skill of her needle and won the friendship of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln with her devotion. In her sweeping historical novel, Chiaverini illuminates the extraordinary relationship the two women shared, beginning in the hallowed halls of the White House during the trials of the Civil War and enduring almost, but not quite, to the end of Mrs. Lincoln's days. Elizabeth Keckley made her professional reputation in Washington, DC, making expertly fashioned dresses for the city's elite, among them Mrs. Jefferson Davis and Mrs. Robert E. Lee. In March 1861, Mrs. Lincoln chose her from among numerous applicants to be her personal "modiste," responsible for creating the First Lady's beautiful gowns and dressing her for important occasions. In this role, Elizabeth Keckley was quickly drawn into the intimate life of the Lincoln family, a clear-eyed but compassionate witness to events within the private quarters of the White House. 

Teen Pick of the Week: The Forsaken

The Forsaken by Lisa Stasse

Alenna Shawcross hasn't seen her parents since they were dragged out of her house by government soldiers of the UNA, a new nation formed from the remnants of Canada, the USA, and Mexico. And now, as a sixteen-year-old orphan, she has failed a government personality test designed to diagnose subversive tendencies. As punishment, Alenna is banished to the wheel, a mysterious island where all the kids who fail get sent. A place where the conditions are brutal, and a civil war rages between two very different tribes of teenagers. So when Alenna meets Liam, a charismatic warrior who is planning to escape, she must find the strength to make a difficult decision to either accept her new life on the wheel or to embark on a journey that will uncover shocking secrets about the UNA--and her own identity as well.

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

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Fiction Pick of the Week: Tiger Rag

Tiger Rag by Nicholas Christopher

New Orleans, 1900. The virtuoso cornet player Charles "Buddy Bolden invents jazz, but after a life consumed by tragedy, the groundbreaking sound of his horn vanishes with him. Rumors persist, though, that Bolden recorded a phonograph cylinder, and over the course of a century it evolves into the elusive holy grail of jazz. Florida, the present day. Dr. Ruby Cardillo's life is falling apart. Her husband, a prominent cardiologist, has left her for a twenty-six-year-old. Her daughter, Devon, a once promising jazz pianist, has recently finished an enforced stint picking up trash along the interstate after a drug conviction. Ruby's estranged mother has just died, but not before conjuring up ghosts that Ruby thought she had put behind her long ago. After a long career as a well-respected anesthesiologist, Ruby suddenly jumps the tracks, forgetting to sleep and eat, indulging her every whim, wearing only purple, consuming only bottles of 1988 Chateau Latour. Then Ruby enlists Devon to accompany her on an impulsive road trip to New York, and both mother and daughter get more than they bargained for, discovering that their own shrouded family history is connected to the tantalizing search for Buddy Bolden's long-lost cylinder.

Teen Pick of the Week: Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn

Tomorrow will be the last day of Nora's junior year. Nora heads for the party in the park, laughing and chatting with her friends, eager to leave her usual quiet, careful self behind. Other kids are drinking beer, flirting, pairing off, dancing. Even the hostile presence of a jealous ex-boyfriend can't spoil the fun. In a few hours, though, Mister Death will make his move. Nora hasn't yet seen his shadow, but we know he's getting ready. He's the man who isn't there, the man no one notices, and he has a rifle. And he's going into the dark woods to use it. Nora and his classmates and their town will find out about him soon enough.

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Nonfiction Pick of the Week!

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon

Solomon's startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, as are the triumphs of love Solomon documents in every chapter. All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on forty thousand pages of interview transcripts with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges. Whether considering prenatal screening for genetic disorders, cochlear implants for the deaf, or gender reassignment surgery for transgender people, Solomon narrates a universal struggle toward compassion.

Teen Pick of the Week: False Memory

False Memory by Dan Krokos

Miranda North wakes up alone on a park bench with no memory. In her panic, she releases a mysterious energy that incites pure terror in everyone around her. Except for Peter, a boy who isn't at all surprised by Miranda's shocking ability. Left with no choice but to trust this stranger, Miranda discovers that she was trained to be a weapon and is part of an elite force of genetically altered teens who possess flawless combat skills and powers strong enough to destroy a city. But readjusting to her old life isn't easy--especially with Noah, the boyfriend she can't remember loving. Then Miranda uncovers a dark truth that sets her team on the run. Suddenly her past doesn't seem to matter...when there may not be a future.

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

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