Thursday, January 26, 2012

New Romance

The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne
Someone is stalking agent Justine DeCabrillac through London's gray streets. Under cover of the rain, the assassin strikes--and Justine staggers to the door of the one man who can save her. The man she once loved. The man she hated. Adrian Hawkhurst. Adrian wanted the treacherous beauty known as "Owl" back in his bed, but not wounded and clinging to life. Now, as he helps her heal, the two must learn to trust each other and to confront the hidden menace that's trying to kill them--and survive long enough to explore the passion simmering between them once again.

With No Remorse by Cindy Gerard
For Luke Colter, downtime is an illusion. He should know better than to ever leave his gun behind, especially since now he's risking his life to save world-famous supermodel Valentina. Val thought traveling incognito through the mountains would be the perfect cure for her bruised heart...until someone tries to kill her. Without knowing who is after her--and why--does she dare trust her irresistible protector?

Where Demons Fear to Tread by Stephanie Chong
Fledging guardian angel and yoga teacher Serena St. Clair dares to enter Devil's Paradise nightclub on a mission--to retrieve the wayward Hollywood "It Boy" she's assigned to protect. But she's ambushed by the club's owner, arch demon Julian Ascher. The most powerful demonic entity in Los Angeles, Julian is handsome as sin, a master of temptation who loves nothing more than corrupting pleasure-seeking humans. He won't release the lost soul Serena is supposed to guard. Unless she accepts his dangerous wager.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: How to Save a Life

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr
Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she's been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends -- everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she is somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one. Mandy Kalinowski understands what it's like to grow up unwanted--to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she's sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It's harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too? As their worlds change around them, Jill and Mandy must learn to both let go and hold on, and that nothing is as easy--or as difficult--as it seems.

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, January 20, 2012

Miracles, Buddhists, and Equality

The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay
When word gets out that Mary-Margaret O'Reilly, a somewhat slow-witted but harmless young woman, may have been witness to a miracles, religious mania descends on the Church of the Sacred Heart in Battersea, London. The consequences are devastating, not only for Mary-Margaret but for others, including Father Diamond, the parish priest, who is in the midst of his own lonely crisis of faith, and Stella Morrison, adrift in a loveless marriage and aching for her ten-year-old son, away at boarding school. Another mother, Alice Armitage, counts the days until her soldier son comes home from Afghanistan, while Mary-Margaret's mother, Fidelma, imprisoned in her tower block, stares out over the city through her window for hour after hour with nothing but her thoughts for company. It is Mary-Margaret's desperate attempt to prove that Jesus loves her that will change all of these lives in a shocking way.

Vulture Peak by John Burdett
Nobody knows Bangkok like Royal Thai Police Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and there is no one quite like Sonchai: a police officer who has kept his Buddhist soul intact--more or less--despite the fact that his job shoves him face-to-face with some of the most vile and outrageous crimes and criminals in Bangkok. But for his newest assignment, everything he knows about his city--and himself--will be a mere starting point. He's put in charge of the highest-profile criminal case in Thailand--an attempt to bring an end to trafficking human organs. He sets in motion a massive sting operation and stays at its center, traveling to Phuket, Hong Kong, Dubai, Shanghai, and Monte Carlo. He draws in a host of unwitting players. And yet, it's closer to home that Sonchai will discover things getting really dicey.

Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home by Anita Hill
In 1991, Anita Hill's courageous testimony during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings sparked a national conversation on sexual harassment and women's equality in politics and the workplace. Today, she turns her attention to another potent and enduring symbol of economic success and equality--the home. Hill details how the current housing crisis, resulting in the devastation of so many families, so many communities, and even whole cities, imperils every American's ability to achieve the American Dream.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: Imaginary Girls

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. After a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers a dead body floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away--away from home, away from Ruby. But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns home at last, she finds a precarious and deadly balance waiting for her. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between line and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

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, January 12, 2012

Large Print: Monks, Mysteries, and Sparrows

Mr. Monk on the Road by Lee Goldberg
Adrian Monk is feeling strangely...satisfied. His job is secure, and his wife's murder has finally been solved. He'd like his agoraphobic brother, Ambrose, to be able to feel the same way--and sees his brother's birthday as a chance to make it happen. So Monk puts a secret ingredient in Ambrose's birthday cake: sleeping pills. When he wakes up, they're in a motor home on the open road. Monk is determined to show his brother the outside world. But as little crimes pop up along the highway, Monk can't resist getting involved.

Hell is Empty: A Walt Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson
Well-read and world-weary, Sheriff Walt Longmire has been maintaining order in Wyoming's Absaroka County for more than thirty years, but in this riveting seventh outing he is pushed to his limits. Raynaud Shade, an adopted Crow Indian, has confessed to murdering a boy ten years ago and burying him deep within the Big Horn Mountains. Shade and a group of other convicts escape while Walt is transporting them through a snowstorm, and Walt, guided only by Indian mysticism and a battered copy of Dante's Inferno, pursues them into an icy hell.

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: Twisted

Twisted: A Pretty Little Liars Novel by Sara Shepard
It's been a year since the torturous notes from A stopped and the mystery of Alison DiLaurentis's disappearance was finally put to rest. Now seniors in high school, Aria, Spencer, Hanna, and Emily are older, but they're not any wiser. The pretty little liars have more secrets than ever--twisted secrets that could destroy the perfect lives they're worked so hard to rebuild.

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, January 6, 2012

Recipes, Rwanda, and Romany

The Sexy Forever Recipe Bible by Suzanne Somers
She is known by her family and friends as a world-class cook, but you would never guess Suzanne Somer's delicious recipes and desserts can also be used as part of her phenomenally successful weight loss plan, Sexy Forever. The Sexy Forever Recipe Bible provides a stunning compilation of more than 400 delicious classics, updated and coded for those with preferences for gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegetarian, or vegan options.

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
Running the Rift follows the progress of Jean Patrick Nkuba from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life. A naturally gifted athlete, he sprints over the thousand hills of Rwanda and dreams of becoming his country's first Olympic medal winner in track. But Jean Patrick is a Tutsi in a world that has become increasingly restrictive and violent for his people. As tensions mount between the Hutu and Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream that running might deliver him, and his people, from the brutality around them.

The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney
Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier. Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he's been chosen more for his blood than for his investigative skills. Still, he's surprised by the intense hostilities he encounters from the Jankos, who haven't had an easy past. Touched by tragedy, they're either cursed or hiding a terrible secret--the discovery of which Ray can't help suspecting is connected to Rose's disappearance.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Teen Pick of the Week: Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff: Stories of Tough Times and Lessons Learned by Jack Canfield
Many of these stories were written by teens and provide comfort and support to their peer readers. Tough Stuff was a chapter in the previous series Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul and includes more challenging issues and experiences of being a teenager, such as drugs and alcohol, rejection, loss of friendships and relationships, death, suicide, divorce, physical and emotional abuse, and eating disorders. Although the content of these stories is often disturbing and sometimes tragic, the potential for insight, learning and "growing up" is enormous.

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!