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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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.

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

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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!

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

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!

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