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.

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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: 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.

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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.

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Teen Pick of the Week: Nevermore

Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure by James Patterson
In the beginning, there was Maximum Ride. A girl. A fighter. A leader. A superhuman with a mission to save the world. She's gone to the ends of the earth seeking her destiny. And now the end isn't near... It's Here.

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Murder, Mystery, and Oddities

Say You're Sorry by Michael Robotham
When pretty and popular teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear one Sunday morning, the search for them captivates a nation, but the girls are never found. Three years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash once lived. A suspect is in custody--a troubled young man who hears voices and claims that on the night of the disappearance he saw a girl being chased by a snowman. Convinced that Piper and Tash might still be alive, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and ex-cop Vincent Ruiz persuade the police to reopen the investigation. But they are racing against time to save the girls from someone with an evil, twisted, and calculating mind.

Rapture by J.R. Ward
Mels Carmichael, reporter for the Caldwell Courier Journal, gets the shock of her life when a man stumbles in front of her car outside the local cemetery. After the accident, his amnesia is just the kind of mystery she likes to solve, but she soon discovers they're in over their heads with his past. Over their heads with passion too.

Dark Currents by Jacqueline Carey
The Midwestern resort town Pemkowet boasts a diverse population: eccentric locals, wealthy summer people, and tourists by the busload--not to mention faeries, sprites, vampires, naiads, ogres and a whole host of eldritch folk, presided over by Hel, a reclusive Norse goddess. To Daisy Johanssen, who was fathered by an incubus and raised by a single mother, it's home. And as Hel's enforcer and the designated liaison to the Pemkowet Police Department, she has to ensure the relations between the mundane and eldritch communities run smoothly. But when a young man from a nearby college drowns--and signs point to eldritch involvement--the town's booming paranormal tourism trade is at stake. Teamed up with her childhood crush, Officer Cody Fairfax, a sexy werewolf on the down-low, Daisy must solve the crime--and keep a tight rein on the darker side of her nature. For if she's ever tempted to invoke her demonic birthright, it could accidentally unleash nothing less than Armageddon.

Teen Pick of the Week: Insurgent

Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable--and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

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Treasure Island, H.G. Wells, and Tammyland

Silver: Return to Treasure Island by Andrew Motion
It's almost forty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins now runs an inn called Hispaniola on the English coast with his son, Jim, and Long John Silver has returned to England to live in obscurity with his daughter, Natty. Their lives are quiet and unremarkable; their adventures have seemingly ended. But for Jim and Natty, the adventure is just beginning. One night, Natty approaches young Jim with a proposition: return to Treasure Island and find the remaining treasure that their fathers left behind so many years before.

The Map of the Sky by Felix Palma
1898. New York socialite Emma Harlow agrees to marry well-to-do Montgomery Gilmore, but only if he accepts her audacious challenge: to reproduce the Martian invasion featured in H.G. Well's popular novel The War of the Worlds. Meanwhile in London, Wells is unexpectedly made privy to certain objects, apparently of extraterrestrial origin, that were discovered decades earlier on an ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic. On that same expedition was an American crew member named Edgar Allan Poe, whose inexplicable experiences in the frozen wasteland would ultimately inspire him to create one of his most enduring works of literature. When eerie, alien-looking cylinders begin appearing on the outskirts of London, Wells is certain it is all part of an elaborate hoax. But soon, to his great horror, he realizes that a true invasion of the earth has indeed begun.

Miss Me When I'm Gone by Emily Arsenault
Author Gretchen Waters made a name for herself with her bestseller Tammyland--a memoir about her divorce and her admiration for country music icons Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton that was praised as a "honky-tonk Eat, Pray, Love." But her writing career is cut abruptly short when she dies from a fall down a set of stone library steps. It is a tragic accident and no suspects foul play, certainly not Gretchen's best friend from college, Jamie, who's been named the late author's literary executor. But there's an unfinished manuscript Gretchen left behind that is much darker than Tammyland: a book ostensibly about male country musicians yet centered on a murder in Gretchen's family that haunted her childhood. In its pages, Gretchen seems to be speaking to Jamie from beyond the grave--suggesting her death was no accident and that Jamie must piece together the story someone would kill to keep untold.

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: 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.

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Teen Pick of the Week: Partials

Partials by Dan Wells
The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials--engineered organic beings identical to humans--has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out. Kira, a sixteen-year-old medic-in-training, is on the front lines of this battle, seeing RM ravage the community while mandatory pregnancy laws have pushed what's left of humanity to the brink of civil war, and she's not content to stand by and watch. But as she makes a desperate decision to save the last of her race, she will find that survival of humans and Partials alike rests in her attempts to uncover the connections between them.

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Teen Pick of the Week: Cinder

Cinder: The Lunar Chronicles Book One by Marissa Meyer
Sixteen-year-old Cinder is considered a technological mistake by most of society and a burden by her stepmother. Being cyborg does have its benefits, though: Cinder's brain interface has given her an uncanny ability to fix things (robots, hovers, her own malfunctioning parts), making her the best mechanic in New Beijing. This reputation brings Prince Kai himself to her weekly market booth, needing her to repair a broken android before the annual ball. He jokingly calls it "a matter of national security," but Cinder suspects it's more serious than he's letting on.

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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.

Teen Pick of the Week: Delirium

Delirium by Lauren Oliver
They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I've always believed them. Until now. Now everything has changed. Now, I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

Read more of hers: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surround her death and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

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Teen Pick of the Week: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to she becomes a contender. But if she is to win she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

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