Lost Manuscripts, "Authorities," and Attack Submarines

The Legend of Broken by Caleb Carr
Some years ago, a remarkable manuscript long rumored to exist was discovered: The Legend of Broken. It tells of a prosperous fortress city where order reigns at the point of a sword--even as scheming factions secretly vie for control of the surrounding kingdom. Meanwhile, outside the city's granite walls, an industrious tribe of exiles known as the Bane forages for sustenance in the wilds of Davon Wood.

Agenda 21 by Glenn Beck
Just a generation ago, this place was called America. Now, after the worldwide implementation of a UN-led program called Agenda 21, it's simply known as "the Republic." There is no president. There is no Congress. No Supreme Court. No freedom. There are only the Authorities. Citizens who have two primary goals in the new Republic: to create clean energy and to create new human life. Those who cannot do either are of no use to society. This bleak and barren existence is all that eighteen-year-old Emmeline has ever known. She dutifully walks her energy board daily and accepts all male pairings assigned to her by the Authorities. Like most citizens, she keeps her head down and her eyes closed. Until the day they come for her mother.

Poseidon's Arrow by Clive Cussler
It is the greatest advance in American defense technology in decades--an attack submarine capable of incredible underwater speeds. Nothing else in any other nation's naval arsenal even comes close. There is only one problem: A key element of the prototype is missing--and the man who developed it is dead. At the same time, ships have started vanishing mid-ocean, usually never to be found again, but when they are, sometimes bodies are found aboard...burned to a crisp. It is up to NUMA director Dirk Pitt and his team, aided by a beautiful NCIS agent and by Pitt's children, marine engineer Dirk and oceanographer Summer, to go on a desperate international chase to find the truth. 

Teen Pick of the Week: Burned

Burned: A Pretty Little Liars Novel by Sara Shepard

It's spring break, and the pretty little liars are trading in Rosewood for a cruise vacation. They want nothing more than to sail into the tropical sunset and leave their troubles behind for one blissful week. But where Emily, Aria, Spencer, and Hanna go, A goes, too. From scuba diving to tanning on the upper deck, A is there, soaking up their new secrets. Emily is smooching a stowaway. Aria's treasure-hunting partner is a little too interested in her booty. Spencer's going overboard trying to land a new boy. And a blast--or rather, a crash--from Hanna's past could mean rough waters ahead for everyone.

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NY Times Bestseller this Week: Janet Evanovich

Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich is the #1 NY Times Bestseller this week!

After a slow summer of chasing low-level skips for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds agency, Stephanie Plum finally lands an assignment that could put her checkbook back in the black. Geoffrey Cubbin, facing trial for embezzling millions from Trenton’s premier assisted-living facility, has mysteriously vanished from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy. Now it’s on Stephanie to track down the con man. Unfortunately, Cubbin has disappeared without a trace, a witness, or his money-hungry wife. Rumors are stirring that he must have had help with the daring escape . . . or that maybe he never made it out of his room alive. Since the hospital staff’s lips seem to be tighter than the security, and it’s hard for Stephanie to blend in to assisted living, Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur goes in undercover. But when a second felon goes missing from the same hospital, Stephanie is forced into working side by side with Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, in order to crack the case.

The real problem is, no Cubbin also means no way to pay the rent. Desperate for money—or maybe just desperate—Stephanie accepts a secondary job guarding her secretive and mouthwatering mentor Ranger from a deadly Special Forces adversary. While Stephanie is notorious for finding trouble, she may have found a little more than she bargained for this time around. Then again—a little food poisoning, some threatening notes, and a bridesmaid’s dress with an excess of taffeta never killed anyone . . . or did they? If Stephanie Plum wants to bring in a paycheck, she’ll have to remember: No guts, no glory. .

Teen Pick of the Week: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
My name is Greg Gaines. I am seventeen. I am the one who wrote the book. My physical appearance is unsatisfactory, and there is probably a fungus eating my brain. I'm not even sure I'm a human. Earl Jackson is the only person who is even sort of my friend. We make mediocre films together. Werner Herzog is our biggest influence. Earl is generally filled with violent rage. During my senior year, my mom forced me to become friends with a girl who had cancer. This brought about the destruction of my entire life.

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Horror Pick of the Week: Fifty Year Sword

The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Danielewski
One Halloween night, at a party held at an East Texas ranch house, a local seamstress named Chintana finds herself thrown into the role of chaperone for five rambunctious orphans. Not surprisingly, the children's energies prove barely containable, even with promises of cake and a storyteller. The storyteller, however, is not what anyone expects. Looking and cloaked in dark, he entertains the orphans with a tale twisted out of vengeance and violence. He does not come empty-handed, either. At their feet he sets a long, narrow box sealed with five latches. "I am a bad man with a very black heart," he warns them. And it was only that badness and blackness which forced me to seek out what I have carried now for many years and brought this night for you. An unsettling thing to say to anyone, especially to children. But as Chintana soon discover, this is just the beginning. Her concerns only mount as the storyteller offers more and more menacing details about what consequences lie hidden within that long, narrow box. To make matters worse, the orphans one by one, lean forward and lift the latches...

Teen Pick of the Week: Tilt

Tilt by Ellen Hopkins
Witnessing the fallout from the poor choices their parents make and the lies adults tell themselves, three teens are clinging to the last remnants of the secure and familiar world in which they've grown up. But the ground is shifting. What was once clear is now confused. Everything is tilting. Mikayla is sure she's found the love her parents seem to have lost, but is suddenly weighing nearly impossible choices in the wake of dashed expectations. Shane has come out, unwilling to lie anymore about who he is, but finds himself struggling to keep it all under control in the face of first love and a horrific loss. Harley, a good girl just seeking new experiences, never expects to hurtle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.

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Family Secrets

The Summer House by Marcia Willett
Matt has always felt that there was something missing in his life. His mother kept all his childhood memories in a small inlaid wooden box, along with many photos of Matt as a child. But something about these photos has always puzzled Matt. Why doesn't he remember those clothes? The toys? And where, in the photos, is his sister Imogen? Meanwhile, Imogen is living with her husband and their baby in a rented cottage. Ever since she was a child, she has loved the Summer House, a charming cottage on the grounds of a beautiful and ancient house in Exmoor. When she has a chance to buy, but her husband refuses to move, Imogen begins to question the seemingly picturesque life she has built for herself. Eventually, the Summer House provides the key to the strange and tragic secret that has affected everyone involved.

You Are the Love of My Life by Susan Richards Shreve
It is 1973 and the scandal of Watergate is on everyone's lips. Lucy Painter, children's book writer and single mother of two, is leaving New York and the married father of her children to return to the house in the tightly knit Washington, DC, neighborhood where she grew up and where she discovered her father's suicide. Lucy hopes for a fresh start, but her life is full of secrets: her children know nothing of the circumstances surrounding her father's death or the identity of their own father. And as new neighbors enter their insular lives, the safety and stability of her family are in jeopardy.