Colonie Library Book Zone

The last nude

2012-01-27T13:53:00.000-05:00

by Ellis Avery. Those eyes! Those lips! That hair! Tamara de Lempicka's iconic Jazz Age paintings that immortalize Rafaela Fano in her nude glory (especially The Dream and La Belle Rafaela) now see glittering, luminescent life in Avery's novel, a riveting lesbian love story of heart-stopping passion, rapture, and stunning duplicity. In 1920s Paris, Tamara, her world lost to WWI, is painting for anyone who'd lost a world, too . . . making our heaven myself, stroke by stroke. Avery (The Teahouse Fire, 2007) places lovers Tamara and Rafaela within a richly portrayed circle of cultural touchstones, including Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney, Jean Cocteau, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and Sylvia Beach, the American expat who published James Joyce's Ulysses and founded Shakespeare & Co., a bookstore-haven for artistic souls. Against that brightly pigmented background, this artist-model lovers' tale is as subtle and seductive as the silk Rafaela listens to with her hands as she designs a slip for her beloved, as stirring as Rafaela (whose survival depends on her beauty), radiant after her first sex for pleasure, seeing Paris, a rose-windowed city, and thinking, This always. Just this. Avery's breathtaking shimmer of first love and its aftermath will turn heads. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Learning to live out loud : a memoir

2012-01-26T10:58:00.000-05:00

by Piper Laurie. The author is probably familiar to most readers as Carrie White's mother in 1976's Carrie (for which she received the second of her three Oscar nominations) and for her role in the television series Twin Peaks (for which she was nominated twice for an Emmy Award). But Laurie has been acting since she was a girl, securing a contract with Universal-International when she was 17 years old and appearing in such films as The Hustler (which brought her first Oscar nomination) and Children of a Lesser God (her third nomination). Although the story she tells is clearly weighted toward her professional life, she does touch on personal details: her antagonistic relationship with Tony Curtis; her brief romantic dalliance with Ronald Reagan (in which the future president is portrayed as cold, cruel, and egotistical); her marriage; her 15-year hiatus from movie roles; and her rather unusual childhood (which saw Laurie and her sister being sent to live at the Reslocks sanitarium, described as an institutional home for children ). All in all, an involving and occasionally moving life story. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Hope : a tragedy : a novel

2012-01-25T09:43:00.000-05:00

by Shalom Auslander. Given his audaciously funny memoir, Foreskin's Lament (2007), it isn't surprising that Auslander's first novel is defiantly hilarious, but its riotous and downright sacrilegious satire wildly exceeds expectations. Solomon Kugel has moved his family out of the city and into an old upstate farmhouse. All should be idyllic, but Kugel's mother has delusions of being a Holocaust survivor, and the house is plagued with a terrible smell. Once Kugel, a champion worrier, whose psychoanalyst tells him that hope is a malady, discovers that a veritable Holocaust saint is living in his attic, life becomes antic and impossibly complicated. As his hapless hero tries to do right, Auslander orchestrates a mission of desecration. Spouting painfully nervy puns ( Auschwitz happens ) and cracking bad jokes about gluten intolerance and how he wouldn't even have made it to head shaving in the camps, Kugel mocks the Misery Olympics of Jewish laments and demolishes the entire concept of remembrance. Along with its lacerating irreverence and tonic comedy of angst, Auslander's devilishly cunning, sure-to-be controversial novel poses profound questions about meaning, justice, truth, and responsibility. --Boooklist (Check catalog)

In our prime : the invention of middle age

2012-01-24T11:55:00.000-05:00

by Patricia Cohen. As those at the tail of the baby boom approach age 50, New York Times culture reporter Cohen lays out the history and current conditions of midlife, from the mid-19th century to the present. Framed by the large-scale, ongoing research project Midlife in the United States, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, her book addresses the "midlife crisis" (largely fictitious or misidentified), the boom of anti-aging "self-improvement" industries, and gaps between myth and media portrayals and everyday reality regarding health, sexuality, and economic power. Our concept of middle age is persistent but ill-defined (Cohen notes that those who learned of her research topic inevitably asked, "When is it?"). Today's adults make choices that belie age-based descriptions of life stages. The digital revolution, multiplication of media outlets, and diversification of the population guarantee that contemporary Americans' midlife experiences will be heterogeneous. From generation to generation, middle age less defines its constituents than is defined by them. VERDICT This is an illuminating social history for students, social scientists, and all those who wonder whether they are middle-aged. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

American dervish : a novel

2012-01-23T13:21:00.000-05:00

by Ayad Akhtar Haunted by guilt, Hayat Shah remembers growing up in Milwaukee in the early 1980s, dazzled by Mina, gifted and gorgeous, his mother's beloved friend from Pakistan, who fled abuse back home for being too smart. When she moves into Hayat's home with her small son, Hayat is smitten by Mina's beauty and by all that she teaches him (and the reader) about the richness of the Qur'an: for Mina, faith is about personal interpretation, not about the outer forms; she does not wear a headscarf. But when she falls in love with physician Nathan Wolfson, Hayat's dad's Jewish partner, and plans to marry him, Hayat is wildly jealous. Many readers will recognize the extremist rants by and about Christians, Muslims, and Jews, from all sides. But the people at home move beyond the stereotypes, including Hayat's atheist womanizer dad, who hates the racist extremists. The young teen's personal story about growing up in Muslim America is both particular and universal, with intense connections of faith, sorrow, tenderness, anger, betrayal, questioning, and love. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The magic room : a story about the love we wish for our daughters

2012-01-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

by Jeffrey Zaslow. In the small town of Fowler, MI, Becker's Bridal has served over 100,000 brides-to-be since the mid-1930s. Along the way, fashions and customs have changed as brides have visited the store's so-called Magic Room to gaze at endless mirrored images of themselves in their wedding gown, an apt metaphor for Zaslow (columnist, Wall Street Journal; The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship) as they reflect on their lives, relationships, and dreams for the future. Zaslow shadows half a dozen of the women who go to Becker's Bridal, listening to their stories and writing a compelling and sincere chronology of the experiences, tragedies, and love that led them to the shop. His narrative is sprinkled with fascinating statistical information concerning marriage and divorce, as well as his cultural analysis and observations concerning family and spousal relationships and insights into the lives and relationships of the four generations of Becker women who have worked at the store. VERDICT Not an examination of today's marriage industry but a study of individual lives and dreams, this is recommended for casual readers and those with an interest in cultural and social customs concerning marriage, women's roles, and parent-child relationships. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The London train

2012-01-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

by Tessa Hadley. In what seems at first a bifurcated novel, both protagonists take the London train. Paul, a writer with two small daughters in his second marriage, travels from his home in Wales to London to find his pregnant 20-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Poised on the brink of freedom, he temporarily leaves his new family behind. Cora, an English teacher who traveled from her London flat to Cardiff to remodel her late parents' home, in which she now lives, is poised to divorce her senior civil servant husband, who's embroiled in an increasingly volatile investigation. Years before, Paul's and Cora's lives intersected when they met on the London train. In spare, incisive prose, Hadley (The Master Bedroom, 2008) probes this pair of only children marked by the deaths of their mothers, playing with chronology to lay open the pasts that shaped them. This is a keenly perceptive and wise novel, illustrating that however important the past is in our lives, only the present, glimpsed in the final pages, truly matters. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Your playlist can change your life : ten proven ways your favorite music can revolutionize your health, memory, organization, alertness, and more

2012-01-16T13:21:00.001-05:00

by Galina Mindlin. This distinctive book comes from the coordinated efforts of Mindlin (psychiatry, Columbia Univ.), Don DuRousseau (executive director, PEAK Neurotraining Solutions), and Joseph Cardillo (Be Like Water: Practical Wisdom from the Martial Arts), who propose that readers can use music to relieve anxiety, increase alertness, feel happier, and sharpen memory. The process involves picking songs you like, taking note of how the songs work, and then using them to create a particular mood or spirit. The authors provide numerous exercises, personal examples, and sample play-lists for specific moods (e.g., getting rid of the blahs, relaxing before tests, and revving up lunch breaks). Although many readers have already found that playing "Johnny B. Goode" can transform washing the kitchen floor into dancing at a night club, this title lends a psychologist's perspective to a common behavior-well worth the purchase. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

A different sky

2012-01-14T13:16:00.000-05:00

by Meira Chand. A sweeping novel that spans 30 years in the lives of three central characters, A Different Sky is a fully engaging experience. The protagonists are richly and deeply drawn; the sights, sounds, and smells of Singapore are gorgeously rendered; and the principal characters' interwoven stories combine to form a compelling narrative. On an island, a family's history is often as convoluted as the city-state's, and the three central stories revolve around the concept of belonging. Set against a tumultuous backdrop of Communist revolutions, WWII, and a nation's struggle for independence, Howard, Raj, and Mei Lan's stories intersect in some decidedly unexpected ways. A dozen supporting characters round out the work, providing unique perspectives on the weighty issues of cultural identity, the importance of tradition, and individual betterment. Chand's extensive knowledge of Singapore's eccentricities brilliantly colors the novel, adding an indelible layer of authenticity to the central stories. Fans of Tara Hyland and other readers of historical fiction should find this novel an emotionally satisfying and historically enlightening experience. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Teaching America : the case for civic education

2012-01-13T13:12:00.000-05:00

The American experiment in self-governance relies on a citizenry conversant in American history and government process. Feith (assistant editorial features editor, Wall Street Journal) and his knowledgeable group of contributors-public officials, law and education scholars, and educators-sound the alarm with impressive clarity about the current state of American civic literacy. Their case is straightforward and without divisive rhetoric. The included essays explore the historical place of civic literacy within the American education system, look at current and past government programs intended to effect civic literacy, present snapshots of existing civic-education programs in K-12 and higher education, and consider options for the future. Verdict A well-documented case for civic-education reform articulated by policymakers, lawyers, educators, and academics who share their expertise and involvement with government programs and relevant curricula. This collection is distinctive for its breadth of coverage and the first-hand expertise and knowledge of its contributors. Highly recommended for students in education and teacher preparation. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

An Amish wedding

2012-01-12T10:46:00.000-05:00

by Kelly Long. Fans of Amish fiction will find triple the enjoyment here thanks to this gathering of novellas in one book. The trio of stories-all by accomplished writers of Amish fiction-create a tight braid of friendship and love as three young women follow their hearts despite bumps in the road. Rose Bender and Luke Raber have been friends forever, but their impending marriage leaves Rose yearning for more. A mysterious thief who seems strangely familiar to Rose sets her on a journey of discovery. Rose's best friend, Priscilla, is about to wed Chester Lapp, but unfortunate events-from finding her wedding dress cut up for doll clothes to an odd case of hiccups-have the pair wondering if their marriage is doomed. Naomi King, Priscilla's sister, seems happy living in the daadi haus and selling baked goods until Zeke Lapp arrives for his cousin Chester's wedding. Can Naomi get past a broken heart to let Zeke in? A satisfying addition to the popular Amish genre. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Knocking on heaven's door : how physics and scientific thinking illuminate the universe and the modern world

2012-01-11T09:33:00.001-05:00

by Lisa Randall. To explain how science works, Randall analyzes the way two researchers at Bell Labs turned the annoying static coming through their radio telescope into a cosmic breakthrough. For in this piquant episode and others that Randall examines science advances by testing theoretical ingenuity against technologically acquired data. Readers gain some historical perspective on this process by revisiting Galileo, who used the telescope to verify Copernican thinking about the heavens and devised an early microscope to assess new ideas about the structural variation of bones. Randall indeed credits Galileo with having recognized the critical importance of scale in shaping fruitful scientific inquiries. And she anticipates acute challenges for twenty-first-century scientists pursuing science at scales both astonishingly large and incomprehensibly small. For data coming from the new Planck and Herschel satellites and from Europe's powerful new Large Hadron Collider will soon compel scientists to look anew at theoretical conjectures about the atom and the universe (or multiverse). As someone who helped forge some of these conjectures, Randall offers an insider's perspective into this cutting-edge science. Yet she illuminates that science with lucid language, laced with references to popular culture, political controversy, and even comic-strip art. The general reader's indispensable passport to the frontiers of science. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The death of King Arthur

2012-01-10T14:56:00.000-05:00

by Peter Ackroyd. Most of us know Sir Thomas Malory's 15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur from T.H. White's The Once and Future King or the musical Camelot. This new version by Ackroyd (The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling) isn't intended to improve on White. It's a modern retelling of the central Arthurian story lines. Arthur becomes king by pulling a sword out of a stone, and he sets up a round table of 150 knights to keep order in the kingdom but is betrayed by his bastard son, Mordred. Sir Lancelot, meanwhile, acts the perfect knight, but his illicit love for Queen Guinevere prevents him from ever attaining the Holy Grail: that privilege is reserved for Galahad, who's still a virgin. Malory's basic story (with obscure language and additional details removed by Ackroyd) should seem old now, but it doesn't. Ackroyd's retelling retains the Christian and chivalric sensibilities of the original but updates the language and cuts out repetition. The result is sheer enjoyment, with notable characters and a narrative that pulls in the reader. And what tales these are-knights fighting for honor, magical potions and poisoned lances, unrequited love, and vile deceit! No one could have done it better than Ackroyd. VERDICT Not a scholarly retelling but a popular one, this story should attract an unexpectedly wide audience. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Sybil: the extraordinary story behind the famous multiple personality case

2012-01-09T10:03:00.001-05:00

by Debbie Nathan Much continues to be written about multiple personality disorder (MPD), now renamed dissociative identity disorder. Without much effort, readers can find information about the clinical phenomenology of MPD. It is the cases the personal stories that have etched MPD into the popular culture. Although the book Sybil was published in 1973, the name Sybil is still synonymous with this disorder. Now, award-winning journalist Nathan meticulously turns the iconic case on its head. To some degree, this is investigative journalism at its best. After all, who among us isn't fascinated by the myths, controversies, and comments that continue to accompany the story of Shirley Ardell Mason, aka Sybil ? Readers interested in popular culture and in the mental-health profession will not be disappointed. Neither will readers interested in following an unusual story back to its roots. Nathan does not attempt to provide a broad grounding in the recognition and treatment of MPD. Regardless, this much is clear: research evidence shows that MPD is quite common, and dissociation is a common feature of many other psychiatric disorders. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Broken

2012-01-07T16:42:00.000-05:00

by Susan Jane Bigleow. In a future where the United States is a burned-out backwater and a single fascist government rules humanity and its colonies, Broken, a derelict superheroine who has lost the power to fly, and Michael Forward, a clairvoyant teenager, race to save a boy from those who want to turn him into a tyrant. As they flee government thugs, bloodthirsty separatist soldiers, and Broken's former lover, a superhero gone bad, Broken and Michael must come to terms with their painful pasts and with choosing between doing what is easy and pleasant and doing what is right. Bigelow's action-packed, fast-flying debut is buttressed by a believable, detailed world and populated by a cast of unforgettable, deeply realized characters. Her unusual and heartfelt take on superheroes underscores what makes these iconic characters heroic-and what makes them profoundly human. --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)

Steve Jobs

2012-01-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

by Walter Isaacson. Now we all know how the story ends. But that only adds a certain frisson to this biography of the man who was determined to make a dent in reality. Shaping reality was what Jobs was about, not only in his extraordinary vision of how personal computers could remake the world but also in his personal life, where early forays into Eastern mysticism led to belief in what Star Trek called a reality distortion field Jobs believed reality was malleable and made others believe it, too. The book is filled with examples of projects that seemed impossible to complete but were completed and goals that appeared unachievable but were achieved all because Jobs insisted it could be done. Yet Jobs was no saint. Isaacson (along with many of Jobs' friends) posits that being given up for adoption gave him a brittle, callous edge, which likely led him to abandon a daughter he had out of wedlock. Juxatposed against Jobs' story are contrasting profiles of Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, the actual engineer, who would benignly have given away the specs for designing personal computers (he did give low-level associates some of his Apple shares before it it went public), and Bill Gates, at different times Jobs' partner and rival. Isaacson, who has previously written about long-gone geniuses Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, benefits this time from contact with his subject. Jobs gave the author 40 interviews for this book and asked his family and associates to cooperate. The result is a wonderfully robust biography that not only tracks Jobs' life but also serves as a history of digital technology. What makes the book come alive, though, is Isaacson's ability to shape the story as a kind of archetypal fantasy: the flawed hero, the noble quest, the holy grail, the death of the king. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Robert Ludlum's The Ares decision

2012-01-05T10:43:00.000-05:00

by Kyle Mills. The latest Covert One thriller brings back Colonel Jon Smith and his cohorts in a tight and tense page-turner. A Special Forces team is sent to Uganda to eliminate a terrorist, but instead of taking him out, the entire squad is decimated. When Smith begins to investigate, the one surviving member commits suicide. Video surveillance seems to indicate the use of a parasite for controlling unwilling subjects. Smith recruits an expert in the field of parasitology along with an old friend to solve the bizarre puzzle and stop a madman from utilizing the bug as a weapon. Various subplots abound as well, adding to the complexity of the narrative. Mills is a fine writer of his action-centered thrillers in his own right, and he makes an inspired choice to continue the Ludlum-based series. This eighth Covert One novel is one of the best since Gayle Lynds was at the helm. Fans of the Ludlum style will have nothing but praise for this one. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Is everyone hanging out without me? (and other concerns)

2012-01-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

by Mindy Kaling. In the conspiratorial tones of a cool older or younger sister or pal, familiar to her twitter followers, Kaling, best-known as a writer-actress on the American version of The Office, traces her path from sensitive, chubby, Indian girl to woman-about-town in TV's comedy scene. In observant, bracingly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant essays and lists, Kaling gives her opinions on life, love, and the ridiculous amount of time it takes men to put on their shoes without holding back. That's not to say she isn't gracious about her family, friends, and coworkers (except frenemy Rainn Wilson) and ultimately reserves her best ribbing for herself. Also strewn throughout the memoir are some of the most adorable (read embarrassing) photos of herself. The showstopper on the back cover depicts her as a coke-bottle-glasses-wearing, androgynous child holding a puppet. To a year noteworthy for great funny ladies dishing about life in the biz, including the likes of Tina Fey and Jane Lynch, Kaling is an exciting addition. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

11/22/63 : a novel

2012-01-03T16:35:00.000-05:00

by Stephen King. Like the similarly sprawling Under the Dome (2009), this novel was abandoned by King decades ago before he took another shot, and perhaps that accounts for both novels' intoxicating, early-King bouquet of ambition and swagger. In this distant cousin to The Dead Zone (1979), Jake Epping is living a normal schoolteacher's life when a short-order cook named Al introduces him to a time warp hidden in a diner pantry leading directly to 11:58 a.m., September 9, 1958. Al's dying of cancer, which means he needs a successor to carry out his grand mission: kill Lee Harvey Oswald so that the 1963 JFK assassination never happens. Jake takes the plunge and finds two things he never expected: true love and the fact that the obdurate past doesn't want to change. The roadblocks King throws into Jake's path are fairly ingenious some of them are outright gut-punches while history buffs will dig the upside-down travelogue of Oswald's life. This doesn't loom as large as some King epics; on the other hand, did we appreciate It in 1986 as much as we do now? Leave it at this: fans will love it. High-Demand Backstory: King is his own backstory: demand for anything new will be loud. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Catherine the Great : portrait of a woman

2012-01-02T11:33:00.000-05:00

by Robert K. Massie. The popularity of Massie's biographies of Russian czars presages a comparable reception for his presentation of Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, as Catherine the Great was originally named. She appeals to readers for several reasons. Those interested in the expansion and development of the Russian Empire under her reign (1762-96) can delve into her conduct of war and diplomacy, cultivation of Enlightenment notables, and attempted reforms of law and government. And those fascinated by the intimate intrigues of dynasties will find an extraordinary example in Catherine's ascent from minor German princess to absolute autocrat of Russia. Court life is Massie's strong suit, though, which he develops with a well-referenced thoroughness that begins with Catherine's own account (The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, Mark Cruse, ed., 2005) of surviving palace politics as consort to the eccentric and disliked crown prince, Paul. The memoir, which suspends in 1758, alludes to another aspect of Catherine that tantalizes royalty readers, her liaisons with courtiers, most famously, Grigory Potemkin. Massie's treatment of them proves sympathetically perceptive to Catherine's warmth and her estrangement from them, humanizing the real woman behind the imperial persona. Written dramatically and almost visually, Massie's Catherine may attain the classic status that his Peter the Great (1980) and Nicholas and Alexandra (1967) already have. --Booklist (Check catalog)

The artist of disappearance : three novellas

2011-12-31T11:30:00.001-05:00

by Anita Desai. In three ensnaring novellas of consummate artistry and profoundly disquieting perceptions, master storyteller Desai (The Zigzag Way, 2004) reflects on the transforming power and devastating limitations of art. In The Museum of Final Journeys, an Anglo magistrate in a district deep in the impoverished flatlands of India accepts an elderly caretaker's beseeching invitation to visit the vast estate his employer has abandoned. In the dilapidated mansion, he finds a treasury of exquisite objects collected the world over, now forgotten artifacts in exile, their luster and stories lost. In Translator Translated, a tale of brilliantly refined suspense, Prema, an English teacher dulled by routine and loneliness, seizes the opportunity to translate the work of an author writing in her little-known mother tongue and is soon in way over her head. As Desai charts Prema's cruel exposure, she considers the plight of indigenous languages, the ethics of translation, and the heartbreak of those seeking affirmation in the creations of others. In The Artist of Disappearance, Ravi, the unloved adopted son of frivolous wealthy parents, finally returns to his beloved Himalayan home to live simply and creatively, immersed in the glory of nature, only to witness its destruction. Desai's provocative and mysterious tales of displacement trace the reverberations when the dream of art collides with crushing reality. --Booklist (Check catalog)

MWF seeking BFF : my yearlong search for a new best friend

2011-12-30T10:47:00.000-05:00

by Rachel Bertsche. Moving from New York City to take the long distance out of her relationship, journalist Bertsche found herself in a tough spot two years into her Chicago tenure a young, married professional past her hard-partying days, far from her BFFs (best friends forever), desiring meaningful friendships, and feeling utterly lost as to how to go about it. Challenging herself to 52 friend-dates in a calendar year and reading up on relationship research along the way, what Bertsche learns and relays anecdotally alongside rundowns of each friend-date could be classified as the science of friendship. Some dates are great; some just so-so; some hilariously terrible and readers can really feel that they're along for each one. In another's voice, the material could easily have become trite or annoying, but Bertsche is just so darn, well, friendly that readers might even find themselves questioning or conquering their own occasional antisocial tendencies. Bertsche deserves applause for the profundity of her research, and she exhausts her topic without tiring readers. Useful index of friend-dates and recommended reading included. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Sniper elite : the world of a top special forces marksman

2011-12-29T11:16:00.000-05:00

by Rob Maylor. Readers of Stephen Hunter's novels about sniper Bob Lee Swagger should be steered to this memoir written by Maylor, an Australian SAS sniper, with the assistance of veteran military writer Macklin. Maylor counts among his earliest and, apparently, fondest memories playing with toy soldiers and watching war movies. He was born to be a soldier, he tells us, and it sure seems that's true. But he became a sniper almost by accident. Looking for an escape from a rocky marriage, he intended to join the British Army's Parachute Regiment but wound up enlisting in the Royal Marines. After several years, he moved to the Australian SAS, seeing action in, among other places, Afghanstan and East Timor. The book is a treat for fans of sniper-related material, being full of information about surveillance techniques, makes and models of weaponry, and other technical matters. On the personal side, Maylor describes his experiences in quite a lot of detail, giving the reader a good sense of what it takes and feels like to be a professional soldier. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

V is for vengeance

2011-12-28T13:58:00.000-05:00

By Sue Grafton. V may stand for vengeance, but think V for Vegas, too that's where the latest in Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series begins. It's there, in 1986, that 23-year-old Phillip Lanahan runs afoul of Santa Teresa Mob boss Lorenzo Dante and finds himself spinning off a multilevel parking structure to an unpleasant end. V is also for Vance, shoplifter Audrey Vance. To meet her, fast-forward two years. Eagle-eyed Millhone spots her lifting silk pj's in Nordstrom's and turns her in. Later, Kinsey is surprised when the woman is found dead at the bottom of a ravine, and even more suprised when the woman's fiance hires Kinsey to prove Audrey didn't commit suicide and wasn't, as Kinsey suspects, part of an organized ring of shoplifters, or pickers. Trust Kinsey to find the truth, and trust Grafton to bring together in crazy harmony a set of circumstances and an oddly assorted bunch of characters (old acquaintances and new) that, in a lesser writer's hands, would have produced narrative chaos. With only four alphabet mysteries to go, speculation on the final installment has already begun. In the meantime, Grafton's devoted fans should sit back and enjoy a terrific installment in the here and now. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Almost president : the men who lost the race but changed the nation

2011-12-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

by Scott Farris. Farris (former bureau chief, United Press International) bases this book on the premise that the losers of our country's presidential elections can be as influential-and as interesting to read about-as the winners. From Henry Clay, "the greatest legislator in American history," to Al Gore, who went on to devote his efforts to fighting global warming, to John Kerry to John McCain, Farris effectively demonstrates that many party nominees in presidential races were able to accomplish more in defeat than they ever could have achieved through victory. He profiles 12 losing candidates, e.g., Al Smith, who lost to Herbert Hoover in 1928, who fought bias and bigotry simply in being the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee and helped change the landscape for Catholics in politics. Ross Perot's surprisingly successful campaign challenged the political status quo and set the stage for future "outsider" candidates. Verdict Based on published sources, this book does a great job supporting the thesis that the profiled figures had greater ability to promote their agendas precisely because they did not win the presidency. A terrific resource for general presidential history buffs and high school and undergraduate libraries. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

To win her heart

2011-12-25T16:33:00.000-05:00

by Karen Witemeyer. Levi Grant emerges from prison with little more than renewed faith and a blacksmith's job in Spencer, Texas, but his first meeting with Eden fosters hope for a wife, family, and home as well. Tall, well muscled, and hesitant, he realizes that he comes across as taciturn and uncouth. But he perseveres in engaging Eden's attention, even though his lisp presents difficulties. Eden was raised as the indulged only child of a wealthy and influential Austin family, and moved to this small town five years ago after being jilted only days before her wedding. She has been content to do good works and maintain a low profile, until Levi challenges her to help Chloe, a 15-year-old raised in the local saloon by her prostitute mother, escape her would-be rapist and become respectable. Witemeyer's hard-hitting Christian historical romance skillfully incorporates Jesus' parables of the prodigal son and the adulteress' rock-toting accusers into her characters' struggles with redemption, worthiness, and new beginnings. A commendable addition to the genre. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Willpower : rediscovering the greatest human strength

2011-12-24T16:28:00.000-05:00

by Roy F. Baumeister. The Victorians came up with the term willpower to describe resisting temptation. Most psychologists never bought it, especially the related notion that willpower was a manifestation of energy within the body. Thanks largely to research conducted by Baumeister, however, it looks like the Victorians were right. In one of many startling revelations, Baumeister and science-writer Tierney show how willpower, aka self-control, is linked to glucose, which explains, for example, why PMS is commonly associated with an inability to control food cravings (glucose is diverted to the reproductive system, leaving less for the rest of the body). Willpower, the authors persuasively argue, isn't merely a quaint notion; it's real. Each of us has a finite amount of it, and the sooner one understands how it works, the sooner one will learn how to avoid depleting one's personal supply. If the book weren't so lucid, it would be tempting to dismiss it as hokum. But it's hard to ignore or ridicule the ideas here. In fact, they seem not just plausible but blindingly obvious. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Legacy : an Event Group thriller

2011-12-23T12:21:00.000-05:00

by David Lynn Goleman. Nothing less than the fate of the earth is at stake in bestseller Goleman's sweeping sixth Event Group thriller (after Primeval). A small alien named Mahjtic, a secret our government has kept for years, warns that the Grays, a branch of evil aliens, are headed toward our planet bent on domination. Earth's only salvation is to acquire advanced weaponry left on the surface of the moon and in an Ecuadorian mine by the remnants of another alien society 700 million years ago. Tasked with the weapons acquisition assignment is the Event Group, a secret government unit headed by Col. Jack Collins that takes on scientific and military missions that fall far beyond the bounds of normality. A subplot involving a wealthy televangelist slows the action somewhat, but as soon as he has been dealt with, the book hits its massive stride and seldom slows. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Veterinary guide for animal owners : caring for cats, dogs, chickens, sheep, cattle, rabbits, and more

2011-12-22T11:13:00.000-05:00

by C. E. Spaulding. The ten chapters in this animal care guide explain the housing, feeding, breeding, and basic medical treatment of cattle, goats, sheep, horses, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, dogs, and cats. The practical approach provides simple solutions to common problems and recommends when to hire a veterinarian for more difficult conditions. Originally published in 1976 by Rodale Press. Spaulding is a retired veterinarian and Clay works as a veterinary field technician. --Summary (Check Catalog)

1Q84

2011-12-21T11:53:00.000-05:00

by Haruki Murakami. *Starred Review* Murakami writes two kinds of novels: short, intimate, crystalline portraits of lovers, often trapped in alternate worlds or struggling between secret selves (After Dark, 2007), and much longer, broad-canvas epics (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1997) that submerge the reader in a tidal wave of story. His latest definitely falls into the latter camp, and, yet, it clings resolutely to the intimacy of the shorter works. This foray into what is unquestionably Murakami's most vividly imagined parallel world begins simply, with two seemingly ordinary events: two lonely 10-year-olds, a boy and a girl, Tengo and Aomame, hold hands in an empty classroom, and for the next 20 years, while never seeing one another, they dream of meeting but are strangely paralyzed to make it happen. Then Aomame, a 30-year-old woman in 1984 and an assassin who kills men who abuse women walks down an emergency exit from a Tokyo expressway and finds herself in another world, which she calls 1Q84, a world overseen by two moons and ruled, apparently, by the quixotic little people. Meanwhile, Tengo has rewritten a novel by an enigmatic 17-year-old girl that accurately describes the world of 1Q84. As the lives of Tengo, Aomame, and a Dostoyevskian private investigator, who works for a religious cult that worships the little people, swirl closer and closer together, Murakami draws the reader deeper and deeper into this utterly baffling universe, switching narration between the three principal characters, each of whom grasps only a small part of their two-mooned world. Gradually but inexorably, the tension builds, as we root passionately for Tengo and Aomame to find one another and hold hands again, so simple a human connection offering a kind of oasis in the midst of the unexplainable and the terrifying. When Murakami melds fantasy and realism, mystery and epic, it is no simple genre-bending exercise; rather, it is literary alchemy of the highest order. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Murakami, whose work has been translated into 40 languages, is one of our most-honored international fiction writers. His latest will attract great interest in literary circles. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Out of Oz : the final volume in the Wicked years

2011-12-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

by Gregory Mcguire. After the slightly disappointing Son of a Witch (2005) and A Lion among Men (2008), Maguire recaptures his mystical mojo in the fourth and final installment of the Wicked Years series. Although it still falls a bit short of the startling dark artistry that defined Wicked, rapidly catapulting it to the top of the best-seller list and spawning a major Broadway musical, this twisted fairy tale is a worthy conclusion to an imaginative and emotionally searing cultural phenomenon. With the fate of Oz hanging in the balance, the Emerald City is preparing to invade Munchkinland. Although th. Matter of Doroth. seemed settled some time ago, Miss Gale is caught in the epicenter of another natural disaster, hurling her straight back into the heart of Oz. As an incarcerated Glinda whiles away the days waiting for the long-overdue arrival of an old friend, Elphaba's granddaughter, Rain, unable to escape heredity and fate, takes center stage. Everyone who has ever known, loved, or even been a bit frustrated by Maguire's creative, myth-bending reworking of the Oz saga will eagerly hop onboard to find out exactly how the journey ends, because nobody does fractured fairy tales better than Maguire. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The hospital by the river : a story of hope

2011-12-14T10:25:00.000-05:00

by Catherine Hamlin. Hamlin and her late husband, Reg, devoted most of their adult lives to practicing obstetrics among Ethiopia's rural poor, where inadequate medical care and bad road conditions made childbirth a risky endeavor. Obstructed labor-frequently lasting five days or longer-resulted in the death of a vast number of babies and caused incontinence in the mothers, who then became outcasts and beggars. In this chronicle of her work in Ethiopia, Hamlin tells of how she and Reg perfected the technique of surgically repairing this damage, operating on more than 25,000 women, most of whom were then able to lead normal lives. Several specialized themes create odd juxtapositions: explicit descriptions of obstructed childbirth, incontinence, and desperate poverty are interspersed with genteel accounts of visits with kings and queens, assorted denizens of high society, Ethiopian brigadiers, and the like. Hamlin sees her service as part of the missionary tradition that her grandparents began, and at the age of 77, she continues to practice by performing surgery, training Ethiopian doctors and midwives, raising money for the hospital she founded, and beginning each morning with prayers and Bible study in her house of mud and sticks. This moving account is recommended for public libraries and specialized collections on women's studies and obstetrics/midwifery. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

A far better rest

2011-12-13T11:37:00.000-05:00

by Susanne Alleyn. Sydney Carton, the brooding hero of A Tale of Two Cities, is one of Dickens' best creations. In her first novel, Alleyn has taken Sydney as her central character and imagined his entire life. As in Tale, fate links Carton's path with those of Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette but also with that of many historical figures, such as Desmoulins and Robespierre. After the marriage of Darnay and Lucie, Carton goes off to France, expecting to live an idle life there as well but instead gets caught up in the French Revolution, first by writing for a revolutionary journal and later by being elected to the French National Convention. He even finds love again with a cousin of Darnay named Eleonore. There are some discrepancies between this novel and Tale, and Alleyn takes some liberties with Dickens' characters, but she tells a very good story. Best read alongside Tale, Alleyn's novel gives a vivid picture of the development of the French Revolution through the eyes of that wonderful hero despite himself, Sydney Carton. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Feminism, Inc. : coming of age in girl power media culture

2011-12-12T11:14:00.001-05:00

by Emilie Zaslow. Zaslow (communication, Pace Univ.) provides an excellent introduction to the nascent field of girl studies. In addition to serving as a solid resource on much of the scholarship already published, the book gives voice to a range of girls from New York City, who speak about how they experience feminism and femininity in their everyday lives and about the tensions between messages concerning feminism and femininity often found in today's girl power media culture. Through focus groups and interviews with 30 participants, Zaslow found that girls understand the contradictions inherent in mediated commodification of feminism but yet lack information on how to collectively resolve unfair social structures. Messages about sexuality as empowerment and subjugation feature prominently in these girls' analyses of contemporary mainstream media. Ultimately the role models to which girls have access reinforce the message that girls have to rely on themselves. Neither celebratory nor dystopian, this study provides insights into the intelligence of contemporary girls and their awareness of the pitfalls of popular culture representation, especially in relation to their complicated lives in a cosmopolitan, difficult urban environment. Zaslow's message: though they are neither anti-feminist nor anti-feminine, these girls cannot reconcile conflicting messages. --Choice (Check catalog)

The Prague cemetery

2011-12-10T13:49:00.001-05:00

By Umberto Eco. An amnesiac tries to figure out who he is by writing his thoughts in a diary and explaining who he hates. It is 1897 and he is Captain Simonini, an accomplished forger with a talent for espionage, and he hates nearly everyone: Germans, Italians, Freemasons, Jesuits, women, but especially Jews. But what has caused him to lose his memory? And who is Abbe Dalla Piccola, the clergyman (or false clergyman) who shares his living quarters and seems to know more about our Simonini than Simonini himself? Thus opens Eco's much-anticipated sixth novel, a whirlwind tour of conspiracy and political intrigue that places one cunning and deeply cynical man at the center of a century's worth of diabolical deeds the most terrible of which being the forgery of one of the foundational documents of modern anti-Semitism. In another novelist's hands, the intrigue, mystery, and historical detail might be enough, but this is Eco, after all. Readers able to navigate the author's tricks and traps will find that this dark tale is delightfully embellished with sophisticated and playful commentary on, among other things, Freud, metafiction, and the challenges of historiography. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: If sales of the original Italian edition are any indication, librarians should expect considerable reader interest here. --Booklist (Check catalog)

The warmth of other suns : the epic story of America's great migration

2011-12-09T13:47:00.000-05:00

by Isabel Wilkerson. From the early twentieth century through its midpoint, some six million black southerners relocated themselves, their labor, and their lives, to the North, changing the course of civil, social, and economic life in the U.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilkerson offers a broad and penetrating look at the Great Migration, a movement without leaders or precedent. Drawing on interviews and archival research, Wilkerson focuses on three individuals with varying reasons for leaving the South the relentless poverty of sharecropping with few other opportunities, escalating racial violence, and greater social and economic prospects in the North. She traces their particular life stories, the sometimes furtive leave-takings; the uncertainties they faced in Chicago, New York, and L.A.; and the excitement and longing for freer, more prosperous lives. She contrasts their hopes and aspirations with the realities of life in northern cities when the jobs eventually evaporated from the inner cities and new challenges arose. Wilkerson intersperses historical detail of the broader movement and the sparks that set off the civil rights era; challenging racial restrictions in the North and South; and the changing dynamics of race, class, geography, politics, and economics. A sweeping and stunning look at a watershed event in U.S. history. --Booklist (Check catalog)

River of smoke

2011-12-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

by Amitav Gosh. Spellbinding and astute, Ghosh continues the nineteenth-century historical saga about the opium trade that he launched with Sea of Poppies (2008). This is an even more fluid and pleasurable tale, however dire its conflicts, and stands firmly on its own, though readers shouldn't miss the first installment. After escaping misery and danger in India, Ghosh's seductive, motley crew of struggling characters has found some semblance of sanctuary in China. Paulette is discovered living in the ruins of a botanical garden by the famous plant-hunter, Fitcher Penrose. They join forces to search for a rare camellia with help from Robin, who finally finds happiness as a gay man in Canton's industrious art world. Neel, the disgraced intellectual raja, is working for Bahram, a well-meaning, wealthy, now-imperiled Indian merchant with an illegitimate Chinese son and a doomed opium business. Ghosh's fascination with the multicultural ferment of Canton inspires thrilling descriptions of everything from local cuisine to the geopolitics of the opium wars. And his delight in language, especially the inventiveness of pidgin, further vitalizes his canny and dazzling tale, which, for all its historical exactitude, subtly reflects the hypocrisy and horrors of today's drug trafficking. With one more novel to go, Ghosh's epic trilogy is on its way to making literary history. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

An invisible thread : the true story of an 11-year-old panhandler, a busy sales executive, and an unlikely meeting with destiny

2011-12-07T10:25:00.000-05:00

by Laura Schroff. According to an old Chinese proverb, there's an invisible thread that connects two people who are destined to meet and influence each other's lives. With Tresniowski (The Vendetta), Schroff tells how, as a busy advertising sales executive in New York, she easily passed panhandlers every day. One day, 11-year-old Maurice's plea for spare change caused Schroff to turn around and offer to buy him lunch. Thereafter, Schroff and Maurice met for dinner each week and slowly shared their life stories. Maurice's tales about his crack addict mother, absent father, and array of drug-dealing uncles were only part of his desperate longing for a life in a safe neighborhood in an apartment with more than one room. As they grow to depend on each other, Maurice asks Schroff to attend his school's parents' night, where his teacher asks Schroff not to abandon the boy. In some weeks, the meals they share become some of the few he has, because any money his mother might "earn" goes to her habit. As Schroff relates Maurice's story, she tells of her own father's alcoholism and abuse, and readers see how desperately these two need each other in this feel-good story about the far-reaching benefits of kindness. --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)

Angel of darkness

2011-12-06T11:56:00.000-05:00

by Cynthia Eden. Nicole St. James hadn't figured on falling prey to a vampire. Fighting to stay alive, she catches sight of another man and begs his help, not recognizing he's an angel of death awaiting the inevitable. Keenan has been stalking Nicole for weeks, and his unwilling yearning for her compels him to kill the vampire instead. Retribution for disobedience is swift. Six months later, Keenan, now one of the Fallen, is drowning his sorrows when Nicole struts into the bar, manifestly no longer human. Keenan doesn't know that Nicole is wanted for the murders she committed as a neophyte vampire, while Nicole is unaware that Keenan can regain his angelic status if he kills her. Motorcycle chases, bar fights, and Keenan's discovery of lust drive this crisp, heart-pounding, smart thriller. Eden doesn't bring much that's new, but she puts it together far better than most. --Publishers Weekly. (Check Catalog)

Republic, lost : how money corrupts Congress--and a plan to stop it

2011-12-05T12:16:00.000-05:00

by Lawrence Lessig. You may call it "dependence corruption," but it's still corruption-the dependence of Congress on campaign contributors to get their message out and the dependence on the voters to elect them on that message. Lessig (Remix) distinguishes between a commercial economy (or quid pro quo), and a gift economy that cements a relationship of obligation. He argues that campaign finance reform will never work as long as politicians know who is donating to their cause, and sometimes even if they know someone is donating, or even threatening to donate, to their opponent's cause. In Washington's vicious circle, a lobbyist has a fundraiser for a candidate because (s)he serves on a certain committee and a Congressional representative knows which lobbyist and which corporation to ask for contributions because (s)he knows they share interests. Lessig proffers interesting solutions, but grants only a 10% chance that one or all of them might help. Though parts of the book are bogged down in lawyerly rhetoric, it will reward readers with insight into the morass that is Washington, though not necessarily hope. --Publishers Weekly. (Check Catalog)

The Christmas shoppe

2011-12-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

by Melody Carlson. The residents of a small town learn that things are not always as they appear in this latest Christmas novella (after Christmas at Harrington's) by Romantic Times award winner Carlson. Matilda Honeycutt moves to Parish Springs, but the townsfolk are put off by her unkempt looks and even more so by the junk shop she has opened. Their opinions of both change, however, when folks begin visiting the store and find peace and grace in old memories. VERDICT This heartwarming story should appeal to fans of Richard Paul Evans and Jan Karon. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Murder in the first-class carriage : the first Victorian railway killing

2011-11-30T15:06:00.000-05:00

by Kate Colkuhoun. Colquhoun recounts the investigation and solution of the Victorian era's ultimate locked-room mystery. On July 9, 1864, a man's black hat, a cane, a black leather bag, a link from a watch chain, and copious amounts of blood were found in a private compartment of the North London Railway train. The compartments were separated, isolated, and locked. Side windows were barred with heavy brass rods. At some point, investigators concluded, a man had been bludgeoned to death in this compartment between Hackney and North London, but no screams had been heard at any point. The body of the elderly banker who had booked the compartment had been disposed of on the tracks. Journalist Colquhoun has crafted a marvelously suspenseful account of the investigation, a trans-Atlantic manhunt, and the ensuing trial. This is an intriguing story about emerging forensics and also an engaging social history, focusing on how a spectacular crime, the first on a British railroad, riveted public attention. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Birds of Paradise : a novel

2011-11-29T15:39:00.000-05:00

by Diana Abu-Jaber. Versatile Abu-Jaber follows her imaginative foray into crime fiction in Origin (2007) with an exploration into the effects a teen's desertion has on her Miami family. At 13, Avis and Brian Muir's daughter, Felice, inexplicably started running away from home. Finally forced to accept their daughter's refusal to return home, Avis, a pastry chef, anxiously awaits her daughter's infrequent calls while Brian, a real-estate attorney, refuses to have anything to do with Felice. The couple's older child, Stanley, shares his mother's passion for food, but his interests don't especially please either parent, and his teen years were largely overshadowed by his sister's rebellion. Abu-Jaber drops the reader in on the Muir family just as Felice is about to turn 18, gradually revealing why Felice felt compelled to run away and how the reverberations of her actions are still affecting the rest of her family. Felice's contemplation of her future coincides with a big announcement of Stanley's regarding his own, sending yet another ripple through the family. Abu-Jaber's new novel is nuanced and deftly drawn. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Conquered into liberty : two centuries of battles along the great warpath that made the American way of war

2011-11-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

by Eliot A. Cohen. Cohen, among America's leading defense analysts and military historians (Citizens and Soldiers: Dilemmas of Military Service), combines his skills in this comprehensively researched, well-written analysis of the international conflict that more than any other shaped the U.S. way of war. That conflict was between the colonies that eventually formed the U.S. and French, then British Canada. For a century and a half, through six global conflicts, the north-south axis between Albany, N.Y., and Montreal was the "great warpath": "[I]ts battles [were] fought with tomahawks and flintlock muskets, its supplies laboriously hauled by bateau and oxcart." Focusing on specific engagements, from the 1690 raid on Schenectady, N.Y., to the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814, Cohen describes lessons that endured. The warpath schooled Americans in a spectrum of combat, from skirmishes fought by irregulars to operations conducted along state-of-the-art European lines. The warpath taught pragmatism and flexibility. It demanded enterprise and ingenuity. It required concern for both logistics and operations. Even issues of contemporary concern, the problems of conventional forces facing irregular opponents and the belief that an adversary can be "conquered into liberty," were first confronted in these battles, as Cohen demonstrates in this original and illuminating study. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

The sisters

2011-11-25T12:28:00.000-05:00

by Nancy Jensen. All families have secrets, and those kept by the Fischer family are particularly shameful and life changing. In 1927, sisters Mabel and Bertie are separated for life when their stepfather commits suicide and Mabel runs off with Bertie's boyfriend. Following each sister, this multigenerational novel introduces readers to two strong matriarchal families. While the women in each generation fight with their mothers to follow their individual dreams, one granddaughter, aptly named Grace, finally learns most of the family history and creates a necklace that reunites the two clans in a work of beauty. VERDICT Set against the dramatic backdrop of American history from the Great Depression into the 21st century, this beautiful but disturbing debut novel, inspired partly by the author's own family history, will engage readers of well-written, thought-provoking women's fiction. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

It's hard not to hate you

2011-11-24T12:26:00.000-05:00

by Valerie Frankel. Since childhood, Frankel (Thin Is the New Happy) suppressed her emotions, to the detriment of her emotional and physical health. After a health scare at age 44, her doctor tells her she must reduce stress: "The hate in me just had to come out." As the author reflects on a lifetime of being determinedly upbeat, she ponders dysfunctional friendships, asserts herself with a bitchy neighbor and selfish gym-goer, even visits a nearby Zen center. Family and friends are supportive, especially when she "outs" her jealousy of fellow authors-turns out, they're all jealous of somebody, too. It's refreshing to read along as Frankel realizes that anger can be cathartic, even entertaining, when expressed, and "feel[ing] all your emotions, all at once" makes for a fuller, more fun life. Fans of her recent memoir, her many novels, or her collaborations with Joan Rivers (Men Are Stupid... and They Like Big Boobs) and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi (A Shore Thing) will especially enjoy learning more about what makes the funny, warm Frankel tick. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Prince of Ravenscar : a Sherbrooke novel

2011-11-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

by Catherine Coulter. Julian, the second son of the Duke of Brabante, is an unmarried smuggler, and his mother wants to take him to London for the season. In fact, the Duchess has chosen a wife for him, Sophie Collette Wilkie, an unfashionably tall clergyman's daughter who, at 20, is considered too old for the marriage market. Julian comes with a good deal of emotional baggage. Wounded at the Battle of Waterloo, he still bears the scars of war. Even worse, his young wife, Lily, was found murdered, and people believe that he did it, especially her brother, Richard, who is obsessed with revenge. Once Sophie meets Julian, she knows he is innocent and becomes his greatest champion, and Julian finds himself falling in love with this allegedly unmarriageable spinster. The prolific Coulter balances this tale's serious themes and tone with humorous moments and a charming secondary romance between Devlin, Julian's half uncle and best friend, who is so pale it's rumored he is a vampire, and one of Sophie's relatives, Roxanne. Fans of Coulter's popular Sherbrooke series (The Scottish Bride, 2001; The Sherbrooke Twins, 2004) will be thrilled by this latest addition. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Blue nights

2011-11-22T15:15:00.000-05:00

by Joan Didion. Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), her chronicle of grief following the abrupt death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, evoked a powerful response from a widely diverse readership and won the National Book Award. Left untold was the story of the life and death of Dunne and Didion's daughter, Quintana Roo, the subject of this scalpel-sharp memoir of motherhood and loss. Didion looks to blue nights summer evenings whe. the twilights turn long and blu. only to heral. the dying of the brightnes. to define the dark limbo she's endured since August 2005, when Quintana Roo, 39, died after nearly two years of harrowing medical crises and complications. Didion looks back to her own peripatetic childhood, her and Dunne's life as world-traveling Hollywood screenwriters, and their spontaneously arranged private adoption of their newborn daughter. As Didion portrays Quintana Roo as a smart and stoic girl given t. quicksilve. mood changes, she parses the conundrums of adoption and chastises herself for maternal failings. Now coping with not only grief and regret but also illness and age, Didion is courageous in both her candor and artistry, ensuring that this infinitely sad yet beguiling book of distilled reflections and remembrance is graceful and illuminating in its blue musings. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The vault : an Inspector Wexford novel

2011-11-21T16:39:00.001-05:00

by Ruth Rendell. In Rendell's twenty-second Inspector Wexford novel, Wexford is now six months retired from the Brighton Police and living part of the year in a well-heeled carriage house in a posh part of London. Rendell is brilliant at showcasing London as seen through the eyes of Wexford on his long walks. She's also brilliant at showing how Wexford feels a bit pointless in retirement. Saving both Wexford and Wexford fans from withdrawal is an offer from a former colleague to serve as unpaid advisor to the police on an especially tricky case. In this latest Wexford, Rendell follows up on a famous cottage and some of the victims and villains of her suspenseful A Sight for Sore Eyes (2000). When the newest owner of the cottage made famous in a painting moves a heavy outdoor planting and opens a manhole beneath it, he discovers four entombed bodies. Forensics determines that three of the bodies (two men and a woman) have been there for 12 years. Another body, a woman, has been there only 2 years. Wexford, as usual, takes the lead in tying together the strands of the cold case with the more recent murder. A family crisis, in which his daughter suffers grievous bodily harm in a stabbing, adds to Wexford's struggles. Rendell, who has won a clutch of British Gold Daggers and American Edgars, is at the top of her form here. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Wexford remains one of the best-loved British coppers still on the beat (or almost on it, as he's now officially retired). Fans will take him any way they can get him. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Becoming Dickens : the invention of a novelist

2011-11-19T15:34:00.000-05:00

by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst A quiet shrewd-looking little fellow who seems to guess pretty much what he is. So wrote Carlyle about the young Charles Dickens. Douglas-Fairhurst, however, understands as Carlyle did not what an immense challenge Dickens faced in determining just what kind of creature he was. In the tangled events of Dickens' formative years refracted through his journalism, political polemics, correspondence, and early fiction readers discern the emerging identity of Victorian England's greatest novelist. The Pickwick Papers looms especially large in this narrative of self-discovery, as Dickens decisively reveals himself in the amusing, verbally inventive, protean, and remarkably autobiographical character, Sam Weller. Though enthusiastic public response to Weller bolsters Dickens' confidence, the writer struggles with the perils of notoriety, finally finding his authorial poise through the unlikely task of editing the memoirs of the great clown Joseph Grimaldi. Manifest in Dickens' decision to use his own name for the first time on the title page of Oliver Twist, that poise profoundly reshapes British literature. A convincing portrait of budding genius. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The cradle in the grave

2011-11-18T15:32:00.001-05:00

by Sophie Hannah. Hannah, author of masterfully crafted psychological thrillers, this time spins a complex tale centered on a controversial social issue. Imprisoned for killing her two sons and forced to give up her infant daughter, Helen Yardley was pardoned years later after expert testimony at her trial was challenged. Finally free, she is promptly murdered. Although filmmaker Fliss Benson wants nothing to do with the Yardley case, her boss assigns her to complete a documentary on wrongly-accused mothers, including Yardley. Her interest is piqued, however, after she receives an anonymous card with a grid of 16 numbers that is just like the one left on Yardley's body. Investigating officer DC Simon Waterhouse, chafing against his hated superior, who worked the original Yardley case, involves his fiancee, DS Charlie Zailer, and the two find themselves seeking not only the murderer but also the truth about the charges against Yardley and another mother accused of murder. The quirks of the Waterhouse-Zailer relationship add interest and even some comic relief from the pain portrayed in this compelling novel. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

I'd listen to my parents if they'd just shut up : what to say and not say when parenting teens

2011-11-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

by Anthony E. Wolf. Adolescents today are more likely to challenge their parents' authority because parents are less punitive with their children than in generations past. While most parents wouldn't want a return to harsh punishment or the potential of teaching children by aggressive example, they can't tolerate the sassiness of their teens. Child psychologist Wolf (Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?, 1991) offers a broad perspective on adolescence and parenting in the digital age. He begins with an overview of child development and human psychology as it applies to adults and children, and how we all challenge what we consider to be impositions. He captures the day-to-day tensions between parents and teens in amusing and infuriating vignettes and suggests how to respond to charges that It's not fair and declarations that I hate you. Parents may balk at the notion of scripted responses but will appreciate the insights into the stresses of modern adolescence, from coping with divorce to adapting to social media and technology. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Lost December

2011-11-16T12:04:00.000-05:00

by Richard Paul Evans. Evans offers up another heartwarming, feel-good tale in time for the holidays. Luke Crisp is the son of a successful business owner, a man who has built a copy-shop empire from scratch. Luke lost his mother at a young age, leaving his father, Carl, to raise Luke alone while running Crisp's Copy Centers. Luke starts working when he is in his teens, learning how the centers run and soaking in his father's strong work ethic. Carl hopes Luke will take over the company when he returns from Wharton Business School, but Luke soon falls in with a group of hard-partying students, led by the charismatic Sean. Rather than return to Arizona to work for his father upon graduation, Luke decides to travel to Europe with his girlfriend, Candace; Sean; and several of their friends. This proves to be a terrible mistake when Luke, with the help of Sean, runs through his trust fund and finds himself truly broke and disowned by his father. Based on the parable of the prodigal son, Evans' latest is a touching redemption story. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Why read Moby-Dick?

2011-11-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

by Nathaniel Philbrick. What a book Melville has written! Hawthorne exclaimed upon first reading Moby Dick. More than 150 years later, Philbrick echoes Hawthorne's enthusiasm. Although he repudiates the various interpretations of Melville's White Whale as a symbol of this or that human nemesis, Philbrick sees in Melville's story of the whale a mythically capacious emblem of the nation that incubated it pulsing with poetic imagination, threatened by grim contradictions, and doomed to a devastating catastrophe. Readers thus come to recognize, for instance, how Melville's portrayal of the Pequod's pious but hard-hearted owners mirrors the bifurcation separating the nation's high-spirited idealism from its real-world addiction to the profits of slavery. And in its harrowing denouement, this prescient novel anticipates the carnage of Cold Harbor and Antietam. To be sure, Philbrick sees in the novel more than a symbol of America's tragically flawed history; he marvels, in fact, at how deeply Melville plumbs mysteries that defy time and geography. By probing the circumstances surrounding Melville's writing of the novel, Philbrick illuminates the intense creative process through which the brooding author melded the darkest elements from the art of Hawthorne and Shakespeare in the crucible of his own fervent agnosticism. Sure to swell the readership of Melville's masterpiece. --Booklist (Check catalog)

The maid

2011-11-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

by Kimberly Cutter. Jehanne d'Arc, patron saint of France, is the central character in this historical novel about war, betrayal, and faith in God. Debut novelist Cutter depicts the heroine's life story from the first time the peasant girl hears voices from God until her death, motivated by jealousy and revenge. At the heart of the story is the girl's seemingly impossible mission and unwavering effort to lead thousands of men to liberate France from its English invaders. The power of faith triumphs as Jehanne and her army turn the tide in the Hundred Years' War. At times, the novel reads like a biography, and Cutter does adhere closely to fact, though she takes some creative liberties. VERDICT Historical fiction fans, particularly those interested in French history, will delight in Cutter's take on this legendary character. Readers of Christian fiction will also find it enticing. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

El Narco : inside Mexico's criminal insurgency

2011-11-12T09:39:00.001-05:00

by Loan Grillo. Freelance war and crime reporter Grillo writes that he became fascinated with the trade routes of narcotics when he was a teenager in Brighton, England, in the 1980s. After drugs started flooding into the seaside town, many of Grillo's friends started using; some died, and some still are wasted, propping up the bars of Brighton. Grillo set out first to learn how drugs made their way from exotic places to Brighton and then to do something to stem the tide. The investigation chronicled here is the result of 10 years of reporting on the ground in Mexico, where Grillo interviewed drug lords, drug addicts, drug survivors, gang members, smugglers, and agents from the ATF, DEA, and FBI. The division of his book into three parts History. Anatomy. and Destiny effectively organizes the analysis of how Mexico came to control drug trafficking, how it spreads, and what can be done about it, while also allowing Grillo free rein in presenting his hard-won findings. This excellent work packs the punch of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah (2007), an exploration of the Italian Mafia, which also displays the fruits of direct reporting bolstered by intensive interviewing. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Zero day

2011-11-11T09:38:00.000-05:00

by David Baldacci. Decorated army veteran John Puller is a special agent in the military's Criminal Investigative Division. When a colonel and his family are brutally murdered in West Virginia, Puller partners with the local homicide detective, Sgt. Samantha Cole, to solve the crime. As their investigation deepens, the number of fatalities increases. How are these victims connected? Puller and Cole must discover the truth behind the conspiracy that sent these individuals to their deaths. The clock is winding down. Three. Two. One. Zero. Game over? Verdict Baldacci fans will embrace this new series hero as Puller doggedly pursues justice in spite of his personal problems: Puller's retired military hero father suffers from dementia, and his brother is serving a life sentence for treason. High-octane suspense and conspiracy thriller buffs who enjoy John Grisham, Michael Connelly, and W.E.B. Griffin will also snatch up this title. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Battlefield angels : saving lives under enemy fire from Valley Forge to Afghanista

2011-11-10T09:37:00.000-05:00

by Scott Mcgaugh. Marketing and communications professional McGaugh (marketing director, USS Midway Museum; Midway Magic) presents a historical survey of American military medicine providing medical and U.S. military history buffs with a look at the personnel who have tended the wounded during and after battle over the last 235 years. Each of the 14 chapters starts with a brief vignette of the experiences of a medic at a certain conflict. The battle of Trenton in the Revolutionary War is followed by Civil War advances, then World War I, six chapters on World War II, then the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Verdict Although there are many more-focused books on military medicine available, this popular history will provide a layperson's introduction to the field. Its breadth requires somewhat superficial coverage, yet the book will appeal to general readers as a useful summary of battlefield medicine, highlighting particular personalities and the evolving role of military doctors and women in service. Suitable for both adult and YA collections. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

The marriage plot

2011-11-09T11:43:00.000-05:00

by Jeffrey Eugenides. In Eugenides' first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex (2002), English major and devotee of classic literature Madeleine Hanna is a senior at Reagan-era Brown University. Only when curiosity gets the best of her does she belly up to Semiotics 211, a bastion of postmodern liberalism, and meet handsome, brilliant, mysterious Leonard Bankhead. Completing a triangle is Madeleine's friend Mitchell, a clear-eyed religious-studies student who believes himself her true intended. Eugenides' drama unfolds over the next year or so. His characteristically deliberate, researched realization of place and personality serve him well, and he strikes perfectly tuned chords by referring to works ranging from Barthes' Lovers' Discourse to Bemelmans' Madeline books for children. The remarkably a propos title refers to the subject of Madeleine's honors thesis, which is the Western novel's doing and undoing, in that, upon the demise, circa 1900, of the marriage plot, the novel didn't mean much anymore, according to Madeleine's professor and, perhaps, Eugenides. With this tightly, immaculately self-contained tale set upon pillars at once imposing and of dollhouse scale, namely, academia ( College wasn't like the real world, Madeleine notes) and the emotions of the youngest of twentysomethings, Eugenides realizes the novel whose dismantling his characters examine.. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher will be cashing in on the popularity of Middlesex, especially with public library users, by targeting much of their publicity campaign in that direction. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Thinking, fast and slow

2011-11-08T10:02:00.000-05:00

by Daniel Kahneman. Decision making tends to be intuitive rather than logical. Kahneman has dedicated his academic research to understanding why that is so. This work distills his and colleagues' findings about how we make up our minds and how much we can trust intuition. Clinical experiments on psychology's traditional guinea pigs college students abound and collectively batter confidence in System 1. as Kahneman calls intuition. All sorts of biases, sporting tags like the halo effect (i.e., unwarranted attribution of positive qualities to a thing or person one likes), bedevil accurate appraisal of reality. According to Kahneman, intuitive feelings often override System 2. or thinking that requires effort, such as simple arithmetic. Exemplifying his points in arenas as diverse as selecting military officers, speculating in stocks, hiring employees, and starting up businesses, Kahneman accords some reliability to intuitive choice, as long as the decision maker is aware of cognitive illusions (the study of which brought Kahneman the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics). Kahneman's insights will most benefit those in leadership positions yet they will also help the average reader to become a better car buyer. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Aleph

2011-11-07T10:01:00.000-05:00

by Paulo Cuelho. If you love mysticism Coelho-style, as many readers around the world do, chances are you will love his latest spiritually transformative odyssey. At the heart of the narrative, Paulo, profoundly disillusioned by contemporary reality, plagued by inner conflict, and losing faith in himself and the world he inhabits, sets off on a highly personal quest that defies time and space. Traveling around the world, he journeys back into his own reincarnations, understanding that his path is reflected in the eyes of others, and that if I want to find myself, I need that map. Although he encounters a diversity of significant friends along the way, his reconnection with a woman he loved and heartlessly betrayed over 500 years ago is the key to his reawakening and redemption. Another magical mystery tour full of spiritually challenging ideas and ideals from the always inspirational Coelho. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Love at first bark : how saving a dog can sometimes help you save yourself

2011-11-04T15:20:00.000-04:00

by Julie Klam. In You Had Me at Woof (2010), Klam cheerfully told how she transformed herself from a desperate young woman who had never had a pet into a happy dog-rescuer with a husband, a daughter, and a house full of Boston terriers. In her new book, she continues on the same path in three stories about her role in rescuing dogs assumed to be unadoptable. In each case, she takes us down to the street or into the woods to witness her first encounter with a dog that just needs food, health care, training, and loving attention to become someone's prized companion. In the process, she entertains us with details of her life, the wide network of dog rescuers with whom she texts, and the sweet dogs who have torn her home apart while fixing her heart. These lively stories set in New York City and the outskirts of New Orleans should be entertaining to read aloud, too. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Eyes wide open

2011-11-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

by Andrew Gross. When Jay Erlich's troubled nephew, Evan, leaps off a cliff in California, the successful surgeon flies to the aid of Charlie, his equally troubled half-brother and Evan's father. Erlich directs his ir. at a care system he believes failed Evan, until unsettling details cause him to wonder whether Evan's death was not suicide but murder. Urging the reluctant coroner's detective, Don Sherwood, to investigate further, Erlich soon finds himself obsessed with the case, believing the evidence points to a bizarre and long-running conspiracy. And as his involvement plays havoc with his personal life, he finds himself in danger, too. Gross is a workmanlike stylist, and occasionally the ensemble cast works against the story we're with Sherwood as he learns something, and with Erlich as Sherwood explains it but never mind. This is a well-plotted, swiftly moving story that forces us to keep turning pages. And the bad guy behind it all, a cult leader with a notorious real-life model, is downright chilling. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Dangerous instincts : how gut feelings betray us

2011-11-02T15:16:00.000-04:00

by Mary Ellen O'Toole. O'Toole, a recently retired FBI behavior analyst, is more than qualified to help people develop simple analytical tools that will help them better detect danger and recognize risky situations. In this absorbing read, she discusses why people trusted Bernie Madoff and Ted Bundy and dissects online dating responses and typical blind spots. The author helps readers analyze their decision-making patterns and provides a guide for helping them to assess and mitigate risk. O'Toole's book will provide insight to everyone, but it's particularly helpful for women living alone, parents concerned about their children's safety, or employers worried about perplexing employee behavior. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

The Stranger's Child

2011-11-01T15:34:00.000-04:00

by Allan Hollinghurst. On the eve of World War I, Cecil Valance, a wildly attractive and promising young poet, pays a visit to the home of his Cambridge boyfriend, the son of one of England's fine old families. He memorializes the visit with a poem that becomes famous after his wartime death. The poem, created as an autograph book keepsake for his lover's younger sister, Daphne, becomes the subject of speculation and debate for biographers and the generations that follow, as it contains hints about what might have happened during the visit and with whom. As the novel gallops ahead decade by decade, following the family fortunes of Daphne and her progeny, the events of that less tolerant era are viewed through an ever-cloudier lens. VERDICT With the prewar ambience of "Atonement", the manor-house mystique of "Gosford Park", and the palpable sexual tension of Hollinghurst's own "The Line of Beauty", this generously paced, thoroughly satisfying novel will gladden the hearts of Anglophile readers. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The puppy diaries : raising a dog named Scout

2011-10-31T14:37:00.000-04:00

by Jill Abramson. After her West Highland white terrier Buddy died, heartbroken New York Times managing editor Abramson was reluctant to get another dog. Then she was hit by a truck. Suffering post-traumatic depression, she agreed with her husband to get a puppy, a British standard golden retriever named Scout. Determined that Scout would become a better-behaved dog than Buddy, she registered the puppy for obedience training based on the positive-reinforcement principles of dog expert Karen Pryor. Trained as an investigative reporter, Abramson interviewed many dog trainers, breeders, veterinarians, and owners, and read many manuals in her search for the best way to raise her puppy. She also sampled services for dogs and their owners in the upscale Tribeca neighborhood of New York and in rural Connecticut. This engaging report on Scout's first year belongs in most public libraries. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The art of fielding : a novel

2011-10-29T12:23:00.000-04:00

by Chad Harbach. *Starred Review* Sports fiction has a built-in plot problem. The drama usually rides on a team's success or failure as it moves through a season to the Big Game. The team either overcomes adversity and wins, following in the cliche-strewn tradition of everything from The Bad News Bears to Rocky, or it loses, a literarily more resonant route, to be sure, but inevitably unsatisfying if the reader has become a fan along the way. First-novelist Harbach finds an inventive and thoroughly satisfying solution to the Big Game problem, and it works because the reader doesn't live or die with what happens on the field. This sprawling multiple-story saga follows the coming-of-age and midlife crises of five characters at Westish College, a small liberal-arts school in Wisconsin. At the center of it all is Henry Skrimshander, a shortstop of phenomenal ability who has led the school's baseball team to unprecedented heights. Then a wildly errant throw from Henry's usually infallible arm provides the catalyst for game-changing events not only in Henry's life but also in those of his roommate, Owen Dunne; his best friend and mentor, the team's catcher, Mike Schwartz; the school's president, Guert Affenlight; and the president's daughter, Pella. In an immediately accessible narrative reminiscent of John Irving, Harbach (cofounder of the popular literary journal n+1) draws readers into the lives of his characters, plumbing their psyches with remarkable psychological acuity and exploring the transformative effect that love and friendship can have on troubled souls. And, yes, it's a hell of a baseball story, too, no matter who wins. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The quest : energy, security and the remaking of the modern world

2011-10-28T12:21:00.000-04:00

by Daniel Yergin. The quest for energy is quite simply the quest for power, argues energy expert Yergin. Unanticipated events manmade and natural, from the coup in Egypt whose ripples threaten to destabilize oil production in the Middle East to the earthquakes that destabilized Japan's nuclear energy plants can pivot the world's economy as more and more emerging nations demand more energy. Yergin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Prize (1991), begins by detailing how the energy system of oil, gas, and electrical power has fueled the economic growth of the modern world. He goes on to provide a close examination of the concerns about the environment, terrorism, geopolitics, and economics that will affect changes in energy sources. He offers context for growing scientific concern about climate change, China's huge stores of coal reserves that make it self-sufficient but threaten the environment, and new perspectives on energy, from Brazil's rising role as ethanol producer to growing investment across the world in renewable energy sources, including solar and wind power. A comprehensive, accessible look at energy. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Song of the Silk Road

2011-10-27T14:02:00.000-04:00

by Mingmei Ye. Yip's lively new novel manages to be at once modern and traditional. Struggling scribe Lily Lin is writing her Chinese-American family saga, stuck in a dead-end relationship with a married man, and employed as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant in midtown Manhattan. When she is contacted by a law firm representing a previously unknown but apparently wealthy Chinese aunt, she ignores her good fortune, thinking it fishy, "like a cliched plot in a cheap novel." But it's not, and if Lily follows her aunt's obsessive instructions to retrace her own Silk Road sojourn, Lily will receive three million dollars. She accepts the challenge, and thus begins an absorbing journey that only seems to make sense as a way of uniting the Chinese and Western halves of Lily's heritage. Surprising and often funny. Yip's (Peach Blossom Pavilion) modern heroine's quest is filled with unique companions, unforeseen dangers, unexpected joys, and bitter sorrows. Part epic, part coming-of-age story, part modern fairy tale, it only falters in an easy ending, which readers, by then in love with Lily Lin, will likely forgive. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Going home : finding peace when pets die

2011-10-26T13:45:00.000-04:00

by John Katz. Leave it to prolific author Katz (Soul of a Dog) to write this beautiful, heartrending book about saying good-bye to a loved pet. Katz draws from personal experience to discuss the difficulties of deciding to put a pet down, dealing with the guilt, and honoring that pet's legacy. He offers special prayers and rituals for helping children grieve the loss of a pet. Best, he speaks of the one-of-a-kind relationship people have with their pets and sees animals as free of the conflict, drama, and disappointment that seem to taint human relationships. Katz addresses a need, and he does it beautifully. Bring tissues. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Scenes from village life

2011-10-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

by Amos Oz. Loosely connected stories from renowned author Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness, 2004) take place in the Israeli village of Tel Ilan, which is shifting from a tight-knit, rustic farming community to one of art galleries and boutique markets. This disquieting transformation and general unease underlie this thought-provoking collection, in which the mayor's wife suddenly leaves him, a stranger mysteriously arrives, and a real-estate agent becomes entranced by a dilapidated property. The memorable Digging finds the elderly Pesach living with his widowed daughter, Rachel. The cantankerous Pesach nags Rachel about unexplained digging noises at night, a complaint she disregards until the Arab student she is housing also mentions similar sounds. In Relations, a doctor anxiously awaits the arrival of her injured nephew as she reflects on their complicated relationship. With the haunting Singing, an evening of communal singing is punctuated with news of air raids, leaving one participant unable to shake an unexplained feeling of urgency. Filled with tension and allegory, Oz's perceptive tales explore the nuance and alienation of transitioning states. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The great A&P and the struggle for small business in America

2011-10-24T11:53:00.000-04:00

by Marc Levinson. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company was a trendsetter and market leader from its founding in 1869. It capitalized on the growing tea trade and innovative marketing approaches to become the first retailer anywhere to sell $1 billion of merchandise in a single year. Levinson shows how, through expanded product lines, trading stamps, branding, and financial control, astute management drove the company's success in reinventing itself in response to changing market conditions. It portrays the colorful personalities of the men who ran A&P in the early days and their effectiveness as leaders. It also cites the missed opportunities, beginning in the 1950s, that resulted in the company's downfall. The A&P story is a fascinating case history within the evolution of the U.S. grocery industry. Levinson makes it read like a novel, full of interesting anecdotes and references to a large bibliography. Anyone interested in the retail industry may find this book a great study of responding to the need to adapt to market and economic pressures to survive. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

City of whispers

2011-10-22T15:41:00.000-04:00

by Marcia Muller. *Starred Review* Muller's sleuth, Sharon McCone, has a new, intensely personal case. Still feeling some residual effects from being shot in the head (Locked In, 2009), Sharon receives an e-mail from her mentally ill half-brother, Darcy Blackhawk, asking for help. When he fails to reply to her response, she gets worried and looks for him. The message came from a computer at an Internet cafe in San Francisco, a city that Darcy has never visited. As Sharon searches for him, she finds the body of a young woman at the Palace of Fine Arts. A witness says that Darcy was heading there. The search widens, and Sharon finds links to the unsolved murder of a banking heiress. She needs to solve both cases to find her brother and ensure his safety, putting herself and her family in danger. The case makes Sharon appreciate her diverse, sometimes dysfunctional family and reinforces her love for her husband, Hy. As Sharon celebrates another birthday, devoted readers will appreciate all the more both the groundbreaking nature of this series (the first to star a female PI in hard-boiled fiction) and the fact that, throughout her long run, Sharon has aged gracefully and matured as a heroine and a woman. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Don't shoot : one man, a street fellowship, and the end of violence in inner-city America

2011-10-21T15:37:00.000-04:00

by David M. Kennedy. In a matter-of-fact, street-smart style, coming from years of working with police officers, gang members, and community workers in some of America's most dangerous neighborhoods, Kennedy, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explains his remarkably effective strategies for combating violent crime. When research showed that only a disproportionately small number of criminals commit most of the most serious crimes, Kennedy had the police identify gang members on parole or probation and urge them to come to a meeting. At the gathering were members of the gangs' families, community service providers, and the police, who explained the legal risks the perpetrators faced (most gang members didn't know)-and demanded that shootings stop. If the killings continued, the perpetrators would not receive another chance; instead, they'd be met with severe punishment, and their entire gang would be targeted. When this program, called Operation Ceasefire, was first tried in Boston in the '90s, violence plummeted by almost two-thirds, and Kennedy chronicles the difficulties in implementing the program to meet the needs of 50 other cities. Warning against the country's "orgy" of incarceration, which disproportionately targets black males in America's most vulnerable neighborhoods, this heartfelt book shows what can happen when police, gangs, and communities come together to address some of America's most intractable social problems. --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)

The brass verdict : a novel

2011-10-20T15:33:00.000-04:00

by Michael Connelly. *Starred Review* It hasn't gone well for L.A. lawyer Mickey Haller since the events described in The Lincoln Lawyer (2005). The recovery from being shot was slow, and the addiction to prescription drugs was worse than the recovery. But Haller has kicked the pills and is ready to practice law again when his friend and fellow attorney Jerry Vincent is murdered, and Mickey inherits all Vincent's cases, including a career-maker: the trial of a studio executive accused of killing his wife and her lover. Quickly, Mickey realizes he's caught in the middle: defending the mogul requires concealing facts that could help solve the Vincent murder. OK, Mickey's used to playing fast and loose with the cops, but the investigating officer, Harry Bosch, knows when he's being played. Careful Connelly readers will know that there's a connection between the author's two heroes, Bosch and Haller, even though this is the first time the two costarred together (see The Black Light, 1993). Connelly plays the dueling characters off against one another effectively, especially for those familiar with the previous books, but it isn't all about backstory. Like Lincoln Lawyer, this is a fine legal thriller, full of both electric courtroom scenes and fascinating behind-the-scenes stuff about the business of lawyering. Connelly is justly celebrated for his characters and his ability to create mood from the sights and sounds of L.A., but he's also a terrific plotter, and that skill is in high relief here. Essential for fans; a great read for anybody. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Five chiefs : a Supreme Court memoir

2011-10-19T12:38:00.000-04:00

by John Stevens. Stevens' law professor, Nathaniel Nathanson, who served as law clerk to Justice Louis Brandeis, whose seat Stevens later inherited, instilled in him a curiosity about the mystery of the law, the unresolved issues constantly coming before the U.S. Supreme Court. In fond memory of the professor, Stevens aims to convey the kinds of insights routine in Nathanson's class. He succeeds without the ponderousness of legal studies. Stevens briefly reviews the first 12 chief justices and the pressing judicial and political issues of their times before focusing on the 5 with whom he had personal contact, Fred Vinson (as his clerk), Earl Warren (as a practicing lawyer), Warren Burger (as a junior justice), William Rehnquist (as a colleague), and John Roberts (as the senior associate justice). Stevens' personal contact with those 5 adds texture and insights to the biographical sketches through anecdotes and fascinating behind-the-scenes details. He ends with his own perspective as the third-longest-serving justice in U.S. history and the senior associate justice. second among equals on the high-court bench. Photographs enhance this engaging look at the Supreme Court. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: When he resigned last June, Justice John Paul Stevens was the third longest-serving justice in American history; this behind-the-scenes look at the Court is sure to get plenty of media attention. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Feast day of fools : a novel

2011-10-18T11:27:00.000-04:00

by James Lee Burke. *Starred Review* Bad guys in James Lee Burke's fiction tend to be very bad, human incarnations of evil, manifestations of something deep in our lizard brain, something that will not be civilized, that craves only chaos. In this latest Hackberry Holland title, starring the seventysomething reformed drunk and whoremonger, now sheriff in a small southwest Texas border town, the bad guys are still very bad, but they have become more multidimensional, human impulses at war with the lizard core. Chief among the antagonists this time is Preacher Jack Collins, Holland's nemesis, presumed dead at the end of Rain Gods (2009) but now risen from the desert, still toting the Thompson machine gun with which he attempts to exorcise a lifetime of demons. But this is anything but a mano-a-mano conflict. Holland and his chief deputy, Pam Tibbs, are tracking a disaffected Homeland Security scientist in possession of secrets that a wealth of bad guys Mexican drug dealers, Russian mobsters would happily peddle to al-Qaeda. At the center of it all is a mysterious Chinese woman, Anton Ling, who operates a kind of underground railroad for illegals but who is an object of fascination for all the principals, from Holland to Preacher Jack to a Mexican gang leader obsessed with finding a way to bless his dead children. As Burke steers the elaborately structured narrative toward its violent conclusion, we are afforded looks inside the tortured psyches of his various combatants, finding there the most unlikely of connections between the players. This is one of Burke's biggest novels, in terms of narrative design, thematic richness, and character interplay, and he rises to the occasion superbly, a stand-up guy at the keyboard, as always. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Who's afraid of post-blackness? : what it means to be Black now

2011-10-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

by Touré Toure, journalist and commentator and a member of the post-civil rights era generation, addresses the complexities of the contemporary meaning of black identity. The term postblack is often but not intended to be confused with postracial, meaning beyond race or racism. But postblack asserts the continuation of black identity in a broader, more inclusive format. Toure interviewed more than 100 successful blacks in arts, politics, business, and other arenas to gain a broader perspective on racial identity. Among his subjects: Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Kara Walker, Melissa Harris-Perry, Harold Ford Jr., Questlove, and Chuck D. The result is a cross section of perspectives, interweaving Toure's own perception that the narrow expectations of blackness and black identity from whites, as well as blacks, is no longer appropriate. Toure examines how blacks, in their aspirational quest, use black identity as a filter, not as a definition. For example, being identifiably black affects a person's experience or perspective on life but does not dictate his or her opinion or position. A compelling book in the age of Obama and struggles with the notion of a postracial society. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Changó's beads and two-tone shoes

2011-10-14T10:18:00.000-04:00

by William Kennedy. *Starred Review* Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning bard of Albany, is back with a jazzy, seductive, historically anchored novel of politics and romance, race and revolution. Young Daniel Quinn awakens one night in 1936 to watch his amiable father, George, preside over a jam session involving Jimmy, a prominent black club owner; Cody, an exceptional black piano player; the future mayor of Albany; and Bing Crosby. Turn the page, and it's 1957. Quinn, now an impulsive and romantic newspaperman, is in Havana, drinking with Hemingway and falling hard for Renata, a rich and daring gunrunner of hyperventilating beauty and perpetual intensity and mystical need. The reporter and the femme-fatale revolutionary meet Castro and marry in a Santeria ceremony invoking Chango, the god of thunder. When next we see them, it's 1968 and racial tension in profoundly corrupt Albany is on the boil. Quinn and Renata tend to personal crises as Jimmy and Cody's civil-rights-activist sons and a rebel priest get caught up in the violence, and George, now senile but still charming, becomes the waltzing ghost of Albany past, positively Shakespearean in his munificent delusions. Music, rapid-fire dialogue, lyrical outrage, epic malfeasance, trampled idealism, and a bit of autobiography drive Kennedy's incandescent and enrapturing tale of the heroic and bloody quest for justice and equality and the gamble of love.. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This gripping addition to Kennedy's celebrated Albany Cycle, which includes Ironweed (1983) and Roscoe (2002), is literary news of the highest order. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The better angels of our nature : why violence has declined

2011-10-14T10:11:00.000-04:00

by Steven Pinker. Readers will understandably question psychology professo. Pinker's basic premises that violence has declined significantly and that we are living in the most peaceable era of human existence. But he makes the case with data and trend lines indicating that despite the horrors of our modern age terrorism, genocide, everyday mayhem we are actually killing and maiming less frequently than in earlier history. Pinker takes a very long view, drawing on history and psychology to examine a very hopeful trend. He begins by looking at six historical trends that have led to advancements from hunting to agriculture to commerce and governance, resulting in greater prosperity and ease. In the arena of psychology, he explores five inner demons and how they have been fueled and calmed by historical factors. Finally, he examines fou. better angel. forces, including empathy, self-control, morality, and reason, that have historically kept us from eliminating our species. This long, well-researched, comprehensive tour-de-force provides a helpful look at the human condition. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Train dreams

2011-10-13T13:46:00.000-04:00

by Denis Johnson. National Book Award-winner Johnson, ever the literary shape-shifter, looks back to America's expansionist fever dream in a haunting frontier ballad about a loner named Robert Grainier. Left in the dark about why he was put on a train by himself as a young boy and sent cross-country to relatives in Idaho, Grainier revels in the hard, dangerous work and steadying loneliness of logging mighty forests and building gravity-defying and spirit-testing railroad bridges over plunging gorges. He finally marries, only to return to the massive undertakings he hungers for, leaving his wife and baby girl in their isolated cabin. After hearing about and witnessing myriad crimes and catastrophes embodying the sublime and the macabre, Grainier is blasted into his own private hell of horror and grief. By the time he emerges, cars and planes have further transformed the world. Johnson draws on history and tall tales to adroitly infuse one contemplative man's solitary life with the boundless mysteries of nature and the havoc of humankind's breakneck technological insurgency, creating a concentrated, reverberating tale of ravishing solemnity and molten lyricism. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Toxic free : how to protect your health and home from the chemicals that are making you sick

2011-10-12T10:45:00.000-04:00

by Debra Dadd-Redalia. Longtime consumer advocate Dadd (Home Safe Home) offers advice on how to purge your home of hazardous substances to improve health and quality of life. Cleaning products, household textiles, food, and other everyday substances that can contain harmful toxins are discussed. Suggestions on how to live toxin free accompany each section. Dadd also discusses the dangers of environmental contaminants such as pesticides and air pollution. Appendixes educate readers further on human physiology, the effects of toxic exposure, and how to identify harmful substances. This book is much more comprehensive in scope than the onslaught of titles that limit their focus to specific kinds of materials-beauty or cleaning products, for example. Similar titles published in recent years include Myron Wentz and Dave Wentz's The Healthy Home and Beth Greer's Super Natural Home. -VERDICT The book is well organized and informative but would benefit from citations to better illustrate the hazards and health implications discussed. Those looking for a primer on household toxins and suggested alternatives will enjoy this resource. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The affair : a Reacher novel

2011-10-11T10:17:00.001-04:00

by Lee Child. *Starred Review* Jack Reacher fans know the basics about their hero career army MP suddenly transformed into the ultimate lone wolf (Have Toothbrush Will Travel) but they don't know the backstory. Finally, Child fills us in on what drove Reacher, a good soldier above all, out of the army. The basic structure resembles most Reacher novels: Jack turns up in an out-of-the-way locale (small-town Mississippi here), confronts a clutch of evildoers, takes them down, packs his toothbrush, and hits the road. But this time hitting the road means leaving the army, which becomes necessary because certain of the evildoers are soldiers, too, and to bring them down, Reacher must discard the MP's manual altogether. For fans of the series, much of the fun comes in spotting Reacher's now-familiar idiosyncrasies at the moments they were born (the habit, for example, of owning only one set of clothes, wearing them until they get dirty, and then buying replacements). The plot itself involves a serial killer possibly a soldier wreaking havoc among the locals living near an army base. Teaming up both professionally and romantically with the town sheriff, a comely former marine, Reacher simultaneously attempts to find the truth and protect the army. As usual, plenty of eggs get broken in spectacular style on the way to making a Reacher omelet. Child's mastery of high-octane plotting remains remarkable, as does his ability to inject what, in other hands, might have been cartoon characters with all the sinews that power human beings. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Public parts : how sharing in the digital age improves the way we work and live

2011-10-09T14:54:00.000-04:00

by Jeff Jarvis. The author of What Would Google Do? (2009) returns with another thoughtful look at the Internet age. A welcome and well-reasoned counterpoint to the arguments that social-networking sites and the easy availability of personal information online are undermining our society and putting our safety at risk, the book shows how instruments of connectivity like Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter can be, if used constructively, major contributors to society. (Recall, for example, how early news out of Egypt during the recent revolution came via Twitter.) Jarvis doesn't ignore the downsides of online connectivity, of course, but he puts them in what appears to be a more objective context. With the recent publicity surrounding the Rupert Murdoch media empire and the cellphone-hacking scandal, the book's theme that the Internet is a valuable tool for social change might strike some readers as a bit ill-timed, but the argument is highly persuasive (especially when Jarvis shows how the printing press, like the Internet, also came with predictions of misuse, invasion of privacy, and disaster). A must-read for anyone interested in the issue of connectivity versus privacy. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Lethal

2011-10-08T14:35:00.000-04:00

Sandra Brown. Lee Coburn is lethal. A trained killer suspected of murdering seven men in a trucking company warehouse in coastal Louisiana, he is the object of an area-wide manhunt when he feigns injury to get into the home of widow Honor Gillette and her four-year-old, Emily. The Gillette house isn't just a refuge for Coburn. He's after something valuable left by Honor's late husband, Eddie, a cop who died in an apparent accident two years ago. As the terrorized Honor fears for Emily's safety and expects to be raped or murdered, it becomes clear that things aren't what they seem. Everything revolves around the Bookkeeper, shadowy head of a scheme for illegally trafficking guns, drugs, and girls, who brooks no deviation from orders given. Though it's fairly obvious early on that Honor is drawn to Coburn's laser blue eyes, Brown keeps the plot twisting and turning, the body count rising, and the action accelerating to a satisfying climax. Brown knows how to write romantic suspense and once again has produced a satisfying page-turner. --Booklist Review (Check Catalog)

Deadline artists : America's greatest newspaper columns

2011-10-07T13:46:00.000-04:00

"It is the great American art form, read by millions every day." When these eloquent, compassionate newspaper columns were first delivered, they were treated as individual works of art, almanacs to suit any disposition. Well-catalogued and categorized, this exultant retrospective of American journalism seems ideal for today's attention spans and travel schedules. In the most memorable modern excerpt from the section "Wars and Other Foreign Affairs," Pete Hamill stands in a "pale gray wilderness" following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and tells readers: "As I write, it remains present tense." In other sections, Hunter S. Thompson and O. Henry reveal a raw, emotional, and entertaining style of journalism; a formula that Jimmy Breslin's surreal "'Are You John Lennon?'" piece surely encapsulates. Avlon, Angelo, and Louis's glorious compilation "is a chance to be there at moments when America changes, for better or for worse." Free-flowing to the very end, lasting drops of pure wisdom come in the form of Mary Schmich's infamous "sunscreen" composition, while Benjamin Franklin's 1757 sermon of advice literally offers words to live by. "Well done is better than well said," Franklin writes, but as far as this essential anthology goes, it's so well done, there's nothing left to say. --Library journal (Check catalog)

Shadow in Serenity

2011-10-07T13:43:00.000-04:00

by Terri Blackstock. There's a shadow in Serenity, TX, and his name is Logan Brisco. Having grown up in a traveling circus, Carny Sullivan had her fill of scam artists. The last thing she wants is to see someone con the people she has come to love. Logan has promised the town a portion of the proceeds of an amusement park he wants to build, but Carny thinks there's something behind his dazzling smile. Is she right, or can Logan prove that he is sincere? VERDICT Christy Award winner Blackstock is known for her Christian romantic suspense stories, with over six million books sold worldwide. That alone should demand purchase, but the crisp prose and multi-dimensional characters will be a hit with readers wanting a fast-paced story. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Death in the city of light : the serial killer of Nazi-occupied Paris

2011-10-06T08:30:00.000-04:00

by David King. *Starred Review* Just about every nonfiction book about a serial killer on the loose in a big city published since 2004 has been hailed as another Devil in the White City. Erik Larson's tour de force of narrative nonfiction hasn't been matched until now. European-history scholar King, author of the acclaimed Vienna, 1814 (2008), has found a villain who, like businessman H. H. Holmes in White City, was admired and trusted and thrived in an atmosphere of genteel chaos. For Holmes, the Columbian Exposition of 1893 provided young female victims. King's subject, respected doctor Marcel Petiot, tortured and dismembered at least a score of victims during the WWII Nazi occupation of Paris. Many of those were Jews, who came to Petiot seeking refuge from the Gestapo. King deftly adopts a Poe-like, thoroughly eerie tone in his opening depiction of the contents of the basement of a town home in a still-fashionable Paris neighborhood in 1944 and maintains it throughout. He follows the investigation led by Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu of the French homicide squad through the search for Petiot and his trial. The French Prefecture de Police allowed King access to the entire Petiot dossier, which had been classified since his trial. While painstaking in its research, the book has a top-notch thriller's immediacy and power to make one gasp. True-crime at its best. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Lost memory of skin

2011-10-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

by Russell Banks. *Starred Review* Banks is in top form in his seventeenth work of fiction, a cyclonic novel of arresting observations, muscular beauty, and disquieting concerns. An unloved runt of 22, the Kid thinks he might b. slightly retarded. but his narrational voice evinces a smart, sensitive, and witty, if dangerously uneducated, mind. With only a pet iguana for a friend, the Kid became addicted to online pornography, which leads to his becoming a virginal convicted sex offender on parole, camping out beneath a causeway at the water's edge in a city much like Miami. The Kid joins a veritable leper colony of sex offenders rendered homeless due to a law forbidding them to live within 2,500 feet of any place children may gather. Enter the Professor, a sociologist whose gargantuan mental powers are matched by his astonishing bulk. Humongous, arrogant, generous, brash, and secretive, the Professor, a character of startling and magnetic originality, latches onto the Kid first as a case study, then as an ally, until things go catastrophically wrong. Banks dramatically contrasts the soulless cybersexual carnival with the thorny complexity of flesh-and-blood encounters and our inner lives, the fecund wildness of a vast primeval swamp, and the fury of a hurricane to create a commanding, intrepidly inquisitive, magnificently compassionate, and darkly funny novel of private and societal illusions, maladies, and truths. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Banks is among our living literary giants, and promotion for this daring novel includes a print, television, radio, and online campaign and a coast-to-coast tour. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

American anthrax : fear, crime, and the investigation of the nation's deadliest bioterror attack

2011-10-04T13:51:00.000-04:00

by Jeanne Guillemin. In July 2008, Bruce Ivins took his own life. He had been a highly respected bioweapons researcher, working for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). He was also the prime suspect in the post-9/11 anthrax attacks that took several lives and caused a nationwide panic. In this gripping account, Guillemin, author of two previous books about biological weapons, chronicles the FBI investigation into the attacks, showing how the authorities came to focus on Ivins and also how the investigation was hampered by procedural confusion and outside influences, such as erroneous reports that escalated the public's sense of panic. Although marketed as a science book, this work, in tone and structure, more closely resembles true crime. There's science in the book, naturally, but the primary interest here arises from how investigators solved the mystery of who was behind the attacks. Highly recommended to readers of science, true crime, and even thrillers. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Winning the war on war : the decline of armed conflict worldwide

2011-10-03T13:51:00.000-04:00

by Joshua S. Goldstein. American University professor and international relations expert Goldstein argues that military conflicts are on the retreat globally. Using analysis and statistics, he rebuts the claim that the 20th century was among the bloodiest in human history, that civilian casualties in warfare have been increasing as a proportion of total casualties, along with violence against women, and that the number of wars being fought has been increasing since World War II. Goldstein contends that peace is a worthwhile objective for its own sake, even without other causes, such as social justice or economic reform. Goldstein reviews the history and development of U.N. peace keeping operations from their inception under Ralph Bunche and Count Bernadotte in Palestine, and while surveying the world's ongoing armed struggles, he presents leading peace research institutes (such as the one in Uppsala, Sweden) and researchers (such as the late Randy Forsberg on nuclear weapons). In addition, he reveals the flawed nature of casualty estimates based on epidemiological models that were employed for the Congo and Iraq. The result is an optimistic, if controversial, assessment by a respected anti-war advocate. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Only time will tell

2011-09-30T10:16:00.000-04:00

by Jeffrey Archer. *Starred Review* Archer introduces an ambitious new historical series, the Clifton Chronicles, and a compelling new character. The series will cover an entire century, but this volume spans two decades, 1920-40. Its central character is young Bristol lad Harry Clifton, fatherless and living in near-poverty conditions, who thanks to the sacrifices of his devoted mother winds up at Oxford University. It sounds like a simple enough story, but Archer, no stranger to thematic complexity, packs the novel with intrigue, mystery, and heartrending revelations. He also tells the tale in a slightly unconventional manner, eschewing straight chronology and devoting sections to several of the main characters Harry, Harry's mother, and a powerful businessman with ties to Harry's family, among others and examining the same period of time through each of the character's eyes. Slowly, like a jigsaw puzzle assembling itself, an entirely different story emerges, one involving Harry's father and the mystery of his sudden disappearance years earlier. What appears at the outset to be a straightforward coming-of-age tale becomes, by the end, a saga of power, betrayal, and bitter hatred. The novel ends on a deliberately dark note, setting the stage for the sequel. Archer is known for thrillers, and while this has some thriller elements, it will also appeal to mainstream historical-fiction fans. An outstanding effort from a reliable veteran. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new series from the perennially best-selling Archer is big news, and St. Martin's will be trumpeting the story at top volume. A 250,000 first printing will provide a well-stocked supply line for hungry fans. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Gunfight : the battle over the right to bear arms in America

2011-09-29T10:15:00.000-04:00

by Adam Winkler. Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, mines 400 years of debate over gun control in America to analyze the Supreme Court's landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in this timely and persuasive history. Dismissing the extremist "gun nuts" and "gun grabbers" who have dominated the gun debate for decades, the author clearly shows that the right to bear arms and gun control have always coexisted in the U.S.-even on the frontier where guns and gun regulation were widespread. The brainchild of a pair of libertarian lawyers, the Heller case revolved around the District of Columbia's total ban on handguns and the contention of Heller's lawyers that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to own guns. Clearly mirroring the impasse over the issue, it offered the courts a rare opportunity to point toward a historically valid compromise position. In 2008, after five years of dramatic litigation, the Supreme Court struck down D.C.'s handgun ban and recognized the plaintiffs' individual rights theory while still noting that many forms of gun control are constitutional. In the tradition of 1976's Simple Justice and 1964's Gideon's Trumpet, Winkler skillfully weaves together history and contemporary jurisprudence to explore a contentious issue of constitutional interpretation. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

A most unsuitable match

2011-09-28T16:17:00.000-04:00

by Stephanie Grace Whitson. Fannie Rousseau is jolted out of her grief-stricken stupor by three nearly simultaneous discoveries: her financial advisor is not to be trusted; her house has become so rundown that a burglar thought it unoccupied; and her mother had a long-estranged twin, last heard from in Montana. Needing to do something in the face of her perceived helplessness to restore the family fortunes other than by marrying a man she detests, she and her beloved maid, Hannah, embark on a steamboat journey upriver in search of Aunt Edith, her only living relative. Along the way they meet Sam Beck, searching for his runaway sister, and a roustabout named Lamar Davis, who helps Sam understand the Bible that was his legacy from his mother. Whitson's historical Christian romance offers action-packed adventure coupled with coming-of-age stories for both Sam and Fannie, along with a fascinating glimpse of the dangers of travel along Old Misery (the Missouri River) and life in a frontier trading post. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Class warfare : inside the fight to fix America's schools

2011-09-27T11:13:00.000-04:00

by Steven Brill. Good teaching really does matter. Success doesn't depend on a school's location or budget; it comes down to the person standing in front of the classroom. CourtTV and The American Lawyer magazine founder Brill (After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era) has concluded that teachers willing to extend their efforts beyond the classroom, to spend extra time with their students and their students' families, and to do all they can to connect with their charges are key to turning around the American education system. However, there are obstacles to overcome, including unions' destructive demands, the problems that arise when teachers' longevity trumps talent, the stigma charter schools sometimes face, and political agendas that fail to put children first. Horror stories about good teachers who are disparaged and bad teachers who are coddled might make you cringe, but Brill's multilayered account of the education dilemma also brings hope that change for the better could be on the horizon. Verdict Many parents, even those who are educators, may not be aware of the battles that occur daily in the education world. This is a fascinating look at those struggles and at the people who determine how America's children will be educated. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

The submission

2011-09-26T16:19:00.000-04:00

by Amy Waldman. *Starred Review* After venomous deliberations over anonymous design submissions for a 9/11 memorial at ground zero, the jury selects an elegant garden as the ideal embodiment of remembrance and rebirth. But when the identity of the architect is revealed Mohammad Khan, the American son of Muslim immigrants from India the dream of national healing warps into a hysterical nightmare. As public outrage ignites, entangled characters struggle with anger, fear, conscience, and ambition. Mohammad, called Mo, is stubborn and aloof. Journalist Alyssa is desperate to capitalize on the excoriating scandal. Down-and-out Sean, who lost his firefighter brother, flounders as spokesperson for the victims' families, while two young 9/11 widows Claire, wealthy and glamorous, and Asma, an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh push through grief to try to do the right thing. In her magnetizing first novel, replete with searing insights and exquisite metaphors, Waldman, formerly a New York Times reporter and co-chief of the South Asia bureau, maps shadowy psychological terrain and a vast social minefield as conflicted men and women confront life-and-death moral quandaries within the glare and din of a media carnival. Waldman brilliantly delineates the legacy of 9/11; the confluence of art, religion, and politics; the plexus between the individual and the group; and the glory of transcendent empathy in The Bonfire of the Vanities for our time. -Booklist (Check Catalog)

The gift of an ordinary day : a mother's memoir

2011-09-22T11:44:00.002-04:00

by Katrina Kenison. In this uplifting narrative of midlife and mothering, former Best American Short Stories editor Kenison inspires those going through their own midlife upheavals to savor each moment of family life, the ordinary moments that can be so fulfilling if we are wholly present. In the wake of lost jobs, put-off dreams, changing relationships with her mate, and the trials of mothering teenage boys, Kenison manages to stay sane by doing just that. A lovely memoir, of special interest to women struggling with midlife issues. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Everything beautiful began after : a novel

2011-09-20T16:29:00.000-04:00

by Simon Van Booy. Crimson-haired Rebecca has left behind a job at Air France and a life that's stuttering out like a candle to settle in Athens and work at becoming a painter, drawing on the memory of the mother who abandoned her and her sister as children. Socially maladapted, relentlessly soused, but indisputably brilliant-he breezed through college early after lonely years at a New England boarding school-George is in Athens to perfect his grasp of ancient languages. Rebecca falls carelessly into a brief affair with George but takes up passionately with Henry, a charismatic if troubled archaeologist in Athens on a dig. Then Henry unknowingly befriends George, and together they end up working together on the dig. But this is no idyll; the dark backstories crafted for each character by first novelist Van Booy (Love Begins in Winter) presage a crushing tragedy that changes the landscape of their lives forever. VERDICT Readers who like to zip through the pages might find this precious or overextended, but those with a little patience will be taken in by the carefully etched stories and lyrically precise and inventive language. A lovely book for sophisticated readers. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Telling memories among Southern women : domestic workers and their employers in the segregated South

2011-09-19T09:48:00.000-04:00

by Susan Tucker. Tucker explores the complex relationships between servants and their employers, also treated by Judith Rollins in Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (CH, Feb '86), Daniel E. Sutherland in Americans and Their Servants: Domestic Service in the United States from 1890 to 1920 (1981), and David M. Katzman in Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (CH, Feb '79). Tucker's contribution to this historiography is a study of that relationship as it is complicated by southern racial ideas. The book is a collection of edited transcripts of interviews with black domestics and white women who employed black domestics. The interviews are divided by subject into five parts and an epilogue. Tucker maintains that black domestics played a unique role as go-between in a segregated society. Her record of their memories and perceptions, as well as the memories of those in whose houses they worked, will be useful for anyone seeking to understand more about women's or southern history. --Choice (Check Catalog)

The little bride

2011-09-17T12:26:00.000-04:00

by Anna Solomon. Late 1880s Russia offers few choices for 16-year-old Minna Losk. Her mother deserts the family, then her father dies in a mine accident. She wants to be a bookkeeper, but her aunts send her out as a servant to a marriage broker for Jewish men. Soon Minna leaves the hopelessness, the pogroms, and the poverty for a farm in South Dakota, where, as a mail-order bride, she receives an unfriendly welcome from her husband-to-be. Max is a rough man much older than she expected, with two sons her own age. The house is a primitive sod hut carved out of the hillside with no running water. Their cow wanders up on the grass roof, and the house collapses, forcing them to accept charity from their prosperous neighbors. In despair, Minna feels that Max doesn't want her, that she's not what he paid for, and now she's romantically involved with his oldest son. VERDICT Solomon writes unsparingly of the harsh realities that women like Minna faced on the American frontier. Although the concluding chapters seem rushed, most readers will feel compelled to stay with this page-turner to its solemn finish. A strong debut novel, highly recommended for those who appreciate exceptional historical fiction. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)