Roll call (excused absences: Ila Dillon)

Call to order

Agenda approval

Public comment

Approval of minutes from last meeting: minutes from the November 1, 2011 regular meeting

Old business:

1. Director’s report to board (Savannah)
2. Corporate financial matters (executive session)
3. Library expansion project (Savannah)
4. Seldovia Women’s Club archives (Shirly)
5. Amend bylaws with respect to email polls (Savannah)
6. Recarpeting library (Savannah)

New business:

1. Outdoor dropbox (Savannah)
2. Board members’ library privileges (Savannah)
3. Next meeting: April 24, 2012

Board member closing comments

This meeting will be held in the library.

Members of the public are invited to attend the meeting and address the board, but public participation in discussion of agenda items is at the discretion of the chair.

Garden state
Traffic
Watching detectives
Animal holiday

Books

Ghosts in the fog: the untold story of Alaska’s WWII invasion / Samantha Seiple
This fascinating little-known piece of American history is told from the point of view of the American civilians who were captured and taken prisoner, along with the American and Japanese soldiers who fought in one of the bloodiest battles of hand-to-hand combat during the war. Complete with more than 80 photographs throughout and first person accounts of this extraordinary event. (Age range: 10 – 14 Years)

Ready player one / Ernest Cline
It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them. (read an excerpt)

Death cloud / Andrew Lane
It is the summer of 1868, and Sherlock Holmes is fourteen. On break from boarding school, he is staying with eccentric strangers—his uncle and aunt—in their vast house in Hampshire. When two local people die from symptoms that resemble the plague, Holmes begins to investigate what really killed them, helped by his new tutor, an American named Amyus Crowe. So begins Sherlock’s true education in detection, as he discovers the dastardly crimes of a brilliantly sinister villain of exquisitely malign intent. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years; read an excerpt)

77 Shadow Street / Dean R. Koontz
The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon’s dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents—among them a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a driven money manager—the Pendleton’s magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.
But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton’s past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. Soon, all those within its boundaries will be engulfed by a dark tide from which few have escaped. (read an excerpt)

Between shades of gray / Ruta Sepetys
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin’s orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously – and at great risk – documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father’s prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years)

At home with the impressionists: masterpieces of French still-life painting / Jeffrey E. Thompson
The Impressionists showed us a new way to look at the world with their graceful and fleeting visions of city streets and the countryside. But one aspect of their work has gone largely overlooked–the still-life painting. Here are some of the most memorable masterpieces in this genre, from the most beloved artists of the movement including Caillebotte, Cezanne, Degas, Fantin-Latour, Gauguin, Mamet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, and van Gogh.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children / Ransom Riggs
A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive. (Age range: 13 – 17 Years)

Scholar / L. E. Modesitt
Quaeryt is a scholar and a friend of Bhayar, the young ruler of Telaryn. Worried about his future and the escalating intrigues in Solis, the capital city, Quaeryt persuades Bhayar to send him to Tilbor, conquered ten years earlier by Bhayar’s father, in order to see if the number and extent of occupying troops can be reduced so that they can be re-deployed to the border with warlike Bovaria.
Quaeryt has managed to conceal the fact that he is an imager, since the life expectancies of imagers in Lydar is short. Just before Quaeryt departs, Bhayar’s youngest sister passes a letter to the scholar-imager, a letter that could well embroil Quaeryt in the welter of court politics he had hoped to leave behind. On top of that, on his voyage and journey to Tilbor he must face pirates, storms, poisonings, attempted murder, as well as discovering the fact that he is not quite who he thought he was. To make it all worse, the order of scholars to which he belongs is jeopardized in more ways than one.

The Scorpio Races / Maggie Stiefvater
Some race to win. Others race to survive.
It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.
Some riders live.
Others die.
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.
Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a choice. So she enters the competition – the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen. (Age range: 13 – 17 Years; read an excerpt)

Shelter / Harlan Coben
Mickey Bolitar’s year can’t get much worse. After witnessing his father’s death and sending his mom to rehab, he’s forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.
A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey’s train-wreck of a life is finally improving – until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley’s trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn’t who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey’s father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury – and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew. (Mickey Bolitar Series #1; Age range: 12 – 17 Years)

The cloud roads / Martha Wells
Moon has spent his life hiding what he is – a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight. An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon is once again cast out by his adopted tribe, he discovers a shape-shifter like himself… someone who seems to know exactly what he is, who promises that Moon will be welcomed into his community. What this stranger doesn’t tell Moon is that his presence will tip the balance of power… that his extraordinary lineage is crucial to the colony’s survival… and that his people face extinction at the hands of the dreaded Fell! Now Moon must overcome a lifetime of conditioning in order to save and himself… and his newfound kin.

Abandon / Meg Cabot
Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can’t help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she’s never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.
But now she’s moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid. (Age range: 14 – 17 Years)

Olivia plants a garden / Emily Sollinger
It’s Mother’s birthday, and Olivia is planning something super special—a surprise dinner! What’s on the menu? All red food, of course! This sweet story is perfect for Mother’s Day or anytime.
When Olivia’s teacher hands out flower and plant seeds to the class, Olivia can’t wait to see what she’ll grow—and of course she knows her plant will be the best in the class! (Age range: 4 – 6 Years)

My name is not easy / Debby Dahl Edwardson
My name is not easy. My name is hard like ocean ice grinding the shore . . . Luke knows his Iñupiaq name is full of sounds white people can’t say. So he leaves it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles away from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School, students—Eskimo, Indian, White—line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there’s some kind of war going on. Here, speaking Iñupiaq—or any native language—is forbidden. And Father Mullen, whose fury is like a force of nature, is ready to slap down those who disobey. Luke struggles to survive at Sacred Heart. But he’s not the only one. There’s smart-aleck Amiq, a daring leader— if he doesn’t self-destruct; Chickie, blond and freckled, a different kind of outsider; and small, quiet Junior, noticing everything and writing it all down. They each have their own story to tell. But once their separate stories come together, things at Sacred Heart School—and the wider world—will never be the same. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years; 2011 National Book Award Finalist)

Thinking, fast and slow / Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions. (Best book of the year 2011 by The Wall Steet Journal, New York Times Book Review, Globe and Mail, The Economist)

Alcatraz versus the evil Librarians / Brandon Sanderson
A hero with an incredible talent…for breaking things. A life-or-death mission…to rescue a bag of sand. A fearsome threat from a powerful secret network…the evil Librarians.
Alcatraz Smedry doesn’t seem destined for anything but disaster. On his 13th birthday he receives a bag of sand, which is quickly stolen by the cult of evil Librarians plotting to take over the world. The sand will give the Librarians the edge they need to achieve world domination. Alcatraz must stop them!…by infiltrating the local library, armed with nothing but eyeglasses and a talent for klutziness. (Alcatraz Series, #1; Age range: 9 – 12 Years)

I am a genius of unspeakable evil and I want to be your class president / Josh Lieb
Twelve-year-old Oliver Watson’s got the IQ of a grilled cheese sandwich. Or so everyone in Omaha thinks. In reality, Oliver’s a mad evil genius on his way to world domination, and he’s used his great brain to make himself the third-richest person on earth! Then Oliver’s father – and archnemesis – makes a crack about the upcoming middle school election, and Oliver takes it as a personal challenge. He’ll run, and he’ll win! Turns out, though, that overthrowing foreign dictators is actually way easier than getting kids to like you. . . Can this evil genius win the class presidency and keep his true identity a secret, all in time to impress his dad? (Age range: 11 – 15 Years)

The extraordinary adventures of Alfred Kropp / Richard Yancey
Alfred Kropp was just trying to survive high school when his guardian uncle gets him roped into a suspicious get-rich-quick scheme that changes his life forever: stealing Excalibur—the legendary sword of King Arthur. But after Alfred unwittingly delivers the sword into the hands of a man with enormously evil intentions, he sets off on an unlikely quest to try to right his wrong and save the world from imminent destruction. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years)

Running the rift / Naomi Benaron
Follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions. Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it’s impossible to stay apolitical—where the man who used to sell you gifts for your family now spews hatred, where the girl who flirted with you in the lunchroom refuses to look at you, where your Hutu coach is secretly training the very soldiers who will hunt down your family. Yet in an environment increasingly restrictive for the Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream of becoming Rwanda’s first Olympic medal contender in track, a feat he believes might deliver him and his people from this violence. When the killing begins, Jean Patrick is forced to flee, leaving behind the woman, the family, and the country he loves. Finding them again is the race of his life.

Blood red road / Moira Young
Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That’s fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when four cloaked horsemen capture Lugh, Saba’s world is shattered, and she embarks on a quest to get him back.
Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the outside world, Saba discovers she is a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba’s unrelenting search for Lugh stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization. (Age range: 14 – 17 Years; read an excerpt)

Finnikin of the rock / Melina Marchetta
Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps. In a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the cusp of manhood, is compelled to join forces with an arrogant and enigmatic young novice named Evanjalin, who claims that her dark dreams will lead the exiles to a surviving royal child and a way to pierce the cursed barrier and regain the land of Lumatere. But Evanjalin’s unpredictable behavior suggests that she is not what she seems — and the startling truth will test Finnikin’s faith not only in her, but in all he knows to be true about himself and his destiny. (Age range: 14 years)

Breakdown / Sara Paretsky
Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago’s Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying.
The girls include daughters of some of Chicago’s most powerful families: The grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is one of the world’s wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is the Illinois Democratic candidate for Senate.
For V. I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango? Or to Chaim Salanter’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles for answers, she finds herself fighting enemies who are all too human. (V. I. Warshawski Series #15)

Larry Bond’s red dragon rising: shock of war / Larry Bond
Under secret orders from the President, U.S. Army Major Zeus Murphy sabotages a Chinese invasion fleet on the eve of its assault against Vietnam. But after Murphy and fellow officer Win Christian are trapped behind enemy lines, Christian’s erratic behavior gives them away. The pair shoot their way out of a Chinese airport terminal, hijack a bus, then barely escape two truckloads of soldiers before disappearing into the night.
Back in America, President Chester Greene fails to convince Congress that the Chinese invasion of Vietnam is the first step in a plan to rule Asia—and eventually go to war with the U.S. Not even the Pentagon will support the President; top-ranking officers do everything they can to sabotage his orders.

Beauty queens / Libba Bray
Teen beauty queens. A “Lost”-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to emall. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.(Age range: 12 years; read an excerpt)

The whisperer / Donato Carrisi
Six severed arms are discovered, arranged in a mysterious circle and buried in a clearing in the woods. Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified. Worse still, the girls’ bodies, alive or dead, are nowhere to be found.
Lead investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler, and Goran Gavila, an eerily prescient criminologist, dive into the case. They’re confident they’ve got the right suspect in their sights until they discover no link between him and any of the kidnappings except the first. The evidence in the case of the second missing child points in a vastly different direction, creating more questions than it answers.

A child’s garden of verses / Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson’s beloved poems celebrate childhood in all its complexity and joy, from the sunny pleasures of “At the Seaside,” to the imaginative musings of “Foreign Lands” to the playful, ever-popular “My Shadow.” Of the many available editions, Gyo Fujikawa’s is one of the sweetest and most personal. (Age Level: 3 and up)

Everybody sees the ants / A. S. King
Lucky Linderman didn’t ask for his life. He didn’t ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn’t ask for a father who never got over it. He didn’t ask for a mother who keeps pretending their dysfunctional family is fine. And he didn’t ask to be the target of Nader McMillan’s relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far.
But Lucky has a secret–one that helps him wade through the daily mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos–the prison his grandfather couldn’t escape–where Lucky can be a real man, an adventurer, and a hero. It’s dangerous and wild, and it’s a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside? (Age range: 14 – 17 Years)

Bunheads / Sophie Flack
As a dancer with the ultra-prestigious Manhattan Ballet Company, nineteen-year-old Hannah Ward juggles intense rehearsals, dazzling performances and complicated backstage relationships. Up until now, Hannah has happily devoted her entire life to ballet.
But when she meets a handsome musician named Jacob, Hannah’s universe begins to change, and she must decide if she wants to compete against the other “bunheads” in the company for a star soloist spot or strike out on her own in the real world. Does she dare give up the gilded confines of the ballet for the freedoms of everyday life? (Age range: 14 – 17 Years)

The secret world of whales / Charles Siebert; Molly Baker
Readers will discover scientific findings that suggest that the human brain and the whale brain are surprisingly similar. They will dive into stories from fiction and legend, as well as real-life tales of ships raised in the air on the back of a whale. With masterful storytelling and impressive photographs, this comprehensive book brings new light to the mysterious underwater world of whales. (Age range: 8 – 12 Years)

Tide, feather, snow: a life in Alaska / Miranda Weiss
Miranda Weiss, a young woman who grew up landlocked in a well-kept East Coast suburb, moved to Homer, Alaska, with her boyfriend, determined to make a place for herself in this unfamiliar country where the years are marked by seasons of fish, and where locals carry around the knowledge of tides, boats, and weather as ballast. In Tide, Feather, Snow, Weiss introduces readers to the memorable people and peculiar beauty of Alaska’s vast landscape, as she takes us along on her remarkable personal journey of adventure, physical challenge, and culture clash. (read an excerpt)

The sledding hill / Chris Crutcher
Eddie hasn’t had an easy year
First his father dies. Then his best friend Billy accidentally kicks a stack of Sheetrock over on himself, breaking his neck and effectively hitting tilt on his Earthgame. Eddie and Billy were inseparable. Still are. Billy isn’t going to let a little thing like death stop him from hanging in there with his friend. And when Eddie faces an epic struggle with the powers that be, Billy will remain right there beside him. (Age range: 13 – 17 Years; read an excerpt)

The Predicteds / Christine Seifert
Your future is not your own…
“We wanted to know what makes a good kid good and a bad kid bad. Can you blame us for that? We found an astoundingly, marvelously simple answer: The brain isn’t so much a complicated machine as it is a crystal ball. If you look into it, you will see everything you want to know.”
-Dr. Mark Miliken, senior researcher at Utopia Laboratories
Who will it be?
Will the head cheerleader get pregnant?
Is the student council president a secret drug addict?
The whole school is freaking out about PROFILE, an experimental program that can predict students’ future behavior.
The only question Daphne wants answered is whether Jesse will ask her out…but he’s a Predicted, and there’s something about his future he’s not telling her. (Age range: 13 – 17 Years; read an excerpt)

Ghost hero / S. J. Rozan
After a dry spell and verging on desperate for work, Chinese- American P.I. Lydia Chin agrees to take a case different from her usual fare. A man calling himself Jeff Dunbar hires her to track down a rumor about a very unusual Chinese painter. Contemporary Chinese painting is blazing hot in the art world and no one is hotter than Chau Chun – Ghost Hero Chau. A brilliant and widely-recognized artist, known for mixing classical forms and contemporary political comment, his works are highly prized. The rumor of new paintings by Chau is racing through the Manhattan art world. There’s only one problem – Ghost Hero Chau has been dead for twenty years.

The Trinity Six / Charles Cumming
The most closely-guarded secret of the Cold War is about to be exposed – the identity of a SIXTH member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring. And people are killing for it…
London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a ‘resourceful career diplomat’. But Crane was much more than that – and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem.
Fifteen years later, academic Sam Gaddis needs money. When a journalist friend asks for his help researching a possible sixth member of the notorious Trinity spy ring, Gaddis knows that she’s onto a story that could turn his fortunes around. But within hours the journalist is dead, apparently from a heart attack.
Taking over her investigation, Gaddis trails a man who claims to know the truth about Edward Crane. Europe still echoes with decades of deadly disinformation on both sides of the Iron Curtain. And as Gaddis follows a series of leads across the continent, he approaches a shocking revelation – one which will rock the foundations of politics from London to Moscow… (read a sample chapter)

Death comes to Pemberley / P. D. James
It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.
Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery. (read an excerpt)

Drop / Michael Connelly
Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two.
DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab’s DNA cases currently in court.
Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving’s son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch’s longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation.
Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department. (Harry Bosch Series #17)

The devil’s elixir / Raymond Khoury
What if there was a drug, previously lost to history in the jungles of Central America, capable of inducing an experience so momentous-and so unsettling-that it might shake the very foundations of Western civilization?
What if powerful forces on both sides of the law got wind of that drug and launched a vicious, uncompromising pursuit to possess it?

Extremely loud & incredibly close / Jonathan Safran Foer
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey. (read an excerpt)

Shut your eyes tight / John Verdon
When he was the NYPD’s top homicide investigator, Dave Gurney was never comfortable with the label the press gave him: super detective. He was simply a man who, when faced with a puzzle, wanted to know. He was called to the investigative hunt by the presumptuous arrogance of murderers – by their smug belief that they could kill without leaving a trace. There was always a trace, Gurney believed.
Except what if one day there wasn’t? (Dave Gurney Series #2)

Game over / Bernis DuBois
In this tale of gambling, sex, and politics, a Native American senator is murdered for her stand on tribal sovereignty and Indian gaming issues. Meanwhile, Debra Woods sinks deeper into her life of gambling and commits crimes to support her habit. She struggles against all odds to take care of her two boys and get out of the circle of gambling addiction.

How to save a life / Sara Zarr
Jill MacSweeny just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends–everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one.
Mandy Kalinowski understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted–to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?  (Age range: 12 – 17 Years)

Gideon’s corpse / Douglas J. Preston; Lincoln Child
A top nuclear scientist goes mad and takes an innocent family hostage at gunpoint, killing one and causing a massive standoff.
A plume of radiation above New York City leads to a warehouse where, it seems, a powerful nuclear bomb was assembled just hours before.
Sifting through the evidence, authorities determine that the unthinkable is about to happen: in ten days, a major American city will be vaporized by a terrorist attack.
Ten days. And Gideon Crew, tracking the mysterious terrorist cell from the suburbs of New York to the mountains of New Mexico, learns the end may be something worse–far worse–than mere Armageddon.

Best staged plans / Claire Cook
As a professional home stager, Sandy Sullivan is an expert at transforming cluttered rooms into attractive houses ready for sale. If only reinventing her life were as easy as choosing the perfect paint color. She’s eager to put her family’s suburban Boston home on the market, to downsize, and to simplify her own life. But she must first deal with her foot-dragging husband and her grown son, who has moved back home after college to inhabit the basement “bat cave.”
After reading them the riot act, Sandy takes a job staging a boutique hotel in Atlanta recently acquired by her best friend’s boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time with her recently married daughter, Shannon, in Atlanta. The bad news is that Shannon finds herself heading to Boston for job training, leaving Sandy and her southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates. If that’s not complicated enough, Sandy begins to suspect that her best friend’s boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side.

Hellboy: Seed of destruction / Michael Mignola; John Byrne
A murder in a New York wax museum and a missing corpse lead Hellboy and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense into ancient Romanian castles on the trail of a sleeping legend: the nobleman vampire, Vladimir Guirescu. Nazi scientists, revived in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, prepare for the return of Rasputin and the end of the world, and Hellboy confronts his purpose on earth. (Hellboy Series, #1; Age range: 16 – 18 Years)

[Note: All synopses are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted and do not constitute reviews by the Seldovia Public Library.]

Dear donor, even though you remain anonymous, please know that the board and library volunteers join me in thanking you for your generosity on behalf of our patrons who will receive so much pleasure from these books. We operate on a very small annual budget, and a gift such as this greatly expands our ability to offer new and enticing titles.

So, thank you. We’re dazzled.

Big Love Season 1

Books

Sailor song / Ken Kesey
Set in the near future, the story takes us to the Alaskan village of Kuinak, a rundown fishing community of Deaps (Descendants of Early Aboriginal Peoples) and Lower Forty-eight refugees perched on the Western Edge of history. It’s a scene rich with characters, like Alice the Angry Aleut, Ike Sallas (known as “the Bakatcha Bandit” during the environmental wars of the nineties), the town’s indispensable “scoot” runner Billy the Squid, and the Loyal Order of Underdogs, who meet monthly for the Full Moon Howl. Into their peculiar midst sails a mighty ship of last hopes, loaded to the gunwales with a big-bucks Hollywood film company. This famous studio/yacht has come north to film a classic children’s book, The Sea Lion. Unscripted transformations abound as the project stirs a new mix into the community, including a tribe brought down from the remote north.

The demi-monde : winter / Rod Rees
Welcome to the Demi-Monde, the ultimate in virtual reality—a military training ground and vivid, simulated world of cruelty and chaos run by psychopaths, madmen and fanatics.
If you die here, you die in the Real World . . .
In the year 2018, the Demi-Monde is the most sophisticated, complex and unpredictable computer simulation ever created, devised specifically to train soldiers for the nightmarish reality of urban warfare. A virtual world of eternal civil conflict, its thirty million inhabitants—“Dupes”—are ruled by cyber-duplicates of some of history’s cruelest tyrants: the fanatical Nazi butcher Reinhard Heydrich; Stalin’s arch executioner Lavrentii Beria; the torture-loving Grand Inquisitor TomÁs de Torquemada; the Reign of Terror’s bloodthirsty mastermind Maximilien Robespierre.
But something has gone horribly wrong inside the Demi-Monde, and the U.S. president’s daughter, Norma, has been lured into this terrifying shadow world, only to be trapped there. Her last hope of rescue is Ella Thomas, an eighteen-year-old jazz singer and very reluctant heroine. But when Ella infiltrates the Demi-Monde and begins her hunt for Norma, she soon discovers the walls containing the evils of this simulated environment are dissolving—and the Real World is in far more danger than anyone knows. With the help of resistors determined to understand their world, Ella must race to save Norma and stop an apocalypse . . . but the clock is ticking. (Demi-monde website; read an excerpt)

Welcome to Bordertown: new stories and poems of the Borderlands / Holly Black; Ellen Kushner
Bordertown: a city on the border between our human world and the elfin realm. Runaway teens come from both sides of the border to find adventure, to find themselves. Elves play in rock bands and race down the street on spell-powered motorbikes. Human kids recreate themselves in the squats and clubs and artists’ studios of Soho. Terri Windling’s original Bordertown series was the forerunner of today’s urban fantasy, introducing authors that included Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Emma Bull, and Ellen Kushner. In this volume of all-new work (including a 15-page graphic story), the original writers are now joined by the generation that grew up dreaming of Bordertown, including acclaimed authors Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Catherynne M. Valente, and many more. They all meet here on the streets of Bordertown in more than twenty new interconnected songs, poems, and stories.

The Scottish prisoner / Diana Gabaldon
London, 1760. For Jamie Fraser, paroled prisoner-of-war in the remote Lake District, life could be worse: He’s not cutting sugar cane in the West Indies, and he’s close enough to the son he cannot claim as his own. But Jamie Fraser’s quiet existence is coming apart at the seams, interrupted first by dreams of his lost wife, then by the appearance of Tobias Quinn, an erstwhile comrade from the Rising.
Like many of the Jacobites who aren’t dead or in prison, Quinn still lives and breathes for the Cause. His latest plan involves an ancient relic that will rally the Irish. Jamie is having none of it—he’s sworn off politics, fighting, and war. Until Lord John Grey shows up with a summons that will take him away from everything he loves—again. (Lord John Grey Series; read an excerpt)

Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores / Greg Palast
This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.
With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures’ Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can’t write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

Diary of a wimpy kid : the last straw / Jeff Kinney
Let’s face it: Greg Heffley will never change his wimpy ways. Somebody just needs to explain that to Greg’s father. You see, Frank Heffley actually thinks he can get his son to toughen up, and he enlists Greg in organized sports and other ?manly” endeavors. Of course, Greg is able to easily sidestep his father’s efforts to change him. But when Greg’s dad threatens to send him to military academy, Greg realizes he has to shape up . . . or get shipped out. (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series #3; Age range: 8 – 11 Years)

Diary of a wimpy kid : dog days / Jeff Kinney
It’s summer vacation, the weather’s great, and all the kids are having fun outside. So where’s Greg Heffley? Inside his house, playing video games with the shades drawn.
Greg, a self-confessed “indoor person,” is living out his ultimate summer fantasy: no responsibilities and no rules. But Greg’s mom has a different vision for an ideal summer . . . one packed with outdoor activities and “family togetherness.”
Whose vision will win out? Or will a new addition to the Heffley family change everything? (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series #4; Age range: 8 – 11 Years)

Doom patrol: crawling from the wreckage / Grant Morrison; Richard Case
Superhero comic from DC, with more information about the series available from Wikipedia. (Doom Patrol Series, #1; Young Adult)

The richest hill on earth / Richard S. Wheeler
The city of Butte looks like a cancerous mélange of smoky mine boilers and rudely constructed sheds when newspaperman John Fellowes Hall arrives on a cold spring day in 1892. Butte may be ugly, but it’s the place to get rich. It’s also a city full of stories—perfect for a journalist looking to make a name for himself. As an employee of mining titan William Andrews Clark, Hall becomes a part of the best story of them all: the fight among the Copper Kings.
Butte’s three founding fathers were remarkable men with little in common other than ambition. Marcus Daly, a humble Irish immigrant, led the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. His political rival, the formidable William Andrews Clark, a brilliant but vain businessman, bought himself a United States Senate seat. And Augustus Heinze tried to steal the mines, using lawyers and bribed judges, only to be crushed by the Rockefellers. The Richest Hill on Earth captures their struggle as well as the stories of the ordinary people—the miners, their wives and children, the journalists, and even the psychics—trying to make their fortunes in the rapidly-changing West.

Clockwork prince / Cassandra Clare
In the magical underworld of Victorian London, Tessa Gray has at last found safety with the Shadowhunters. But that safety proves fleeting when rogue forces in the Clave plot to see her protector, Charlotte, replaced as head of the Institute. If Charlotte loses her position, Tessa will be out on the street—and easy prey for the mysterious Magister, who wants to use Tessa’s powers for his own dark ends.
With the help of the handsome, self-destructive Will and the fiercely devoted Jem, Tessa discovers that the Magister’s war on the Shadowhunters is deeply personal. He blames them for a long-ago tragedy that shattered his life. To unravel the secrets of the past, the trio journeys from mist-shrouded Yorkshire to a manor house that holds untold horrors, from the slums of London to an enchanted ballroom where Tessa discovers that the truth of her parentage is more sinister than she had imagined. When they encounter a clockwork demon bearing a warning for Will, they realize that the Magister himself knows their every move—and that one of their own has betrayed them. (Age: young adult; Infernal Devices Series #2)

The hunter / John Lescroart
Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family-until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: “How did ur mother die?”
The answer is murder, and urged on by curiosity and the mysterious texter, Hunt takes on a case he never knew existed, one that has lain unsolved for decades. His family’s dark past unfurls in dead ends. Child Protective Services, who suspected but could never prove that Hunt was being neglected, is uninformed; his birth father, twice tried but never convicted of the murder, is in hiding; Evie, his mother’s drug-addicted religious fanatic of a friend, is untraceable. And who is the texter, and how are they connected to Hunt?

[Note: All synopses are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted and do not constitute reviews by the Seldovia Public Library.]

Alpha and omega
Magnetic storm (Nova episode, 2003)
Dimming the sun (Nova episode, 2006)
The hidden messages in water

Books

Maine / J. Courtney Sullivan
For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials “A.H.” At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface.
As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago. (read an excerpt)

The Marx sisters / Barry Maitland
Mrs. Thatcher’s London is bristling with the newly rich bankers, and property developers who have declared the city their personal playground. But on tiny Jerusalem Lane, time seems not so much to have stood still as to have slipped backwards. Its shabby houses are home to a clutch of elderly emigres, refugees from a once war-torn Europe who are still fighting ancient political battles, the Trotskyites thumping their canes in fury, the Leninists bellowing into the Anarchists’ hearing-aids. To many outsiders, the Lane’s enmities look like some quaint geezers’ hobby, a louder version of canasta. But then the geezers start dying. (Brock and Kolla Series, #1)

All my enemies / Barry Maitland
Just before Kolla is to start her new job, a young woman is found viscously murdered in a leafy, well-heeled suburb, and the grotesque details of the slaughter appear to be well-rehearsed, even theatrical. Assigned to the case, Kolla’s only improbable lead draws her to a local amateur drama group. Once in their orbit, she is lured into a piece of theatre over which, increasingly, she has little control. In All My Enemies, Brock and Kolla find themselves in a tangled web of deceptions in a case wherein a corpus of plays becomes a template for murder. (Brock and Kolla Series #3)

Dark mirror / Barry Maitland
A student in the Reading Room of the London Library, Marion Summers, suddenly goes into a seizure, then slips into a coma and then dies. But what first appears to be a simple tragedy, is soon revealed to be much more sinister. During the autopsy, it’s determined that she actually died of acute arsenic poisoning. Brought to the attention of the Serious Crime Unit of Scotland Yard, the newly promoted Detective Inspector Kathy Kolla, with the help of her superior, DCI David Brock, investigate the mysterious Summers, leading them to suspect her death was related to unexplained and unusual aspects of her recent life. The more they investigate, the more confounding the mystery becomes and more the clear it is that behind what really happened – and why – lies the most difficult-to-crack case Kolla and Brock have ever faced. (Brock and Kolla Series)

The keeper of lost causes / Jussi Adler-Olsen
The Keeper of Lost Causes, the first installment of Adler- Olsen’s Department Q series, features the deeply flawed chief detective Carl MØrck, who used to be a good homicide detective-one of Copenhagen’s best. Then a bullet almost took his life. Two of his colleagues weren’t so lucky, and Carl, who didn’t draw his weapon, blames himself.
So a promotion is the last thing Carl expects.
But it all becomes clear when he sees his new office in the basement. Carl’s been selected to run Department Q, a new special investigations division that turns out to be a department of one. With a stack of Copenhagen’s coldest cases to keep him company, Carl’s been put out to pasture. So he’s as surprised as anyone when a case actually captures his interest. A missing politician vanished without a trace five years earlier. The world assumes she’s dead. His colleagues snicker about the time he’s wasting. But Carl may have the last laugh, and redeem himself in the process.
Because she isn’t dead . . . yet.

Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit / Barry Estabrook
Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, “The Price of Tomatoes,” investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point? (Table of contents)

The maze runner / James Dashner
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he’s not alone. When the lift’s doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade—a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls.
Just like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they’ve closed tight. And every 30 days a new boy has been delivered in the lift.
Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up—the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers.
Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years; Maze Runner Series #1; read an excerpt)

Carpe demon : adventures of a demon-hunting soccer mom / Julie Kenner
Lots of women put their careers aside once the kids come along. Kate Connor, for instance, hasn’t hunted a demon in ages.
That must be why she missed the one wandering through the pet food aisle of the San Diablo Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, he managed to catch her attention an hour later-when he crashed into the Connor house, intent on killing her.
Now Kate has to clean up the mess in her kitchen, dispose of a dead demon, and pull together a dinner party that will get her husband elected to County Attorney-all without arousing her family’s suspicion. Worse yet, it seems the dead demon didn’t come alone…
It’s time for Kate Connor to go back to work.

The Club Dumas / Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Lucas Corso is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas’s masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named after a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris in pursuit of a sinister and seemingly omniscient killer. (read an excerpt)

[Note: All synopses are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted and do not constitute reviews by the Seldovia Public Library.]

Rio
Transformers

Books

A red herring without mustard / C. Alan Bradley In the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey, the insidiously clever and unflappable eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce had asked a Gypsy woman to tell her fortune—never expecting to later stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned almost to death in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets. (Flavia de Luce Series #3; age 11+; read an excerpt)

The story of Holly & Ivy / Rumer Godden Ivy, Holly, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones each have one Christmas wish. Ivy, an orphan, wishes for a real home and sets out in search of the grandmother she’s sure she can find. Holly, a doll, wishes for a child to bring her to life. And the Joneses wish more than anything for a child to share their holiday. Can all three wishes come true? (Age range: 8 – 11 Years)

This book made me do it / John Woodward Brush up on your know-how by doing, making, and exploring just about everything! Activities come in all shapes and sizes, and this book shows you an incredible variety of them, from panning for gold to doing the Moonwalk. Ever wanted to fold origami, tie-dye a T-shirt, or slam-dunk a basketball like a pro? Interested in creating a homemade bird feeder or a flashlight that runs on candy? This Book Made Me Do It shows you how to do all of this and more! Perfect for budding artists, scientists, sports stars, and chefs, these step-by- step projects will provide hours of educational fun, whether you’re looking for a long-term hobby, or just a way to spend a rainy day. (Age range: 10 – 13 Years)

Saga / Conor Kostick Ghost is part of an anarcho-punk airboard gang who live to break the rules. And there’s a good reason – their world, Saga, has a strict class system enforced by high-tech electronics and a corrupt monarchy. Then Ghost and her gang learn the complicated truth. Saga isn’t actually a place; it’s a sentient computer game. The Dark Queen who rules Saga is trying to enslave the people of New Earth by making them Saga addicts. And she will succeed unless Ghost and her friends – and Erik, from Epic, and his friends – figure out how to stop her in time. (Age range: 12 years)

Edda / Conor Kostick Everyone in the virtual universe of Edda is made of pixels-except Penelope. While her body is kept alive in a hospital bed, her avatar runs free, able to go anywhere and do anything, including create deadly weapons for Edda’s ruler, her guardian, Lord Scanthax. When Scanthax decides he wants to invade another virtual world, Erik/Cindella from Epic and Ghost from Saga become part of the story-and soon the virtual universes are alive with fighting, alight with bombs, and brought together by three teenagers who want peace and understanding. This is the third and final book in Conor Kostick’s trilogy. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years)

Zoo city / Lauren Beukes Zinzi December has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job: missing persons. Winner of the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award.

The future of us / Jay Asher It’s 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They’ve been best friends almost as long – at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh’s family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they’re automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn’t been invented yet. And they’re looking at themselves fifteen years in the future. By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives later. And as they grapple with the ups and downs of what their futures hold, they’re forced to confront what they’re doing right – and wrong – in the present. (Age range: 12 – 17 Years)

Yarn bombing : the art of crochet and knit graffiti / Mandy Moore On city street corners, around telephone posts, through barbed wire fences, and over abandoned cars, a quiet revolution is brewing. “Knit graffiti” is an international guerrilla movement that started underground and is now embraced by crochet and knitting artists of all ages, nationalities, and genders. Its practitioners create stunning works of art out of yarn, then “donate” them to public spaces as part of a covert plan for world yarn domination. Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti is the definitive guidebook to covert textile street art. This full-color DIY book features twenty kick-ass patterns that range from hanging shoes and knitted picture frames to balaclavas and gauntlets, teaching readers how to create fuzzy adornments for lonely street furniture. Along the way, it provides tips on how to be as stealthy as a ninja, demonstrates how to orchestrate a large-scale textile project, and offers revealing information necessary to design your own yarn graffiti tags. The book also includes interviews with members of the international community of textile artists and yarn bombers, and provides resources to help readers join the movement; it’s also chock full of beautiful photographs and easy step-by-step instructions for knit and crochet installations and garments.

The marriage plot / Jeffrey Eugenides It’s the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why “it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France,” real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead—charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy—suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old “friend” Mitchell Grammaticus—who’s been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange—resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology Laboratory on Cape Cod, but can’t escape the secret responsible for Leonard’s seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. (read an excerpt)

Shine / Lauren Myracle When her best guy friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it. Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice. (Age range: 13 – 17 Years)

11/22/63 / Stephen King It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. (read an excerpt)

Explosive eighteen / Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum Series #18) Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup. His killer could be anyone. And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying. Only one other person has seen the missing photo—Stephanie Plum. Now she’s the target, and she doesn’t intend to end up in a garbage can. With the help of an FBI sketch artist Stephanie re-creates the person in the photo. Unfortunately the first sketch turns out to look like Tom Cruise, and the second sketch like Ashton Kutcher. Until Stephanie can improve her descriptive skills, she’ll need to watch her back. Over at the bail bonds agency things are going from bad to worse. The bonds bus serving as Vinnie’s temporary HQ goes up in smoke. Stephanie’s wheelman, Lula, falls in love with their largest skip yet. Lifetime arch nemesis Joyce Barnhardt moves into Stephanie’s apartment. And everyone wants to know what happened in Hawaii?

The language of flowers / Vanessa Diffenbaugh The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. (read an excerpt)

The night strangers / Chris Bohjalian (read an excerpt)In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts. The home’s new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure. Unlike the Miracle on the Hudson, however, most of the passengers aboard Flight 1611 die on impact or drown. The body count? Thirty-nine – a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door. Meanwhile, Emily finds herself wondering about the women in this sparsely populated White Mountain village – self-proclaimed herbalists – and their interest in her fifth-grade daughters. Are the women mad? Or is it her husband, in the wake of the tragedy, whose grip on sanity has become desperately tenuous? (read an excerpt)

The map of my dead pilots : the dangerous game of flying in Alaska / Colleen Catherine Mondor The Map of My Dead Pilots is about flying, pilots, and Alaska—and, more specifically, about those pilots who take death-defying risks in the Last Frontier and sometimes pay the price. Colleen Mondor spent four years running dispatch operations for a Fairbanks-based commuter and charter airline—and she knows all too well the gap between the romance and reality of small plane piloting in the wildest territory of the United States. From overloaded aircraft to wings covered in ice, from flying sled dogs and dead bodies, piloting in Alaska is about living hard and working harder. What Mondor witnessed day to day would make anyone’s hair stand on end. Ultimately, it is the pilots themselves—laced with ice and whiskey, death and camaraderie, silence and engine roar—who capture her imagination. In fine detail, Mondor reveals the technical side of flying, the history of Alaskan aviation, and a world that demands a close communion with extreme physical danger and emotional toughness.

“V” is for vengeance / Sue Grafton A woman with a murky past who kills herself-or was it murder? A dying old man cared for by the son he pummeled mercilessly. A lovely woman whose life is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring racking up millions in stolen goods. A brutal and unscrupulous gangster. A wandering husband, rich and powerful. A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt thinking he can beat the system. A lonely widower mourning the death of his lover, desperate for answers that may be worse than the pain of his loss. An elegant but ruthless businessman whose dealings are definitely outside the law: the spider at the center of the web. And Kinsey Millhone, whose thirty-eighth-birthday gift is a punch in the face that leaves her with two black eyes and a busted nose. V: Victim. Violence. Vengeance. (Kinsey Millhone Series #22)

One thousand white women : the journals of May Dodd / Jim Fergus The story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial “Brides for Indians” program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man’s world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime.

[Note: All synopses are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted and do not constitute reviews by the Seldovia Public Library.]

Under our grant terms, we need to keep the library open a certain number of hours a week. Our current schedule does that; if we slash our hours, not so much. So, not a lot of wiggle room.

And there’s the whole thing about being open enough that we cover the times when you want to use the library. We need our schedule to be handy for folks who are out and about during the day, kids who need to be able to use the library when they’re not in school, and working folks who can only run errands at night or on the weekend.

Now that the holidays are here, we’ve got this volunteer going off on vacation and that volunteer off to supervise grandbaby births and that means we’re stretched so thin staffing the circulation desk that we can’t also cover the other jobs of keeping the library running, buying those new books and movies you all want, and doing the thousands of behind-the-scenes tasks that are why you already see me in that office so many days of the week.

Can you help us out? We need folks who can give us just a couple hours in an afternoon, once a week. Or even every other week. You’ll get all of the (very simple) training you’ll need and a lot of the time I’m right there in the office for backup. It’s not hard and it’s not terribly time-consuming but it’s all-important in keeping our library operating. We really need your support.

Stop in, call 234-7662, or email seldovia.library@gmail.com and let us know that you can share a little time with the rest of Seldovia’s library community. It will mean so much to all of us.

photo © Ground Truth Trekking

From September to November this fall, Seldovians Hig, Erin, Katmai and Lituya spent two months living on the shifting, melting surface of North America’s largest glacier.

Trekking between a series of camps on the Malaspina Glacier, on Alaska’s remote and harsh Lost Coast, they explored this dramatic and wild landscape, weathered the fall storms, and documented climate change in action. You can read more about their expedition in their Life on Ice blog entries.

Now that they’re home and have had time to sort through their photographs and videos, they’re ready to share this adventure with the community. Please join us Saturday evening, Dec. 3 at 6:30 pm in the Susan B. English School Commons for a multimedia lecture on their trip.

This event is sponsored by the Seldovia Public Library in cooperation with Ground Truth Trekking. There is no charge for admission.

Well, from Alaskan Librarian Daniel Cornwall comes an excellent set of suggestions, Advice for Dealing with Broken URLs. If you can identify the slashes in the address field in your browser (internet program), you can learn to chase pages that have moved and find where else they may be archived. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but it’s better than just putting your head down on the keyboard and weeping with frustration.

I think that we can all be thankful for our volunteers. This handful of stalwarts is there, week in and week out in all sorts of weather, keeping the library open and functioning so that you can use it. Let’s call them out by name, shall we? Next time you see them, please add your own thanks to Robin Hilts-Hoffman, Lily Kroll, Tracie Merrill, Allison Miller, and Cheryl Reynolds, plus our last summer’s volunteers, Kathleen Gruber, Sirena Turner, and Mary Ann Wilson.

All of us volunteers also owe you, our library patrons and community, a big thank-you as well. You’re the reason we keep the doors open, and we appreciate your patience when things get a little confused, when the power goes out, when you have to wait to use a computer.

Speaking after my first full year as director, I especially want to thank all of you who have taken the time to talk with me about what you want to see us offer in this library. My telepathy skills are notably poor, and as I work on learning how to make this the library you want, I value every bit of feedback you can offer. Remember: I’m usually there of an afternoon in my office and that door is always open when I am. Why not stop by and share in the conversation, share in shaping our library?

We can’t discuss gratitude without also offering our thanks to the great folks at the state library. Not only do they administer the annual operating grant that allows us to buy all those great books and movies, but they provide the invaluable behind-the-scenes support and education that allow us, essentially a bunch of well-intentioned amateurs, to run a fairly professional library service. You may not see this from your side of the circulation desk, but please be assured: when things function well, it’s likely because of those invisible helping hands.

And on the topic of money, a nod of deep thanks goes to our legislature that every year passes that critical appropriation. We operate on a shoestring, but without the state support, we’d be dangling from a fiscal thread.

Which doesn’t mean we don’t value the financial support from the community any less. In fact, we know quite well how many competing good causes have their hands out in this tiny population. So many worthy endeavors rely upon support right here at home, and we’re grateful for our share of that. All of your book and movie donations, the purchases you make at our annual Fourth of July Sale, the money you spend at our holiday sale and bake sales and tables at the crafters’ bazaars–we know that even the smallest amount represents your support and encouragement and we value that it lets us continue to keep our library as well-stocked as it is.

Finally, we are always thankful for the City of Seldovia in the form of its employees and the city council. They’re the ones who keep the lights on and the heat cooking. While we may grouse about the windows that don’t close, we’re nonetheless grateful that we’re under a roof that doesn’t leak and down the hall from restrooms that are now kept brilliantly clean thanks to the new custodian. We couldn’t be there without them, and we are enduringly delighted that the city sees the value in supporting a library as a community asset.

I know that a lot of you will be propping up your feet today after a big dinner, relaxing with a good book or movie from the library. And aren’t we all thankful for that? I know I am.