8/15: New at the library this week

Movies:

The reader
The secret of Roan Inish
Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow your dreams
Hello Kitty goes to the movies
Princess stories : A gift from the heart
Princess stories : Beauty shines from within
Barbie as Rapunzel

(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

8/12: New at the library this week

Games

The orange box (XBox360)
Halo 3 (XBox360)
Guitar Hero III (XBox360)
Def Jam Fight for NY (XBox)
Fable: The lost chapters (XBox)
Matrix: Path of Neo (XBox)

Movies:

Billy’s bootcamp : Basic training
Billy’s bootcamp : Ultimate bootcamp
Billy’s bootcamp : AB bootcamp
Billy Blanks’ tae bo : Capture the power
Rachel getting married
TrueBlood : Strange Love
Revolutionary road

(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Spirit basket : Over 200 years of adventures in Alaska / Marie Osborn Reid
This novel portrays historical events experienced by an Alaska Native family over more than two centuries. Generations of teenagers adjust from subsistence living to invasion by Russian fur traders, the purchase by America, gold fever, WWII detention, huge earthquake, disastrous oil spill, and much more. Each chapter is a new adventure of a new generation.

Ch.1 Harvest of the Fur Seals, Attu Island in 1745
Ch. 2 Escape, Aleutian Islands in 1770
Ch. 3 The Governor’s Daughter, Kodiak in 1794
Ch. 4 The Priest, New Archangel, Russian America in 1834
Ch. 5 Coming of America, Sitka in 1867
Ch. 6 Gold Nuggets, from Sitka to Nome in 1900
Ch. 7 Return, from Fairbanks to Seward in 1925
Ch. 8 Evacuation, from St. Paul Island to a Southeast camp in 1942
Ch. 9 Earthquake, in Anchorage in 1964
Ch. 10 The Spill, in Valdez in 1989
Ch. 11 Olympic Games, in Fairbanks in 2010
(read exerpts)

A plague of secrets / John T. Lescroart
The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. When his body is found, inspectors discover that his knapsack is filled with high-grade marijuana. It soon becomes clear that San Francisco’s A-list flocked to Bay Beans West not only for their caffeine fix.

But how much did Maya Townshend—the beautiful socialite niece of the city’s mayor, and the absentee owner of the shop—know about what was going on inside her business? And how intimate had she really been with Dylan, her old college friend?

As another of Maya’s acquaintances falls victim to murder, and as the names of the dead men’s celebrity, political, and even law- enforcement customers come to light, tabloid-fueled controversy takes the investigation into the realms of conspiracy and cover-up. Prosecutors close in on Maya, who has a deep secret of her own—a secret she needs to protect at all costs during her very public trial, where not only her future but the entire political landscape of San Francisco hangs in the balance, hostage to an explosive secret that Dismas Hardy is privilege-bound to protect.

4/1: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

The fiery cross / Diana Gabaldon (unabridged; cassette)
Voyager / Diana Gabaldon (unabridged; cassette)
Drums of autumn / Diana Gabaldon (unabridged; cassette)

Movies:

Under the same moon
School of rock
The Savages
(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Blind alley / Iris Johansen
Eve Duncan’s job is to put a face on the faceless victims of violent crimes. Her work not only comforts their survivors—but helps catch their killers. But there is another, more personal reason that Eve Duncan is driven to do the kind of work she does—a dark nightmare from a past she can never bury. And as she works on the skull of a newly discovered victim, that past is about to return all over again. (read an exerpt)

10/25: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

7th heaven / James Patterson; Maxine Paetro (CD)
Two cases have pushed San Francisco detective Lindsay Boxer beyond her limits. In the first, a terrible fire in a wealthy home has left a married couple dead and Lindsay and her partner, Rich Conklin, searching for clues. At the same time, Michael Campion, the son of California’s ex-governor with a reputation for partying, has been missing for a month. When there finally seems to be a lead in his case, it is a devastating one. And the combined pressure from the press and the brass is overwhelming. (read a sample chapter)

Amazing grace / Danielle Steel (CD; unabridged)
On a warm May night in San Francisco, the Ritz-Carlton ballroom shimmers with crystal and silver as a glittering, celebrity-studded crowd gathers for a charity dinner dance. The evening is perfect–until, just minutes before midnight, the room begins to sway. Glass shatters. And as the lights go out, people begin to scream.

In the earthquake’s aftermath, the lives of four strangers will converge.… Sarah Sloane, the beautiful wife of a financial whiz, watches her perfect world fall to pieces…. Grammy-winning singer Melanie Free, the event’s headliner, comes to a turning point in her life and career…. Photographer Everett Carson, a former war correspondent whose personal demons have demoted him to covering society parties, finds new purpose amid the carnage…and Sister Maggie Kent, a nun who normally works in jeans and high-tops with the homeless, searches through the rubble–and knows instantly that there is much work to be done…. (read an exerpt)

Movies:

Vantage point (DVD)
The good German (DVD)

Books:

Chasing darkness / Robert Crais
It’s fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women — one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole’s world upside down.

Damage control / Judith A. Jance
“Thank You So Much, Mr. Campbell,” Claire Newmark said as the disgruntled speaker returned to his seat. As head of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors, Claire was chairing that Friday morning’s meeting. “Do you have anything to say in response, Sheriff Brady?”

Joanna snapped awake. One of the things about being a sleep-deprived working mother meant that she could fall asleep anywhere—in front of her computer, at her desk, in church, and definitely in front of the TV set on those rare occasions when she actually tried to watch a show. In this case, she had dozed off during a Board of Supervisors Friday morning meeting. (read an exerpt)

5/3: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

The mists of Avalon / Marion Zimmer Bradley
(cassettes; abridged)

“Q” is for quarry / Sue Grafton
She was a “Jane Doe,” an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California’s Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were mulitple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the case remained unsolved. (cassettes; abridged)

3/4: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

Lord John and the private matter / Diana Gabaldon (cassettes)
The year is 1757. On a clear morning in mid-June, Lord John Grey emerges from London’s Beefsteak Club, his mind in turmoil. A nobleman and a high-ranking officer in His Majesty’s Army, Grey has just witnessed something shocking. But his efforts to avoid a scandal that might destroy his family are interrupted by something still more urgent: the Crown appoints him to investigate the brutal murder of a comrade in arms, who may have been a traitor. (read an exerpt)

Outlander / Diana Gabaldon (CD)
In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord…1743. (read an exerpt)