9/10: New at the library this week

Books:

Catching fire / Suzanne Collins
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. (Age Range: Young Adult; Hunger Games Series, #2)

Silence of the grave / Arnaldur Indriðason
Inspector Erlendur returns in this gripping Icelandic thriller When a skeleton is discovered half-buried in a construction site outside of Reykjavík, Inspector Erlendur finds himself knee-deep in both a crime scene and an archeological dig. Bone by bone, the body is unearthed, and the brutalizing history of a family who lived near the building site comes to light along with it. Was the skeleton a man or a woman, a victim or a killer, and is this a simple case of murder or a long-concealed act of justice? As Erlendur tries to crack this cold case, he must also save his drug-addicted daughter from self destruction and somehow glue his hopelessly fractured family back together. (Reykjavik Thriller Series, #2)

10/4: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

Real ponies don’t go oink! / Patrick F. McManus (cassette)
“True-life” tales of man against nature in a collection sure to entertain the most hard-to-please listener.

Radio broadcasts

Sam Spade, private eye (cassette)
The falcon : Daring detective Michael Waring (cassette)
Murder at midnight (cassette)

Books:

Peter Puffin’s wild ride : Cruising Alaska’s currents / Libby Hatton
Join Pete Puffin on his wild ride cruising Alaska’s currents with this colorfully illustrated children’s book. A young boy comes to Alaska on a family vacation, bringing with him his favorite toy, Pete Puffin, a wooden puffin carved by his grandfather. In an exciting moment at sea, the toy slips through the boy’s fingers off the side of the cruise ship.

In the main storyline, Pete recounts his wild ride cruising Alaska’s currents. A secondary storyline comes from the boy, Eddy, writing postcards to his grandfather. Woven throughout are educational themes about the ocean and its animals, currents, and health. The book also includes nine flip-over postcards, adding an element of interactivity to engage youngsters.

8/9: New at the library this week

Movies:

Chinatown (dvd)
Foyle’s War Season 6 (dvd)
Hairpray (dvd)
Schindler’s list (dvd)
Volver (dvd)
Fantasia (dvd)

Books:

Tribute / Nora Roberts
Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is a long way from Hollywood. And that’s exactly how Cilla McGowan wants it. Cilla, a former child star who has found more satisfying work as a restorer of old houses, has come to her grandmother’s farmhouse, tools at her side, to rescue it from ruin. Sadly, no one was able to save her grandmother, the legendary Janet Hardy. An actress with a tumultuous life, Janet entertained glamorous guests and engaged in decadent affairs—but died of an overdose in this very house more than thirty years earlier. To this day, Janet haunts Cilla’s dreams. And during waking hours, Cilla is haunted by her melodramatic, five-times-married mother, who carried on in the public spotlight and never gave her a chance at a normal childhood. By coming east, rolling up her sleeves, and rehabbing this wreck of a house, Cilla intends to find some kind of normalcy for herself.

7/19: new at the library this week

Movies:

Judgement day (dvd)
The AAI 2007 convention (dvd)
Growing up in the universe (dvd)
Root of all evil? : The uncut interviews (dvd)
Root of all evil? (dvd)

Books:

Change of heart / Jodi Picoult
One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen. (read an exerpt)

6/7: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

The subtle knife / Philip Pullman
As the boundaries between worlds begin to dissolve, Lyra and her daemon help Will Parry in his search for his father and for a powerful, magical knife.(CD; unabridged; His Dark Materials Series, #2; read an exerpt)

The amber spyglass / Philip Pullman
Along with the return of Lyra, Will, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, Dr. Mary Malone, and Iorek Brynison the armored bear comes a host of new characters: the Mulefa, mysterious wheeled creatures with the power to see Dust; Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia, hand-high spy-masters to Lord Asriel; and Metatron, a fierce and mighty angel. So, too, come startling revelations: the painful price Lyra must pay to walk though the land of the dead, the haunting power of Dr. Malone’s amber spyglass, and the names of who will live — and who will die — for love. And all the while, war rages with the Kingdom of Heaven, a brutal battle that — in its shocking outcome — will uncover the secret of Dust. (cassettes; unabridged; His Dark Materials Series, #3; read a sample chapter)

Movies:

Catch me if you can (videotape)

Books:

Odd hours / Dean Koontz
After grappling with the very essence of reality itself, after finding the veil that separates him from his soul mate, Stormy Llewellyn, tantalizingly thin yet impenetrable, Odd longed only to return to a life of quiet anonymity with his two otherworldly sidekicks—his dog Boo and a new companion, one of the few who might rival his old pal Elvis. But a true hero, however humble, must persevere. Haunted by dreams of an all-encompassing red tide, Odd is pulled inexorably to the sea, to a small California coastal town where nothing is as it seems. Now the forces arrayed against him have bothofficial sanction and an infinitely more sinister authority…and in this dark night of the soul dawn will come only after the most shattering revelations of all. (Odd Thomas Series, #4; read an exerpt)

3/15: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

J.D. Robb collection 5: Seduction in death, Reunion in death, Purity in death / J. D.Robb (cassettes)
Seduction in Death: Dante had been courting his victim in cyberspace for weeks before meeting her in person. A few hours later, she was dead. Detective Eve Dallas is playing and replaying the clues in her mind. The candlelight, the music, the rose petals strewn across the bed – he hadn’t intended to kill her.

Reunion in Death: At exactly 7:30 p.m., Walter Pettibone arrived home to over a hundred friends and family shouting, “surprise!” At 8:45 p.m., a woman with emerald eyes and red hair handed him a glass of champagne. One sip of birthday bubbly, and he was dead. The woman’s name is Julie Dockport. Detective Eve Dallas remembers her all too well.

Purity in Death: Louie Cogburn had spent three days holed up in his apartment, staring at his computer screen. When someone knocked at his door, Louie picked up a baseball bat, opened the door, and started swinging… The first cop on the scene fired his stunner twice and Louie died instantly. When a second man dies under nearly identical circumstances, Detective Eve Dallas starts racking her brain for answers and for courage to face the impossible…that this might be a computer virus able to spread from machine to man…

2/2: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

A wrinkle in time / Madeleine L’Engle — Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg’s father, who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. (Age Range: 12 and up: Time Quartet Series, #1; read an sample chapter; casettes)

The Eyre affair / Jasper Fforde — When asked to summarize his creation is a single sentence, Jasper Fforde described it as “a literary detective thriller with romantic overtones, mad-inventor uncles, aunts trapped in Wordsworth poems, global multinationals, scheming evildoers, an excursion inside the novel Jane Eyre, dodos, knight-errant-time-traveling fathers, and the answer to the eternal question: Who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays?” (Thursday Next Series, #1; read an exerpt)

12/10: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

• Mount Vernon love story: a novel of George and Martha Washington / Mary Higgins Clark — The novel charts the course of George’s tentative courtship of the young widow Martha Custis. (read an exerpt)
• Little altars everywhere / Rebecca Wells — The story unfolds in the alternating voices of Vivi and her husband, Big Shep, along with Sidda and her siblings, as well as the almost-but-not-quite family Chaney and Willetta. Wells embraces nearly thirty years of life on the Walker plantation in Thornton, Louisiana, where the cloying air of the bayou and a web of family secrets at once shelters, traps, and defines this utterly original community of souls. (read a sample chapter)
• A tree grows in Brooklyn / Betty Smith — The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg. (read a sample chapter)
• Balance of power / Richard North Patterson — President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington–the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA). (read an exerpt)