10/28: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

Suspect / Michael Robotham (unabridged; cassettes)
At forty-two, psychiatrist Joe O’Loughlin seems to have it all: a thriving practice, a beautiful wife, an adoring daughter. But Joe’s snug, happy world is crumbling. Recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he’s dreading the inevitable and all too palpable deterioration of his body and mind. Then, when the police ask for his help in solving the brutal murder of a woman they assume is a prostitute, he’s horrified to recognize the victim as a nurse he once worked with, and with whom he had a bit of a past. As Joe begins to suspect that one of his patients may be responsible, the police zero in on him.(read a sample chapter)

Mark Twain / Geoffrey C. Ward; Dayton Duncan; Ken Burns (unabridged; two copies: cassettes & CD)
A companion audiobook to the 4-hour PBS television series.
Using material from Twain’s works, diaries, and letters, Mark Twain follows the great writer/humorist/lecturer/people’s philosopher from the Hannibal, Missouri of his childhood, to the Europe and Middle East of his travels (and hilarious travel books); from his beginnings as a newspaperman to his storied life as (in his own words) “the most conspicuous man on the planet.”(read an exerpt)

The rise of Theodore Roosevelt / Edmund Morris (abridged; cassettes)
A biography published on the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president. (read a sample chapter)

The king of torts / John Grisham (unabridged; cassettes)
The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.

As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life—that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession’s newest king of torts… (read an exerpt)

10/24: New at the library this week

Movies:

Babylon A.D.

(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

The lost symbol / Dan Brown
As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object — artfully encoded with five symbols — is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation… one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon’s beloved mentor, Peter Solomon — a prominent Mason and philanthropist — is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations — all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth. (read an exerpt)

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)

2/4: New at the library this week

Movies:

Hairspray (dvd)
No reservations (dvd)
The 10th kingdom (dvd)

Books:

Vineyard chill / Philip R. Craig
For year-round Vineyard residents J. W. Jackson and his wife, Zee, winter brings its own beauty, with uncrowded streets, pristine snowy landscapes, and long, cozy nights by the fire. It can also bring danger.
There’s a chill in the air one January day when J.W. receives a surprising visit from long-ago pal Clay Stockton. Thrice divorced and still living on the edge, Clay has come to J.W. not to relive the reckless days of their youth but to ask J.W. for help. He’s in big trouble and needs to lie low on the Vineyard.

12/27: New at the library this week

Movies:

There will be blood (dvd)
Resurrecting the champ (dvd)
Cloverfield (dvd)
Mad money (dvd)
Wall-E (dvd)

Books:

Nightmare at the book fair / Dan Gutman
Trip had no idea how DANGEROUS the library could be…

Trip Dinkleman hates to read. Hates, hates, hates it. All he wants to do is play lacrosse. So when the president of the PTA asks Trip to help her out on his way to tryouts, he is not happy. He is even more not happy when a stack of books tumbles onto his head and knocks him out cold.

And he is even more not happy when he wakes up and has absolutely no idea where he is. Now all he wants to do is get home. But after encountering a haunted house, aliens, talking animals, and much, much more, he realizes getting home might be just a little bit harder to do than he thought. (Age Range: 8 to 12; read an exerpt)

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.

You can give your library a gift this holiday season

No, this isn’t an appeal for money–although that’s always welcome, too ;)

What we’re asking Santa for this year is the return of all of those long-neglected library books that have been out…oops…for so long that it’s kinda embarrassing to bring them back after all this time.

Yep, we’re so anxious to have them come back that the next month is Total Amnesty Month. We won’t ask; we’ll just be glad to see them again. No fines; no pleas for a guilt donation; no nasty looks; just us being happy to have them back.

So won’t you take a few moments to look behind the seat in the truck, under the kids’ beds, and wherever else those books have been lurking that you’ve been meaning to return, and just go ahead and drop them off.

You can even stay anonymous–just put them in a plastic bag and drop them in the return bin. We’ll be glad to see them, no matter what. And then we’ll be having a happy holiday, for sure.

12/15: New at the library this week

DVDs:

• Tigger & Pooh Christmas movie
• A Christmas memory
• The 12 dogs of Christmas
• An angel for May
• A fairy Christmas

Books:

• Shoot him if he runs / Stuart Woods — Stone Barrington and Holly Barker pursue a master spy and murderer in a tropical paradise where very little is as it seems. (Stone Barrington Series)

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)