6/20: New at the library this week

Games

Ghost recon (X-Box)
Enter the matrix (X-Box)
Star Wars: Knights of the old republic (X-Box)
Halo (X-Box)
Halo 2 (X-Box)
NFL Street 2 (X-Box)

Movies:

Bella
The day the earth stood still
Sex and the city

(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Dead and gone / Charlaine Harris
For Sookie Stackhouse, the day to day activities of the vampire and were communities in and around Bon Temps, Louisiana, are of vital interest, She’s blood-bound to the leader of the vamps, a friend to the local were pack, works for a man who is shifter, and has a brother who is a were-panther…

But for most of the humans in Bon Temps, the vamps are mysterious seductive creatures-and they don’t even know about the weres.

Until now. The weres and shifters have finally decided to follow the lead of the undead and reveal their existence to the ordinary world.

At first it seems to go well. Then the mutilated body of a were-panther is found in the parking lot of the bar where Sookie works. The victim is someone she knows, so she feels compelled to discover who-human or otherwise-did the deed.

But what she doesn’t realize is that there is a far greater danger than the killer threatening Bon Temps. A race of unhuman beings–older, more powerful and far more secretive than vampires or werewolves– is preparing for war. And Sookie will find herself an all-too human pawn in their battle… (Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Series, #9)

5/16: New at the library this week

Movies:

Love in the time of cholera
Capote
(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Pursuit / Karen Robards
W hen rookie lawyer Jessica Monaghan gets the call from John Riordan, the senior partner at the illustrious law firm for which she works, she thinks the plum assignment he offers her might be a life-changing moment. And she’s right, it is—only not in the way she hopes. It’s late on a Saturday night, and Riordan is busy—and, Jess can tell, well on his way to being drunk. He needs Jess to meet First Lady Annette Cooper, for whom Riordan is a personal lawyer, at a Washington, D.C., hotel. Jess is thrilled: This high-profile assignment must mean she’s on her way to bigger things. But bigger isn’t always better.

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)

10/1: New at the library this week

Movies:

Live free or die hard (DVD)
Why Shakespeare? (DVD)
Muse of fire (DVD)
definitely, maybe (DVD)
No country for old men (DVD)

Books:

Education of a wandering man / Louis L’Amour
In this, his most personal book ever, L’Amour writes of growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, of the parents who instilled in him a love of the printed and spoken word, and of his decision to leave school at fifteen to make the world his classroom. While his contemporaries attended high school, L’Amour skinned cattle in Texas, worked as a circus roustabout and a mine caretaker, won small-town prizefighting exhibitions, hoboed across Texas on the Southern Pacific, and shipped out to the West Indies, England, and Singapore as a merchant seaman. Wherever he wandered, his pockets were always bulging with books. (read an exerpt)

Skeleton Lake / Mike Doogan
Twenty years ago, Alaska was a different place— rougher, more violent. Danny Shirtleff was the kind of cop needed to keep the lid on Anchorage, never afraid to mix it up. His luck ran out on a muddy road next to Skeleton Lake. Two bullets in the back of the head took care of Danny, and landed fledgling detective Nik Kane with the first big case of his career. He never expected that it would take twenty years to untangle the threads that made up the dead police officer’s life.

7/12: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

Nevada Barr collection: blood lure, hunting season, flashback / Nevada Barr
Blood Lure (Bill Weideman, Melissa Coates): In Blood Lure, Anna returns to the West, where she is sent on a training assignment to study grizzly bears in Waterton/Glacier National Peace Park. But back in her beloved mountains, where the air is pure and cool, Anna fails to find the spiritual renewal she expected. Instead, nature seems to have become twisted, carrying a malevolence almost human in its focus.

Hunting Season (Ruth Bloomquist, Melissa Coates): When Anna answers a call to historic Mt. Locust, the last thing she expects to encounter is murder. But the man Anna finds in the stand’s old bedroom is no tourist in distress. He’s nearly naked, and very dead, his body bearing marks consistent with an S & M ritual gone awry. When hidden agendas and old allegiances are revealed, it’s suddenly Anna’s life on the line.

Flashback (Ruth Bloomquist, Mikael Naramore): Running from a proposal of marriage from Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon takes a post as a temporary supervisory ranger on remote Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park. This island paradise served as a prison for the Lincoln conspirators during and after the Civil War. When a mysterious boat explosion – and the discovery of unidentifiable body parts – keeps her anchored to the present, Anna finds crimes of past and present closing in on her. A tangled web that was woven before she arrived begins to threaten her sanity and her life. (abridged; cassette)

7/5: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

As part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ The Big Read, we have just received audio guides on CD of the following books (*these novels are in our collection):

• To Kill a Mockingbird*
• The Great Gatsby*
• The Maltese Falcon*
• The Grapes of Wrath*
• A Farewell to Arms*
• Fahrenheit 451*
• The Call of the Wild*
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter*
• The Joy Luck Club*
• The Age of Innocence*
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Bless Me, Ultima
• My Antonia

Movies:

Charlie Wilson’s War (dvd)
Radio days (dvd)
Michael Clayton (dvd)

4/12: New at the library this week

Movies

Wildthings (dvd)

Books

Buckingham Palace gardens / Anne Perry
Pitt investigates the murder of a maid at Buckingham Palace, narrowing his group of suspects down to several house guests who are meeting with the Prince of Wales to discuss the funding of a huge project: the Cape to Cairo railway. While the Prince might overlook the unfortunate loss of a maid, the Queen, who is due back soon, will likely veto any Royal support in the scheme if she finds out. (read a sample chapter)

My old man and the sea : a father and son sail around Cape Horn / David Hays
Some fathers and sons go fishing together. Some play baseball. David and Daniel Hays decided to sail a tiny boat 17,000 miles to Cape Horn and back. This is the often hilarious account of how two men overcame the unforgiving forces of the oceans to accomplish what few had done before them. More importantly, it is a moving story of how father and son overcame the distance between them to find a deeper love and respect for each other. (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…

2/23: New at the library this week

Lost horizon / James Hilton

Doctor Zhivago / Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

The case against Hillary Clinton / Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and one of our most astute political observers, argues in this concise and compelling book that everyone in America—not just New Yorkers—must look closely at Hillary Clinton and the implications of her Senate bid. What is her record? Which Americans does she truly represent? What are her motives? And, most important, what does Hillary’s Election 2000 campaign mean for the rest of American in 2004? (read an exerpt)

Plum lucky / Janet Evanovich
Stephanie Plum has a way of attracting danger, lunatics, oddballs, bad luck . . . and mystery men. And no one is more mysterious than the unmentionable Diesel. He’s back and hot on the trail of a little man in green pants who’s lost a giant bag of money. Problem is, the money isn’t exactly lost. Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur has found it, and like any good Jersey senior citizen, she’s hightailed it in a Winnebago to Atlantic City and hit the slots. With Lula and Connie in tow, Stephanie attempts to bring Grandma home, but the luck of the Irish is rubbing off on everyone: Lula’s found a job modeling plus-size lingerie. Connie’s found a guy. Diesel’s found Stephanie. And Stephanie has found herself in over her head with a caper involving thrice-stolen money, a racehorse, a car chase, and a bad case of hives.

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)