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)

5/2: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

Miracle at St. Anna / James McBride
Inspired by a historical incident that took place in the village of St. Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany and by the experiences of the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Division in Italy during World War 11, Miracle at St. Anna is a singular evocation of war, cruelty, passion, heroism, and love. It is the story of four American soldiers, the villagers among whom they take refuge, a band of partisans, and an Italian boy, all of whom encounter a miracle — though perhaps the true miracle lies in themselves. (cassettes, unabridged)

The appeal / John Grisham
In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.

Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided? (CD; unabridged)

4/15: New at the library this week

Movies:

Stop bullying now! : Video toolkit
The Spiderwick chronicles
In Bruges
Slumdog millionaire
(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Welcome to the departure lounge : adventures in mothering mother / Meg Federico
The adventure begins when Meg’s mother, Addie, vacationing in Florida, takes a spill. At the hospital, Addie bolts upright on her gurney and yells “I demand an autopsy!” before passing out cold.

“One minute, she is unconscious, the next, she’s nuts,” observes Meg Federico in this hilarious and poignant memoir of taking care of eighty-year-old Addie and her relatively new (and equally old) husband, Walter, in their not-so-golden years.

Addie’s accident is a portent of things to come over the next two years as Meg oversees her mother’s home care in the Departure Lounge, the nickname Meg gives Addie and Walter’s house in suburban New Jersey. It is a place of odd behaviors and clashing caregivers, where chaos and confusion reign supreme.

Meg had expected that Addie and Walter would settle into a Rockwellian dotage of docile dependency. Instead the pair regress into terrible teens. Meg watches from the sidelines in disbelief as her mother and stepfather, forbidden by doctors to drink, conspire to order cases of scotch by phone; as Addie’s attendant accuses the evening staff of midnight voodoo; as the increasingly demented Walter’s sex drive becomes unbridled and mail-order sex aids are delivered to the front door. Meg jumps in to cope with the pandemonium–even as she struggles to manage her own family back in Nova Scotia. (read an exerpt)

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)

2/28: New at the library this week

Movies:

Hellboy II : The golden army (dvd)
Youth without youth (dvd)
Waking the dead : Season 1 (dvd)
The postman (dvd)
Farenheit 9/11 (dvd)
Da Vinci’s inquest: Season 3 (dvd)

Books:

The faithful spy / Alex Berenson
John Wells is the only American CIA agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda. Since before the attacks in 2001, Wells has been hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, biding his time, building his cover.
Now, on the orders of Omar Khadri–the malicious mastermind plotting more al Qaeda strikes on America–Wells is coming home. Neither Khadri nor Jennifer Exley, Wells’s superior at Langley, knows quite what to expect. (John Wells Series, #1)

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)

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…

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)

2/16: New at the library this week

Books:

Undertow / Sydney Bauer — Christina Haynes is the teenage daughter of a popular US Senator, and when she drowns moments after a conversation at sea with her best friend’s mother, Boston Lawyer David Cavanaugh faces his toughest case to date.

Boom! : voices of the sixties : personal reflections on the ’60s and today / Tom Brokaw — The author takes us on a tour of the turbulent 1960s, blending his personal reflections with firsthand accounts from the people that lived through it. (read an sample chapter)

The sea of monsters / Rick Riordan — Percy Jackson’s seventh-grade year has been surprisingly quiet. Not a single monster has set foot on his New York prep-school campus. But when an innocent game of dodgeball among Percy and his classmates turns into a death match against an ugly gang of cannibal giants, things get . . . well, ugly. And the unexpected arrival of Percy’s friend Annabeth brings more bad news: the magical borders that protect Camp Half-Blood have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and unless a cure is found, the only safe haven for demigods will be destroyed. (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series, #2; Age Range: 9 to 12)

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)