10/1: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

Undue influence / Steve Martini (unabridged; cassettes)
Paul Madriani is back in a complex web of murder and deceit — this time within his own family. His wife Nikki has just died of cancer. On her deathbed, Nikki made Paul promise to look after her younger sister, Laurel Vega, who is mired in a bitter child-custody battle with her ex-husband, a powerful state senator.

When Jack Vega’s new wife is found slain execution-style, Laurel becomes the prime suspect. Paul — remembering his promise to his wife — has no choice but to take Laurel’s case. But as he tries to mount a defense and probes deeper into the lives of those involved, he discovers a trail of betrayal and duplicity that hides the truth at every turn. (Paul Madriani Series #3)

For whom the bell tolls / Ernest Hemingway (unabridged; cassettes)
The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal.

Goodnight, Irene / Jan Burke (unabridged; cassettes)
For thirty-five years the identity of the dismembered woman found under the Las Piernas pier has remained a mystery. What secret did she take to her grave? Southern California reporter Irene Kelly has uncovered a maze of forensic records and confidential files that suggest a motive far more sinister than anyone imagined. The discovery has brought her close to Detective Frank Harriman, and closer still to exposing a killer who will resort to anything to keep his secrets buried — and Irene silenced forever.

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)

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.

7/18: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

Incident at Vichy / Arthur Miller (CD)
In a small and dark room, nine men are assembled under a shadowy pretext. As the tension builds, the men are questioned – are they the sort of people whom the new Nazi regime considers “inferior?” Starring Lawrence Pressman, Arye Gross, Gregory Itzin and Raphael Sbarge. Written by Arthur Miller.

Arcadia / Tom Stoppard (CD)
Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia merges science with human concerns and ideals, examining the universe’s influence in our everyday lives and ultimate fates through relationship between past and present, order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge. Set in an English country house in the year 1809-1812 and 1989, the play examines the lives of two modern scholars and the house’s current residents with the lives of those who lived there 180 years earlier. Arcadia leaves us with the view that if the universe is an apparently doomed machine, then whilst we are alive, we might as well dance. Features an interview with Ira Nadel, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, and the author of “Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard.”

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)

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)