6/30: New at the library this week

DVDs:

• Over the hedge

Books:

• Little earthquakes / Jennifer. Weiner — First comes love. Then comes marriage. And then things start to get really interesting...A tale of romance, friendship, forgiveness, and extreme sleep deprivation, as three very different women navigate one of life's most wonderful and perilous transitions: the journey of new motherhood. (read an exerpt)
• Something borrowed / Emily Giffin — tells the story of Rachel, a young attorney living and working in Manhattan. Rachel has always been the consummate good girl---until her thirtieth birthday, when her best friend, Darcy, throws her a party. That night, after too many drinks, Rachel ends up in bed with Darcy's fiancé. Although she wakes up determined to put the one-night fling behind her, Rachel is horrified to discover that she has genuine feelings for the one guy she should run from. (read an exerpt)
• Gossip hound / Wendy Holden — Grace Armiger isn't living the high life. As a publicist in a London publishing house, she spends her days trying to interest an indifferent media in her collection of oddball authors. Home's not much better-her scruffy apartment, untrustworthy boyfriend, and nagging mother aren't doing much to keep her spirits high. Plus, she's just had a wildly inappropriate one-night stand with one of her writers. But when a chance encounter turns into a brush with an A-list celebrity, Grace dares to think her life may finally be taking a promising turn . (read an exerpt)
• In her shoes / Jennifer Weiner — Meet Rose Feller. She's thirty years old and a high-powered attorney with a secret passion for romance novels. She dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her that she's beautiful. She also dreams of getting her fantastically screwed-up little sister to get her life. together. Meet Rose's sister, Maggie. Twenty-eight years old, drop-dead gorgeous and only occasionally employed. Although her dreams of big-screen stardom haven't progressed, Maggie dreams of fame and fortune -- and of getting her dowdy big sister to stick to a skin-care regime. These two women with nothing in common but childhood tragedy, shared DNA, and the same size feet, are about to learn that their family is more different than they ever imagine, and that they're more alike, than they'd ever believe. (read an exerpt)
• Miracle in the Andes : 72 days on the mountain and my long trek home / Nando Parrado — In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence. Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying—among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off. (read an exerpt)
• A million little pieces / James Frey — Amemoir of drug addiction and recovery that daused controvery when it was revealed to be partly fabricated. (read an exerpt)
• Snuggle mountain / Lindsey Lane — It's morning, and Emma wants pancakes. But the two-headed giant who lives on Snuggle Mountain has forgotten all about breakfast. So lump by bump, Emma begins her climb up the shaking, quaking mountain to reach the giant's snuggly cave. How can Emma wake the giant without getting caught in the Sleeping Spell? (Age Range: 3 to 6)
• Alaska park science : Scientific studies on climate change in Alaska's national parks / Monica Shah — The tenth issue of Alaska Park Science, entitled “Scientific Studies on Climate Change in Alaska’s National Parks,” focuses on current trends and evidence of climate change. If future projections hold true, the ecological and societal effects of climate change will be considerable in the twenty-first century.
• Maximum Ride : saving the world and other extreme sports / James Patterson — There's one last chance to save the world in MAXIMUM RIDE: SAVING THE WORLD AND OTHER EXTREME SPORTS, the closing chapter of James Patterson's thrilling trilogy. The time has arrived for Max and her winged "Flock" to face their ultimate enemy and discover their original purpose: to defeat the takeover of "Re-evolution", a sinister experiment to re-engineer a select population into a scientifically superior master race...and to terminate the rest. Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel have always worked together to defeat the forces working against them--but can they save the world when they are torn apart, living in hiding and captivity, halfway across the globe from one another? (Age Range: 12 and up)
• The navigator : a novel from the Numa files / Clive Cussler — Years before the current Gulf war, a diminutive statue was stolen from the Baghdad Museum. For some reason, this missing Phoenician icon has recently attracted marked interest among men not readily identifiable as art connoisseurs. In fact, the men who seek the so-called Navigator are ruthless killers who have already struck once. Saving the life of a UN investigator, Curt Austin and Zavala learn of this homicidal quest firsthand, thus beginning NUMA's full immersion into a mystery of Da Vinci Code dimensions
• The alibi man / Tami Hoag — She was a vision. She was a siren. She was a nightmare. She was dead. Now he needed her to disappear. And he knew just how to make it happen. The Palm Beach elite go to great lengths to protect their own-and their own no longer includes Elena Estes. Once upon a time a child of wealth and privilege, Elena turned her back on that life. Betrayed and disillusioned by those closest to her, she chose the life of an undercover cop, the hunt for justice her own personal passion. Then a tragic, haunting mistake ended her career. Now Elena exists on the fringes of her old life, training horses for a living. But a shocking event is about to draw her back into the painful vortex she's fought so hard to leave behind. (read an exerpt)
• Bangkok haunts / John Burdett — Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok’s District 8, but nothing like the video he’s just been sent anonymously: "Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species. I am watching one right now." He’s watching a snuff film. And the person dying before his disbelieving eyes is Damrong—a woman he once loved obsessively and, now it becomes clear, endlessly. And there is something more: something at the end of the film that leaves Sonchai both figuratively and literally haunted. (Sonchai Jitpleecheep Series, #3; read a sample chapter)
• Lawn boy / Gary Paulsen — One day I was 12 years old and broke. Then Grandma gave me Grandpa's old riding lawnmower. I set out to mow some lawns. More people wanted me to mow their lawns. And more and more. . . . One client was Arnold the stockbroker, who offered to teach me about "the beauty of capitalism. Supply and Demand. Diversify labor. Distribute the wealth." "Wealth?" I said. "It's groovy, man," said Arnold. (Age Range: 9 to 12)
• The short bus : a journey beyond normal / Jonathan Mooney — A young man once called unteachable journeys across America to investigate the lives of those, like himself, who are forced to create new ways of living in order to survive Labeled “dyslexic and profoundly learning disabled with attention and behavior problems,” Jonathan Mooney was a short bus rider—a derogatory term used for kids in special education and a distinction that told the world he wasn’t “normal.” Along with other kids with special challenges, he grew up hearing himself denigrated daily. Ultimately, Mooney surprised skeptics by graduating with honors from Brown University. But he could never escape his past, so he hit the road. To free himself and to learn how others had moved beyond labels, he created an epic journey. He would buy his own short bus and set out cross-country, looking for kids who had dreamed up magical, beautiful ways to overcome the obstacles that separated them from the so-called normal world.
• Acacia / David Anthony Durham — Leodan Akaran, ruler of the Known World, has inherited generations of apparent peace and prosperity, won ages ago by his ancestors. A widower of high intelligence, he presides over an empire called Acacia, after the idyllic island from which he rules. He dotes on his four children and hides from them the dark realities of traffic in drugs and human lives on which their prosperity depends. He hopes that he might change this, but powerful forces stand in his way. And then a deadly assassin sent from a race called the Mein, exiled long ago to an ice-locked stronghold in the frozen north, strikes at Leodan in the heart of Acacia while they unleash surprise attacks across the empire. On his deathbed, Leodan puts into play a plan to allow his children to escape, each to their separate destiny. And so his children begin a quest to avenge their father's death and restore the Acacian empire–this time on the basis of universal freedom. (read an exerpt)
• Black holes and baby universes and other essays / Stephen Hawking — These thirteen essays and one remarkable extended interview broadcast over the BBC on Christmas day 1992 range from the autobiographical to the purely scientific. Building on his earlier work, Stephen Hawking discusses imaginary time, how black holes can give birth to baby universes, and scientists' efforts to find a complete unified theory that would predict everything in the universe, a concept that he believes will come to seem as natural to the next generation as the idea that the world is round.
• Good harbor / Anita Diamant — Good Harbor is the long stretch of Cape Ann beach where two women friends walk and talk, sharing their personal histories and learning life's lessons from each other. Kathleen Levine, a longtime resident of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is maternal and steady, a devoted children's librarian, a convert to Judaism, and mother to two grown sons. When her serene life is thrown into turmoil by a diagnosis of breast cancer at fifty-nine, painful past secrets emerge and she desperately needs a friend. Forty-two-year-old Joyce Tabachnik is a sharp-witted freelance writer who is also at a fragile point in her life. She's come to Gloucester to follow her literary aspirations, but realizes that her husband and young daughter are becoming increasingly distant. Together, Kathleen and Joyce forge a once-in-a-lifetime bond and help each other to confront scars left by old emotional wounds. (read an exerpt)
• Judge & jury / James Patterson — Senior FBI agent Nick Pellisante is closing in on the notorious mob boss "The Electrician," when the scheduled sting goes spectacularly awry. Two FBI agents are dead, the boss is wounded, and Pellisante vows the Electrician's next move will be from a jail cell. (large print edition)
• Ricochet / Sandra Brown — When Detective Sergeant Duncan Hatcher is summoned to the home of Judge Cato Laird in the middle of the night to investigate a fatal shooting, he knows that discretion and kid-glove treatment are the keys to staying in the judge's good graces and keeping his job. At first glance, the case appears open-and-shut: Elise, the judge's trophy wife, interrupted a burglary in progress and killed the intruder in self-defense. But Duncan is immediately suspicious of Elise's innocent act. His gut feeling is that her account of the shooting is only partially true -- and it's the parts she's leaving out that bother him. (large print edition; read a sample chapter)
• The Da Vinci code / Dan Brown — While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. (large print edition; read an exerpt)
• The Book of Christmas / Neil Philip ; Sally Holmes — A luminous sampling of 24 stories, carols, and poems for the holiday season, this is a lavish collection of cherishedChristmas writings, at theheart of wh ich lies the Nativity story, told in the words of the King James Bible.
• Michael Hague's favorite Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales / H. C. Andersen — Hans Christian Andersen was one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Michael Hague has chosen nine of Andersen's best-loved fairy tales to illustrate in his unique style.
• Alaska's Kenai Peninsula wildlife viewing trail guide / Doug O'Harra —
• The Alton gift / Marion Zimmer Bradley — After the tragic, untimely death of Regis Hastur, a ruler who struggled lifelong to save the beloved world of his birth from the ambitions of the ruthless Terran Federation, the Terrans have finally abandoned Darkover to pursue interstellar civil war. As Lew Alton-returned home to the world of his birth after decades spent in exile as the Darkovan representative to the Terran Senate-wrestles with the dark shadows from his past, his daughter Marguerida's psychic Gifts warn her of impending danger. But danger to whom?

6/16: New at the library this week

DVDs:

• Mrs. Henderson presents
• Finding home
• Happy feet

Books:

• The sea hunters II / Clive Cussler — More true adventures with shipwrecks and the real life NUMA — Clive Cussler's National Underwater & Marine Agency. (read a sample chapter)
• Three wishes / Barbara. Delinsky — When a surprise October blizzard hits Panama, Vermont, blanketing the sleepy little town with several feet of snow, it creates a scene so tranquil no one suspects the tragedy to come, least of all Bree Miller. Slipping and sliding as she walks home from the diner where she works, she barely has time to notice the runaway truck skidding toward her until it is too late. (read an exerpt)
• Shadows on the tundra : Alaskan tales of predator, prey and man / Tom Walker — Drawing on 25 years' experience as a hunter, licensed guide and photographer, Walker writes a superb account of Alaska's big-game animals and their habitat. Following him, we observe and track grizzly bears, moose, wolves, caribou and Dall sheep.
• The Margarets / Sheri S. Tepper — The only human child living in a human work colony on the Martian satellite Phobos, little Margaret Bain has devised a system for keeping the suffocating demons of boredom and loneliness at bay: She invents six imaginary companions, each an extension of her own personality, to play with. When the unproductive Phobos project is shut down, and after Margaret is forced to return to Earth with her parents, the child's other selves are lost to her. But they are not gone. (read an exerpt)
• In an instant : a family's journey of love and healing / Lee. Woodruff ; Bob Woodruff — In January 2006, the Woodruffs seemed to have it all-a happy marriage and four beautiful children. Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him. (read an exerpt)
• Everyone worth knowing / Lauren Weisberger —Soon after Bette Robinson quits her horrendous Manhattan banking job like the impulsive girl she's never been, the novelty of walking her four-pound dog around the unglamorous Murray Hill neighborhood wears as thin as the "What are you going to do with your life?" phone calls from her parents. Then Bette meets Kelly, head of Manhattan's hottest PR firm, and suddenly she has a brand-new job where the primary requirement is to see and be seen inside the VIP rooms of the city's most exclusive nightclubs. (read an exerpt)
• Pasadena / David Ebershoff — At the story's center is Linda Stamp, a fishergirl born in 1903 on a coastal onion farm in San Diego's North County, and the three men who upend her life and vie for her affection: her pragmatic farming brother, Edmund; Captain Willis Poore, a Pasadena rancher with a heroic military past; and Bruder, the mysterious young man Linda's father brings home from World War I. (read an exerpt)
• Abide with me / Elizabeth Strout — In the late 1950s, in the small town of West Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss. At the same time, the community he has served so charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths and failings-faith and hypocrisy, loyalty and abandonment-when a dark secret is revealed. (read a sample chapter)
• Damage control / Robert Dugoni — A rising star at her prestigious Seattle law firm, Dana Hill knows all about stress. She pours herself into her work and family with all the energy she has. But her carefully balanced life is about to be turned upside down. First a frightening medical diagnosis forces her to reassess her roles as a lawyer, mother, and wife to a man she suddenly no longer trusts. Then her life is rocked further by the shocking and brutal murder of her twin brother. (read a sample chapter)

6/2: New at the library this week

DVDs:

• Meet the Fockers

Books:

• The grave tattoo / Val McDermid — After torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, long discarded old wives' tales takes on a chilling new plausibility. For centuries, Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian staged the massacre on Pitcairn so that he could return home. And there, he told his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth, who turned it into a long narrative poema poem that remained hidden lest it expose Wordsworth to the gallows for harboring a fugitive. Wordsworth specialist Jane Gresham, herself a native of the Lake District, feels compelled to discover once and for all whether the manuscript ever existedand whether it still exists today. But as she pursues each new lead, death follows hard on her heels. (read an exerpt)
• The Homer Spit : coal, gold, and con men / Janet R. Klein
• Exploring Alaska's Prince William Sound, its fiords, islands, glaciers, and wildlife / Neil C. Johannsen ; Elizabeth Johannsen
• A Parade of Alaska history : sculptured in bas-relief for the Alaska Mutual Savings Bank, Anchorage, Alaska / Miriam Hilscher ; Herb Hilscher
• Charles Russell / Charles M. Russell, ; Sophia Craze — Charles Russell's life and art are revealed in this large-format volume focusing on sixty-six full color paintings and sculptures. Known as the "cowboy artist," he embodied the rugged individualism of his time.
• Prisoner of Tehran : a memoir / Marina Nemat — What would you give up to protect your loved ones? Your life? In her heartbreaking, triumphant, and elegantly written memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal Islamic Revolution.
• The overlook / Michael Connelly — In his first case since he left the LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit for the prestigious Homicide Special squad, Harry Bosch is called out to investigate a murder that may have chilling consequences for national security. A doctor with access to a dangerous radioactive substance is found murdered on the overlook above the Mulholland Dam. Retracing his steps, Harry learns that a large quantity of radioactive cesium was stolen shortly before the doctor's death. With the cesium in unknown hands, Harry fears the murder could be part of a terrorist plot to poison a major American city. (Harry Bosch Series, #12; watch a video of four novel exerpts)
• The Odyssey / Homer ; Robert Fitzgerald
• Shadow divers : the true adventure of two Americans who risked everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II / Robert Kurson — For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships. But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment. (read a sample chapter)
• The unquiet / John Connolly — Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing. His daughter insists that he killed himself after allegations surfaced that he had betrayed his patients to foul and evil men -- but when a killer obsessed with uncovering the truth behind his own daughter's disappearance comes seeking revenge, long-forgotten secrets begin to emerge.
• The remains of the day / Kazuo Ishiguro — A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England.