10/6: New at the library this week

Audiobooks:

• Beach road (CD) / James Patterson — Montauk lawyer Tom Dunleavy's client list is woefully small - occasional real estate closings barely keep him in paper clips. When he is hired to defend a local man accused in a triple murder that has the East Hampton world in an uproar, he knows that he has found the case of his lifetime. (read a sample chapter)
• Double homicide : Boston : Santa Fe (CD) / Jonathan Kellerman ; Faye Kellerman — It's Christmastime, and police officers Darrel Two Moons and Steve Katz are expecting the usual gang assaults, feuding spouses, and alcohol-related misdemeanors. Then the call comes in from the Historic District: the reported death of an art gallery owner whose bludgeoned body stretches across a bleached pine floor like a big, nasty still life. (read a sample chapter)
• Emma's secret (cassette) / Barbara Taylor Bradford — The legendary Emma Harte, heroine of A Woman of Substance, returns in Emma's Secret, a novel that showcases the storytelling power of Barbara Taylor Bradford.
• Death's acre : inside the legendary forensic lab the Body Farm where the dead do tell tales (CD) / William M. Bass — Dr. Bill Bass, one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists, gained international attention when he built a forensic lab like no other: The Body Farm. Now, this master scientist unlocks the gates of his lab to reveal his most intriguing cases-and to revisit the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, fifty years after the fact.

DVDs:

• The clearing

Videos:

• The scarlet and the black
• The truth about Charlie
• Oscar's greatest moments
• Penny serenade
• The amazing adventure
• Power yoga with Rodney Yee
• Lower body yoga for beginners (Gaiam)
• Upper body yoga for beginners (Gaiam)
• Yoga conditioning for life (Gaiam)
• Abs yoga for beginners (Gaiam)
• Stress relief yoga
• War and remembrance (12-tape set)

Books:

• The captain's dog : my journey with the Lewis and Clark tribe / Roland Smith — Born the runt of his litter and gambled away to a rusty old riverman, the Newfoundland pup Seaman doesn't imagine his life will be marked by any kind of glory—beyond chasing down rats. But when he meets Captain Meriwether Lewis, Seaman finds himself on a path that will make history. Lewis is just setting off on his landmark search for the Northwest Passage, and he takes Seaman along. Sharing the curiosity and strength of spirit of his new master, Seaman proves himself a valuable companion at every turn. Part history, part science—and adventure through and through—The Captain's Dog is the carefully researched, thrilling tale of America's greatest journey of discovery, as seen through the keen, compassionate eyes of a remarkable dog. (Age Range: Young Adult)
• Seaman : the dog who explored the West with Lewis & Clark / Gail Karwoski —This imaginative retelling of the journey of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the Corps of Discovery brings to life an unheralded member of the Corps -- Seaman, a 150-pound Newfoundland dog. As Seaman makes the long trek with the Corps, he serves a key role in the expedition's success. Come along with Seaman and his companions as they explore the vast uncharted lands beyond the Mississippi River. Travel with them as they form friendships with several Indian tribes and welcome Sacagawea to the expedition. Experience with them the many dangers of this wild land. And rejoice with them when they cross the Continental Divide and finally reach their goal -- the rocky shores of the Pacific Ocean. (Age Range: 8 to 12)
• Lewis and Clark and me : a dog's tale / Laurie Myers — From his first meeting with Lewis, to being mistaken for a bear by Indians who had never seen such a large dog, to his encounters with wild animals both familiar and unfamiliar, Seaman's tales are filled with the joys of companionship and the tingling excitement of adventure. (Age Range: 8 to 12)
• Mothers of the South : portraiture of the white tenant farm woman / Margaret Jarman Hagoood — In 1937 Hagood visited 254 tenant houses in the Carolina Piedmont, Georgia, and Alabama, talking with and listening to southern mothers. Mothers of the South records not only the results of her work but the voices, attitudes, and expectations of the people she interviewed. Tenant farming, a widespread way of life in the '30s, began to disappear with the coming of World War II and increased farm mechanization and became virtually nonexistent by the 1970s. Hagood's work is invaluable for its insight into this lost world.
• Alaska hooch : the history of alcohol in early Alaska / Thayne I. Andersen
• Collected poems, 1934-1952 / Dylan Thomas
• Helping children cope with grief / Alan Wolfelt — Guidelines are presented in the book of how one can create a "helping healing relationship." Through reading and participating in the activities presented, the reader will become capable of establishing a very special kind of goal-directed experience with the grieving child. Unites interpretation of human research and grief processes to accentuate the quality of caregiving to children during their grief periods. Explained are the stages through which the grieving person must travel with help, characteristics of a caregiver are expounded, and techniques presented to create the best atmosphere for a grieving child to thrive with love and care.
• Garden almanac : a month-by-month guide / Penelope O'Sullivan — Maintaining a beautiful garden is as simple as following each month's "to do" list in this handy book. Geared to zones 3 to 6, Garden Almanac provides inspiration with color photographs and historic botanical illustrations, and the tools to keep gardens flourishing: easy-to-use monthly overviews, calendars, and task lists.
• Creating birdhouses : 30 delightful projects to turn your garden into a home for birds / Mary Maguire — Choose from 30 projects to create your own birdhouse, table, nesting box, bird feeder or bird bath - each one beautiful, functional and highly individual. Includes traditional, classic designs plus more contemporary projects, as well as tips for decorating existing birdhouses and tables.
• Making old-fashioned Santas / Candie Frankel
• We all shine on : the stories behind every John Lennon song 1970-1980 / Paul Du Noyer —

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)

5/19: New at the library this week

Books:

• False impression / Jeffrey Archer — When an aristocratic old lady is brutally murdered in her English country home on the night before September 11, 2001, it will take all the resources of the FBI and Interpol to work out the connection between her death and a priceless Van Gogh, which is stolen that night. But in the end, it is a courageous young woman who escapes from North Tower of the World Trade Center after the first plane crashes into the building, who has the foresight and determination to take on both sides of the law and avenge the old lady’s death.
• Moby-Dick / Herman Melville — A masterpiece of storytelling and symbolic realism, this thrilling adventure and epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. More than just the tale of a hair-raising voyage, Melville's riveting story passionately probes man's soul. Required reading in American literature courses from high school to college. Unabridged reproduction of a standard edition.
• Bad Girl Creek / Jo-Ann Mapson — Phoebe DeThomas has lived life as spectator, confined to a wheelchair, in awe of her beloved Aunt Sadie, and overshadowed by her financial wizard brother, James. But when Sadie dies, leaving Phoebe a flower farm, the world opens up to her in ways she could never have imagined.
• Stickeen / John Muir — An illustrated edition of the well-loved tale in which world-famous naturalist John Muir recounts how he and a dog named Stickeen struggled to cross an Alaskan glacier during an ice storm. An exhilarating story that has become an American classic. (Age Range: 8 to 10)
• Stickeen : John Muir and the brave little dog — John Muir's favorite story of "the most memorable of all my wild days"-his classic adventure on an Alaskan glacier with the dog Stickeen-is now retold in modern language with stunning illustrations for another generation of children to enjoy. This is a compelling story of the developing relationship between Muir and an aloof, unfriendly little dog, Stickeen. After becoming stranded on the glacier, they reach safety with the help of a courageous trip over an ice bridge. (Age Range: 8 to 11)
• Close case / Alafair Burke — For Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid's thirty-second birthday, she gets an unusual gift: a homicide call out. The crime scene: the elite Hillside neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. The victim: hotshot investigative reporter Percy Crenshaw, who has been bludgeoned to death in his carport. (Samantha Kincaid Series, read a sample chapter)
• Silvermeadow / Barry Maitland — Two cases. One location. The first case, a girl gone missing, seems a decidedly local affair. The second, the return of a violent criminal who had fled the country, instantly attracts the interest of Scotland Yard and Detective Chief Inspector David Brock. When he learns that his longtime nemesis, the amphetamine-juiced killer and thief known as "Upper" North, may have surfaced, Brock assembles his team, summoning Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla to assist him. Their manhunt centers on Silvermeadow, the huge and glittery supermall on the outskirts of London where North was spotted. (Kathy and Brock Mysteries Series; read a sample chapter)
• The pilgrim's progress in the allegory of a dream / John Bunyan; Cheryl V. Ford — (public domain text)
• Field of blood / Denise Mina — When the body of a four-year-old boy is found tortured and battered to death, it is assumed the child has been the victim of a vicious sexual predator. Instead the police are led, not to the house of an adult killer, but to the doors of two eleven-year-old boys. (Paddy Meehan Series, #1; read an exerpt)
• Hide in plain sight / Michele Albert — Fiona Kennedy can tell a forgery from the genuine article in a snap. Drop-dead-sexy Grif Laughton, however, is not so easy to read. He's clearly a masterpiece of the male variety -- and the attraction he sparks is definitely the real thing. But Grif is a man of secrets, and the potentially priceless manuscript he's asked her to appraise is just one of them. (read an exerpt)
• A northern light / Jennifer Donnelly— Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder. (Age Range: Young Adult; read an exerpt; 2004 Printz award winner)

5/12: New at the library this week

Videos:

• Train of life
• Star Trek : The motion picture
• Star trek : The undiscovered country
• Star trek : The wrath of Khan
• Star trek : The search for Spock
• The 13th Warrior

DVDs:

• Shadow of a doubt
• Mighty Joe Young
• The libertine
• Miami vice
• Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead man's chest

Audiobooks:

• The zero game / Brad Meltzer (casssette) — Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are best friends who have plum jobs as senior staffers to well-respected congressmen. But after a decade in Washington, idealism has faded to disillusionment, and they're bored. Then one of them finds out about the clandestine Zero Game. It starts out as good fun—a simple wager between friends. But when someone close to them ends up dead, Harris and Matthew realize the game is far more sinister than they ever imagined—and that they're about to be the game's next victims. (read a sample chapter)

Books:

• Revenge of innocents / Nancy Taylor. Rosenberg — Carolyn knew everything about Veronica Campbell. She knew about the case of murder and retribution that haunted her life and her career. About her stormy relationship with her husband, Drew. About the emotional darkness that was overwhelming Veronica's fragile seventeen-year-old daughter, Jude. But seeing her friend laid out on a cold hard slab of steel in a morgue, and hearing the initial judgments of the investigators, Carolyn also knows this: there's no way Veronica would have ever taken her own life. (Carolyn Sullivan Series, #4)
• The Alexandria link / Steve Berry — Cotton Malone retired from the high-risk world of elite operatives for the U.S. State Department to lead the low-key life of a rare-book dealer. But his quiet existence is shattered when he receives an anonymous e-mail: "You have something I want. You're the only person on earth who knows where to find it. Go get it. You have 72 hours. If I don't hear from you, you will be childless." His horrified ex-wife confirms that the threat is real: Their teenage son has been kidnapped. When Malone's Copenhagen bookshop is burned to the ground, it becomes brutally clear that those responsible will stop at nothing to get what they want. And what they want is nothing less than the lost Library of Alexandria.
• The woods / Harlan Coben — Twenty years ago, four teenagers at summer camp walked into the woods at night. Two were found murdered, and the others were never seen again. Four families had their lives changed forever. Now, two decades later, they are about to change again.
• Betraying our troops : the destructive results of privatizing war / Dina Rasor; Robert Bauman — In this shocking exposé, two government fraud experts reveal how private contractors have put the lives of countless American soldiers on the line while damaging our strategic interests and our image abroad. From the shameful war profiteering of companies like Halliburton/KBR to the sinister influence that corporate lobbyists have on American foreign policy, Dina Rasor and Robert H. Bauman paint a disturbing picture. Here they give the inside story on troops forced to subsist on little food and contaminated water, on officers afraid to lodge complaints because of Halliburton's political clout, on millions of dollars in contractors' bogus claims that are funded by American taxpayers. Drawing on exclusive sources within government and the military, the authors show how money and power have conspired to undermine our fighting forces and threaten the security of our country.
• 6th target / James Patterson; Maxine Paetro — When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are being plucked off the streets together with their nannies-- but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. (Women's Murder Club Series, #6)
• Young men & fire / Norman Maclean — On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy. (National Book Critics Circle Award 1992)
• The golden compass / Philip Pullman — Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. (His Dark Materials Series, #1; read an exerpt)
• The inheritance of loss / Kiran Desai — In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge's chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country's place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai's new-sprung romance with her handsome Nepali tutor and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they, too, are forced to confront their colliding interests. The nation fights itself. (read a sample chapter)
• What the dead know / Laura Lippman — Thirty years ago two sisters disappeared from a shopping mall. Their bodies were never found and those familiar with the case have always been tortured by these questions: How do you kidnap two girls? Who'or what'could have lured the two sisters away from a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon without leaving behind a single clue or witness? Now a clearly disoriented woman involved in a rush-hour hit-and-run claims to be the younger of the long-gone Bethany sisters. But her involuntary admission and subsequent attempt to stonewall investigators only deepens the mystery. (read a sample chapter)
• A wicked snow / Gregg Olsen — Hannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck on her family’s farm. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug up - one of them her mother’s. It was the nation’s worst murder scene in decades and the killer was never found.Twenty years later Hannah is a talented CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back. (read a sample chapter)
• The Yiddish policemen's union / Michael Chabon — For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. (read a sample chapter)
• The widow / Carla Neggers — Four days after Abigail Browning's wedding, her life changed in a way she never expected: her husband was shot, meeting his death along the rocky Mount Desert Island coast. Was it a random act of violence, or could someone have wanted Christopher dead? That's the question that has haunted Abigail, now a homicide detective, for the past seven years. As determined as ever to find her husband's killer, she returns to the foggy Maine island -- and the home she has inherited there -- after receiving an anonymous tip. Is it just another false lead by someone looking for attention? Or can she finally prove that his death was tied to something that happened that night . . . and that he was murdered? (read an exerpt)
• Children are no match for fire : A fire safety story for the whole family / Carol Dean ; Sandra Dunn — John and Jodie are twins who are turning five years old on July 4th. They attend a class at their local fire department, where Patches, the department's Dalmatian, shows them his version of Stop, Drop, and Roll. The twins are eager to share what they have learned with their parents, and want to practice the things Chief Foley had suggested. Little did they know how important the training was going to be to their friend Kim. John and Jodie have a birthday they will never forget. John becomes a hero, and receives an award for his quick action.
• Edward Weston : the flame of recognition: his photographs accompanied / Edward Weston — Integrating revealing excerpts from Edward Weston's own Daybooks and letters with some of his most exquisite photographs, Nancy Newhall sheds light on Weston's own attempts to "understand the strange flashes of vision" that came through his camera.
• The daybooks of Edward Weston Vol II: California / Edward Weston — For more than fifteen years, Edward Weston kept a diary in which he recorded his struggle to understand himself, his society, and his medium. Seldom has an artist written about his life as vividly, intimately, or sensitively. His journal has become a classic of photographic literature.
• Dancing with the wheel : the medicine wheel workbook / Sun Bear — The result of nearly twenty-five years of intensive study with two Native American dreaming societies, Dancing the Dream draws our attention to the four directions of the Medicine Wheel (East, South, West, and North) and the three unseen directions – Above, Below, and Within – and explains how each of these seven directions represents a specific path on the spiritual journey. (read an exerpt)
• By my side / Nora Roberts — Contains two books— 1) From This Day: When B. J. Clark, manager of the Lakeside Inn, met the new owner, Taylor Reynolds, she was fully prepared to dislike him. She feared--and with good reason--that he planned to transform her lovely, sleepy old hotel into a resort for jet-setters. But when sparks flew between them, B.J. soon found herself torn between her professional antagonism and her growing attraction to the man she had sworn to despise. 2) Temptation: Socialite Eden Carlbough didn't expect running a girls' camp to be easy, but she never thought she'd literally be run up an apple tree by the little monsters--nor did she think she'd come crashing down into the capable arms of orchard owner Chase Elliot. Chase knew he'd caught a windfall when he looked at the woman in his arms. He didn't like being cast as the serpent, but how could he resist when she'd just offered him such forbidden fruit? (read an exerpt)
• The same sweet girls / Cassandra King — On an island every summer and in the mountains every fall, the Same Sweet Girls come together to share their stories. When one of the group faces the most difficult challenge of her life, the novel builds to an almost unbearably powerful conclusion, one of the most memorable in current fiction. Without a touch of sentimentality, Cassandra King writes of the way close friends can help each other through even the most cataclysmic life events. (read an exerpt)
• Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson — the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience. (read a sample chapter)
• The flamingo rising / Larry Baker — It's the 1960s in Jacksonville, Florida (where the sixties are still the fifties), and some of America's last sweet moments of innocence are unfolding out on the coastal highway at the Flamingo Drive-In Theatre, owned and operated by the Lee family. (read an exerpt)
• Ugly ways / Tina McElroy Ansa — Three sexy, screwed-up Southern sisters come home to Mulberry to put their totally self-centered mother, Mudear, in her grave. We meet the Lovejoy women as they gather in their mother's house to lay her and the demons she has dumped on them to rest.
• Ghost soldiers : the forgotten epic story of World War II's most dramatic mission / Hampton Sides — On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected trooops from the elite U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty miles in an attempt to rescue 513 American and British POWs who had spent three years in a surreally hellish camp near the city of Cabanatuan. Hampton Sides explores the mystery of human behavior under extreme duress - the resilience of the prisoners, who defied the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation, tropical diseases, and unspeakable tortures; the violent cultural clashes with Japanese guards and soldiers steeped in the warrior ethic of Bushido; the remarkable heroism of the Rangers and Filipino guerillas; the complex motivations of the U.S. high command, some of whom could justly be charged with abandoning the men of Bataan in 1942; and the nearly suicidal bravado of several spies, including priests and a cabaret owner, who risked their lives to help the prisoners during their long ordeal. (read an exerpt)
• The art of being an elephant / Christine Denis-Huot; Michel Denis-Huot — They're the majestic lords of the savannah--and as these magnificently beautiful photos and engaging text prove, the elephant is one of the most surprising and intelligent creatures on our planet.
• Staircases / Eva Jiricna — Forty-nine historic staircases in 18 countries are reviewed.

4/5: New at the library this week

Videos:

• Hard candy
• Mrs. Harris
• She's the man

DVDs:

• Anne of Avonlea
• DaVinci's inquest, season 1
• Babel
• World War II: when lions roared
• Road to Bali; Road to Rio
• When it was a game
• Nacho libre

Books:

• At some disputed barricade / Anne Perry — July 1917: Joseph Reavley, a chaplain, and his sister Judith, an ambulance driver, are bone-weary as they approach the fourth year of the conflict; the peace of the English countryside seems a world away. (World War One Series #4; read an exerpt)
• Secrets of a family album / Isla Dewar — Obsessively neat Lily, a writer who writes about writers, is asked to interview the enigmatic Rita Boothe, journalist, photographer, self-styled culinary expert and wit. Sitting in Rita's living room, leafing through a book of photographs from the early seventies, Lily comes across a picture of an incandescently sexy young woman sitting in the back of a limousine swigging Jack Daniels. It is her mother, Mattie.
• Bad blood / Linda A. Fairstein — Defendant Brendan Quillian, a prominent young businessman, is charged with the brutal strangulation of his beautiful young wife, Amanda. His conviction is not a certainty: Quillian was conveniently out of town on the day of the killing, and he has hired a formidable defense attorney who seems one step ahead of Cooper as the trial opens. But with the help of detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, she is confident she can prove Quillian paid a hit man to commit the crime. (Alexandra Cooper Series; read a sample chapter)
• Step on a crack / James Patterson — With the unexpected death of a beloved former first lady, the nation falls into mourning as the world's most powerful people gather in New York for her funeral. Then the inconceivable occurs. Billionaires, politicians, and superstars of every kind are suddenly trapped by one man's brilliant and ruthless scenario.
• The suspect / John T. Lescroart — When Dr. Caryn Dryden is found floating dead in her hot tub, homicide inspector Devin Juhle targets a suspect close to home: her husband, Stuart Gorman. After all, Stuart was recently asked for a divorce, and he stands to gain millions in insurance. His alibi - that he was at his cabin on Tamarack Lake that weekend - doesn't keep him out of hot water. But maybe a shrewd attorney will.
• The best life diet / Bob Greene — a lifetime plan for losing weight and keeping it off. Bob Greene helped Oprah achieve her dramatic weight loss, and he can help you too. You'll eat the same delicious food that Oprah enjoys, and, just like Oprah, you'll have Bob to encourage you at every step.
• An Irish country doctor / Patrick Taylor — Barry Laverty, M.D., can barely find the village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there, but already he knows that there is nowhere he would rather live than in the emerald hills and dales of Northern Ireland. The proud owner of a spanking-new medical degree and little else in the way of worldly possessions, Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant in a small rural practice.
• The road / Cormac McCarthy — A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. They sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearting, a cart of scavenged food-and each other. (read an exerpt)
• From Baghdad, with love : a Marine, the war, and a dog named Lava / Jay Kopelman — When Marines enter an abandoned house in Fallujah, Iraq, and hear a suspicious noise, they clench their weapons, edge around the corner, and prepare to open fire. What they find during the U.S.–led attack on the "most dangerous city on Earth," however, is not an insurgent bent on revenge, but a tiny puppy left behind when most of the city's population fled before the bombing. Despite military law that forbids the keeping of pets, the Marines de-flea the pup with kerosene, de-worm him with chewing tobacco, and fill him up on Meals Ready to Eat. (read an exerpt)
• Do-it-yourself home improvement : a step-by-step guide / Julian Cassell — Covering everything you need to know for any home task. From quick-fix repair jobs to major construction, this is the ultimate visual guide to every aspect of home improvement.

12/2: New at the library this week

Videos:

• The Alamo
• Open range
• The hunted
• Spy game
• Fascination
• North and south : Book 1 & Book 2

DVDs:

• The sea inside
• Vengeance valley
• Casablanca express/Swiss conspiracy
• Mystery woman
• Night of the living dead
• Paradise now

Books:

• Murder below zero / Ronald P. Lovell — Professor and sometime amateur sleuth Thomas Martindale leaves campus to sign on as a science writer for a research expedition to the Arctic for a change of pace from the often mundane world of the university. The work is unique: an attempt to study ice as a tool for national security. Soon after the members of the team board a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker for the journey to their base—a remote island in the Beaufort Sea—Russian scientists join the group with unpleasant consequences. (read a sample chapter)
• The end / Lemony Snicket — This book is the last in A Series of Unfortunate Events, and even if you braved the previous twelve volumes, you probably can't stand such unpleasantries as a fearsome storm, a suspicious beverage, a herd of wild sheep, an enormous bird cage, and a truly haunting secret about the Baudelaire parents. (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #13)(Age Range: 9 to 12) (read a sample chapter)
• The life and times of the thunderbolt kid / Bill Bryson — Bill Bryson's first travel book opened with the immortal line, "I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." In this hilarious new memoir, he travels back to explore the kid he once was and the weird and wonderful world of 1950s America. He modestly claims that this is a book about not very much: about being small and getting much larger slowly. But for the rest of us, it is a laugh-out-loud book that will speak volumes - especially to anyone who has ever been young.
• Happy feet : the movie storybook — Little Mumble isn't like the other penguins--he loves to dance! When the penguin elders blame Mumble's unique "happy feet" for the shortage of food, Mumble bravely sets off on an epic quest to prove them wrong . (Age Range: 3 to 6)
• Santa cruise / Mary Higgins Clark — Alvirah Meehan, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth; her husband, Willy; recently hitched private detective Regan Reilly and her groom, Jack, head of the NYPD Major Case Squad; and Regan's parents, Nora and Luke, are guests on the Royal Mermaid's maiden voyage, the Santa Cruise. The cruise is Commodore Randolph Weed's gift to a select group of people who in the last year "made the world a better place." What he really wants is good publicity that will generate future bookings for his struggling new venture. He also plans to scatter his beloved mother's ashes at sea during this four-day odyssey in the Caribbean. What he doesn't know is that his ne'er-do-well nephew, Eric, has smuggled two escaping criminals on board. (read a sample)

11/4: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

• Because of Winn-Dixie / Kate DiCamillo

Books:

• Short straw / Stuart Woods — reintroduces Santa Fe lawyer Ed Eagle, who first appeared in Woods's 1992 thriller, Santa Fe Rules. In his first adventure, Ed fell in love with the seductive Barbara Kennerly, and married her — against his better judgment. Turns out that Ed should have listened to his intuition. Ed Eagle awakens the morning after his fortieth birthday to find that Barbara has vanished, and Ed's money — from his business, his bank, and his brokerage accounts — has been wired to the Cayman Islands.
• Snow treasure / Marie McSwigan — In the bleak winter of 19 0, Nazi troops parachuted into Peter Lindstrom's tiny Norwegian village and held it captive. Nobody thought the Nazis could be defeated--until Uncle Victor told Peter how the children could fool the enemy. It was a dangerous plan. They had to slip past Nazi guards with nine million dollars in gold hidden on their sleds. It meant risking their country's treasure--and their lives. (Age Range: 8 to 11)
• Stormbreaker: The Graphic Novel / Anthony Horowitz — They told him his uncle died in a car accident. Fourteen-year-old Alex knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's windshield confirm his suspicions. But nothing prepares him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for MI6—Britain's top secret intelligence agency. Recruited to find his uncle's killers and complete his final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Now is your chance to see this book visualized in a brand-new format, with bold, edgy, manga-like illustrations that bring Alex Rider to life in a way not seen before.(Alex Rider Series; Age Range: Young Adult)
• Ghosthunters and the Gruesome Invincible Lightning Ghost! / Cornelia Caroline Funke — Hugo, still an Averagely Spooky Ghost, and Hetty Hyssop, world-renowned ghosthunter, have formed an agency dedicated to dealing with difficult apparitions. No case can defeat them--until they encounter a Gruesome Invincible Lightning Ghost. This smoking specter has claimed the penthouse suite of a beachfront hotel, where it passes its eternal vacation by turning guests into ghosts themselves. Could Hugo's slime douse the flaming phantom--or are Tom and the team about to get burned? ( Ghosthunters Series, #2; Age Range: 7 to 10)
• Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost / Cornelia Caroline Funke — Nine-year-old Tom can't catch a break: He's a klutz, his sister Lola pretty much hates his guts, and--and this is a BIG "and"--he just found a ghost camping out in his cellar. Lucky for Tom his grandma's best friend just happens to be the world's foremost ghosthunter. Under her expert tutelage, Tom learns the tools of the trade--which just happen to include buckets of graveyard dirt--and soon finds he has to face down not just the Averagely Spooky Ghost (ASG) in his basement but the Incredibly Revolting Ghost (IRG) in town. ( Ghosthunters Series, #1; Age Range: 7 to 10)
• Sugar sugar rune 1 / Moyoko Anno — Chocolat and Vanilla are young witch princesses from a magical land. They've come to earth to compete in a contest - whichever girl captures the most hearts will become a queen! Living in a boarding school, they must make as many boys fall in love with them as possible if they want to achieve their goal. Standing against them are a pair of rival princes looking to capture their hearts because they want to be kings! (publisher's preview)
• Sugar sugar rune 2 / Moyoko Anno — Chocolat's problems in the Human World continue, as sweet and modest Vanilla wins many admirers. But there's more at stake than a contest when Chocolat learns something shocking about Pierre, the boy she's falling for. It is a secret that threatens Chocolat's life and forces her to return to the Magic World to uncover a truth no one in the Kingdom wants to discuss. Worse still, as the challenge heats up, the two best friends find themselves drifting apart and their friendship on the verge of ending!(wikipedia entry)
• Havana Bay / Martin Cruz Smith — The body, what was left of it, was drifting in Havana Bay the morning Arkady arrived from Moscow. Only the day before, he had received an urgent message from the Russian embassy in Havana saying that his friend Pribluda was missing and asking that he come. (Arkady Renko Series, #4)
• Lights out tonight / Mary Jane Behrends Clark — As KEY News film and theater critic, Caroline Enright knows her opinions have influenced the box office habits of millions of Americans. She has taken her fair share of irate phone calls, and even an occasional threat, from disgruntled movie producers and agents angered over her reviews. But she is unprepared when her trip to the Warrenstown Summer Playhouse is interrupted by murder.
• Braids & bows / Anne Akers Johnson
• Beautiful braids : an illustrated step-by-step guide / Judy Rambert
• Album of horses / Marguerite Henry — The award-winning author of the wonderful stories Misty of Chincoteague, King of the Wind, and Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Marguerite Henry describes in vivid detail the hardworking Shire, the elegant Lipizzan, the spirited Mustang, and many more. Never before have facts about horses been more accessible, and with Wesley Dennis's classic illustrations highlighting every page, this unique collection is sure to be treasured by horse lovers of all ages. (Age Range: 7 to 10)
• Just dogs : a literary and photographic tribute to the great hunting breeds — a memorial, a literary and photographic tribute, to those dogs living and gone who have graced the lives of hunters. Here are evocative photographs, literary excerpts, and stories that recreate scenes and events that all who have ever hunted with a favorite dog can recall.
• Past malice / Dana Cameron — Asked to join in a dig at the site of the eighteenth–century Chandler House, archaeologist Emma Fielding and her student crew have descended upon Stone Harbor, Massachusetts. But certain residents of the tiny coastal community are none too happy about Emma's arrival -- especially when her excavation uncovers a pair of freshly slain corpses.
• A fugitive truth / Dana Cameron — The opportunity of a lifetime awaits archaeologist Emma Fielding in the Berkshire foothills of Western Massachusetts: the chance to study the eighteenth-century diary of Margaret Chandler, the accused witch and murderess whose home Emma excavated only months before. However, the three other Shrewsbury Foundation fellows she must share the premises with are a disturbingly odd bunch, and before too long one of them is dead.