The diviners - Libba Bray

The diviners - Bray, Libba

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Here's your headline, boss: "Small-Town Dame Lands in Big Apple, Goes Wild, Tries to Stop Resurrection of Antichrist." It'll sell bundles! Indeed it will, as Bray continues her winning streak with this heedlessly sprawling series starter set in Prohibition-era New York. Slang-slinging flapper Evie, 17, is "pos-i-tute-ly" thrilled to be under the wing of her uncle, who runs the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Business is slow (i.e., plenty of time for Evie to swill gin at speakeasies!) until the grisly arrival of what the papers dub the Pentacle Killer, who might be the reincarnation of a religious zealot named Naughty John. Even Evie's new pals—hoofers, numbers runners, and activists, but all swell kids—are drawn into the investigation. It's Marjorie Morningstar meets Silence of the Lambs, and Bray dives into it with the brio of the era, alternating rat-a-rat flirting with cold-blooded killings. Seemingly each teen has a secret ability (one can read an object's history; another can heal), and yet the narrative maintains the flavor of historical fiction rather than fantasy. The rest of the plot—well, how much time do you have? The book is big and wants to be the kind of thing you can lose yourself in. Does it succeed? It's jake, baby. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: One need only peruse Bray's track record (the Gemma Doyle Trilogy; Going Bovine, 2009; Beauty Queens, 2011) to see that the heavy promo plans and author tour are well earned. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews

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Destiny of the republic - Candace Millard

Destiny of the republic: a tale of medicine, madness & the murder of a president - Millard, Candace

Summary: A narrative account of the twentieth president's political career offers insight into his background as a scholar and Civil War hero, his battles against the corrupt establishment, and Alexander Graham Bell's failed attempt to save him from an assassin's bullet.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* What a shame for himself and for the country that the kind, intelligent, and charming president James Garfield did not see his administration through to completion. (He had been in office only four months when, in July 1881, he was shot by a deranged office seeker; in September, he died.) That is the sentiment the reader cannot help but derive from this splendidly insightful, three-way biography of the president; Charles Guiteau, who was Garfield's assassin; and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, whose part in the story was an unsuccessful deathbed attempt to locate the bullet lodged somewhere in the president's body. Garfield, who largely educated himself and rose to be a Civil War general and an Ohio representative in the House, was the dark-horse candidate emergent from the 1880 Republican National Convention. Guiteau, on the other hand, led a troubled life and came to believe it was his divine mission to eliminate Garfield in revenge for the new president's steps against proponents of the spoils system. Bell could have been the hero of the whole sad story, but his technology failed to save the stricken president's life. Millard's book, which follows her deeply compelling The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (2005), stands securely at the crossroads of popular and professional history—an intersection as productive of learning for the reader as it undoubtedly was for the author. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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The yellow birds - Kevin Powers

The yellow birds - Powers, Kevin

Summary: In the midst of a bloody battle in the Iraq War, two soldiers, bound together since basic training, do everything to protect each other from both outside enemies and the internal struggles that come from constant danger.



Publishers Weekly Reviews
This moving debut from Powers (a former Army machine gunner) is a study of combat, guilt, and friendship forged under fire. Pvt. John Bartle, 21, and Pvt. Daniel Murphy, 18, meet at Fort Dix, N.J., where Bartle is assigned to watch over Murphy. The duo is deployed to Iraq, and the novel alternates between the men's war zone experiences and Bartle's life after returning home. Early on, it emerges that Murphy has been killed; Bartle is haunted by guilt, and the details of Murphy's death surface slowly. Powers writes gripping battle scenes, and his portrait of male friendship, while cheerless, is deeply felt. As a poet, the author's prose is ambitious, which sets his treatment of the theme apart—as in this musing from Bartle: "though it's hard to get close to saying what the heart is, it must at least be that which rushes to spill out of those parentheses which were the beginning and end of my war." The sparse scene where Bartle finally recounts Murphy's fate is masterful and Powers's style and story are haunting. (Sept.)

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Bill Cunningham New York (DVD)

Bill Cunningham New York (DVD)

Summary: Bill Cunningham has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirees for the New York Times Style section in his columns On the Street and Evening Hours for decades. Presented is a delicate, funny, and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

Video Librarian Reviews
Richard Press' documentary offers an affectionate portrait of photographer Bill Cunningham, whose snapshots of fashion shows, high society events, and distinctively dressed people on the street have graced the pages of the New York Times for years. What makes this film particularly noteworthy are Cunningham's contradictions. While the octogenarian shutterbug is fanatic about unusual dress—he spends his days on the city streets, scampering around to shoot passersby whose clothes pique his interest—his personal wardrobe is utterly functional. Cunningham moves easily among pampered celebrities, but he travels around on his 28th bike (the previous 27 having been stolen). The shutterbug admits to never having had a serious romantic relationship, but enjoys a bevy of friends, and while he's at home in rarefied social circles, he lives a positively spartan existence, occupying a tiny rent-controlled Carnegie Hall studio lacking kitchen or private bath and almost bereft of furniture aside from the file cabinets where he stores the negatives of all the pictures he's ever shot (at least until he's evicted and forced into a larger place). Cunningham's lifestyle is partially explained by his indifference to money; the photographer has frequently turned down payment in order to maintain his prized independence. Press' approach to his subject is laidback, benefiting from interesting interviews with the voluble Cunningham, his colleagues, and myriad friends and associates. A film about single-mindedness of a cheerful, contented sort—a genial surface beneath which one can glimpse something rather poignant—this is recommended. (F. Swietek) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Eames the architect and the painter (DVD)

Eames the architect and the painter (DVD)

Summary: The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames is widely regarded as America's most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, this is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.

Video Librarian Reviews
Charles Eames (1907–78) and his second wife, Ray (1912–88), were among the most innovative and influential American designers of the mid-20th century. Narrated by James Franco, this documentary by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey serves up a chronicle of their lives and achievements, alternating archival material with comments from family, colleagues, and still-adoring members of their studio staff. Eames briefly covers the early years of both—Charles the architect and Ray the painter—but the emphasis here is on the groundbreaking work they accomplished in the circus-like atmosphere of their company headquarters in Venice, CA. The revolutionary design of the so-called Eames chair, made of malleable material and contoured to fit the human body, and the house they built—rightfully considered a milestone of modern architecture—receive due attention, but so do the advertising films they devised for major American companies like IBM, the extravagant museum exhibition on the colonial period they spearheaded for the U.S. Bicentennial, and the impressionistic film about America they created for public showing in the Soviet Union. And the filmmakers take time to reflect on the Eames' personal relationship (noting that Ray consciously deferred to the more charismatic Charles) and on the charge that the pair failed to adequately acknowledge the contributions of their staff. DVD extras include bonus scenes. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Far from the tree - Andrew Solomon

Far from the tree: parents, children, and the search for identity - Solomon, Andrew

Summary: Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon (2001), tackles daunting questions involving nature versus nurture, illness versus identity, and how they all affect parenting in his exhaustive but not exhausting exploration of what happens when children bear little resemblance to their parents. He begins by challenging the very concept of human reproduction. We do not reproduce, he asserts, spawning clones. We produce originals. And if we're really lucky, our offspring will be enough like us or our immediate forebears that we can easily love, nurture, understand, and respect them. But it's a crapshoot. More often than not, little junior will be born with a long-dormant recessive gene, or she may emerge from the womb with her very own, brand-new identifier—say, deafness, physical deformity, or homosexuality. Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium. Solomon focuses on the creative and often desperate ways in which families manage to tear down prejudices and preconceived fears and reassemble their lives around the life of a child who alters their view of the world. Most succeed. Some don't. But the truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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This book is full of spiders - David Wong

This book is full of spiders: seriously, dude, don't touch it - Wong, David

Summary: David and John become embroiled in a new set of horrific but absurd challenges when movie-induced zombie phobia enables a nefarious shape-shifter race to take over the world. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
Wong—in reality Cracked.com writer Jason Pargin—follows up his comic horror novel John Dies at the End (2009) with this wildly out-there sequel. Best friends John and Dave live in a smallish town that seems to suffer from a surfeit of supernatural and suspicious events. The story begins with a local cop being, um, intruded upon by a spiderish creature that turns its victim into, um, a zombie-like individual, and it gets a whole lot weirder from there. Wong, the book's first-person narrator and also one of its central characters (John being "John Cheese," a fellow Cracked.com contributor) focuses mainly on the laughs and the strange goings-on, but there's a very interesting idea here: What if the current pop-culture zombie mania could lead to a pseudo-zombie apocalypse? What if, in other words, enough people believe in something to turn it into reality? And how do a couple of slacker dudes defeat a creature that, technically, doesn't even exist? Full of laughs and goofiness, the book should definitely appeal to fans of John Dies at the End and to readers of comic horror fiction in general (especially, it should be noted, fans of British novelist Tom Holt, who will be familiar with the same sort of whimsy and ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-situation environment.) Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Treme Television Series (DVD)

Treme Television Series (DVD)

Summary: Amid the ruins of New Orleans, ordinary people--musicians, chefs, residents--find themselves clinging to a unique culture and wondering if the city that gave birth to that culture still has a future.


Video Librarian Reviews
The food ain't bad, but it's the music that's New Orleans' lifeblood—a truism that rings loud and clear in Treme, the outstanding HBO series set in the Crescent City. Indeed, the opening scene finds residents parading in song just three months after Hurricane Katrina. Music permeates every episode, ranging from the expected Dixieland and zydeco to hip hop, rock, and more, delivered by veteran greats (Ernie K-Doe, Lee Dorsey, the Meters, Allen Toussaint) and newcomers (such as Trombone Shorty). Of course, there's a dark side as well: New Orleans here is barely starting to recover from the epic disaster—homes are gone, neighborhoods are barren, folks are missing, the government is essentially useless, and the line between cop and criminal is sometimes nonexistent. All of this is brought to life via multiple storylines and characters, including John Goodman as loud-mouthed writer Creighton Bernette and Melissa Leo as his activist wife, Toni; Wendell Pierce as trombonist Antoine Batiste and Khandi Alexander as his ex-wife, Ladonna; Clarke Peters as Albert Lambreaux, a man who returns from Houston to rebuild his ruined home; and Steve Zahn as clueless hippie DJ Davis McAlary. Not all of them get through the season unscathed, which is only natural in a show that emphasizes authenticity—from its plain, profane dialogue to its almost complete lack of gloss and glamour. Compiling all 10 episodes from the 2010 debut season, DVD and Blu-ray extras include audio and music commentaries, and behind-the-scenes featurettes. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are interactive viewing modes featuring information about the culture and music of New Orleans. Highly recommended. (S. Graham) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Justified Television Series (DVD)

Justified Television Series (DVD)

Summary: Due to his old-school style, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is reassigned from Miami to his childhood home in the poor, rural coal-mining towns in Eastern Kentucky. Lawman Givens is a tough, soft-spoken gentleman who never gives an inch.



Video Librarian Reviews
Originally adapted from an Elmore Leonard short story, this FX-aired series stars Timothy Olyphant as Kentucky-born U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, who is transferred (demoted actually) from Miami back to his home county. Justified has turned into one of the channel's notable critical and popular successes thanks to a superb cast, smart writing, and the decision to script each season around a self-contained story—in this case, one that will be familiar to readers of Leonard's entertaining latest novel, Raylan. Here, Raylan is dropped into the middle of a complicated standoff involving a family syndicate running marijuana, meth, moonshine, and other vital interests in coal country. Margo Martindale won a well-deserved Emmy Award as Mags Bennett, the wily matriarch of the backwoods mafia, busy taking on a corporate mining concern while her less disciplined sons (notably Jeremy Davies as Dickie, a schemer with a grudge against Raylan) stir up trouble in their dope trade. Walton Goggins is Boyd Crowder, a former criminal (and one-time buddy to Raylan) who tries to go straight but finds himself drawn back to his strengths as the balance of power in the rural crime world shifts. Compiling all 13 episodes from the 2011 second season on DVD and Blu-ray, extras include two behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes, and—exclusive to the Blu-ray release—a roundtable discussion with Leonard and the show's writers and producers. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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The physick book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe

The physick book of Deliverance Dane - Howe, Katherine

Summary: While readying her grandmother's abandoned home for sale, Connie Goodwin discovers an ancient key in a seventeenth-century Bible with a scrap of parchment bearing the name Deliverance Dane. In her quest to discover who this woman was and seeking a rare artifact--a physick book--Connie begins to feel haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials and fears that she may be more tied to Salem's past than she could have imagined.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Harvard graduate student Connie Godwin is determination personified. She will get her doctorate and find success as a historian, whether her aura-reading mother understands her bookishness or not. But first she has to contend with her tweedy adviser's oddly urgent demands and her late grandmother's incredibly old, long-abandoned house in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The house is cloaked in vines and stuffed with dusty old bottles and books, but its clutter yields a tantalizing scrap of paper carrying the words "Deliverance Dane." Connie hasn't a clue, but the reader knows, thanks to alternating chapters set in the late-seventeenth century, that Deliverance was a good woman accused of being a witch during the infamous Salem witch hysteria. Soon Connie, admirably sensible in the face of mystifying, even terrifying occurrences, zealously searches archives and libraries for healer Deliverance's "shadow book," while struggling to understand her own weird, new powers. Historian Howe's spellbinding, vividly detailed, witty, and astutely plotted debut is deeply rooted in her family connection to accused seventeenth-century witches Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor and propelled by an illuminating view of witchcraft. In all a keen and magical historical mystery laced with romance and sly digs at society's persistent underestimation of women. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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A wrinkle in time: the graphic novel - Hope Larson

A wrinkle in time: the graphic novel - Larson, Hope

Summary: A graphic novel adaptation of the classic tale in which Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Commemorating its fiftieth anniversary, L'Engle's classic couldn't have scored a better talent to adapt its story into comics form. Larson produces high-quality coming-of-age stories featuring female protagonists, with the most recent (Mercury, 2010) even including a fantasy element to highlight the tale's emotional stakes. She dives wholeheartedly into L'Engle's seminal epic, chronicling the journey of Meg Murry, her preternaturally intelligent younger brother, Charles, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe, crossing distant worlds to save the Murry's, lost patriarch. Guided by three grandmotherly guardian angels, they navigate the dangers of a mind-controlled world fallen under the influence of a cosmic force of pure evil. Larson has miraculously preserved the power of the original's social and religious themes, as well as its compelling emotional core, while staying true to her distinctive voice and aesthetic. Her soft-lined, large-eyed characters are a modern exemplar of classical American cartooning, and the metallic blue coating of the pages evokes both the timelessness of the story and the remoteness of alien worlds. This adaptation is fabulous for presenting a fresh vision to those familiar with the original, but it's so true to the story's soul that even those who've never read it will come away with a genuine understanding of L'Engle's ideas and heart. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Does this church make me look fat? - Rhoda Janzen

Does this church make me look fat?: a Mennonite finds faith, meets Mr. Right, and solves her lady problems - Janzen, Rhoda

Summary: Rhoda Janzen had reconnected with her family and her roots, though her future felt uncertain. But when she starts dating a churchgoer, the skeptic begins a surprising journey to faith and love. Rhoda doesn't slide back into the dignified simplicity of the Mennonite church. Instead she finds herself hanging with the Pentecostals, who really know how to get down with sparkler pom-poms. Amid the hand waving and hallelujahs, Rhoda finds a faith richly practical for life.

Publishers Weekly Reviews
Author of the improbable bestseller Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Janzen continues her quirky tales of finding faith in unlikely places in this dotty, squeaky-clean postdivorce sequel in which she describes life with a new boyfriend and the courage to battle breast cancer. Having fallen out of her conservative Mennonite community in California—"abgefallen" is how she is referred by her church folk—now an English professor in Holland, Mich., Janzen meets and falls for a Pentecostal born-again "Jesus-nail-necklace-wearing manly man" shortly before she is diagnosed with massive, inoperable breast cancer. With Mitch standing firmly by her, along with her resilient mom and sister, Janzen was determined to face her condition with optimism, and in startlingly breezy prose, considering the gravity of her condition, pokes fun at her professorial distractedness in contrast to Mitch's literal groundedness. She plunges into activities at his Pentecostal church, as wildly improvisational and "kooky" as her Mennonite church had been sober and dignified, with enthusiasm, embracing their particular rituals of healing and even tithing. However, underneath her limpid facetiousness (one inspired simile compares Mitch's gloomy aged father's boredom to "a stretch of wet cement that he protected with cones and tape") run serious concerns about her faith, spiritual growth, and the meaning of prayer and humility. "I had unfinished business with God," Janzen writes, sharing in this vibrant, charming narrative her own "fruits of the spirit." (Oct.)

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Words in air - Elizabeth Bishop

Words in air : the complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell - Bishop, Elizabeth

Summary: A profile of the intimate relationship between the two twentieth-century poet friends draws on their thirty-year correspondence to offer insight into how they inspired each other, the ways in which they viewed their private and surrounding worlds, and their experiences within the literary community. - (Baker & Taylor)

Choice Reviews
The complete correspondence between Bishop (1911-79) and Lowell (1917-77), who were friends as well as fellow poets, will be warmly welcomed by scholars of both poets. Though most of their letters are already available in separate volumes--Robert Giroux's edition of Bishop's letters (One Art: Letters, 1994) and Saskia Hamilton's edition of Lowell's (The Letters of Robert Lowell, CH, Jan'06, 43-2675)--this collection adds new letters and creates a rich, compelling narrative. Bishop and Lowell met in 1947 and were immediately drawn to each other, both personally and professionally. Their correspondence covers a period of some 30 years and contains lively discussions about the poetry of their contemporaries, politics (both American and Brazilian), and their own writing. Indeed, they influenced each other's work, aspired to each other's talents, and wrote poems for each other. They also wrote more personally, of their love affairs and their respective illnesses: Bishop suffered throughout her life from severe asthma, depression, and alcoholism; Lowell, from what would now be called bipolar disorder. Their understanding of and affection for each other is clear throughout their correspondence, which ended only on Lowell's death. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. Copyright 2009 American Library Association.

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Chronicle of a death foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronicle of a death foretold - Garcia Marquez, Gabriel

Summary: The narrator of this story studies a murder which takes place shortly after a wedding and explores the mass community complicity that allowed it to happen.




Kirkus Review
/* Starred Review */ In this new novella by the Nobel Prize-winner, a Colombian-village murder 20 years in the past is raked over, brooded upon, made into a parable: how an Arab living in the town was assassinated by the loutish twin Vicario brothers when their sister, a new bride, was rejected by her bridegroom--who discovered the girl's unchastity. Cast off, beaten, grilled, the girl eventually revealed the name of her corrupter--Santiago Nassar. And, though no one really believed her (Nassar was the least likely villain), the Arab was indeed killed: the drunken brothers broadcasted their intentions casually; they went so far as to sharpen their murder weapons--old pig-sticking knives--in the town market; and the town, universal witness to the intention, reacted with epic ambivalence--sure, at first, that such an injustice couldn't occur, yet also resigned to its inevitability. As in In Evil Hour (1979) and other works, then, what Garcia Marquez offers here is an orchestration of grim social realities--an awareness that seems vague at first, then coheres into a solid, pessimistic vision. But, while In Evil Hour threaded the message with wit, fanciful imagination, and storytelling flair (the traits which have made Garcia Marquez popular as well as honored), this new book seems crammed, airless, thinly diagrammatic. The theme of historical imperative comes across in a didactic, mechanistic fashion: "He never thought it legitimate," G-M says of one character, ironically, "that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so there should be the untrammeled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold." (Also, the novella's structural lines are uncomfortably close to those of Robert Pinget's Libera Me Domine.) So, while the recent Nobel publicity will no doubt generate added interest, this is minor, lesser Garcia Marquez: characteristic themes illustrated without the often-characteristic charm and dazzle. (Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1983)

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Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon - Keyes, Daniel

Summary: A thirty-two-year-old mentally handicapped man takes part in an innovative scientific experiment to raise his intelligence - (Baker & Taylor)

Reviews
"A tale that is convincing, suspenseful and touching."--The New York Times
"An ingeniously touching story . . . Moving . . . Intensely real."--The Baltimore Sun

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Moonrise kingdom (DVD)

Moonrise kingdom (DVD)

Summary: Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore, and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle.

Video Librarian Reviews
Perhaps because of their dry, whimsical, bittersweet wistfulness, Wes Anderson's eccentric films (including The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox) are often a breath of cinematic fresh air. On an idyllic island off New England's Narragansett Bay in September 1965, two alienated, rebellious 12-year-olds fall in love and decide to run away together. Orphaned outcast Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) is tired of being bullied by Khaki Scout Troop 55 at Camp Ivanhoe, while sullen Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) peers through binoculars, eager to escape from her younger brothers, morose father Walt (Bill Murray) and harried mother Laura (Frances McDormand), who is having an affair with the local sheriff, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis). As intrepid, idealistic Sam and Suzy hike through the rolling fields and craggy ravines—following a Native American harvest migration trail, and setting up their sanctuary camp on a deserted beach by a magical cove that they dub Moonrise Kingdom—a violent storm is brewing off-shore. Meanwhile, their alarming absence initiates an exhaustive search by the colorfully caricatured adults: Sharp, Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), and a woman known only as Social Services (Tilda Swinton). Like Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra—often referenced here—Anderson creates distinctive component parts which are then artfully blended into a winning whole. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (S. Granger)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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San Miguel - T.C. Boyle

San Miguel - Boyle, T.C.

Summary: From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Women," a historical novel about three women's lives on a California island. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of Boyle's haunting new novel.



Kirkus Reviews
The prolific author's latest is historical, not only in period and subject matter, but in tone and ponderous theme. The 14th novel from Boyle returns to the Channel Islands off the coast of California, a setting which served him so well in his previous novel (When the Killing's Done, 2011). Some of the conflicts are similar as well--man versus nature, government regulation versus private enterprise--but otherwise this reads more like a novel that is a century or more old, like a long lost work from the American naturalist school of Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, both of whom saw mankind caught in mechanistic forces and nature as something other than the Eden of innocence so often romanticized. The novel tenuously connects the stories of two families who move, 50 years apart, to the isolation of the title island, in order to tend to a sheep ranch. For Marantha Waters, the symbolically fraught pilgrimage with her husband and daughter in 1888--on "New Year's Day, the first day of her new life, and she was on an adventure...bound for San Miguel Island and the virginal air Will insisted would make her well again"--is one of disillusionment and determination. Even the passage of time feels like a loss of innocence: "The days fell away like the skin of a rotten fruit"; "The next day sheared away like the face of a cliff crashing into the ocean and then there was another day and another." The ravages of the natural world (and their own moral natures) take their toll on the family, who are belatedly succeeded in the 1930s by a similar one, as newlyweds anticipate their move west as "the real life they were going into, the natural life, the life of Thoreau and Daniel Boone, simple and vigorous and pure." Reinforcing their delusions is national press attention, which made much of their "pioneering, that is, living like the first settlers in a way that must have seemed romantic to people inured to the grid of city streets and trapped in the cycle of getting and wanting and getting all over again." What may seem to some like paradise offers no happy endings in this fine novel. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Nightmare at 20,000 feet: horror stories - Richard Matheson

Nightmare at 20,000 feet: horror stories - Richard Matheson

Summary: A chilling anthology of eerie tales of horror and the macabre includes twenty of the author's most famous stories including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which was transformed into a memorable episode on The Twilight Zone, "Prey," and "Duel," which inspired Stephen Spielberg's acclaimed first TV movie. - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly Reviews
Although Matheson (I Am Legend; Hell House; etc.) needs no introduction to most horror fans, Stephen King provides one for this collection of classic weird tales in which he appreciatively remembers his mentor's "gut-bucket short stories that were like shots of white lightning." Spanning almost half a century, the influential contents are as much a roadmap to the direction horror fiction has taken since the 1950s as to Matheson's own legacy of spare, scary chillers. In lieu of pedantic priers into the Unknown, he offers sympathetic everymen, like the husband in "First Anniversary," who finds hints of the unearthly suddenly seeping through his comfortably complacent marriage. Matheson strips away horror's traditional gothic clutter to expose ordinary landscapes that perfectly take the imprint of his characters' paranoid fixations: that life's petty annoyances are part of a universal conspiracy to drive a person mad in "Legion of Plotters," and that dangerously malfunctioning household items are channels for a man's self-destructive anger in "Mad House." The agents of horror in these stories are less often the usual supernatural bogies than malignantly endowed everyday objects, like telephones, television sets and home appliances that are all the more frightening for their ubiquity. The well-known title tale about a nervous air traveler is a showcase for the author's trademark less-is-more prose style, which suspensefully delineates a psychological tug-of-war between man and a monster that may be purely imagined. Timeless in their simplicity, these stories are also relentless in their approach to basic fears. (Feb. 9) FYI: A Grand Master of Horror and winner of a Stoker for Lifetime Achievement, Matheson has also won Edgar and Hugo awards. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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Catch That Tiger - Noel Botham

Catch That Tiger - Botham, Noel

Summary: Unleashed by Hitler in 1942, the German Tiger tank was by far the most powerful tank ever built at the time—the 60-ton monster could destroy any Allied tank from more than a mile away. Desperate to discover the secret technology used in its manufacture, Winston Churchill chose a brilliant young army engineer, Major Doug Lidderdale, as his special agent. In a late-night briefing in the subterranean war rooms under Whitehall he ordered him "Go catch me a tiger." Doug did not hesitate, and by February 1943 was facing Rommel's desert army. After several unsuccessful and hair-raising efforts to bag a Tiger on the battlefields of Tunisia, Doug and his team put their lives on the line in a terrifying, close-range shoot-out with the five-man crew of a Tiger, capturing the tank intact. The morale boost to the Allies was such that both Churchill and King George VI flew to Tunis to examine the Tiger firsthand. But the Germans were not finished with Doug—constant attacks by the Luftwaffe and U-boats pursued him and his men on every step of the journey back to England. But eventually, by October 1943, the Tiger was gifted to Churchill, who had it placed on London's Horse Guards Parade. Lidderdale went on to use some of the Tiger technology to develop war machines for the D-day landings and was promoted to Colonel. Tiger 131 is now kept at Bovington Tank Museum and is the only working Tiger in the world. The full extent of Doug's adventures in North Africa only came to light after his son, Dave Travis, revealed the existence of his father's diaries. - (Independent Publishing Group)

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A boy and a bear in a boat - Dave Shelton

A boy and a bear in a boat - Shelton, Dave

Summary: A boy and a bear go to sea, equipped with a suitcase, a comic book and a ukulele, for a short trip but soon their boat encounters "unforeseeable anomalies," strange storms, a terrifying sea monster, and the rank remains of The Very Last Sandwich.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In this illustrated novel from England, a boy steps aboard a small rowboat equipped with a bear for a captain. The boy merely needs a ride to the other side of the sea, but due to a few "unforeseeable anomalies," he soon fears they may be lost. Even a limited game of I Spy fails to break up the monotony. Exasperated by the bear's seemingly bumbling leadership, the boy accuses him of stranding them in the middle of nowhere. Pointing to an entirely blue map, the bear counters, "We passed through the middle of nowhere about noon yesterday. So you see it's not so bad." When adventures with storms and a ravenous sea monster eventually ensue, the pair makes the best use of their meager supplies—a suitcase, a comic book, a ukulele, and a "Very Last Sandwich." Just as the bear thinks he may have failed as captain, the boy steps in to reassure him of his skills. It's Shelton's spare, wry storytelling that makes this book set sail. The duo's give-and-take relationship, aptly depicted in the expressive black-and-white illustrations, becomes the real focus of this existential story. An open ending emphasizes the adage that life is a journey rather than a destination. Deceptively brilliant. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Who I am - Pete Townshend

Who I am - Townshend, Pete


Summary: The legendary lead guitarist and principal songwriter for The Who, one of the most influential rock-and-roll bands of all time, pens his own story.



Library Journal Reviews
Townshend has been working on this memoir for a decade—without the help of a ghostwriter. (It says something that this fact is emphasized.) Here he is as a child, raised by a mentally incapacitated grandmother as his parents led an early version of countercultural life; an adolescent, founding the forerunner of the Who with buddy Roger Daltrey; and a full-fledged rock star wrestling (as rock stars do) with drugs, sex, fame, fortune, and notoriety.

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Between the lines - Jodi Picoult

Between the lines - Picoult, Jodi

Summary: Told in their separate voices, sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek his freedom.



Booklist Reviews
Quirky loner Delilah discovers a fairy tale in her high-school library and develops a raging crush on its handsome prince. She is startled but delighted to discover that he can actually see her and speak to her. In alternating chapters Oliver and Delilah relate their adventures in liberating Oliver from the two-dimensional page into Delilah's three-dimensional world. Picoult's teenage daughter pitched the idea to her mother, and together the two have created a compulsively readable charmer. The teen dialogue and interior monologues feel authentic, while Picoult's practiced hand balances humor with larger issues such as abandonment, hope, and existential quandaries related to fate and human nature. Both silhouette and pencil drawings abound; characters climb in and around the text to excellent effect. Younger readers and their parents will appreciate the gentle, wholesome romance, with nary a shred of paranormal action. The tender, positive tone and effective pacing that builds to a satisfying finish will inspire readers to pass the book to a friend—or reread it themselves. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Picoult's brand-name presence on the cover will draw readers for her first foray into YA lit, and a mother-daughter tour will help spread the word. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Scenes from an impending marriage - Adrian Tomine

Scenes from an impending marriage - Tomine, Adrian

Summary: A comic book based on the author's own wedding plans celebrates the absurd aspects of getting married, from taking dance lessons to managing family demands.



Booklist Reviews
Once the initial euphoria of popping the question wears off, the minefield of putting together a wedding takes shape. In small, nine-panel-grid vignettes, Tomine documents the perilous process, fraught with one-time decisions that few are qualified to make, from settling on the reception venue to making tactful negotiations on whittling down the guest list, agonizing over invitations that invariably wind up in the trash anyway, and picking from an assortment of cookie-cutter DJs. Interspersed are a few full-page panels that take a subversive, Family Circus spin on exercise ("This nonsense stops the minute we're married!"), dance lessons (ditto), and eyebrow-tweezing (ditto plus expletives). With the obsessive self-awareness bred into all great autobiographical cartoonists, Tomine incisively depicts the monumental-feeling pressures and expectations that can toss a fledgling couple into "the black hole of nuptial narcissism," or, in Adrian and Sarah's case, provide ample proof that they should be making the plunge after all. The institution of marriage as a whole just might benefit from having this little book as required reading. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Wallflower at the orgy - Nora Ephron

Wallflower at the orgy - Ephron, Nora

Summary: From her Academy Award—nominated screenplays to her bestselling fiction and essays, Nora Ephron is one of America’s most gifted, prolific, and versatile writers. In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace American culture with love, cynicism, and unmatched wit. From tracking down the beginnings of the self-help movement to dressing down the fashion world’s most powerful publication to capturing a glimpse of a legendary movie in the making, these timeless pieces tap into our enduring obsessions with celebrity, food, romance, clothes, entertainment, and sex. Whether casting her ingenious eye on renowned director Mike Nichols, Cosmopolitan magazine founder Helen Gurley Brown—or herself, as she chronicles her own beauty makeover—Ephron deftly weaves her journalistic skill with the intimate style of an essayist and the incomparable talent of a great storyteller. - (Random House, Inc.)

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The deep - Claire Nouvian (Ed.)

The deep - Nouvian, Claire (Ed.)

Summary: Readers are taken on a voyage into the darkest realms of the ocean in this visual and scientific tour that reveals nature's oddest and most mesmerizing creatures in crystalline detail, in a study that brings together two hundred full-color images with information on the latest scientific discoveries. - (Baker & Taylor)

Publishers Weekly Reviews
Before the recent development of submersibles capable of exploring the ocean more than six miles down, oceanographers gleaned most of what they knew about the denizens of the deep from dead fish in trawler nets. One such creature first captured in 1901, the "vampire squid from hell," turned out to be a living fossil whose origins date back more than 200 million years. Now known to be quite benign, so are most of the creatures depicted in this stunning collection of more than 160 color photosâ€"even the Pacific viperfish, with fangs so long it can't close its mouth, and the spookfish, with its enormous telescopic eyes. Species from as far down as four and a half miles are depicted in exquisite detail; most are mere centimeters long, though the giant squid, a timid creature despite its size, grows to almost 60 feet. Fifteen short, jargon-free essays assembled by editor and French journalist Nouvianâ€"who became enthralled with the deep after visiting the Monterey Bay Aquariumâ€"flesh out the fantastical images with scientific fact. They dismiss the myth of deep sea monsters and describe the amazing persistence of life around hydrothermal vents and methane flues; a thoughtful glossary adds to this impressive book's popular appeal. (Apr. 28)

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Stretching - Bob Anderson

Stretching -Anderson, Bob

Summary: This is the book that people tell their friends about, that trainers recommend for virtually every sport and activity, and that medical professionals recommend to people just starting to get back in shape. Stretching first appeared in 1980 as a new generation of Americans became committed to running, cycling, aerobic training, and workouts in the gym - which all seem commonplace now. It features: more than 20 new stretching routines, including those for sports enthusiasts; travelers, children, gardeners, and people in wheelchairs; an abbreviated version of each routine for people in a hurry; new information on the stretching vs. warming up controversy; and new and improved drawings.- (Perseus Publishing)

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Adventure time. The complete first season (DVD)

Adventure time. The complete first season (DVD)

Summary: A 14-year-old boy and his magical dog go on various heroic adventures in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo. - (Baker & Taylor).



Review
A genuinely inspired amalgamation of fantasy tropes liberally frosted with absurd humor, the animated series Adventure Time is a charmingly cracked confection that deserves its devoted cult following. Set in a faraway kingdom called Ooo, the series follows the caffeinated adventures of Finn the Human (Jeremy Shada) and his bespectacled talking dog Jake (John DiMaggio, Futurama) as they thwart the misunderstood but mostly evil Ice King (Tom Kenny, SpongeBob SquarePants) from his regular attempts to kidnap Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch, Teen Titans). Aiding them in their escapades are the bass-playing Vampire Queen (Olivia Olson, Phineas and Ferb), petulant extraterrestrial Lumpy Space Princess (voiced by series creator Pendleton Ward), and Beemo (Niki Yang), a sentient but playable video game console. The 26 mini-episodes that comprise the show's first season pit the heroes against a dizzying array of oddities, including candy zombies in "Slumber Party Panic," a pie-throwing robot (Andy Milonakis), and "Ricardio the Heart Guy," a living heart suavely voiced by George Takei. But more often than not, the characters' own personal issues make for the most inspired moments, most notably in "When Wedding Bells Thaw," where Finn and Jake try to encourage the Ice King to give up his princess-kidnapping pursuits by throwing him a bachelor party.

That blend of grownup, self-aware humor and childlike silliness can be difficult to balance, but Adventure Time frequently succeeds, thanks in part to the epic sprawl of its universe, which provides a sizable canvas that preserves the tone of the series while maintaining a never-ending supply of weird and wonderful encounters. It is unquestionably an acquired taste, but it's also a sweetly offbeat series and an awful lot of fun.--Paul Gaita (Amazon)

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The open road - Pico Iyer

The open road: the global journey of the fourteenth Dalai Lama - Iyer, Pico

Summary: An illuminating account of the Dalai Lama explores his diverse roles as a politician, scientist, philosopher, and religious leader; discusses his ideas about religion, Tibet, peace, and world events; and examines his hidden life, often pragmatic messages, and the daily challenges he confronts. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* A mindful world wanderer and renowned travel writer, Iyer has a 30-year connection to the Dalai Lama stemming from a meeting between Iyer's philosopher father and the Dalai Lama shortly after his dramatic escape from Tibet in the wake of the Chinese invasion. Iyer has often arranged to be in the same place at the same time as the Dalai Lama, and he now reports on the beloved "spiritual celebrity" in action. His coverage includes vivid descriptions of the highly charged atmosphere of Dharamsala, the capital of Tibet-in-exile; surreal aspects of the Dalai Lama's ecstatic reception at his numerous appearances; and the profoundly mysterious elements of the Dalai Lama's "private and almost unimaginable Tibetan world," the realm of oracles and reincarnation. In the book's most inquisitive passages, Iyer offers rare insights into contradictory roles the Dalai Lama plays as a monk with a passion for science; a philosophic, exiled leader of an occupied nation that is threatened with extinction; and an icon espousing "global ethics." The combination of Iyer's exacting observations, incisive analysis, and frank respect for the unknowable results in a uniquely internalized, even empathic portrait of one of the world's most embraced and least understood guiding lights. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

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Prairie nocturne - Ivan Doig

Prairie nocturne - Doig, Ivan

Summary: Teaching voice lessons to the privileged members of society during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Susan Duff is hired by a man who once harbored political ambitions to teach his African American chauffeur how to sing. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
Doig returns to several of the characters from his much-loved Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) in this gripping story set not only in Montana's Two Medicine country, the landscape indelibly associated with the author, but also in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. It's 1924, and Susan Duff, the headstrong schoolgirl from Rascal Fair, is now a middle-aged voice teacher in Helena, resigned to spinsterhood after her affair with gubernatorial candidate Wes Williamson cost him the election. Then Wes seeks her out with a proposition: teach his black chauffeur, Monty, to sing. Returning to Two Medicine country, Susan does just that, as the narrative twists and turns its way back into the pasts of the three principal characters and ahead into their shared futures in New York: Monty on the concert stage and Susan and Wes, their relationship still tumultuous, in the wings. As always, Doig incorporates a vast amount of fascinating historical material into his personal drama: the story of the "Buffalo soldiers" of the tenth cavalry in the late nineteenth century; the saga of the Ku Klux Klan's incursion into Montana; and, of course, the Harlem Renaissance itself. The heart of the matter, though, is the three-sided relationship among Susan, Wes, and Monty; skirting the melodrama into which this triptych might easily have tumbled, Doig tightens the reins on his sometimes mannered prose and constructs a subtle, highly textured love story, nicely balancing period detail and well-modulated emotion. ((Reviewed August 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews

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A separation (DVD)

A separation (DVD)

Summary: A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.


Video Librarian Reviews
An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, writer-director Asghar Farhadi's ambiguous, enigmatic meditation on marital conflict is set in contemporary Iran, where two couples appear before a judge to defend their legal, moral, and religious beliefs in family court. As the drama begins, Simin (Leila Hatami) has received permission for her family to emigrate from Tehran, following a year-and-a-half of bureaucratic aggravation. Simin is trying to convince her banker husband, Nader (Peyman Moadi) and adolescent daughter Termeh (played by the director's daughter, Sarina Farhadi), to opt for a better life. But middle-class, moderate Nader feels he must stay and care for his frail father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi), who is afflicted with Alzheimer's. When frustrated Simin moves back to her parents' home, Nader hires poor, pious Razieh (Sareh Bayet) to care for his father during the day—unbeknownst to her debt-ridden, unemployed husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini). When pregnant Razieh is subsequently injured in an accident, the foursome winds up before an Iranian judge. Deftly exploring ethical and cultural issues surrounding Iranian women living under the Islamic theocracy that has dominated the country since the 1979 revolution, A Separation is highly recommended. (S. Granger)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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This is how you lose her - Junot Diaz

This is how you lose her - Diaz, Junot

Summary: Presents a collection of stories that explores the heartbreak and radiance of love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Díaz continues to keep company with his alter ego, Yunior, a Dominican turned New Jerseyan, in his second short story collection. Drown (1996), his first, introduced Yunior and established Díaz as a writer of promise. His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), won the Pulitzer Prize and galvanized a world of new readers. Díaz's standout fiction remains pinpoint, sinuous, gutsy, and imaginative. Yunior kicks things off by stating, "I'm not a bad guy." The women in his life would caustically disagree. We see Yunior as a boy new to America and his long-absent father's temper, a teenager and college student forever infatuated and forever cheating, and a lonely adult confronted by aggressive racism. Each taut tale of unrequited and betrayed love and family crises is electric with passionate observations and off-the-charts emotional and social intelligence. Díaz's involving, diverse characters include Yunior's combative brother Rafa, Magda the coldhearted, Nilda the young man-magnet, and a sexy older woman. Fast paced, unflinching, complexly funny, street-talking tough, perfectly made, and deeply sensitive, Díaz's gripping stories unveil lives shadowed by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust. These are precarious, unappreciated, precious lives in which intimacy is a lost art, masculinity a parody, and kindness, reason, and hope struggle to survive like seedlings in a war zone. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Díaz, as compelling in person as on the page, will connect with his large and loyal readership via a national author tour, extensive media interviews, and a social media campaign. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews

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The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master & Margarita - Bulgakov, Mikhail

Summary: When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a psychiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time. - (Random House, Inc.)

Reviews
“Fine, funny, imaginative . . . . The Master and Margarita stands squarely in the great Gogolesque tradition of satiric narrative.” —Saul Maloff, Newsweek

“The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant. . . . A great work.” —Chicago Tribune

“Magnificent . . . a gloriously ironic gothic masterpiece . . . had me rapt with bliss.” —Patrick McGrath, Guardian (UK)

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