Watchmen - Alan Moore

Watchmen - Moore, Alan

Summary: This graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all too human failings. The concept of the super hero is dissected and inverted as strangely realistic characters are stalked by an unknown assassin. Originally published as a 12 issue series in 1986 and 1987, WATCHMEN remains one of DC Comics' most popular graphic novels.

Review
"A work of ruthless psychological realism, it’s a landmark in the graphic novel medium. It would be a masterpiece in any."
–TIME, TIME MAGAZINE’s 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present

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Dreams of joy - Lisa See

Dreams of joy - See, Lisa

Summary: Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father, the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime.

Booklist Reviews
See continues the irresistible saga of May, Pearl, and Pearl's daughter, Joy, in a novel set in the immediate aftermath of the emotional events that brought her immensely popular Shanghai Girls (2009) to a fevered conclusion. Reeling with the revelation of her mother's true identity and burdened with the belief that she alone caused her father's suicide, Joy hastily flees Hollywood via a one-way ticket to the People's Republic of China. There she plans to search for her biological father and "beautiful girl" artist Li Zhi-ge, and immerse herself in the communist lifestyle, the rhetoric of which she embraced as a college student. Once she discovers what Joy has done, Pearl travels back to Shanghai at great personal risk to try and locate her daughter and convince her to return home. Both women find a nation in the throes of Chairman Mao's "Great Leap Forward" campaign, and immediately are catapulted into lives of unspeakable deprivation and gut-wrenching horror. Through the sobering experiences of a naive young girl and the sacrificial actions of her mother, See paints a vivid, haunting, and often graphic portrait of a country, and family, in crisis. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The eagerly awaited sequel to the reading-group favorite Shanghai Girls is supported by intensive marketing efforts. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Don't kill the birthday girl - Sandra Beasley

Don't kill the birthday girl: tales from an allergic life - Beasley, Sandra

Summary: When butter is deadly and eggs can make your throat swell shut, cupcakes and other joys of childhood are out of the question–and so Sandra’s mother used to warn guests against a toxic, frosting-tinged kiss with “Don’t kill the birthday girl!” Tackling a long-marginalized subject, this book intertwines a cultural history and sociological study of food allergies with humorous and sometimes heartbreaking real-life experience. From a short-lived gig as a restaurant reviewer to the dates that ended with trips to the emergency room, step inside the story of a modern young woman coming to terms with a potentially deadly disorder.

REVIEWS
"This information- and anecdote-filled book will be a welcome antidote to the worries and fears endured by families with food allergies."—Booklist

“Intelligent and witty…enthralling…thoughtful and well-written.” —Publishers Weekly

"Award winner Beasley (e.g., Barnard Women Poets) offers a cultural study of living the “allergic life.” —Library Journal

“Fascinating…humane and informative.” —Kirkus Reviews

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This life is in your hands - Melissa Coleman

This life is in your hands: one dream, sixty acres, and a family undone - Coleman, Melissa

Summary: With urban farming and backyard chicken flocks becoming increasingly popular, Coleman has written this timely and honest portrait of her own childhood experience in Maine with her two homesteading parents during the turbulent 1970s. A luminous, evocative memoir that explores the hope and struggle behind one family's search for a self-sufficient life.


Booklist Reviews
With parents who were devoted acolytes of original back-to-the-landers Helen and Scott Nearing, Coleman grew up in the early 1970s as the quintessential "hippie baby," eating organic foods, running barefoot and free on 60 acres of Maine's back woods. As her father's enthusiasm for self-sufficiency took on a zealot's verve, Coleman's mother shouldered more of the arduous domestic duties, resolutely tending the family's spartan cabin sans running water or electricity. Known for devotion to the cause, the charismatic young couple soon attracted followers, and when a second child, Heidi, was born, it seemed as though, perhaps, they really could lead a charmed existence. It lasted two years, until the day Heidi drowned in the property's pond. The death of a child has the potential to destroy any family, and Coleman's was no exception. With her parents' divorce, Coleman experienced a surging sense of abandonment, one that she attempts to reconcile in this poignant memoir that chronicles the nascent homesteading counterculture in paralyzing detail. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Beautiful boy - David Sheff

Beautiful boy: a father's journey through his son's meth addiction - Sheff, David

Summary: "From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction. Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective of his father, David."--www.amazon.com.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Although the journey of the subtitle seems too dreadful to experience, even vicariously, Playboy contributing editor Sheff's intense memoir is hard to put down. Beyond the visceral torture of helplessly watching Nic, his adolescent son, descend deep into the rabbit hole of addiction, Sheff confesses to the ubiquitous parental habit of second-guessing every decision he has made throughout Nic's life, especially the ones he is forced to make as he tries to help the young man get and stay clean. His efforts have him turning to any and all resources, from AA to medical experts to rehab centers and finally to friends, for advice and assistance. The experience all but tears him and his family apart as Nic forges his parents' signatures on checks, steals his eight-year-old brother's savings, promises to reform, then repeatedly fails to stick with a rehabilitation program. In the end, it isn't the addiction as much as the repeated failures and relapses that are so debilitating for everyone involved. The book originated in a much-lauded New York Times Magazine article, which Sheff here expands in scope, sharing his and Nic's wisdom, missteps, and successes, and the lessons they learned. A must-read for, at the least, anyone in similar straits.

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Risk - Colin Harrison

Risk - Harrison, Colin

Summary: Attorney George Young uses his investigative skills to look into the violent death of Roger Corbett, son of the founder of Young's firm.



Booklist Reviews
In this latest thriller, Harrison (The Havana Room, 2004) puts the pedal to the metal and doesn't let up. The opening pages find middle-aged Manhattan insurance lawyer George Young summoned by the widow of his firm's formidable founder, Wendell Corbett. Mrs. Corbett wants to know the reason behind her son Roger's death before she goes under the knife for a surgery she's unlikely to survive. But Roger's demise seems to have just been an accident (he was hit by a careening garbage truck as he exited a local bar). Or was it? Young, who owes his career to Wendell Corbett, pledges to find answers. A series of clues leads him to a lithe and comely Czech hand model who may know more than she lets on. Russian mobsters, wily poker-playing informants, and a hot-and-cold New York Yankees ball club are all pivotal players here. Also compelling is Young's shrewd wife, Carol, who worries about her husband in the way only a longtime partner can. Harrison delivers a crime novel as gritty and electric as New York City itself. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Heart of the matter - Graham Greene

Heart of the matter - Greene, Graham

Summary: Set in West Africa, this is the story of Scobie, an assistant police commissioner, and his personal and professional corruption.




Kirkus Reviews:
/* Starred Review */ Reported originally in the February 15th bulletin, this was postponed to the above date as a mid-summer selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. The original report ran as follows: "Not to be associated with Graham Greene's earlier works (Brighton Rock, The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear, etc.) this is a novel of considerable seriousness and stature in which the sensational brilliance of his previous writing has been subdued by sincerity, by compassion, and by a strong sense of faith. But with no sacrifice of narrative momentum, this pursues the theme of good and evil in its ultimate implications, portrays the corruption of a man by a worldly- rather than a final-judgment. This is the story of Scobie, whose austere integrity has remained above question during his fifteen years' service as Assistant Police Commissioner in a West African coastal town, has brought him few friends and many enemies. Bound by a sense of responsibility to his work, to his wife, Louise, for whom he feels only pity and the pathos of her unattractiveness, Scobie becomes the victim of that pity when to give Louise a fresh start- he borrows the money for her passage from a Syrian, Yussuf. Falling in love again, this time with a childlike widow of nineteen, Scobie again finds that passion dies away, that only pity is left, and his indiscretion exposed to the malevolent Yussuf- he becomes an object of blackmail. In a descrescendo to dishonor which leads from doubt to deceit, indirectly to murder, Scobie commits the unforgivable sin in the tenets of his Catholicism, suicides, but in so doing finds the renunciation of his life... A book which offers a variety of virtues- in its external drama, in its satiric subtlety as it is directed against the insular, colonial scene, and in its relentless portrayal of a man destroyed by the strength of his conscience rather than the weakness of the flesh. For an adult, appreciative audience. (Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1948)

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Shakespeare in performance - Keith Parsons & Pamela Mason (Eds.)

Shakespeare in performance - Parsons, Keith & Mason, Pamela (Eds.)

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Stories I only tell my friends - Rob Lowe

Stories I only tell my friends: an autobiography - Lowe, Rob

Summary: The 1980s Brat Pack founder presents an account of his life in show business and politics, tracing his counter-culture youth in Malibu, his work on such productions as "The Outsiders" and "The West Wing" and his pursuits of family and sobriety.



Booklist Reviews
Lowe, in case you haven't been living on planet Earth for some time, is a significant TV and movie actor. Again, unless you've been out of the loop lately, his career was nearly scuttled when a sex tape featuring him with two young women surfaced. But the point of bringing that sad and not-really-anyone's-business incident up is to say that Lowe survived to thrive again, and his charming, honest, even affectionate memoir is the story of strong guts behind a strikingly handsome face. Lowe recalls his early life in Ohio, his move with his mother and brother (Chad, that is, also an actor) to California, and his early advent into movies and television. A stable family life was never his to enjoy until he began his own. He certainly does not downplay the wild parts of his life, but neither does he act entitled to the high points of his career. Readers will appreciate learning of his hard work and of his learning from his past mistakes. A book to recommend widely. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: First serial rights sold to Vanity Fair (May issue), author appearances, and national media and review attention will generate buzz. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Akhenaten dweller in truth - Najib Mahfuz

Akhenaten dweller in truth - Mahfuz, Najib

After the death of Akhenaten, a young man searches for the truth about the "heretic pharaoh," interviewing Akhenaten's closest friends, most dangerous enemies, and even his enigmatic wife, Nefertiti, about the remarkable leader of ancient Egypt, in a fictional portrait of the eighteenthdynasty pharaoh by the Nobel Prizewinning author of Palace of Desire. Original. 20,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
In a novel set during the eleventh century B.C., Mahfouz details the story of a young boy, Meriamum, who seeks to uncover the "truth" about the titular character, the recently deceased pharaoh. Akhenaten, Egypt's first monotheistic ruler, endured a controversial reign, during which he struggled to impart his divine vision to an unwilling nation. Armed with a letter of introduction, Meriamum is granted interviews with those closest to the pharaoh: a diverse array of characters that include the high priest, childhood friends, soldiers, a harem member, and finally Nefertiti, Akhenaten's wife. As Meriamum pieces together the disparate accounts, both he and the reader are given a fascinating glimpse of Akhenaten, a man compelled to follow his faith no matter how disastrous the consequences. Mahfouz populates his engrossing novel with characters that are believably human and flawed; their conflicts with religion and politics have a timeless quality to which readers will respond. Although some might complain that the content of the interviews often becomes repetitive, readers interested in ancient Egypt will find this book immensely appealing. ((Reviewed March 15, 2000)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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The legend of Colter Bryant - Alexandra Fuller

The legend of Colter Bryant - Fuller, Alexandra

Summary: "Colton knew there were a hundred ways to die in Wyoming. That's why he figured there was only one way to live--with all his heart. When Alexandra Fuller set out to write about the oil rigs on Wyoming's high plains, she was expecting the fierce weather and the roughnecks, the big skies and the industry men, but she wasn't expecting to encounter a real-life cowboy. Then Colton H. Bryant happened into her story, a soulful boy with a mustang-taming heart and blue eyes that'll look right through you. The story of his life took over Fuller's writing and a kind of magic ensued, the result of which became this book."--From publisher description.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Fuller's re-creation of the brief life of Colton H. Bryant is the story of a third-generation oil-patch worker in Wyoming. Spotlessly capturing the distinctive scenes from his life, Fuller takes readers into the Bryant family and the small-town community and oil rigs they inhabited. To know Colton, who "has a way of tearing out of the chute, firing with all hooves at once," one must experience him, and Fuller, with pinpoint detailing and a deadeye aim on Wyoming dialect, teases out a portrait of a young man that is staggering in its spareness, and heartbreaking in its tenderness. But, "like all westerns, this story is a tragedy before it even starts because there was never a way for anyone to win against all the odds out here." The stacked deck belongs to the oil companies, of course, and the lesson learned from Colton's life and death is that human life is small change and protecting it isn't in the best interest of profit. Although it's little consolation, Fuller's deeply moving celebration of Colton's life is bursting with humor, love, and tragedy, like all that is best in life, and without ever having met him, you won't soon forget Colton H. Bryant. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.


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The other side - Istvan Banyai

The other side - Banyai, Istvan

Summary: A wordless picture book that shows a series of familiar scenes through many twists in point of view, such as a boy looking down out of a jet's window and another boy on the ground looking up at the same jet.



Horn Book Guide Reviews
In this wordless book, we see part of a story on one page; turning that page reveals another perspective. There are other stories as well, mysteriously intertwined. The resolution raises more questions, sending readers back to the beginning for additional clues in Banyai's precise line art. Readers who like puzzles and the challenge of lateral thinking will find themselves preoccupied for hours. Copyright 2006 Horn Book Guide Reviews.

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Stranger than fiction - Chuck Palahniuk

Stranger than fiction - Palahniuk, Chuck

Summary: A collection of nonfiction writings documents encounters with Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis, the challenges faced by the author when "Fight Club" was made into a movie, the lives of submariners, and the violent experiences of college wrestlers. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
From Fight Club (1996) and the guys who fight for sport to Choke (2001) and a young man who might literally be the son of Jesus, Palahniuk's novels are consistently populated with extraordinary eccentrics. So it's no surprise that in this collection of previously published magazine pieces, he writes mostly of the bizarre. Palahniuk focuses on themes of solitude and community, on our need to feel simultaneously special and a part of something. He attends the Olympic wrestling trials, for instance, and examines why men endure cauliflower ear and debilitating injury to participate in a sport that no one watches or cares about. The personal essays (Palahniuk describes a romp through Seattle while wearing a dog costume, for instance) don't shine as much as the journalistic pieces, although fans will be interested to learn personal details about Chuck and his experiences with quasi celebrity. But the best narratives here-- particularly a lengthy one on Americans who build European-style castles--show Palahniuk's deep compassion for oddballs and misfits, a hard-boiled kindness for which his fans revere him. ((Reviewed May 15, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

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Close to famous - Joan Bauer

Close to famous - Bauer, Joan

Summary: Twelve-year-old Foster McFee and her mother escape from her mother's abusive boyfriend and end up in the small town of Culpepper, West Virginia, where they use their strengths and challenge themselves to build a new life, with the help of the friends they make there.



Booklist Reviews
Twelve-year-old Foster McFee and her mother leave Memphis in the middle of the night, fleeing the mother's abusive boyfriend. Foster has a severe learning disability, a pillowcase full of mementos of her dead father, and a real gift for baking. When she and her singer mother relocate to a tiny, rural West Virginia town, they discover a friendly and welcoming population of delightfully quirky characters. Foster finally learns to read from a reclusive, retired movie star; markets her baked goods at Angry Wayne's Bar and Grill; helps tiny but determined Macon with his documentary; and encourages her mother to become a headliner rather than a backup singer, all the while perfecting her baking technique for the time when she gets her own cooking show like her TV idol, Sonny Kroll. Bauer gently and effortlessly incorporates race (Foster's mother is black; her father was white), religion, social justice, and class issues into a guaranteed feel-good story that dodges sentimentality with humor. Readers who want contemporary fiction with a happy ending will find it here. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Inside out & back again - Thanhha Lai

Inside out & back again - Thanhha, Lai

Summary: Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* After her father has been missing in action for nine years during the Vietnam War, 10-year-old Hà flees with her mother and three older brothers. Traveling first by boat, the family reaches a tent city in Guam, moves on to Florida, and is finally connected with sponsors in Alabama, where Hà finds refuge but also cruel rejection, especially from mean classmates. Based on Lai's personal experience, this first novel captures a child-refugee's struggle with rare honesty. Written in accessible, short free-verse poems, Hà's immediate narrative describes her mistakes—both humorous and heartbreaking—with grammar, customs, and dress (she wears a flannel nightgown to school, for example); and readers will be moved by Hà's sorrow as they recognize the anguish of being the outcast who spends lunchtime hiding in the bathroom. Eventually, Hà does get back at the sneering kids who bully her at school, and she finds help adjusting to her new life from a kind teacher who lost a son in Vietnam. The elemental details of Hà's struggle dramatize a foreigner's experience of alienation. And even as she begins to shape a new life, there is no easy comfort: her father is still gone. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Life, on the line - Grant Achatz

Life, on the line : a chef's story of chasing greatness, facing death, and redefining the way we eat - Achatz, Grant

Summary: An award-winning chef describes how he lost his sense of taste to cancer, a setback that prompted him to discover alternate cooking methods and create his celebrated progressive cuisine.



Kirkus Reviews
One of America's most decorated chefs relates the triumphal story of his culinary genesis and epic battle with tongue cancer.

The unlikely comma in the title of this 36-year-old's memoir, seemingly choking off the subject before it's developed, wonderfully captures the pivotal pause cancer forced the young chef to take during his meteoric rise in the restaurant world. Witnessed and told in part by business partner Kokonas, Achatz's story begs comparison more with sports greats like Andre Agassi and Lance Armstrong, who famously surmounted gross physical challenges to reach the pinnacle of their careers, than with other culinary lions. While his untimely diagnosis with carcinoma of the tongue at age 33 may have compelled Achatz to share his story of life "on the line" with a mainstream audience, the bulk of the memoir focuses on the chef's extraordinary culinary journey. From cracking eggs at age seven in his grandmother's café, to opening Alinea in Chicago at 31, which was subsequently named the best restaurant in the country by Gourmet in 2006, Achatz writes that the great challenge of his younger life was matching the culinary achievement of those around him. "All of my life I was surrounded by success"—including his parents, who owned their own restaurant before they were 30, exposure to the uncompromising demands of Charlie Trotter and mentoring by the inimitable Thomas Keller. "The whole time I wanted to be as good as all of them," he writes. "I knew the only way to come close to that was to do something different; otherwise, I would always be in their shadows." With an unrelenting work ethic and crackerjack imagination that has yielded gastronomic gems like foie gras lozenges enrobed in bittersweet chocolate or lavender-flavored popsicles, not to mention a revolutionary approach to food preparation and presentation, Achatz has demonstrated success at achieving "different." But what makes this memoir ring true for those beyond the world of the professional kitchen is the author's understated rise to the challenge of his life-altering trauma.

Revelatory and inspiring.
Copyright Kirkus 2011 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Humble masterpieces - Paola Antonelli

Humble masterpieces: everyday marvels of design - Antonelli, Paola

Summary: From M & Ms to Post–It Notes, a charming and insightful collection of design marvels from everyday life, celebrated by the curator of the MoMA's department of architecture and design.

Every day we use dozens of tiny objects, from Post–It notes to Band–Aids. If they work well, chances are we do not pay them much attention. But although modest in size and price, some of these objects are true masterpieces of the art of design.

Paola Antonelli, curator of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Design and Architecture, is a highly celebrated figure in the world of design (she was just ranked among the top 100 most powerful people in the world of art). Paola has long been passionate about the subject of everyday objects that are marvels of design. The response to her recent MoMA show, also called Humble Masterpieces, was electric. In addition to lively coverage in dozens of publications, the museum goers spread the word about the fun of learning about and nominating their own picks for humble masterpieces.

Now, in this colorful visual feast, Antonelli chooses 100 fabulous objects, from Chupa Chup lollipops to Legos to Chopsticks and Scotch tape. Each object will be portrayed with a gorgeous close–up detail, a brisk and informative text on its origin and special design features, as well as a silhouette image of the object as we see it each day. Certain to appeal to a broad audience, and to lend itself to fun, creative promotional opportunities, Humble Masterpieces will celebrate the possibility of looking at our everyday lives in an all–new way.
- (HARPERCOLL)

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The emperor of scent - Chandler Burr

The emperor of scent : a story of perfume, obsession, and the last mystery of the senses - Burr, Chandler

Summary: Explores the life of scientific maverick Luca Turin, a man whose remarkable powers of smell and obsession with perfume led to the discovery of how the nose works and how scents are detected. - (Baker & Taylor)




Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Science is supposed to be rational and objective, but in the real world, as mettlesome journalist Burr discovered while chronicling an ingenuous scientist's approach to solving one of the greatest mysteries of the body, how smell works, it is more often ego-driven, avaricious, and viciously resistant to fresh ideas. Burr, author of A Separate Creation (1996), met Luca Turin by chance, just one of the countless serendipitous moments that typify this cosmopolitan biophysicist's intuitive and innovative approach to science. Possessed of a capacious intellect, an obsession with smell, and a passion for perfume, Turin has always, Burr writes, "picked up information like flypaper." This gift, coupled with Turin's preternaturally sensitive nose, phenomenal memory, and prodigious ability to precisely describe scents, enabled him to write his renowned Parfums: Le Guide (1992)--which granted him precious access to the secretive big seven fragrance corporations--and to think outside the box and challenge the clearly flawed, but persistent, theory that scents are recognized by molecular shape. Turin is certain that it's molecular vibrations, and the scandalous story of his thwarted efforts to publish his exciting and provocative findings, thanks to Burr's vigorous writing style, incisive portraits, and scientific explication, is as suspenseful as it is fascinating. ((Reviewed December 1, 2002)) Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews

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Elmer - Gerry Alanguilan

Elmer - Alanguilan, Gerry

Summary: Jake Gallo, an intelligent chicken, returns to the farm where his father, Elmer, one of the first sentient chickens, is dying, where he reads Elmer's diary and talks to the man who protected his parents before chickens were declared human. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Gorgeously drawn black-and-white artwork combines with outstanding storytelling in this modern-day fable of ethnic strife, identity, friendship, and family. The titular character has been a writer all his "human" life, keeping a secret diary that his son Jake discovers and reads after Elmer's death. Along with his newly engaged sister and gay movie-star brother, Jake returns to his childhood home for Elmer's last days, stays on for his funeral, and helps his newly widowed, delicate mother. Oh, and Jake and family are sentient, well-spoken chickens, a result of a never-explained but carefully depicted world event in 1979. Elmer's old human friend, Farmer Ben, offers Jake insight on Elmer's past—both pre- and postsentience—and advice as Jake works through his family's victimization at the hands of Ben's kind. Bloody world wars pitted chicken against man and led to a wave of antichicken prejudice and even attempts at genocide before the UN declared chickens an equal part of humanity. Ethical and moral issues touch on wide-angle politics but also keep close to familial events in Jake's childhood (bullying, child-parent strife) and adulthood (inter-"ethnic" marriage). The fine-lined artwork depicts the differences between sentient and presentient chickens, while some full-page panels show the lush scenery and relative calm between action sequences. Set in Alanguilan's Philippine homeland and marked by its culture, Elmer deserves a wide international readership (for teen collections, note brief female nudity and strong violence) and shows how the sequential-art format can challenge even such canonical predecessors as Animal Farm. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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The Duggars - Michelle Duggar

The Duggars: 20 and counting!: raising one of America's largest families--how they do it - Duggar, Michelle

Summary: A behind-the-scenes look at this supersize, faith-filled family from Arkansas that's full of entertaining and enlightening stories, photos, recipes, tips, traditions, and practical ideas for rearing happy children.



No Review Available

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Austenland - Shannon Hale

Austenland - Hale, Shannon

Summary: Because her obsession with Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice," is ruining her love life, Jane Hayes is delighted when she gets the chance to take a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women.



Booklist Reviews
Suppose you're a huge fan of Jane Austen, and in particular Pride and Prejudice and in particular Colin Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the BBC adaptation, and nothing in real life quite measures up. And suppose your great-aunt's legacy to you is a three-week vacation at an Austen-themed resort. This is the situation in which Jane Hayes, New York graphic artist, finds herself. Pembrook Park is a kind of Austen Fantasy Island where the female guests are required to dress, speak, eat, and in every way conduct themselves like heroines in Austen's novels, with actors filling out the roles of eligible suitors. Jane, called Miss Erstwhile for the duration of her stay, tries to get used to corsets and other Regency amusements while sorting out whether the attentions of a Darcyesque Mr. Nobley, not to mention a good-looking gardener, are sincere or part of the show. A clever confection for fans of contemporary Austen knockoffs. ((Reviewed March 15, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

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The greater journey - David G. McCullough

The greater journey: Americans in Paris - McCullough, David

Summary: "This is the inspiring and, until now, untold story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America; future abolitionist Charles Sumner; staunch friends James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse (who saw something in France that gave him the idea for the telegraph); pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk; medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes; writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James; Harriet Beecher Stowe, seeking escape from the notoriety Uncle Tom's Cabin had brought her; sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent; and American ambassador Elihu Washburne, who bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris and even more atrocious nightmare of the Commune. His vivid account in his diary of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris (drawn on here for the first time) is one readers will never forget. Nearly all of these Americans, whatever their troubles, spent many of the happiest days and nights of their lives in Paris."--From publisher description.

Library Journal Reviews
Using a cache of letters, journals, and memoirs McCullough explores the impact of Paris on American thought and creativity during the 19th century. Tracing the city's influence on dozens of characters, McCullough offers readers his special blend of accessible, story-based social history. His lists of subjects reads like the top class of a 19th-century who's who: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (the New York sculptor), Mary Cassatt, Oliver Wendell Holmes (father of the Supreme Court Justice), James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel F.B. Morse, Charles Sumner (who went on to be the key voice in the Senate against slavery), and Harriet Beecher Stowe all make appearances. As McCullough's wonderful book makes clear, these luminaries did not just sharpen and deepen their particular expertise in Paris, they witnessed and absorbed a way of life and outlook that was both totally foreign and extremely influential. Presenting an intersecting grid of tales, McCullough dips out of one story only to dip into another as he explores the individual biographies that collectively make his point. The result is narrative nonfiction at its best, a work that seduces the reader with a fascinating blend of strongly defined characters, illuminating and intriguing detail, and an engrossing pace. - Neal Wyatt, "RA Crossroads", Booksmack! 7/7/11 Read-alikes: (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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The Devil's company - David Liss

The Devil's company - Liss, David

Summary: Set in 1700s London. When Benjamin Weaver is blackmailed into stealing documents from the ruthless British East India Company, he soon discovers the theft of trade secrets is only the first move in a daring conspiracy within the eighteenth century's most powerful corporation. To save his friends and family, Weaver must infiltrate the Company, navigate its warring factions, and uncover a secret plot of corporate rivals, foreign spies, and government operatives.

Booklist Reviews
Liss' third Benjamin Weaver novel finds the eighteenth-century British "thief-taker" (a kind of detective specializing in recovering stolen goods) on the wrong end of an elaborate scam. A secretive businessman, Mr. Cobb, has bought the debts of Weaver's uncle and two friends and threatens to throw them all into debtors' prison if Weaver doesn't do his bidding: gather information that could be used against London's formidable East India Company. Reluctantly, Weaver is on the case, but his real agenda is to save his friends and use whatever information he uncovers against Cobb and his henchmen. As in the previous Weaver adventures, A Conspiracy of Paper (2000), about Exchange Alley, center of the eighteenth-century British stock trading, and A Spectacle of Corruption (2004), about the world of bare-knuckle politics, Liss probes another insular community, silk traders, whose tentacles extend deep into every fabric of British economic and social life. His portrait of the East India Company could stand as a treatise on the birth of today's megacorporation: rife with historical detail and philosophical rumination on the proper relationship between business and government, it offers context on issues that continue to fuel debate on both sides of the Atlantic, but it does so not with pontificating economists but with a cast of robust Dickensian characters who wear their individuality on their silky sleeves. If the plot twists itself into a too-elaborate knot this time, requiring some awkward untwisting at the end, it interferes only slightly with our enjoyment of the novel. For every English major who flunked economics, Liss is here to complete our education in a way we can understand. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Mao's last dancer - Cunxin Li

Mao's last dancer - Li, Cunxin

Summary: Chosen from millions of children to serve in Mao's cultural revolution by studying at the Beijing Dance Academy, Li knew ballet would be his family's best opportunity to escape the bitter poverty in his rural China home. From one hardship to another, Li persevered, never forgetting the family he left behind.



Kirkus Reviews
A prominent ballet dancer revisits the strange course that led him from a Chinese hamlet to the world stage.Mix Billy Elliott with Torn Curtain and you'll have some of the tale in very broad outline. Born in 1961, Li lived his early years under the shadow of Mao's Great Leap Forward, which had impoverished the already poor countryside to an almost unbelievable extent. "Dried yams were our basic food for most of the year," Li writes. "We occasionally had flour and corn bread for a treat, but those were my [mother's] special reserves for relatives or important visitors. . . . Dried yams were the most hated food in my family, but there were others in the commune that could not even afford dried yams. We were luckier than most." Luck came in another form when Madame Mao decided that recruiting ballet dancers from the provinces would prove to the world that Chinese Communism was truly egalitarian, whereupon Li was packed off to dance school. "The officials mentioned ballet," he writes, "but all I knew about ballet was what I'd seen in the movie The Red Detachment of Women." Willing but slow to learn ("I was considered a laggard by most of my teachers," he writes with characteristic modesty), Li eventually found his feet, at the same time finding a purpose: "to serve glorious communism." One exchange trip to Texas, though, and Li, now in his late teens, was ready for something else. Li's well-paced account of the ensuing cloak-and-dagger episodes that led to his defection to the West adds suspense to a tale already full of adventures, but there are no conventional bad guys to be found in it. Indeed, he writes with fine compassion for the Chinese consul who attempts to dissuade him from becoming an outcast; "unlike me, he had to go back and would probably never manage to get out again."Nicely written and humane: for anyone interested in modern Chinese history or for fans of dance. Copyright Kirkus 2004 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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The five - Robert McCammon

The five - McCammon, Robert

Summary: Follows an eponymous rock band struggling to survive on the margins of the music business as they move through the American Southwest on what might be their final tour together, where the band members come to the attention of a damaged Iraq war veteran, and their lives are changed forever.



Staff Review
A story about a rock 'n' roll band who goes on a road trip that they never expected. Amazingly detailed, and full of rock knowledge, you won't forget this band.

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Zoo City - Lauren Beukes

Zoo City - Beukes, Lauren

Summary: Zinzi has a talent for finding lost things. Being hired by famously reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum of the criminal underclass. Set in a wildly re-imagined Johannesburg, it mixes refugees, crime, the music industry, African magic and the nature of sin.



Staff Review
A unique science fiction story set in a futuristic South Africa. Completely original.

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Canti - Giacomo Leopardi

Canti - Leopardi, Giacomo

Summary: Giacomo Leopardi is Italy's greatest modern poet, the first European writer to portray and examine the self in a way that feels familiar to us today. A great classical scholar and patriot, he explored metaphysical loneliness in entirely original ways. Though he died young, his influence was enormous, and it is no exaggeration to say that all modern poetry, not only in Italian, derives in some way from his work.


Booklist Reviews
For a poet of his stature, Leopardi has enjoyed few complete translations in English. His poetic corpus isn't large; this volume contains all of it, in the original Italian as well as English. But Leopardi employed archaisms and unusual syntax, classical allusions, and the elision that makes him one of the first modernists. He also modified the traditional poetic forms he used, moving away from their rhyme schemes for the sake of personalizing his poetic voice, though he never descends to autobiography. Galassi grants the impossibility of transferring Leopardi's musicality into English, yet his versions often have their own swing to them, and they always verify the depiction of Leopardi in the introduction as a discouraged but genuine patriot and a philosophical hapless lover. They reflect, too, the romantic displacement of devotion from God to nature, the distrust of science, the exaltation of eros, and the despair of meaningful change that Matthew Arnold's English harbinger of modernism, "Dover Beach," attests. An absorbing presentation of a literary giant. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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The moonstone - Wilkie Collins

The moonstone - Collins, Wilkie

Summary: The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The story was originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie Collins' best novels. Besides creating many of the characteristics of detective novels, The Moonstone also represented Collins' social opinions by his treatment of the Indians and the servants in the novel.


Review
“Perfect for long, cold winter evenings.”
— The Times

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Unaccustomed earth - Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed earth - Lahiri, Jhumpa

Summary: Exploring the secrets and complexities lying at the heart of family life and relationships, a collection of eight stories includes the title work, about a young mother in a new city whose father tends her garden while hiding a secret love affair.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Following her thoughtful first novel, The Namesake (2003), which has been made into a meditative film, Lahiri returns to the short story, the form that earned her the Pulitzer Prize for her debut, Interpreter of Maladies (1999). The tight arc of a story is perfect for Lahiri's keen sense of life's abrupt and painful changes, and her avid eye for telling details. This collection's five powerful stories and haunting triptych of tales about the fates of two Bengali families in America map the perplexing hidden forces that pull families asunder and undermine marriages. "Unaccustomed Earth," the title story, dramatizes the divide between immigrant parents and their American-raised children, and is the first of several scathing inquiries into the lack of deep-down understanding and trust in a marriage between a Bengali and non-Bengali. An inspired miniaturist, Lahiri creates a lexicon of loaded images. A hole burned in a dressy skirt suggests vulnerability and the need to accept imperfection. Van Eyck's famous painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, is a template for a tale contrasting marital expectations with the reality of familial relationships. A collapsed balloon is emblematic of failure. A lost bangle is shorthand for disaster. Lahiri's emotionally and culturally astute short stories (ideal for people with limited time for pleasure reading and a hunger for serious literature) are surprising, aesthetically marvelous, and shaped by a sure and provocative sense of inevitability. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

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Secret daughter - Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Secret daughter - Gowda, Shilpi Somaya

Summary: Interweaves the stories of a baby girl in India, the American doctor who adopted her, and the Indian mother who gave her up in favor of a son, as two families--one in India, the other in the United States--are changed by the child that connects them.



Kirkus Reviews
Fiction with a conscience, as two couples worlds apart are linked by an adopted child.Gowda's debut opens in 1984 with poor Indian village-dweller Kavita giving birth to a second daughter. When her first was born, husband Jasu immediately arranged the child's death. Girls are a luxury the couple can't afford; they need boys, who don't require dowries and can help with the labor of surviving. This time around, Kavita stands up to Jasu, names the baby Usha and takes her to an orphanage. Adopted and renamed Asha, she becomes the only child of Krishnan, scion of a wealthy Bombay family, who is now a neurosurgeon in San Francisco, and his American wife Somer. Asha's arrival assuages some of Somer's pain over her infertility but brings its own cultural problems. Asha grows up feeling incomplete, cut off from half her heritage by her mother's fears and neediness. As a college student, her flair for journalism leads to a fellowship, and she chooses to spend the year in Bombay (now Mumbai), giving Gowda further opportunity to describe India, mainly its gender imbalance and the social divide between the wealthy and the grindingly impoverished. Somer and Krishnan's marriage goes through a rocky phase, and Kavita and Jasu have problems too, but Asha's visit inevitably provides the opportunity to connect some, if not all, of the loose ends.A lightweight fable of family division and reconciliation, gaining intensity and depth from the author's sharp social observations. Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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The girl in the garden - Kamala Nair

The girl in the garden - Nair, Kamala

Summary: A conflicted young woman seeks clarity about her impending marriage by remembering a childhood summer when she discovered a long-hidden secret while visiting her mother's ancestral home in an Indian village outside a mysterious jungle. 40,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
On the verge of marriage, Rakhee Singh must return to India to rectify childhood notions of marriage and love that were shattered during an adolescent summer spent in India. Just as Rakhee's adolescence was beginning, her Indian immigrant mother, facing deep depression and unhappiness in Minnesota, decided to bring her to India for the summer. There, Rakhee built strong friendships with her cousins, met her dying grandmother, and found her once-rich family struggling to stay afloat. She discovered as the summer unfolded that the financial hardship was deeply involved in her mother's affair with an old friend and with a mysterious garden deep in the forest behind the family home. What Rakhee discovered within the walls of the garden changed her life forever. A daring fairy tale of a story, Nair's first novel audaciously tackles issues ranging from puberty to friendship to abuse, providing plenty of adventure as well. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Save me - Lisa Scottoline

Save me - Scottoline, Lisa

Summary: When an explosion rips through the nearly empty cafeteria of a Reesburgh (Pa.) Elementary School, lunch mother Rose McKenna leads two girls to safety before racing to rescue her own daughter, Melly. But Rose soon learns that she may face both civil and criminal charges for her heroics because one of the girls she saved was seriously injured in the resulting fire that killed three school staff members.

Booklist Reviews
Suburban mom Susan Pressman is forced to make a split-second decision after an explosion goes off in the school cafeteria in which she volunteers. Should she rescue her own daughter, Melly, trapped in the bathroom, or lead the girls standing in front of her, who constantly bully her daughter, to safety? Her choice reverberates throughout the little town of Reesburgh, Pennsylvania, as she is cast as the villain by the local news anchor, parents, and the school. While her attorney and husband construct a defense plan that includes filing a lawsuit against the school, Susan sets out to seek the truth behind this mysterious, accidental fire. With the help of a construction worker who may know the cause of the explosion as well as an incognito visit to a local factory, Susan slowly unravels the truth and along with it some hidden secrets in Reesburgh's dark past, including one horrifying buried memory of her own. At the quick pace of a thriller, Scottoline masterfully fits every detail into a tight plot chock-full of real characters, real issues, and real thrills. A story anchored by the impenetrable power of a mother's love, it begs the question, just how far would you go to save your child? Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Sisterhood everlasting - Ann Brashares

Sisterhood everlasting: a novel - Brashares, Ann

Summary: Having lost touch with each other over the years, Carmen, Lena, and Bridget are surprised when they receive plane tickets to travel to Australia for a reunion with Tibby, but after tragedy strikes their lives are changed forever.



Booklist Reviews
Brashares' bestselling YA series, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, follows four fiercely devoted best friends who shared a pair of near-magical jeans ("According to our mythology, they had the power to keep us together when we were apart"). In the new installment, the pants have been lost for 10 years, and the sisters, now in their late twenties and separated by time zones, struggle to maintain their close bonds. A reunion in Greece creates an opportunity to reconnect, but three of the friends arrive to find that their beloved fourth has drowned in a possible suicide. Most of the novel focuses on the central characters as they try to return to life in the wake of the tragedy, and the transitions between viewpoints are occasionally disjointed. But, like Francesca Lia Block, who has followed the lead heroine of her watershed YA novel, Weetzie Bat (1989), into her forties, Brashares nimbly ages her characters, nicely capturing late-twentysomething concerns about marriage, motherhood, and careers as well as love's enduring power to mend the ruptures of grief. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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The devotion of suspect X - Keigo Higashino

The devotion of suspect X - Higashino, Keigo

Summary: Yasuko Hanaoka thought she had escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day, the situation quickly escalates and Togashi ends up dead. Yasuko's next-door-neighbor Ishigami offers his help, not only disposing of the body, but plotting the cover-up as well.



Booklist Reviews
One of Japan's best-selling crime novelists makes his American debut in an atmospheric thriller about a desperate woman, Yasuko, who, craving a peacefull life with her daughter, Misato, kills her abusive lout of an ex-husband. The next-door neighbor, Ishigami, helps hide the body and improvises a cover-up. When the body is eventually found, however, determined investigator Kusanagi, with the help of Dr. Yukawa, a physicist who knew Ishigami in college, senses that something is amiss with Yasuko's story. A cat-and-mouse, Dostoevsky-like investigation ensues. Higashino explores just how far a relationship built on a terrible event can last. Suggest to readers familiar with Natsuo Kirino (Real World, 2008), another Japanese master of psychological crime fiction, and Karin Fossum, whose Norway-set thrillers are also drenched in psychological terror. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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