Amped - Daniel Wilson

Amped - Wilson, Daniel

Summary: In a near-future world where technologically enhanced humans are governed by a strict set of conduct laws, twenty-nine-year-old Owen Gray joins the ranks of a persecuted underclass that is planning to change, or destroy, the world.



Publishers Weekly Reviews
Owen Gray is an ordinary 29-year-old high school teacher implanted with a medical chip that controls his epilepsy. When the Supreme Court rules that "Amps," people whose chips give them enhanced abilities, are not a protected class shielded from discrimination, Owen's father, who's also his neurosurgeon, reveals that Owen's chip is "something extra," and Owen is now in danger from "pure pride" activists. He takes off for an Oklahoma trailer park called Eden where chip designer Jim Howard lives alongside other implantees whose only protection now is each other. Most just want to live normal lives, but ex-soldier Lyle Crosby intends to exploit their enhancements to start a war, and Owen is thrust into the fight. Wilson keeps the action and fear-based prejudice ever-present without sacrificing depth. The story's heart is the moral quandary Owen faces once he knows his implant only responds to his deepest thoughts, keeping the reader wondering how far he will go and how much he is willing to sacrifice. Agent: Laurie Fox, Linda Chester Literary Agency. (June)

Check Availability

My happy days in Hollywood - Gary Marshall

My happy days in Hollywood a memoir - Marshall, Gary

Summary: A lighthearted account by the producer and director of such productions as "Laverne & Shirley" and "Pretty Woman" traces his Bronx childhood, role in shaping A-list celebrity careers, and personal philosophies about life and entertainment.



Booklist Reviews
Marshall has worn many hats in Hollywood over the course of his five decades in the business: writer, producer, director, actor. Born in the Bronx, he made his way to Hollywood in 1961 and got his start penning sitcoms for such television luminaries as Lucille Ball and Danny Thomas. The creation of the hit show Happy Days put Marshall on the map, and led to several spin-offs, including Laverne & Shirley, which starred his sister Penny. Marshall turned to the big screen next, and while his first few entries weren't commercially successful, subsequent outings like Nothing in Common, Beaches, and Pretty Woman made him a household name. Contrary to many working in the business, Marshall went out of his way to make each of his sets a happy place, playing pranks on various stars and even ensuring that Julia Roberts ate regular meals after she collapsed during the filming of Pretty Woman. Readers are bound to be as charmed by Marshall himself as they are by the behind-the-scenes anecdotes he shares about his hit television shows and movies. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

They eat puppies, don't they? - Christopher Buckley

They eat puppies, don't they? - Buckley, Christopher

Summary: Starting a rumor about an assassination plot targeting the Dalai Lama as part of an effort to gain support for a secret weapons system, Bird McIntyre and Angel Templeton provoke Washington crises that bring the United States and China to the brink of war.



Booklist Reviews
In his latest novel of bull's-eye political satire, Buckley (Supreme Courtship, 2008) skewers our adversarial yet symbiotic relationship with China, along with the corruption endemic to lobbying, weapons manufacturing, and media spin. Walter "Bird" McIntyre, lobbyist for an aerospace behemoth, is instructed to "whip up . . . anti-Chinese fervor" to help secure government funding for a new secret weapon. Hapless and endearing, Bird divides his time between the condo he calls the Military-Industrial Duplex and the country estate he dubbed Upkeep, home to his equestrian wife, Alzheimer's-afflicted mother, and freeloading brother Bewks, a Civil War reenactor, while writing egregiously clichéd thrillers. Bring on sexy-scary hawk and neocon Angel Templeton, and Bird is in more trouble than he concocts for his tough-guy heroes. Vicious confrontations break out on Chris Matthews' Hardball, the Dalai Lama is in peril, and the eminently reasonable president of China can talk with his trusted aide only in the bathroom with the water running full blast to foil their enemies' listening devices. Buckley balances bayonet humor and tenderness in this canny and diverting send-up. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.


Check Availability

Along the way - Martin Sheen & Emilio Estevez

Along the way: the journey of a father and a son - Sheen, Martin

Summary A dual memoir of the film legend and his actor/director son shares fifty years of family history, covering their Northern Spanish heritage, careers, and individual spiritual lives. - (Baker & Taylor)



Kirkus Reviews
The patriarch and scion of one of America's best-known acting families take turns sharing the stories of their lives, careers and relationship. The 2010 film The Way, written and directed by Estevez and starring Sheen, tells the story of a man who completes the journey along the Camino de Santiago pilgrim's path begun by his son, who died en route. The movie provides the entry point for the authors--assisted by Edelman (The Possibility of Everything, 2009, etc.)--to relate their life stories, focusing on acting, faith, family and the filming of The Way. Sheen, born Ramon Estevez, the son of a Spanish immigrant father and Irish immigrant mother, grew up in a large Catholic family in Dayton, Ohio. Emilio Estevez was raised in Malibu, Calif., and on film and TV sets around the world as his father struggled to make a career as an actor and keep his family together. On the whole, the alternating voices work well, highlighting the similarities and differences in the father and son's paths to professional and personal success and noting the failures and obstacles on the way. Estevez's description of his experiences as a 14-year-old on the Philippines set of Apocalypse Now is particularly noteworthy, adding an extra dimension to the well-documented insanity of that film's creation. The drawback to a double memoir becomes evident after a while, however, as the stories of auditions and film sets, fascinating though they may be, lessen the impact of what is intended to be the main focus: the life lessons each man draws from their father-son relationship. Shedding light on the creation of a unique family and an American acting dynasty, this book is certain to become a Father's Day gift staple for West Wing and Repo Man fans alike. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.


Check Availability

The age of miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

The age of miracles - Walker, Karen Thompson

Summary: Imagines the coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.



Kirkus Reviews
In Walker's stunning debut, a young California girl coming of age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers. Sixth-grader Julia, whose mother is a slightly neurotic former actress and whose father is an obstetrician, is living an unremarkable American middle-class childhood. She rides the school bus and takes piano lessons; she has a mild crush on a boy named Seth whose mother has cancer; she enjoys sleepovers with her best friend Hanna, who happens to be a Mormon. Then one October morning there's a news report that scientists have discovered a slowing of the earth's rotation, adding minutes to each day and night. After initial panic, the human tendency to adapt sets in even as the extra minutes increase into hours. Most citizens go along when the government stays on a 24-hour clock, although an underground movement of those living by "real time" sprouts up. Gravity is affected; birds begin to die, and astronauts are stranded on their space station. By November, the "real time" of days has grown to 40 hours, and the actual periods of light and dark only get longer from that point. The world faces crises in communication, health, transportation and food supply. The changes in the planet are profound, but the daily changes in Julia's life, which she might be facing even in a normal day, are equally profound. Hanna's family moves to Utah, leaving Julia without a best friend to help defend against the bullies at the bus stop. She goes through the trials and joys of first love. She begins to see cracks in her parents' marriage and must navigate the currents of loyalty and moral uncertainty. She faces sickness and death of loved ones. But she also witnesses constancy and perseverance. Julia's life is shaped by what happens in the larger world, but it is the only life she knows, and Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Check Availability

Love, fiercely - Jean Zimmerman

Love, fiercely: a gilded age romance - Zimmerman, Jean

Summary: Documents the Gilded Age love story of an heiress who fought for women's rights and an architect, tracing their upbringings, their pursuits, and their advocacy efforts on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised.



Library Journal Reviews
Demonstrating the same flare as in her previous biography, Zimmerman (The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty) pays respect to the lives and times of Edith Minturn Stokes and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes. Edith and Newton, as he was called, who married in 1895, were born in New York to immense privilege and became patrons of the arts and advocates for immigrant rights. The two knew each other as children and eventually fell in love. Newton, a respected architect in his own right, pulled together a massive multivolume documentary history, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, and Edith worked for many charitable organizations. Zimmerman chronicles their personal lives and love, from the heights of financial success to the depths of deteriorating health and wealth, while also encapsulating the era in which they lived. VERDICT With an impressive amount of research behind every page, Zimmerman manages to capture the sweeping drama of the turn of the century as well as the compelling story of a couple who knew how to love, fiercely. Her superb pacing and gripping narrative will appeal to all who enjoy history, biography, and real-life romance. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/11.]—Crystal Goldman, San Jose State Univ. Lib., CA

Check Availability

Unholy night - Seth Grahame-Smith

Unholy night - Grahame-Smith, Seth

Summary: Depicts the lives of the Three Kings of the Nativity, casting them as a set of infamous thieves who accidentally happen upon Joseph, Mary, and the newborn king and help them escape to Egypt.



Booklist Reviews
Blasphemous or brilliant? That was the buzz surrounding Grahame-Smith following his auspicious arrival on the New York Times best-seller list in 2009 with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a clever literary mash-up that launched a new "historical revisionism" genre of popular fiction. Blockbuster authors don't grow on trees, so it wasn't a huge shock when Grahame-Smith made headlines last December after Warner Bros. paid him $2 million for the film rights to Unholy Night before its publication. The twisted plot revolves around the biblical story of the Three Wise Men, depicted here as thieving scoundrels who—through a series of outrageous set pieces—end up aiding Joseph, Mary, and the little baby Jesus as they escape from the evil King Herod. There's no way of knowing if Grahame-Smith wrote this would-be epic with the intent of having it become a big-budget Hollywood movie, but it's not hard to visualize someone like Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of the murderous yet charming Balthazar. It's a rollicking, swords-and-sandals yarn that could easily have been subtitled "in 3-D." Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Home - Toni Morrison

Home - Morrison, Toni

Summary: "The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"-- Provided by publisher.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The Korean conflict is over, and soldier Frank Money has returned to the States with a disturbed psyche that sends him beyond anger into actually acting out his rage. From the mental ward in which he has been incarcerated for an incident he can't even remember, he determines that he must escape. He needs to get to Atlanta to attend to his gravely ill sister and take her back to their Georgia hometown of Lotus, which, although Frank realizes a return there is necessary for his sister's sake, remains a detestable place in his mind. Morrison's taut, lacerating novel observes, through the struggles of Frank to move heaven and earth to reach and save his little sister, how a damaged man can gather the fortitude to clear his mind of war's horror and face his own part in that horror, leave the long-term anger he feels toward his hometown aside, and take responsibility for his own life as well as hers. With the economical presentation of a short story, the rhythms and cadence of a poem, and the total embrace and resonance of a novel, Morrison, one of our national literary treasures, continues to marshal her considerable talents to draw a deeply moving narrative and draw in a wide range of appreciative readers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A quarter-million print run is the surest indication that the publisher is confident that a new Morrison novel is bound to be a big hit. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Winter's bone - Daniel Woodrell

Winter's bone - Woodrell, Daniel

Summary: Reaching her sixteenth year in the harsh Ozarks while caring for her poverty-stricken family, Ree Dolly learns that they will lose their house unless her bail-skipping father can be found and made to appear at an upcoming court date. 25,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ In Give Us a Kiss (1996), Woodrell introduced the Redmonds, marijuana farmers from the Ozarks ("It's a strange, powerful bloodline poetry, I guess, but there's something so potent to us Redmonds about bustin' laws together, as a family"). Now he turns his attention to the Redmonds' archenemies, the Dollys, another family of dirt farmers who thrive on bustin' laws together (crank cocaine being their crop of choice). But this time the Dollys aren't feuding with the Redmonds as much as battling each other. Sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly, who dreams of escaping her family by joining the army ("where you got to travel with a gun and they make everybody help keep things clean") is caught in the crossfire when her daddy jumps bail, leaving her stuck with two younger brothers and the prospect of forfeiting their house if the old man doesn't show up for his court date. To find Daddy, dead or alive, and save the house, Ree must ask questions of her notoriously tight-lipped relatives ("talkin' causes witnesses"). When she keeps pushing for answers, the relatives push back. Like his characters, and especially his teen characters, Woodrell's prose mixes tough and tender so thoroughly yet so delicately that we never taste even a hint of false bravado, on the one hand, or sentimentality, on the other. And Ree is one of those heroines whose courage and vulnerability are both irresistible and completely believable--think of not just Mattie Ross in True Grit but also Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or even Eliza Naumann in Bee Season. One runs out of superlatives to describe Woodrell's fiction. We called his last novel, The Death of Sweet Mister (2001), "word perfect." If that's true--and it is--this one is word perfecter. ((Reviewed May 1, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

How to live, or, A life of Montaigne - Sarah Bakewell

How to live, or, A life of Montaigne: in one question and twenty attempts at an answer - Bakewell, Sarah

Summary: "How does one live? How does one do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Montaigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them 'essays,' meaning 'attempts' or 'tries.' Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne's honesty and charm still draw readers. This spirited biography relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored."--From publisher description.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In a wide-ranging intellectual career, Michel de Montaigne found no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well. By casting her biography of the writer as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question How to live? Bakewell limns Montaigne's ceaseless pursuit of this most elusive knowledge. Embedded in the 20 life-knowledge responses, readers will find essential facts—when and where Montaigne was born, how and whom he married, how he became mayor of Bordeaux, how he managed a public life in a time of lethal religious and political passions. But Bakewell keeps the focus on the inner evolution of the acute mind informing Montaigne's charmingly digressive and tolerantly skeptical essays. Flexible and curious, this was a mind at home contemplating the morality of cannibals, the meaning of his own near-death experience, and the puzzlingly human behavior of animals. And though Montaigne has identified his own personality as his overarching topic, Bakewell marvels at the way Montaigne's prose has enchanted diverse readers—Hazlitt and Sterne, Woolf and Gide—with their own reflections. Because Montaigne's capacious mirror still captivates many, this insightful life study will win high praise from both scholars and general readers.

Check Availability

The art of Daniel Clowes - Daniel Clowes, Alvin Buenaventura, Chip Kidd and Chris Ware

The art of Daniel Clowes: modern cartoonist - Clowes, Daniel

Summary: Examines the work and accomplishments of the author of "Eightball," "Ghost World," and other alternative comics and graphic novels.



Booklist Reviews
Clowes is the ultimate alt-comics artist, combining drawing chops equal to those of Jaime Hernandez, the derisively skeptical attitude of a Peter Bagge, and a formal mastery of the medium that rivals Chris Ware's. This handsome volume, released in connection with a traveling exhibition of Clowes' artwork, offers an overview of his 25 years in comics, from his late-'80s magazine Eightball through his acclaimed graphic novels, including Ghost World (1997), David Boring (2000), and Wilson (2010). The volume opens with a recent, career-spanning interview and a generous selection of his groundbreaking Eightball-era work, followed by an appreciation by close friend Ware, who reminisces about their days as struggling cartoonists in Chicago in the early '90s (their informal collaborations are among the rarest of the many rarities reprinted in the book). Other essays offer insight into Clowes' later work, but it's the profusion of his artwork collected here—comics pages, unpublished sketches, New Yorker covers, and other commercial illustrations—that makes the most compelling case for Clowes as one of the most accomplished and important figures on the contemporary comics scene. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Dreaming in French - Alice Yaeger Kaplan

Dreaming in French: the Paris years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis - Kaplan, Alice Yaeger

Summary: Examines how spending time abroad in Paris changed the lives and outlooks of three notable American women. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Kaplan (The Interpreter, 2005) recounted her revelatory passion for all things French in French Lessons (1994). She now offers uniquely discerning portraits of three very different yet equally trailblazing American women whose "lives were transformed by a year in France, and who, in turn, transformed the United States." An elegant, socially well-connected book lover and "keen observer of beauty," Jackie Bouvier Kennedy was a Vassar student when she went to France in 1949 and found her true home. As Kaplan follows Kennedy to the White House and beyond, she praises her "quiet power and uncanny intelligence" while tracking her lifelong fascination with French art and culture. Leaving her husband and young son behind, Susan Sontag landed in France in 1958 and immersed herself in bohemian Paris and the French literary works that became the foundation for her influential, often controversial writing. Angela Davis' ardor for French propelled her out of segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to school in New York, then to Paris in 1963–64 as the only African American student in her year-abroad program. A woman of "intellectual intensity" and valor, she became a besieged activist and cause célèbre. Kaplan's avidly researched, fresh, and astute biographical triptych reveals as much about the evolution of women's lives as it does about how profoundly these three exceptional Francophiles deepened the American experience. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

The art of losing - Rebecca Connell

The art of losing - Connell, Rebecca

Summary: Louise, a young woman whose mother, Lydia, died in an automobile accident while she was a child, believes that her mother's lover, Nicholas, caused her death and seeks revenge against him by secretly creeping into his life.


Publishers Weekly Reviews
Connell's first novel charts the riveting, decade-long struggle of 20-something Englishwoman Louise to come to terms with losing her mother at the age of 10. In 1983, Oxford professor Nicholas Steiner has a short-lived affair with Lydia, the wife of a university colleague and Louise's mother, before marrying another woman and having a son. Nicholas's attempt at domestic bliss is complicated by an unexpected encounter with Lydia, with whom he renews the affair, which ends only with Lydia's death in 1989. Nearly two decades later, certain that Nicholas is to blame for her mother's death, Louise assumes her mother's name, moves to the town where Nicholas and his family live, and sets out to confront and, she hopes, destroy him. But Louise/Lydia falls in love with Nicholas's son and moves in with the Steiner family, from whom she learns firsthand about life's ambiguities. Connell's story races through a series of breathtaking yet believable surprises, never failing to hold the reader's interest. (Oct.)

Check Availability

This is how - Augusten Burroughs

This is how: proven aid in overcoming shyness, molestation, fatness, spinsterhood, grief, disease, lushery, decrepitude, & more-- for young and old alike - Augusten Burroughs

Summary: Draws on the author's roller-coaster experiences with limited opportunities, successes and failures while offering darkly whimsical, no-holds-barred advice on surviving everything from riding elevators and gaining weight to finishing drinks and finding love. By the author of Running With Scissors. 350,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Burroughs, whose best-selling memoir, Running with Scissors (2002), documented horrific childhood abuse, is uniquely qualified to write a self-help book. He is a survivor, with intimate knowledge of many of the topics addressed in the genre. His advice here, whether about addiction, aggression, self-loathing, or denial, can be summed up in three words: get over yourself. Life is too short, he says, to do anything but live in the moment and focus on the good. Burroughs is bracingly honest, offering remedies for the world-weary, from teenage girls molested by their fathers to adults coming to terms with the death of a life partner. Burroughs, whose struggles with alcohol were documented in Dry (2003), doesn't believe in Alcoholics Anonymous, which requires members to admit powerlessness. A person needs power, he says, to abolish alcohol from his or her life. With his trademark blend of black humor and heart, Burroughs serves up tough love and reasons for hope: "If you hate life, you haven't seen enough of it," he writes in a chapter about suicide. "If you hate your life, it's because your life is too small and doesn't fit you. However big you think your life is, it's nothing compared to what's out there." HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a first printing of 350,000 copies and extensive promotion in print and online, Burroughs' one-of-a-kind take on the how-to book will have his fans standing in line for advice. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

A thousand-mile walk to the Gulf - John Muir

A thousand-mile walk to the Gulf - Muir, John

Summary: In 1867, John Muir, age twenty-eight, was blinded in an industrial accident. He lay in bed for two weeks wondering if he would ever see again. When his sight miraculously returned, Muir resolved to devote all his time to the great passion of his life -- studying plants. He quit his job in an Indiana manufacturing plant, said good-bye to his family, and set out alone to walk to the Gulf of Mexico, sketching tropical plants along the way. He kept a journal of this thousand-mile walk and near the end of his life, now famous as a conservation warrior and literary celebrity, sent a typescript of it to his publisher. The result is a wonderful portrait of a young man in search of himself and a particularly vivid portrait of the post-war American South. Here is the young Muir talking with freed slaves and former Confederate soldiers, pondering the uses of electricity, exploring Mammoth Cave, sleeping in a Savannah cemetery, delirious with malarial fever in the home of strangers at Cedar Key, traveling to Havana, Cuba, and sailing to San Francisco Bay. Once in California, Muir promptly set out for Yosemite Valley -- 200 miles away. There Muir found his destiny -- and a mountain range to test his apparently inexhaustible capacity for walking. A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf bridges two Muir classics: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra

Check Availability

Girlchild - Tupelo Hassman

Girlchild - Hassman, Tupelo

Summary: Obsessively following the edicts of the Girl Scouts Handbook in spite of her lack of a troop, young Rory longs to escape the Reno trailer park where she lives with her bartender mother.



Booklist Reviews
In this inventive, exciting debut, Hassman writes a 1980s Reno trailer park into a neon, breathing world. Reno is just like Tahoe, only without anything beautiful. Narrator Rory Dawn, whose mother, simultaneously tripping on acid and giving birth, gave her a name that sounds like a screaming sunrise and calls her girlchild for short, is a grade-schooler when we meet her. Like the 1972 Nobility double-wide she lives in, trailer-park anthropologist Rory's own foundation is lacking, at best. She inventories her mother's alcoholism and mental illness with heartbreaking, childish normalcy. The abuse she suffers at the hands of her inept babysitters turns her into an introverted bookworm who wins spelling bees (until she worries her smarts will alienate her beloved mother) and finds solace in the library. Rory's name fills the circulation card of her school's Girl Scout Handbook, and she earns proficiency badges as a troop of one. Hassman's creatively titled, short, free-form chapters are helium-filled imagination fodder, and Hassman takes what could be trite or unbelievable in less talented hands and makes it entirely the opposite. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Mapplethorpe: a biography - Patricia Morrisroe

Mapplethorpe: a biography - Morrisroe, Patricia

Summary: Describes the photographer's intensely private life, his personal relationships, the evolution of his seminal photographic art, and his battle with AIDS - (Baker & Taylor)



Kirkus Reviews
~ A rivetingly detailed, unforgivingly blunt biography of the photographer whose celebrity portraits and depictions of the sadomasochistic gay subculture ignited public controversy. More voyeuristic titillation than serious art historical examination, Morrisroe's study of Mapplethorpe (19461989) gains credibility from her exhaustive research: The New York based journalist interviewed the artist about his life on numerous occasions before his death from AIDS, spoke at length to former lovers and art world associates, and won the confidence of his long-estranged parents. The book opens with heavy irony at Mapplethorpe's Catholic funeral in Floral Park, Queens, the artist's boyhood home. His youth was an awkward period of slow self-discovery in the shadow of a gregarious older brother and domineering father. At Brooklyn's Pratt Institute in the '60s, the ROTC cadet blossomed into an acid-eating hippie art student. He soon found his muse in aspiring rock poet Patti Smith; the pair moved to Manhattan and held court from the Chelsea Hotel. The author depicts Mapplethorpe as a conniving seducer who wrote his own ticket to the art world by winning the love and support of Sam Wagstaff, a prominent and monied photography collector. With his patronage, Mapplethorpe flourished, turning his personal fascinations into compelling photo series, most frequently of gay S&M rituals, black men, bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, eroticized flowers, and celebrities. Morrisroe treats Mapplethorpe as a kind of sexualized social savant with a magic touch, making much ado of his shameless career manipulations pitting galleries and power players against one another. Pathos comes to the fore in the chapters on the '80s, in which the dying artist achieves ever-greater levels of fame and controversy. Rich in sharp observation and risque revelation, an immorality tale that shamelessly mines Mapplethorpe's sad legacy for all it's worth. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Vanity Fair; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections) Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews

Check Availability

Executioner's song - Norman Mailer

Executioner's song - Mailer, Norman

Summary: A reconstruction of the crime and fate of Gary Gilmore, the convicted murderer who sought his own execution in Utah where he was imprisoned, is based on taped interviews with relatives, friends, lawyers, and law-enforcement officials - (Baker & Taylor)


Review
This is an absolutely astonishing book. -- The New York Times Book Review, Joan Didion

Check Availability

Space chronicles - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Space chronicles: facing the ultimate frontier - Tyson, Neil deGrasse

Summary: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson presents his views on the future of space travel and America's role in that future, giving his readers an eye-opening manifesto on the importance of space exploration for America's economy, security, and morale.



Kirkus Reviews
Astrophysicist Tyson, the director of Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers a forceful, cumulative argument for space exploration even in the face of a disastrous economy. In this collection of articles and talks, the author investigates what space travel means to us as a species and, more specifically, what NASA means to America. Deploying an energetic tone, scattershot with clever twists and peculiar, entertaining factoids, Tyson handles the species half of the equation from the comic angle. That perspective is inclusive and humbling, open and encouraging of wonder, and the author finds in Earth a precious mote in the vastness, allowing readers to transcend the primal and celebrate great scientific laws to appreciate our place in the universe. It also helps us get past the jingoistic aspects of space exploration, for if NASA--the other half of Tyson's concern--is driven by anything, it is military politics. "When science does advance, when discovery does unfold, when life on Earth does improve," he writes, "they happen as an auxiliary benefit and not as a primary goal of NASA's geopolitical mission statement." But those auxiliary benefits are the critical, serendipitous fallout of the space program: GPS, cordless power tools, ear thermometers, household water filters, long-distance telecommunication devices, smoke detectors and much more. You can't script the benefits; you have to have faith in the cross-pollinating splendors of science, and Tyson finds little evidence for this in the current Congress. If Tyson handles both the rarified and scientific justifications of continued space funding with aplomb, his economic reasoning falls short. One half a penny of each tax dollar sounds scant, but that leaves only 199 like-sized programs for the entire government. An enthusiastic, persuasive case to start probing outer space again.

Check Availability

The age of miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

The age of miracles - Walker, Karen Thompson

Summary: Imagines the coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.



Kirkus Reviews
In Walker's stunning debut, a young California girl coming of age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers. Sixth-grader Julia, whose mother is a slightly neurotic former actress and whose father is an obstetrician, is living an unremarkable American middle-class childhood. She rides the school bus and takes piano lessons; she has a mild crush on a boy named Seth whose mother has cancer; she enjoys sleepovers with her best friend Hanna, who happens to be a Mormon. Then one October morning there's a news report that scientists have discovered a slowing of the earth's rotation, adding minutes to each day and night. After initial panic, the human tendency to adapt sets in even as the extra minutes increase into hours. Most citizens go along when the government stays on a 24-hour clock, although an underground movement of those living by "real time" sprouts up. Gravity is affected; birds begin to die, and astronauts are stranded on their space station. By November, the "real time" of days has grown to 40 hours, and the actual periods of light and dark only get longer from that point. The world faces crises in communication, health, transportation and food supply. The changes in the planet are profound, but the daily changes in Julia's life, which she might be facing even in a normal day, are equally profound. Hanna's family moves to Utah, leaving Julia without a best friend to help defend against the bullies at the bus stop. She goes through the trials and joys of first love. She begins to see cracks in her parents' marriage and must navigate the currents of loyalty and moral uncertainty. She faces sickness and death of loved ones. But she also witnesses constancy and perseverance. Julia's life is shaped by what happens in the larger world, but it is the only life she knows, and Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Check Availability

Harbor nocturne - Joseph Wambaugh

Harbor nocturne - Wambaugh, Joseph

Summary: "In the southernmost Los Angeles district of San Pedro, one of the world's busiest harbors, an unlikely pair of lovers are unwittingly caught between the two warring sides of the law amid the investigation of a horrifying human-trafficking ring. When Dinko Babich, a young longshoreman, delivers Lita Medina, a young Mexican dancer, from the harbor to a Hollywood nightclub, theirs lives are forever changed as the two are caught in the crosshairs of the multitude of cops and criminals, the law-abiding and the lawless, who occupy the harbor."--Dust jacket.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Wambaugh fills his books with over-the-top, crazy war stories, disturbing, sometimes revolting in their details and insights into human nature and made more shocking because readers know Wambaugh gets his stories from real cops. And, while that could be more than enough, Wambaugh embeds the stories he hears from cops within fiercely and ingeniously plotted mysteries. The war story–mystery combination works because cops naturally tell each other their stories in the downtimes between calls. This latest is part of Wambaugh's Hollywood Station series, in which police do battle against the crazies on the streets and in the hills. The action expands, this time, to the L.A. district of San Pedro, one of the world's busiest harbors, which boasts a harbor's share of lowlifes and career criminals. A love story starts when a druggie longshoreman takes the assignment of driving a young Mexican stripper from a harbor bar to a Hollywood nightclub, a decision that gets the longshoreman enmeshed in the sex-trafficking trade. Fans of Hollywood Station (2006), the first in the series, will be glad to see surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam return, along with the always-ambitious Hollywood Nate Weiss, now pushing 40 and fearing that his chances to be discovered are as flimsy as his SAG card. A very fast ride-along, enlivened by cop gallows humor, snarky street altercations, and an insistent pull to the dark side. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Oh, the places you'll go - Dr. Seuss

Oh, the places you'll go - Dr. Seuss

Summary: Advice in rhyme for proceeding in life; weathering fear, loneliness, and confusion; and being in charge of your actions.

"Don't be fooled by the title of this seriocomic ode to success; it's not 'Climb Every Mountain,' kid version. All journeys face perils, whether from indecision, from loneliness, or worst of all, from too much waiting. Seuss' familiar pajama-clad hero is up to the challenge, and his odyssey is captured vividly in busy two-page spreads evoking both the good times (grinning purple elephants, floating golden castles) and the bad (deep blue wells of confusion). Seuss' message is simple but never sappy: life may be a 'Great Balancing Act,' but through it all 'There's fun to be done.'"--(starred) Booklist. - (Random House, Inc.)


Check Availability

The Lorax - Dr. Seuss

The Lorax - Dr. Seuss

Summary: The Once-ler describes the results of the local pollution problem.

"Unless someone like you...cares a whole awful lot...nothing is going to get better...It's not."

Long before saving the earth became a global concern, Dr. Seuss, speaking through his character the Lorax, warned against mindless progress and the danger it posed to the earth's natural beauty.

"The big, colorful pictures and the fun images, word plays and rhymes make this an amusing exposition of the ecology crisis."—School Library Journal. - (Random House, Inc.)

Check Availability

Insurgent - Veronica Roth

Insurgent - Roth, Veronica

Summary: "As war surges in the dystopian society around her, sixteen-year-old Divergent Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves--and herself--while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love"-- Provided by publisher.


Booklist Reviews
While the hugely popular Divergent (2011) welcomed dystopian fans of every stripe with its irresistable concept and hybridization of genres, this sequel is more for hard-core fans—a good thing if you're a devotee but a bit overwhelming for fence-riders. Rocked by the recent simulation war, the five factions engage in increasingly dangerous power plays to pick up the pieces. Tris and her love, Tobias, both daredevils of the Dauntless faction, are key players in these skirmishes, most of which focus upon the fiendishly logical Erudites and almost all of which are complicated by backstabbers and turncoats. It remains a great deal of fun to watch these cliques-taken-to-extremes duke it out with their various strengths and weaknesses, and Roth delivers the goods when it comes to intense, personal violence (no superpowers to be found here) and compelling set pieces (as when Tris undergoes a public "truth serum" interrogation). Newcomers, and even some old hands, might get buried under all the transposable characters and faction minutia, but those who stick it out will be rewarded with quite the cliff-hanger HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Divergent was the kind of best-seller juggernaut debut authors dream of. With high-profile movie rights already sold, you can bet you'll see this sequel on everyone's must-read list. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Harbor - John Ajvide Lindqvist

Harbor - Lindqvist, John Ajvide

Summary: "From the author of the international and New York Times bestseller Let the Right One In (Let Me In) comes this stunning and terrifying book which begins when a man's six-year-old daughter vanishes. One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While the couple explore the lighthouse, Maja disappears -- either into thin air or under thin ice -- leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to the island to regroup. He slowly realises that people are not telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. What is happening in Domaro, and what power does the sea have over the town's inhabitants? As he did with Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist serves up a blockbuster cocktail of suspense in a narrative that barely pauses for breath"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
This eerie, atmospheric tale of desperation and strange bargains with incomprehensible forces begins with the disappearance of seven-year-old Maja. Two years later, her father, Anders, is back on the island, scene of her vanishing, intent on reassembling his life. He spent the interval drunk; his wife, Celia, left him; and he's obsessed with how perfect life with Maja was. His grandmother, Anna-Greta, knows something she's not telling. In fact, most of Domaro's year-round residents know at least something about the town's relationship with the surrounding sea. Anna-Greta's lover Simon, a former stage magician, has his own secrets but slowly discovers the island's secrets as his own becomes harder to keep. Living in the Shack, where he'd lived with Celia and Maja, Anders becomes increasingly convinced that Maja isn't dead and that he must rescue her. He'll go to any length, and eventually, the history of the island becomes clear. The book's long, complex buildup to a particularly satisfying conclusion is shot through with the very best kind of horror—subtle, persistent, finally front-and-center. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.


Check Availability

In one person - John Irving

In one person - Irving, John

Summary: A tale inspired by the U.S. AIDS epidemic in the 1980s follows the experiences of individuals--including the bisexual narrator--who are torn by devastating losses and whose perspectives on tolerance and love are shaped by awareness of what might have been.


Booklist Reviews 
*Starred Review* Much of Irving's thirteenth novel is piquantly charming, crisply funny, and let-your-guard-down madcap in the classic mode of a Frank Capra or Billy Wilder film. This shrewdly frolicsome ambience is tied to the amateur theatrical productions that provide the primary source of entertainment in mid-twentieth-century First Sister, Vermont, a no-place-to-hide yet nonetheless secretive small town sporting a private boy's prep school. Here lives young, fatherless Billy, whose lumberman-by-day, actor-by-night Grandpa Harry plays women's roles with baffling authenticity. By the time Billy turns 13, he realizes that something sets him apart beyond his speech impediment and determination to become a writer, namely his crushes on the "wrong people," including his future stepfather, teacher and Shakespeare scholar Richard, and Miss Frost, the tall, strong librarian who eventually proves to be the key to the truth about Billy's bisexuality and his biological father. Storytelling wizard that he is, Irving revitalizes his signature motifs (New England life, wrestling, praising great writers, forbidden sex) while animating a glorious cast of misfit characters within a complicated plot. A mesmerizing, gracefully maturing narrator, Billy navigates fraught relationships with men and women and witnesses the horrors of the AIDS epidemic. Ever the fearless writer of conscience calling on readers to be open-minded, Irving performs a sweetly audacious, at times elegiac, celebration of human sexuality. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Irving is always a huge draw, and this sexually daring and compassionate tale, which harks back to the book that made him famous, The World according to Garp (1978), will garner intense media attention. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Chew - John Layman

Chew: the omnivore edition - John Layman

Summary: Tony Chu is a detective with a secret. A weird secret. Tony Chu is cibopathic, which means he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. It also means he's a hell of a detective - as long as he doesn't mind nibbling on the corpse of a murder victim to figure out whodunit and why. He's been brought on by the Special Crimes Division of the FDA, the most powerful law enforcement agency on the planet, to investigate their strangest, sickest and most bizarre cases. This gorgeous, oversized edition loaded with extras follows Tony for the first ten issues of IGN.com's pick for "Best Indie Series of 2009," and MTV Splash Page's "Best New Series of 2009." Collects the New York Times' best seller "Taster's Choice," as well as the follow-up story-arc "International Flavor."

Booklist Reviews 
This deluxe edition collects the first two five-issue story arcs of the ultraviolent (and ultracannibalistic) foodie buddy-cop comic. In a near future where millions of Americans died from a particularly nasty avian flu, poultry is outlawed and a Prohibition-style black market springs up to satisfy the needs of gastronomes and frustrated chefs. Enter FDA agent Tony Chu, one of three known "cibopaths," who has the most peculiar ability to get psychic impressions from whatever he eats. Lots of dismemberment and corpse-chomping (it's harder to see Tony bite into a dead dog for clues than any of the various people he's forced to nibble on) ensue as the beginnings of a conspiracy theory about the bird flu and an alien fruit that tastes just like chicken take shape. It's not nearly as nauseating as it might sound (though, to be fair, it is plenty gross), thanks to Layman's flippant sense of humor and Guillory's chunky, kinetically caricatured artwork, which whips up an irresistible smorgasbord out of the bloody, genre-hopping ingredients. Grand gut-check comics entertainment here. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Beauty queens - Libba Bray

Beauty queens - Bray, Libba

Summary: When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.

BookPage Reviews

Girls gone radical

Libba Bray’s last novel, the award-winning Going Bovine, was heralded as a departure for the author, who had previously been best known for a trilogy of Victorian-era supernatural romances. Now, in Beauty Queens, Bray further pushes the boundaries in a work of social satire that skewers race, gender, standards of beauty and our hyper-saturated media culture. Oh, and did I mention that it’s also wicked funny?

When a plane carrying 50 contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant crash-lands on a (seemingly) deserted island, will it turn into Lord of the Flies? Or something else entirely? At first, the girls do split up into tribes—the Lost Girls and the Sparkle Ponies—but before long, they come to see their isolation as something of an opportunity. “There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. . . . They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.” But what happens when these self-actualizing (and very, very fetching) young women encounter the hunky stars of reality TV’s “Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser”?

The surviving Miss Teen Dream contestants comprise a veritable United Nations of diversity—there’s the black girl, the Indian girl, the transgender contestant, the uptight virgin, the deaf one, the lesbian . . . but each girl’s remarkably distinctive voice and deeply personal backstory results in a narrative that’s equal parts compelling and crazy. Beauty Queens is pointed, riotous and unapologetically feminist, with each swerve toward preachiness cleverly counterbalanced with a hilarious barb or perfectly placed one-liner. “Do you think my new feminism make me look fat?” one character asks. Turns out, Bray shows us, feminism can look pretty darn hot after all.
Copyright 2011 BookPage Reviews.

Check Availability

Love's executioner - Irvin Yalom

Love's executioner: and other tales of psychotherapy - Yalom, Irvin

Summary: The risks and rewards of psychotherapy are examined by one of its finest practitioners through ten case studies of individuals with unique problems that nevertheless reflect on the whole human condition - (Baker & Taylor)



Library Journal Reviews
Because Yalom (psychiatry, Stanford Univ.) is not only an accomplished psychiatrist but a gifted storyteller as well, his new book moves at the pace of a suspense thriller, with each chapter providing a fascinating look at the patient-therapist relationship. Yalom gives the reader the opportunity to view up close the intimate, and sometimes startling, relationship that develops between client and therapist. Refusing to paint an artificial picture of therapy as always successful--a truly unique aspect of this work--Yalom also describes relationships in which clients have walked out, never to return; the reader is left to ponder why the relationship ended as it did. At once funny and insightful; highly recommended.-- Kim Banks, Columbia Univ. Lib. Copyright 1989 Cahners Business Information.


Check Availability

The Gormenghast novels - Mervyn Laurence Peake

The Gormenghast novels - Peake, Mervyn Laurence

Summary: A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and a dazzling array of bizarre creatures inhabit the magical world of the Gormenghast novels which, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reign as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of it all is the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom, unless the conniving Steerpike, who is determined to rise above his menial position and control the House of Groan, has his way.

In these extraordinary novels, Peake has created a world where all is like a dream--lush, fantastical, and vivid. Accompanying the text are Peake's own drawings, illustrating the whole assembly of strange and marvelous creatures that inhabit Gormenghast.

Reviews
"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work . . . a classic of our age."-- Robertson Davies

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."-- C. S. Lewis

"This extravagant epic about a labyrinthine castle populated with conniving Dickensian grotesques is the true fantasy classic of our time."-- The Washington Post Book World

Check Availability

A fearsome doubt - Charles Todd

A fearsome doubt: an Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery -  Todd, Charles

Summary: Seven years after sending Ben Shaw to the gallows for the brutal murders of elderly women, Inspector Ian Rutledge is approached by Shaw's widow, who claims that her husband had been innocent, and sets out to uncover the truth about a potential miscarriage of justice. By the author of Watchers of Time. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge may be the only sleuth in detective-fiction history to have a ghost as his sidekick. Hamish MacLeod, late of the Scottish brigade, whom Rutledge ordered executed for insubordination during the Great War, provides acerbic commentary on Rutledge's actions and thoughts, effectively underscoring Rutledge's psychological torment. Rutledge's habitual angst is stretched to the breaking point in the latest in this series, when the inspector has reason to fear that he sent the wrong man to the gallows seven years before, in 1912. The hanged man's widow presents Rutledge with new evidence that seems to place the blame on another serial killer. Fearing for his sanity, Rutledge must examine the new evidence and investigate the murder of two ex-soldiers in Kent. Both sets of serial killings become eerily intermeshed. Todd skillfully interweaves an acute psychological portrait with a compelling puzzle. Intelligent and intense history-mystery, at the level of Anne Perry and Bruce Alexander. ((Reviewed August 2002)) Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews

Check Availability

Pandemonium - Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium - Oliver, Lauren

Summary: After falling in love, Lena and Alex flee their oppressive society where love is outlawed and everyone must receive "the cure"--an operation that makes them immune to the delirium of love--but Lena alone manages to find her way to a community of resistance fighters, and although she is bereft without the boy she loves, her struggles seem to be leading her toward a new love.  

Kirkus Reviews
 It's been six months since readers first met 17-year-old Lena Haloway, desperately in love in a world that considers such feelings an infection to be permanently and irrevocably "cured." This much-anticipated sequel to Delirium (2011) picks up right where the first novel left off, with Lena and Alex's only partially successful attempt to escape to "the Wilds." Lena, alone, heartbroken and near death, must reach deep within herself to find the strength and the will to survive. "Step by step--and then, inch by inch," she is reborn. The story of Lena's new life as a rebel Invalid, determined to honor the memory of Alex by fighting for a world in which love is no longer considered a capital offense, is told through a series of flashbacks and present-day accounts that will leave readers breathless. The stakes only get higher when Lena realizes she has feelings for someone new. The novel's success can be attributed to its near pitch-perfect combination of action and suspense, coupled with the subtler but equally gripping evolution of Lena's character. From the grief-stricken shell of her former self to a nascent refugee and finally to a full-fledged resistance fighter, Lena's strength and the complexity of her internal struggles will keep readers up at night. (Dystopian romance. 14 & up) Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.  

Check Availability