Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.
Showing posts with label Library Loot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Library Loot. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Library Loot (Jan 25 - Feb 1)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library.  If you'd like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button - and visit the above 2 blogs to see who has the Mr. Linky this week. Don't forget to check out what others are checking out!


Irises
by Francisco X. Stork

Kate is bound for college and an M.D. -- if her family will let her go.  Mary wants only to stay home and paint.  When their loving but repressive father dies, they must figure out how to support themselves and their mother, and how to get along in all their uneasy sisterhood.

Then three young men sway their lives:  Kate's boyfriend, Simon, asks her to marry him, offering the girls some much-needed stability.  Mary is drawn to Marcos, though she fears his violent past.  And Andy tempts Kate with more than romance, recognizing her ambition because it matches his own.

Kate and Mary each find new possibilities and darkness in their sudden freedom.  But it's their mother's life that might divide them for good -- the question of if she lives, and what's worth living for.




The Queen of Kentucky
by Alecia Whitaker

Fourteen-year-old Kentucky girl Ricki Jo Winstead, who would prefer to be called Ericka, thank you very much, is eager to shed her farmer's daughter roots and fit in with the popular crowd at her small-town high school.  She trades her Bible for Seventeen magazine, buys new "sophisticated" clothes, and strikes up an unlikely flirtation with the freshman class's resident bad boy.  She's on top of the world, even though her best friend and neighbor, Luke, says he misses "plain old Ricki Jo."

Caught between being a country girl and wannabe country club girl, Ricki Jo begins to forget who she truly is: someone who doesn't care what people think and who wouldn't let a good-looking guy walk all over her.

After a serious incident on Luke's farm, Ricki Jo realizes that being a true friend is more important than being popular. . . and that the one boy who matters most has been next door all along. 




Unearthly
by Cynthia Hand

In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees. . .

Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel.  Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do.  Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.

Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town.  When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place -- and out of place at the same time.  Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.

As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make -- between honesty and deceit, love and duty, good and evil.  When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?





Saving Zoe
by Alyson Noel

It's been on year since the brutal murder of her older sister, Zoe, and fifteen-year-old Echo is still reeling from the aftermath.  Her parents are numb, her friends are moving on, and the awkward start to her freshman year proves she'll never live up to her sister's memory.  Until Zoe's former boyfriend Marc shows up with Zoe's diary.

At first Echo's not interested, doubting there's anything in there she doesn't already know.  But when curiosity prevails, she starts reading, becoming so immersed in her sister's secret world, their lives begin to blur, forcing Echo to uncover the truth behind Zoe's life so that she can start to rebuild her own.

Prepare to laugh your heart out and cry your eyes out in this highly addictive tale as Alyson Noel tackles the complicated relationship between two sisters and shows how the bond can endure long after one of them is gone. 


Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Library Loot (Aug 31, 2011)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library.  If you'd like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button - and visit the above 2 blogs to see who has the Mr. Linky this week. Don't forget to check out what others are checking out!


Our library is closing soon for about 5 weeks to complete some renovations, so I have been stocking up!

Witches on the Road Tonight
by Sheri Holman

By the best-selling author of The Dress Lodger, Sheri Holman's new and most ambitious novel to date, Witches on the Road Tonight, uncovers the secrets and lies that echo through three generations of one Appalachian family.  It is a deeply human, urgent exploration of America's doomed love affair with fear.

On the eve of World War II, eight-year-old Eddie Alley lies in bed watching his first horror movie, hand-cranked and flickering on the bare wall of a backwoods cabin.  In 2011, Eddie's daughter, Wallis, an anchorwoman for a twenty-four-hour news channel, lies in bed with a stranger, spinning ghost stories.  Between these two nights winds the story of the Alley family -- Eddie's mother, Cora, an Appalachian mountain witch who slips out of her skin after nightfall; Captain Casket, Eddie's alter ego, a campy 1970's TV horror-movie host; and Jasper, the orphaned boy Eddie brings home, who is determined to destroy Eddie's illusions even if it means destroying himself.

Deftly moving from the rural, Depression-era South to modern New York City, Holman teases out the dark compulsions and desperate longings that can blur the line between love and betrayal.  Witches on the Road Tonight is an unflinching story that digs at the roots of myth -- both familial and societal -- and beautifully renders our perpetual yearning to make sense of the past in our present.



Left Neglected
by Lisa Genova

Sarah Nickerson is like any other career-driven supermom in Welmont, the affluent Boston suburb where she leads a hectic but charmed life with her husband Bob, faithful nanny, and three children -- Lucy, Charlie, and nine-month old Linus.

Between recruiting the best and brightest minds as the vice president of human resources at Berkley Consulting; shuttling the kids to soccer, day care, and piano lessons; convincing her son's teacher that he may not, in fact, have ADD; and making it home in time for dinner, it's a wonder this over-scheduled, over-achieving Harvard graduate has time to breathe.

A self-confessed balloon about to burst, Sarah miraculously manages every minute of her life like an air traffic controller.  Until one fateful day, while driving to work and trying to make a phone call, she looks away from the road for one second too long,  In the blink of an eye, all the rapidly moving parts of her jam-packed life come to a screeching halt.

A traumatic brain injury completely erases the left side of her world, and for once, Sarah must pay close attention to the details surrounding her, including her formerly absent mother.  Without an awareness of the food on the left side of her plate or even her own left hand, she is forced to search for answers in the void of this strange hemi-world -- both about the past and her uncertain future.

Now, as she wills herself to regain her independence and heal, Sarah must learn that her real destiny -- her new, true life -- may lie far from the world of conference calls and spreadsheets.  And that a happiness and peace greater than all the success in the world is close within reach if only she slows down long enough to notice.


Powers: A Novel
by John B. Olson

"Bury me standing.  I must be buried standing."

Deep in the swamps of southern Louisiana, Mariutza's beloved grandfather whispers his ominous last request -- and dies in her arms.  All her life he's looked after her, trained her in the old Gypsy ways and kept her hidden away in the swamp.  But now. . .

The Badness has found her.

Mari's only hope is to find Jaazaniah the Prophet, the legendary hero of her grandfather's bedtime stories.  But how can a girl who has never left the swamp survive the terrifying world of men long enough to find a saviour who may not even exist?

In the heart of New orleans, musician Jazz Rechabson runs for his life.  Everyone is out to get him. Soldiers, government agents, mysterious hoooded men.  What do they want?  And who is the beautiful young woman who haunts his waking dreams?

Can strangers from different worlds come together in time to unmask a horrifying enemy?  And if they do, will they be able to stand?



Mother's Milk
by Edward St. Aubyn

Celebrated English author Edward St. Aubyn's brilliant and scathingly witty family portrait examines the shifting allegiances between parents, children, husbands, and wives.

The novel's perspective carousels between each member of the Melrose family -- the same family featured in St. Aubyn's trilogy Some Hope -- starting with Robert, who provides an exceptionally droll and convincing account of being born; to Patrick, a hilariously churlish husband who has been sexually abandoned by his wife in favor of motherhood; to Mary, who's consumed by her children and an overwhelming desire to not repeat the mistakes of her own mother.  All the while, St. Aubyn examines the web of false promises that entangle this once illustrious family, whose last vestige of wealth -- an old house in the South of France -- is about to be permanently donated by Patrick's mother to a new-age foundation.

An up-to-the-minute dissection of the mores of child-rearing, marriage, adultery, and assisted suicide, Mother's Milk showcases St. Aubyn's luminous and acidic prose -- and his masterful ability to combine the most excruciating pain with the driest comedy.  Once Mother's Milk is absorbed into the bloodstream of American culture, postpartum depression will never be the same again.



The Sea
by John Banville

The author of The Untouchable now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory.

The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife's death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child -- a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her.  But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.  The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins -- Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless -- in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the "barely bearable raw immediacy" of his childhood memories.

Interwoven with this story are Morden's memories of his wife, Anna -- of their life together, of her death -- and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him "like a second heart."

What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel -- among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer.



The Devil and Miss Prym
by Paulo Coelho

A community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear.  A man persecuted by the ghosts of his painful past.  A young woman searching for happiness.  In one eventful week, each will face questions of life, death, and power, and each will choose a path.  Will they choose good or evil?

In the remote village of Viscow -- a village too small to be on any map, a place where time seems to stand still -- a stranger arrives, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars.  He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him:  Are human beings, in essence, good or evil?  In welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever mark their lives.

Paulo Coelho's stunning novel explores the timeless struggle between good and evil, and brings to our everyday dilemmas fresh perspective:  incentive to master the fear that prevents us from following our dreams, from being different, from truly living.

The Devil and Miss Prym is a story charged with emotion, in which the integrity of being human meets a terrifying test.


Ripple
by Mandy Hubbard

Lexi is cursed with a dark secret.  The water calls to her, draws her in, forces her to sing her deadly song to unsuspecting victims.  If she succumbs, she kills.  If she doesn't the pain is unbearable.  To keep herself and those she cares about safe, she shuts herself off, refusing to make friends or fall in love -- again.  Because the last time she fell in love with a boy, he ended up dead.

Then Lexi finds herself torn.  Against her better judgment, she's opening up again, falling in love with someone new when she knows she shouldn't.  But when she's offered the chance to finally live a normal life, she learns that the price she must pay to be free of her curse is giving him up.

Mandy Hubbard spins a sea-ravaged tale of melancholy beauty, and the choices one girl makes between land and waves, love and freedom, her future -- and her heart.


Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by Marjane Satrapi

Originally published to wide critical acclaim in France, where it elicited comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.  In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.  The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran: the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life and the toll repressive regimes exact on the individual spirit.  Marjane's child's-eye-view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family.  Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression.  It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity.  And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.


The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga
Narrated by John Lee

Balram Halwai is a complicated man.  Servant.  Philosopher.  Entrepreneur.  Murderer.  Over the course of seven nights, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Balram's eyes penetrate his native India as few outsiders can.  And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.

Sold in sixteen countries around the world, The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own.  Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation.


A Discovery of Witches
by Deborah Harkness
narrated by Jennifer Ikeda

Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research.  Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery, so she banishes the book to the stacks.  But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library.


The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, Book 1)
By Patrick Ness
Narrated by Nick Podehl

Prentisstown isn't like other towns.  Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise.  Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee -- whose thoughts Todd can hear, too, whether he wants to or not -- stumble upon an area of complete silence.  They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden -- a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives.  But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?



The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, Book 2)
by Patrick Ness
Narrated by Angela Dawe and Nick Podehl

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss.  Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor's terrifying new order.  But everything is shrouded in secrets.  Where is Viola?  Is she even still alive?  And who are the mysterious Answer?  And then one day, the bombs begin to explode. . .


Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, Book 3)
by Patrick Ness
Narrated by Angela Dawe, Nick Podehl and Macleod Andrews

As a world-ending war surges to life around them, Todd and Viola face monstrous decisions.  The indigenous Spackle, thinking and acting as one, have mobilized to avenge their murdered people.  Ruthless human leaders prepare to defend their factions at all costs, even a a convoy of new settlers approaches.  And as the ceaseless Noise lays all thoughts bare, the projected will of the few threatens to overwhelm the desperate desire of the many.  The consequences of each action, each word, are unspeakably vast: To follow a tyrant or a terrorist?  To save the life of the one you love most or thousands of strangers?  To believe in redemption or assume it is lost?  Becoming adults amid the turmoil, Todd and Viola question all they have known, racing through horror and outrage toward a shocking finale.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Library Loot (Aug 10, 2011)


Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library.  If you'd like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button - and visit the above 2 blogs to see who has the Mr. Linky this week. Don't forget to check out what others are checking out!




Die For Me
by Amy Plum

My life had always been blissfully, wonderfully normal.  But it only took one moment to change everything.

Suddenly, my sister, Georgia, and I were orphans.  We put our lives into storage and moved to Paris to live with my grandparents.  And I knew my shattered heart, my shattered life, awould never feel normal again.  Then I met Vincent.

Mysterious, sexy, and unnervingly charming, Vincent Delacroix appeared out of nowhere and swept me off my feet.  Just like that, I was in danger of losing my hdeart all over again.  But I was ready to let it happen.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy.  Because Vincent is no normal human.  He has a terrifying destiny, one that puts his life at risk every day.  He also has enemies. . . immortal, murderous enemies who are determined to destroy him and all of his kind.

While I'm fighting to piece together the remnants of my life, can I risk putting my heart -- as well as my life and my family's -- in jeopardy for a chance at love?



Hereafter
by Tara Hudson

Can there truly be love after death?

Drifting in the dark waters of a mysterious river, the only thing Amelia knows for sure is that she's dead.  With no recollection of her past life -- or her actual death -- she's trapped alone in a nightmarish existence.  All of this changes when she tries to rescue a boy, Joshua, from drowning in her river.  As a ghost, she can do nothing but will him to live. Yet in an unforgettable moment of connection, she helps him survive.

Amelia and Joshua grow ever closer as they begin to uncover the strange circumstances of her death and the secrets of the dark river that held her captive for so long.  But even while they struggle to keep their bond hidden from the living world, a frightening spirit named Eli is doing everything in his power to destroy their newfound happiness and drag Amelia back into the ghost world. . . forever.



The Tiger's Wife
by Tea Obreht

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Tea Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker's twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphange by the sea.  By the time she and her lifelong friend Zora begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her.  Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her.  Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards.  Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own:  the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death.  After telling her grandmother he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone.  A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel.  Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.

Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather's final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child.  On their weekly trips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age.  But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself.  One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. "These stories," Natalia comes to understand, "run like secret rivers through all the other stories" of her grandfather's life.  And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.



Husband and Wife
by Leah Stewart

Sarah Price is thirty-five years old.  She doesn't feel as though she's getting older, but there are some noticeable changes:  a hangover after two beers, the stray gray hair, and most of all, she's called "Mom" by two small children.  Always responsible, Sarah traded her MFA for a steady job, which allows her husband Nathan, to write fiction.  But Sarah is happy and she believes Nathan is too, until a truth is revealed: Nathan's upcoming novel, Infidelity, is based in fact.

Suddenly Sarah's world is turned upside down.  Adding to her confusion, Nathan abdicates responsibility for the fate of their relationship and of his novel's publication -- a financial lifesaver they have been depending upon -- leaving both in Sarah's hands.  Reeling from his betrayal, she is plagued by dark questions.  How well does she really know Nathan?  And, more important, how well does she know herself?

For answers, Sarah looks back to her artistic twenty-something self to try to understand what happened to her dreams.  When did it all seem to change?  Pushed from her complacent plateau, Sarah begins to act -- for the first time not so responsibly -- on all the things she has let go of for so long: her blank computer screen; her best friend, Helen; the volumes of Proust on her bookshelf.  And then there is that e-mail in her inbox: a note from Rajiv, a beautiful man from her past who once tempted her to stray.  The struggle to find which version of herself is the esesntial one -- artist, wife, or mother -- takes Sarah hundreds of miles away from her marriage on a surprising journey.

Wise, funny, and sharply drawn, Leah Stewart's Husband and Wife probes our deepest relationships, the promises we make and break, and the consequences they hold for our lives, revealing that it's never too late to step back and start over.



Remedies
by Kate Ledger

Simon and Emily Bear look like a couple who have it all.  Simon is a respected doctor, while Emily shines professionally as a partner in a premier public relations firm.  They have a beautiful house in Baltimore and a healthy daughter. But their marriage is scarred by old, hidden wounds.  Even as Simon tends his patients' ills, and Emily spins away her clients' mistakes, they can't seem to do the same for themselves or their relationship.

Simon becomes convinced he's discovered a cure for chronic pain, a finding that could be a major medical breakthrough.  As he yearns to prove he's a good doctor and to make amends for a missed diagnosis years before, he is oblivious of the pain he's causing at home.  Emily, still struggling to move beyond the devastating loss that she and Simon suffered fifteen years ago, comes to realize she hasn't felt anything for a very long time -- that is, until a lover from her past resurfaces and forces her to examine her marriage anew.

In a debut novel on a par with today's top women writers, Remedies explores the extraordinarily complicated facets of pain, in the nerves of the body and the longings of the heart.

What would you endure in order to avoid feeling pain? And would you believe in a cure?  Depicting modern-day marriage with a razor-sharp eye, Remedies is about what it takes, as an individual and as a couple, to recover from profound loss.



















Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Library Loot (Jan 19, 2011)


Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library.  If you'd like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button - and visit the above 2 blogs to see who has the Mr. Linky this week. Don't forget to check out what others are checking out!


The Poison Tree
by Erin Kelly

It is the sweltering summer of 1997, and Karen is a strait-laced, straight-A university student. When she meets the impossibly glamorous Biba, a bohemian orphan who lives in a crumbling old mansion in Highgate with her enigmatic brother Rex, she is soon drawn into their world - but something terrible is about to happen, and someone's going to end up dead . . .



Pastoralia
by George Saunders

If Americans in the future were to try to send us a message about where our culture is heading, they might simply point to the fiction of George Saunders.  Living in a world that's both indelibly original and hauntingly familiar, the characters in these stories bring to life our most absurd tendencies, and allow us to see ourselves in a shocking, uproariously funny new light.

Here you find people who live and work in a simulated, theme-park cave and communicate with their loved ones via fax machine.  You encounter a family happily gathered around their favorite form of entertainment, a computer-generated TV show called The Worst That Could Happen.  And you ear an upbeat self-help guru sermonize about how figuring out who's been "crapping in your oatmeal" will help raise your self-esteem.  With an uncanny sense of how our culture reflects our character, Saunders mixes a deadpan naturalism with a wicked sense of humor to reveal a picture of contemporary America that's both feverishly strange and, through his characters' perseverance, oddly hopeful.



The Sword of Shannara
by Terry Brooks
Long ago, the wars of the ancient Evil had ruined the world and forced mankind to compete with many other races--gnomes, trolls, dwarfs, and elves. But in peaceful Shady Vale, half-elfin Shea Ohmsford knew little of such troubles.


Then came the giant, forbidding Allanon, possessed of strange Druidic powers, to reveal that the supposedly dead Warlock Lord was plotting to destroy the world. The sole weapon against this Power of Darkness was the Sword of Shannara, which could be used only by a true heir of Shannara. On Shea, last of the bloodline, rested the hope of all the races.


Soon a Skull Bearer, dread minion of Evil, flew into the Vale, seeking to destroy Shea. To save the Vale, Shea fled, drawing the Skull Bearer after him . . .


THUS BEGAN THE SEEMINGLY HOPELESS QUEST OF A SIMPLE MAN AGAINST THE GREATEST POWER OF EVIL THE WORLD HAD EVER KNOWN.


Past Midnight
by Mara Purnhagen
Let me set the record straight. My name is Charlotte Silver and I'm not one of those paranormal-obsessed freaks you see on TV…no, those would be my parents, who have their own ghost-hunting reality show. And while I'm usually roped into the behind-the-scenes work, it turns out that I haven't gone unnoticed. Something happened on my parents' research trip in Charleston—and now I'm being stalked by some truly frightening other beings. Trying to fit into a new school and keeping my parents' creepy occupation a secret from my friends—and potential boyfriends—is hard enough without having angry spirits whispering in my ear. All I ever wanted was to be normal, but with ghosts of my past and present colliding, now I just want to make it out of high school alive….

Choker
by Elizabeth Woods
Sixteen-year-old Cara Lange has been a loner ever since she moved away from her best and only friend, Zoe, years ago. She eats lunch with the other girls from the track team, but they're not really her friends. Mostly she spends her time watching Ethan Gray from a distance, wishing he would finally notice her, and avoiding the popular girls who call her "Choker" after a humiliating incident in the cafeteria.


Then one day Cara comes home to find Zoe waiting for her. Zoe's on the run from problems at home, and Cara agrees to help her hide. With her best friend back, Cara's life changes overnight. Zoe gives her a new look and new confidence, and next thing she knows, she's getting invited to parties and flirting with Ethan. Best of all, she has her BFF there to confide in.


But just as quickly as Cara's life came together, it starts to unravel. A girl goes missing in her town, and everyone is a suspect—including Ethan. Worse still, Zoe starts behaving strangely, and Cara begins to wonder what exactly her friend does all day when she's at school. You're supposed to trust your best friend no matter what, but what if she turns into a total stranger?


The Last Thing I Remember
by Andrew Klavan
He's strapped to a chair. He's covered in blood and bruises. He hurts all over. And a strange voice outside the door just ordered his death.


The last thing he can remember, he was a normal high-school kid doing normal things--working on his homework, practicing karate, daydreaming of becoming an air force pilot, writing a pretty girl's number on his hand. How long ago was that? Where is he now? Who is he really?


And more to the point . . . how is he going to get out of this room alive?



Whistling in the Dark
by Lesley Kagen
It was the summer on Vliet Street when we all started locking our doors...
Sally O'Malley made a promise to her daddy before he died. She swore she'd look after her sister, Troo. Keep her safe. But like her Granny always said-actions speak louder than words. Now, during the summer of 1959, the girls' mother is hospitalized, their stepfather has abandoned them for a six pack, and their big sister, Nell, is too busy making out with her boyfriend to notice that Sally and Troo are on the Loose. And so is a murderer and molester.


Highly imaginative Sally is pretty sure of two things. Who the killer is. And that she's next on his list. Now she has no choice but to protect herself and Troo as best she can, relying on her own courage and the kindness of her neighbors.



Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl's mesmerizing debut has critics raving and heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of this "cracking good read" is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway school, she finds some - a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel - with "visual aids" drawn by the author - that has won over readers of all ages.





Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Library Loot - Oct 27, 2010


Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library.  If you'd like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button - and visit the above 2 blogs to see who has the Mr. Linky this week. Don't forget to check out what others are checking out!

I haven't done a Library Loot post since March!  Doesn't mean I haven't been checking out books though!




The Quilter's Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini (An Elm Creek Quilts Novel - 1)

When Sarah McClure and her husband, Matt, move to Waterford, Pennsylvania, she hopes to make a fresh start in the small college town.  Unable to find a job both practical and fulfilling, she takes a temporary position at Elm Creek Manor helping its reclusive owner, Sylvia Compson, prepare her family estate for sale after the death of her estranged sister.  Sylvia is also a master quilter and, as part of Sarah's compensation, offers to share the secrets of her creative gifts with the younger women.

During their lessons, the intricate, varied threads of Sylvia's life begin to emerge.  It is the story of a young wife living through the hardships and agonies of the World WAar II home front; of a family torn apart by jealousy and betrayal; of misunderstanding, loss, and a tragedy that can never be undone.  As the bond between them deepens, Sarah resolves to help Sylvia free herself from remembered sorrows and restore her life -- and her home -- to its former glory.  In the process, she confronts painful truths about her own family, even as she creates new dreams for her future.

Just as the darker sections of a quilt can enhance the brighter ones, the mistakes of the past can strengthen understanding and lead the way to new beginnings.  The powerful debut novel by a gifted storyteller, The Quilter's Apprentice tells a timeless tale of family, friendship, and forgiveness as two women weave the disparate pieces of their lives into a bountiful and harmonious whole.



The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan

In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier.  To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust.  On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967.  Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.



Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in the smallest of towns, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit.  In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it. . .

The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina.  Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.  Generations of Waverleys tended this garden.  Their history was in the soil.  But so were their futures.

A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants -- from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor.  Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanell is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncanilly clear.   They are the last of the Waverleys -- except for Claire's rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.

When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire's quiet life is turned upside down -- along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart.  Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past.  And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy -- if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom -- or with each other.




Every Move She Makes by Beverly Barton

As the pampered daughter of one of Spring Creek's most  prestigious southern families, Ella Porter has lived her entire life on the straight-and-narrow.  And being "good" has kept Ella safe and sane -- until now.  Suggestive yet ominous letters have been arriving at her office with alarming frequency.  Letters that remind her of the disturbing ones she used to get from Reed Conway -- the hellraiser she kenw from childhood -- after her father prosecuted him for murder.  Now Reed's been released from prison, and though Ella finds herself wanting to believe his claims of innocence, she's getting closer that a "good girl" ever should to a man with such a bad reputation.

Reed Conway is on a mission: to find out who really murdered his stepfather.  But someone wants to interfere -- someone determined to send Reed right back to prison for a brand-new crime.  They've made it look like he's still a threat to Ella Porter and her family, when the truth is, the more he sees Ella, the more he wants her.  But his attempt to prove his innocence have put both their lives in jeopardy. .. .Because whoever is stalking Ella will stop at nothing -- including murder. . .

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Library Loot: 3-24-2010




Library Loot is hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at Reading Adventures.





Title: Going Bovine
Author: Libba Bray

All sixteen-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school -- and life in general -- with a minimum of effort. It's not a lot to ask. But that's before he's given some bad news: he's sick and he's going to die. Which totally sucks.

Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure -- if he's willing to go in search of it. With the help of Gonzo, a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf, and a yard gnome who just might be the Viking god Balder, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America of smoothie-drinking happiness cults, parallel-universe-hopping physicists, mythic New Orleans jazz musicians, whacked-out television game shows, snow-globe vigilantes, and disenfranchised, fame-hungry teens into the heart of what matters most.

From New York Times bestselling author Libba Bray comes a dark comedic journey that poses the questions: Why are we here? What is real? What makes microwave popcorn so good? Why must we die? And how do we really learn to live? (inside book jacket)






Title: Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Author: Carrie Vaughn

Vampires. Werewolves. Talk Radio.

Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station -- and a werewolf in the closet. Sick of lame song requests, she accidentally starts "The Midnight Hour," a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged.

After desperate vampires, werewolves, and witches across the country begin calling in to share their woes, her new show is a raging success. But it's Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew. . .(back cover)





Title: Home Safe
Author: Elizabeth Berg

In this new novel, beloved bestselling author Elizabeth Berg weaves a beautifully written and richly resonant story of a mother and daughter in emotional transit. Helen Ames -- recently widowed, coping with loss and grief, unable to do the work that has always sustained her -- is beginning to depend far too much on her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Tessa, and is meddling in her life, offering unsolicited and unwelcome advice. Helen's problems are compounded by her shocking discovery that her mild-mannered and seemingly loyal husband was apparently leading a double life. The Ameses had painstakingly saved for a happy retirement, but that money disappeared in several large withdrawals made by Helen's husband before he died. In order to support herself and garner a measure of much needed independence, Helen takes an unusual job that ends up offering far more than she had anticipated. And then a phone call from a stranger sets Helen on a surprising path of discovery that causes both mother and daughter to reassess what they thought they knew about each other, themselves, and what really makes a home and family.

"Maybe Freud didn't know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does," said USA Today, and that special gift of understanding shines through in this remarkable new novel, Home Safe is an exquisitely rendered story about mothers, daughters, and finding new richness in the stages of life, in one's family, and in oneself. (inside book jacket)





Title: Joy School (audio version)
Author: Elizabeth Berg
Read by: Jen Taylor

Thirteen-year-old Katie is new to her Missouri town, living alone with a stern, inaccessible father following her mother's death. Unable to fit in at school, she forges alliances wherever she can: with her housekeeper, with a pimply fellow misfit named Cynthia, and with the gorgeous Taylor, who gets her kicks out of shoplifting. Most frustrating of all is Katie's imperfect friendship with the proprietor of a local gas station, a handsome 23-year-old who shares her love for checkers but doesn't return her crush. (back cover)




Title: Fade
Author: Lisa McMann
Some nightmares never end.

For Janie and Cabel, real life is getting tougher than the dreams. They're just trying to carve out a little (secret) time together, but no such luck.

Disturbing things are happening at Fieldridge High, yet nobody's talking. When Janie taps into a classmate's violent nightmares, the case finally breaks open -- but nothing goes as planned. Not even close. Janie's in way over her head, and Cabe's shocking behavior has grave consequences for them both.

Worse yet, Janie learns the truth about herself and her ability -- and it's bleak. Seriously, brutally bleak. Not only is her fate as a dream catcher sealed, but what's to come is way darker than she'd feared. . . (inside book cover)




Title: Meridian
Author: Amber Kizer
Half human, half angel, Meridian Sozu has a dark responsibility.
Meridian has always been an outcast. It seems that wherever she goes, death and grief follow. On her sixteenth birthday, a car crashes in front of her family's home -- and though she's untouched, Meridian's body explodes in pain.
Before she can fully recover, Meridian is told that she's a danger to her family and is hustled off to her great-aunt's house in Revelation, Colorado. There she learns the secret her parents have been hiding for her entire life: Meridian is a Fenestra, the half-angel, half-human link between the living and the dead.
It's crucial that Meridian learn how to transition human souls to the after life -- how to help people die. Only then can she help preserve the balance between good and evil on earth. But before she can do that, meridian must come to terms with her ability, outsmart the charismatic preacher who's taken over Revelation, and maybe -- if she can accept her sworn protector, Tens, for who he is -- fall in love. Meridian and Tens face great danger from the Aternocti, a band of dark forces who capture vulnerable souls on the brink of death and cause chaos. But together, they have the power to outsmart evil.
Dark, lovely, and lushly romantic, Meridian will entrance readers. (inside book jacket)








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