Categories
Full List of New Arrivals

NEW ARRIVALS – MARCH 2016

ADULT FICTION

“The Cold Spot” by Tom Piccirilli – “The Cold Spot” is crime fiction at its very best, an exceptional revenge story so vivid you feel like you’re in the back seat of a getaway car with a master storyteller at the wheel.”—Jason Starr, author of The Follower

“Cry Wolf: (A Sebastiano Cangio Thriller)” by Michael Gregorio – “Gregorio effectively captures the grisly incongruities of mob relationships and the hypocrisies of Italian marital accommodations in this stark tale of violent murder and rampant political corruption” (Publishers Weekly)

“The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft” by Aaron J. French – “H. P. Lovecraft and his Mythos have seen a resurgence in popularity, but this collection stands out among the crowd. This is an excellent introduction to the Mythos for novices but will also be grabbed up by Lovecraft enthusiasts. All 12 stories are scary and well-crafted with plenty to offer. This volume contains original artwork and a commentary on each deity by Lovecraft scholar Donald Tyson. These essays are particularly compelling as readers encounter them after being immersed in each God’s terrifying world. This is a must for all horror collections.”– ALA Booklist Starred Review

“Just Another Trip” by Martin Whittle – “(August 1943 and the Allies air war in Europe is not going well and losses are mounting.) Mark White and the crew of Lancaster bomber M-Mother have become a close-knit team as the battle intensifies, the raw brutality of the endless night operations has a devastating effect on them. This novel tells their story.” — back cover

“The Paris Protection” by Bryan Devore – “Explosive thrills…Devore masterfully builds and maintains suspense…plunges readers into the tense and tactical world of Secret Service agents pushed to their limits.” –Kirkus Reviews

“The Tsar of Love and Techno” by Anthony Marra – “Marra, in between bursts of acidic humor, summons the terror, polluted landscapes, and diminished hopes of generations of Russians in a tragic and haunting collection.”
Booklist (starred)

“Youngblood: A Novel” by Matt Gallagher – “Not only does Youngblood rank among the very best books of our seemingly endless Iraq war, it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read of war, period. A mystery as taut as that of any thriller lies at the heart of the story, and as the layers peel away and the mystery coils tighter and tighter, grim truths are revealed about love, loyalty, violence, power–about life in a very hard place made so much harder by years of war. Matt Gallagher’s fierce, brilliant novel should serve as a slap in the face to a culture that’s grown all too comfortable with the notion of endless war.” (Ben Fountain, New York Times bestselling author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk)

ADULT MYSTERY

“Death Descends on Saturn Villa” by M.R.C. Kasasian  –“A well-plotted mystery full of twists and turns, skullduggery, danger, and double-dealing.” — (Good Book Guide)

“The Plague of Thieves Affair” by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini — “… the late nineteenth-century private detectives are working a couple of cases. John Quincannon, a former Secret Service operative, is looking into the suspicious death of a brewery employee, while Sabina Carpenter, who used to be a detective for the Pinkerton agency, is hot on the trail of Sherlock Holmes. Or, to be more precise, an elusive man who claims he is Holmes (and who stands to inherit a sizable fortune if he can demonstrate that he is not a lunatic). When two top-class writers join forces, the results can be wonderful. …A match made in literary heaven, in other words, and their latest collaboration is just splendid.” —  Pitt, David. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2016.

“A Song for the Brokenhearted” by William Shaw – “Superb . . . Shaw picks up multiple plot threads, expertly weaving them into a complex story . . . Shaw perfectly captures the end of an uneasy era, and the utterly terrifying final scene will leave readers breathless.”―Publishers Weekly (starred)

“When Falcons Fall: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery” by C. S. Harris – “With such well-developed characters, intriguing plotlines, graceful prose, and keen sense of time and place based on solid research, this is historical mystery at its best.”—Booklist (starred review)

BIOGRAPHY

“You Come Too: My Journey with Robert Frost” by Lesley Lee Francis – “Francis, a granddaughter of Robert Frost, says this book is a memoir but grants its biographical qualities and basis in scholarship―hers―as well as her own life. It is something altogether extraordinary, an insider’s view of a great family that constantly but hardly deliberately reminds us that it is personal… Francis neatly balances anecdote, commentary, and emotion-laden incident throughout… It is hard to imagine a better book about the poet and his most intimate heritage.” — (BOOKLIST starred review)

ADULT NON-FICTION

“Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land” by Sandy Tolan – “[Tolan] portrays the multigenerational Israeli-Palestinian conflict by focusing on the life and musical abilities of one youngster, Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, and his family and friends . . . This is an engrossing and powerful story, moving skillfully amid the failure of the never-ending battles and ‘peace’ talks between Israel and Palestine and the determination of one brave young man to change his world.” ―starred review, Booklist

“Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” by Jane Mayer – “[B]ombshells explode in the pages of Dark Money, Jane Mayer’s indispensible new history . . . .combines her own research with the work of scores of other investigators, to describe how the Kochs and fellow billionaires like Richard Scaife have spent hundreds of millions to ‘move their political ideas from the fringe to the center of American political life.’”
The Guardian 

“Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World” by Katherine Zoepf – “Many of the women and girls in Excellent Daughters strive toward freedom, but they do so in ways that most Westerners would be unable to parse. Zoepf has achieved not only intimate access to this population, but also profound insight into the joys, anxieties, and revelations they experience behind the collective abaya. Superbly reported and compassionately told, at once clear-eyed and forgiving, these brave narratives will foster understanding, forgiveness, and respect. This moving book is an act of cultural translation of the very first order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree and The Noonday Demon

“The Family Tree: A Lynching in Georgia, a Legacy of Secrets, and My Search for the Truth” by Karen Branan – “Karen Branan goes where few white Southerners dare to tread: to the skeletons in the family closet. Rather keeping the door closed, Branan takes an honest look at her family’s connection to a lynching that occurred more than a century ago. The result is a gripping and chilling story of race and a legacy of racism that echoes into the present.”
(W. Ralph Eubanks, author of Ever is a Long Time)

“Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization” by Graham Hancock – “New scientific evidence proves that the earth was hit by a comet 12,800 years ago. The comet broke up into multiple fragments. Some were more than a mile in diameter and hit the North American ice cap, instantly melting millions of square miles if ice and causing the global deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world.” — back cover

“Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds” by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto – “… a deeply moving, well-written work that ranks among the better accounts of the injuries inflicted in wartime on civilian and ethnic populations. Students of war crimes and crimes against humanity are sure to notice this book.” (Herbert Bix, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan)

“Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father” by Carol Tyler – “While centered around the author’s efforts to process her father’s wartime experience, Tyler’s story bleeds out into the circumstances of her family’s history, her pages racing through narrative stratagems, practically one per situation; the enormous versatility of her drawing unifies paneled pages, booming splashes and mixed media-type info outlays into a self-evident means of making sense of things you’ve lived with, but not actually witnessed.” — (Joe McCulloch – The Comics Journal)

ADULT AUDIO BOOK

“Career of Evil” by Robert Galbraith -“Pure pleasure. . . . That’s what makes these novels so good: They are clever, tightly plotted mysteries with all of the most pleasurable elements of the genre (good guy, bad guy, clues, twists, murder!), but with stunning emotional and moral shading.”―Annalisa Quinn, NPR

MUSIC

“Frank Sinatra: – A Voice in Time 1939-1952”
“Game of thrones. Season five, Music from the HBO series”

BLUE/DVD

“Ant-Man”
“Cave of Forgotten Dreams”
“The Flash: Season 1”
“Furious 7”
“The Good Dinosaur”
“Hotel Transylvania 2”
“The Martian”
“Minions”
“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”
“Sicario”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”
“Trainwreck”

BOARD BOOK

“Baby Penguins Love Their Mama” by Melissa Guion
“May I Please Have a Cookie?” by Jennifer E. Morris

PICTURE BOOK

“ABC Dream” by Kim Krans
“Always Remember” by Cece Meng
“Be a Friend” by Salina Yoon
“Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep!” by Todd Tarpley
“Big Friends”
by Linda Sarah & Benji Davies
“Dylan the Villain” by K. G. Campbell
“Greenling” by Levi Pinfold
“How to Put Your Parents to Bed”
 by Mylisa Larsen
“Ida, Always” by Caron Levis and Charles Santoso
“Lola and I” by Chiara Valentia Segre
“My Dog’s a Chicken” by Susan McElroy Montanari & Anne Wilsdorf
“The Goodbye Book” by Todd Parr
“Peddles”
by Elizabeth Rose Stanton
“Snappsy the Alligator” by Julie Falatko
“The Story of Diva and Flea” by Mo Willems
“Strictly No Elephants” by Lisa Mantchev
“Super Happy Magic Forest” by Matty Long
“Whatever Happened to My Sister?” by Simona Ciraolo
“When Andy Met Sandy” by Tomie de Paolo
“Whoops!” by Suzi Moore
“The Wonderful Habits of Rabbits” by Douglas Florian
“Worm Loves Worm” by J. J. Austrian

JUVENILE AUDIO BOOK

“The Hollow Boy” by Jonathan Stroud – … the latest escapades of Lockwood and Co., a ghost-hunting agency staffed by the crack team of Anthony Lockwood, George Cubbins, and Lucy Carlyle, start with a hair-raising scene of murder, mayhem, and ghostly apparitions. Narrator Lucy finds herself on shaky ground as her ability to speak to ghosts grows ever more powerful and more dangerous, while changes to the agency in the form of a tidy, Type A assistant named Holly Munroe seem to spell doom for Lucy’s future with the company. Meanwhile, The Problem grows exponentially worse and a fading, famous department store holds more horrors than Lucy has ever seen. A series of disturbing discoveries, building on revelations in the earlier books, make it clear that there is a more malevolent human force than The Problem at work in London, and Lucy, George, and Lockwood are drawing ever closer to its source. As always, the descriptions of the hauntings are genuinely frightening, especially that of a spindly, humanoid creature that crawls on all fours and whispers Lucy’s name. ” —Elisabeth Gattullo Marrocolla, Darien Library, CT

JUVENILE BIOGRAPHY

“Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement” by Carole Boston Weatherford – “Caldecott Honor winner Weatherford (Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, 2006) has rendered Hamer’s voice so precisely that it is like sitting at her knee as she tells her story. Holmes’ multimedia collages perfectly capture the essence of each poem. Like Hamer’s life, the illustrations are filled with light, texture, movement, and darkness. They are both abstract and realistic, brilliantly juxtaposing gentle floral motifs with protest placards and Fannie Lou Hamer’s face in bold relief. Ultimately, though this is Hamer’s story, it includes the collaborative struggles of others with whom she worked and fought for a different America. Bold, unapologetic, and beautiful.” —Booklist (starred review)

“You Never Heard of Casey Stengel?!” by Jonah Winter and Barry Blitt – “Blitt infuses his artwork with physical humor, and as readers follow Stengel through his highs, lows, and head-scratching in-betweens (like forgetting to put on pants before taking the field), they’ll agree that ‘They just don’t make ’em like Casey Stengel anymore.’ ” —Publishers Weekly starred review

JUVENILE FICTION

“The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle” by Janet Fox – ““With nods to Narnia, Harry Potter and The Golden Compass, Janet Fox has created hair-raising suspense and drama. My heart is still pounding from this action-packed, imaginative read!” —Kirby Larson, Newbery Honor-winning author of Hattie Big Sky

“Echo: A Novel” by Pam Munoz Ryan – * “The book’s thematic underpinnings poignantly reveal what Friedrich, Mike, and Ivy truly have in common: not just a love of music, but resourcefulness in the face of change, and a refusal to accept injustice.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Free Verse” by Sarah Dooley – “The story mounts a quiet defense of the nobility of broken people… who hold on when all seems lost and sacrifice much out of love for their children. Sasha’s quietly moving poems… trace the evolution of her appreciation for what she has and her understanding that one must find one’s own way to wholeness after loss.”—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 

“Friday Barnes, Girl Detective” by R. A. Spratt – “With off-the-wall plot turns and small mysteries scattered throughout, this is the perfect choice for mystery fans with a silly sense of humor, and the cliff-hanger ending promises more sleuthing on the horizon. Gosier’s black-and-white spot illustrations add to the charming atmosphere. A sheer delight.” ―Booklist, starred review

“Friends for Life” by Andrew Norriss – “Norriss (I Don’t Believe It, Archie!) has written a sensitive novel that illustrates how easy it is to feel alone, the ways differences can be isolating, and the power of friendship and connection. This memorable story will leave readers thinking about how small actions can have a significant impact.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The Girl Who Could Not Dream” by Sarah Beth Durst – “This book is self-aware, playing with common fantasy tropes, thus reinvigorating the familiar underlying story of a loner having to learn to overcome her fears to save the ones she loves…A fun, fast read with broad appeal.”
School Library Journal, starred review

“The Land of Stories: The Enchantress Returns” by Chris Colfer – “It’s hard not to love [the book]…Colfer gets off many good lines [and] the nifty ending ties the plot’s multiple strands up while leaving room for further fairy tale adventures.”―Publishers Weekly

“The Lemonade War” by Jacqueline Davies – “The basics of economics take backseat to Evan and Jessie’s realizations about themselves and their relationship. Davis . . . does a good job of showing the siblings’ strengths, flaws, and points of view in this engaging chapter book.” —Booklist, ALA

“The Lightning Queen” by Laura Resau – “Inspired by true stories from rural Mexico, this astonishing novel illuminates two facsinating but marginalized cultures — the Romani and Mixteco Indians. Award-winning author Laura Resau tells the exhilarating story of an unlikely friendship that begins in the 1950’s and reaches into today.” — inside front cover

“Maybe a Fox” by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee –  “…a fantastical, heartbreaking, and gorgeous tale about two sisters, a fox cub, and what happens when one of the sisters disappears forever.” — Amazon.com

“The Nine Lives of Jacob Tibbs” by Cylin Busby – “With engrossing action and great character description and development, Busby has created a story that will enthrall fans of animal fantasy.” —Booklist starred review

“Paper Wishes” by Lois Sepahban – “…It’s 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Manami and her family are Japanese American, which means that the government says they must leave their home by the sea and join other Japanese Americans at a prison camp in the desert. Manami is sad to go, but even worse is that they are going to have to give her and her grandfather’s dog, Yujiin, to a neighbor to take care of. Manami decides to sneak Yujiin under her coat and gets as far as the mainland before she is caught and forced to abandon Yujiin. She and her grandfather are devastated, but Manami clings to the hope that somehow Yujiin will find his way to the camp and make her family whole again. It isn’t until she finds a way to let go of her guilt that Manami can reclaim the piece of herself that she left behind and accept all that has happened to her family.” — Amazon.com

“The Smell of Other People’s Houses” by Bonnie-Sue Hitchock – “Using alternating narratives, debut novelist Hitchcock deftly weaves these stories together, setting them against the backdrop of a native Alaska that readers will find intoxicating. The gutsiness of these four teens who, at heart, are trying to find their places in the world and survive against challenging odds, will resonate with readers of all ages.” —Publishers Weekly

JUVENILE NON-FICTION

“Breakthrough: How Three People Saved “Blue Babies” and Changed Medicine Forever” by Jim Murphy —  “Murphy masterfully interweaves discussions of discrimination, the controversy over animal testing, and the background of each protagonist into the main narrative, building tension as he leads up to the surgery itself.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

“Hey, Seymour! A Search & Find Fold-Out Adventure” by Walter Wick – “While the adult reader might marvel at the work involved in constructing the attractive sets, young readers will simply have eyes for the visual game. Fans of the previous titles will be thrilled to lose themselves once more.” — Booklist

“When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons” by Julie Fogliano – “Fogliano’s book is a treasure. She has captured it! That elusive stage of life and self-expression that is childhood. The syntax, the imagery, the intimacy with nature and most importantly, the WONDER that we all had the privilege to possess as children and again through out kids.” — Natalie Merchant

YOUNG ADULT

“The Dragonriders of Pern” by Anne McCaffrey – “Anne McCaffrey’s Pern is one of the most memorable worlds in science fiction and fantasy. Humans and their flying dragon companions live in fear of thread, a caustic, deadly material that falls sporadically from space. But when the thread doesn’t fall for a long time, people become complacent, forgetting that it is the brave dragonriders who can save them from the periodic threat. But when the thread falls, human and dragon heroes must fight the scourge. This edition encompasses the first three unforgettable novels of McCaffrey’s epic series: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon.” — Amazon.com

“Giant Days: Volume One” by John Allison – “From Esther’s dramatic tendencies to Susan’s temper and Daisy’s lack of social experience, the eccentricities of Giant Days main cast should appeal to anyone seeking a fresh approach.” — Newsarama

“Guitar Notes” by Mary Amato – “An upbeat teen with a talent for drawing and soccer who hails from the wrong side of the tracks learns to bloom where he’s planted…” — Kirkus Reviews

“A Little in Love” by Susan E. Fletcher – “The entire tale will be long remembered, and is a must-read for all Les Mis fans.” — School Library Journal, starred review