Look What's New for Teens!

Alice in the Country of Hearts by Soumei Hoshino - Wonderland is officially at war! And Alice is trapped in the middle of it all. Will she make it out alive? A little arrogant, stubborn, and determined to get back home, Alice isn't fazed by these challenges...until she discovers that every man is gun crazy and weirdly in love with her. What's going on in Wonderland?

Look What's New for Kids!

The Legend of the Golden Snail by Graeme Base - Wilbur loves the legend of the Golden Snail, an enchanted galleon, and vows to become its next master.

December Recommendations for Kids

Fiction

Spaceheadz by Jon Scieszka - Michael K.’s first day of day of fifth grade in a new school and he is stuck sitting with aliens! Bob and Jennifer, and their talkative hamster major Fluffy, are on earth to recruit millions of kids into spaceheads in an effort to save the earth from being turned off. Michael had previously starred in a cereal commercial, claiming he could do anything, and since the aliens feed on earth’s errant TV and radio broadcast waves they believe he is perfect to help them recruit 3.14 million kids to their cause. Log onto www.spaceheadz.com to become a spaceheadz yourself!

Olivia Claus by Kama Einhorn - ‘Twas the Night before Christmas and Mathilda, Olivia’s favorite stuffed monkey, is nowhere to be found!! How can it be a Merry Christmas, and how can Olivia save the day and find what’s missing?

Tacky’s Christmas by Helen Lester - The penguins are having a rollicking good time—until the hunters appear! Can Tacky save Christmas? Also included is a CD of Tacky’s Carols: Christmas Songs from Nice Icy Land.

Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas by Julia Rawlinson - On an ice-bright Christmas Eve Fletcher the Fox suddenly realized Santa may not be able to find his rabbits’ new burrow. With the help of various forest friends, Fletcher makes a trail for Santa, and all is well, until it snows!

Llama Llama Holiday Drama by Anna Dewdney - Llama llama has a holiday meltdown!

Tuck Me In! by Dean Hacohen and Sherry Scharschmidt - A marvelous book for bedtime where youngsters can help tuck in various animals. The zebra, peacock, hedgehog, moose, elephant, and then lastly the child, each sport their own colorful blanket. A soothing read for those frantic holiday nights, or a welcome gift for the youngest.

Griff Carver, Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg - Griff Carver promises the old lady (aka Mom), that this time it will be different; he won’t let his job as safety patrolman at his middle school consume his life. When he discovers a counterfeit hallpass ring engineered by class president candidate, Marcus "The Smile" Volger, he cannot resist the power his shiny badge brings and the opportunity to bring justice to all. An amusing romp through the perils of middle school.


Nonfiction

How to Improve at Judo by Ashley Martin - Profusely illustrated guide from the basics, to advanced skills. The text covers throws, locks, breakfalls, equipment, holds, rules, and more.

December Recommendations for Teens

Fiction

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff - Bad things don't happen in Gentry. No floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes. No disease reaches the people of Gentry. Nothing bad happens.

Unless you count the children stolen from their cribs in the night, and offered up as human sacrifices days later. This is the price the town pays for their safety. Once a year, a child is taken and something else, something unnatural, is left in its place. The replacement is fragile, and usually doesn't survive. Parents bury the replacement and provide a headstone with their child's name on it.

That's what should have happened to Malcolm Doyle. Well, the replacement of Malcolm, anyway.

Mackie hates what he is. He lives his life just trying to blend in, and it generally works until Tate's sister is taken. Tate is determined to get her sister back, and she suspects that Mackie might be able to help her. Now, Mackie has to decide if he is willing to risk everything for Tate, by confronting the very monsters who left him to die in a stranger's crib. Or will he, like the rest of the people in Gentry, choose to let Tate's sister pay the price for their safety?

If I Stay by Gayle Forman - In the blink of an eye, Mia's entire life is forever changed. A day that begins as a cherished "snow day," one of those days where the universe grants you a special gift, no school, soon turns in to the worst day of Mia's life. One that takes everything she has. Now she must decide if she is strong enough to survive, or if she even wants to.

Witnessing her damaged body being pulled from the wreckage of her family's car is just the beginning. She listens as friends tell her it's okay to go, and as others tell her to stay. Intensely moving, this book explores the life that Mia had and what she has lost. If I Stay is a witty and fun book that manages to take a serious situation and turn it into a beautiful discovery.

Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials by Stephanie Hemphill - It was just a girls’ game till it turned deadly. This fictionalized account of the Salem witch trials is told in verse from the point of view of three young women living in 1692 Salem. Ann, Mercy, and Margaret unleash a torrent of accusations which forever alter the lives of the people in their village.

Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry - Fourteen years ago on First Night, Benny lost his parents and the world was wasted and overrun with zombies. All 15 years olds are required to find a job, and with great reluctance, he apprentices himself to his half-brother Tom, a bounty hunter. Benny is crippled by his overwhelming hatred of zoms and the last vivid memories he has of his parents. Further complications arise with the advent of a bounty-hunter rivalry. Plenty of gore for every reader.

Three Quarters Dead by Richard Peck - Sophomore Kerry is overjoyed to be included by the three most popular high school girls; however when those three girls die in a tragic auto accident, they blame Kerry who did not pick up her cell phone on the first ring. Now Kerry feels three quarters dead without their dazzling presence, until she receives a text from one of them and time stalls. The ghostly girls seem to have unfinished business regarding the prom. As they continue their attempts to manipulate Kerry from beyond the grave, Kerry struggles to realize the meaning of true friendship.

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer - It’s been a year since the meteor collided with the earth which produced catastrophic changes. Miranda’s life is inconceivably altered by the harsh weather, scarcity of food, and many daily challenges. Her family struggles on, and miraculously survives only to have their supplies stretched even further when her father, his new wife, baby and three strangers arrive. This is a companion to Life as We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher - Incarceron is a unique prison, one which has a personality, and seeks revenge. Initially it was set up as a closed perfect environment. Claudia lives Outside, and as the daughter of the Warden is betrothed to an obnoxious prince. If she is able to help Finn escape from Incarceron, perhaps she will discover if he is lost Prince Giles, the true prince of the Realm, to whom she was betrothed when much younger.

The Genius Wars by Catherine Jinks - Hacking, programming, gaming—Hamish and Cadel think of themselves as Cyberwarriors. Cadel has been raised by a criminal mastermind, but now enjoys a relatively normal life, until Prosper English emerges from the murky shadows to stalk Cadel. With Cadel’s life in danger, and the lives of his friends in peril, Cadel shifts into hyper drive with a variety of cutting edge tricks up his sleeve.

December Recommendations for Adults

Fiction

The Body and the Blood: A John Jordan Mystery by Michael Lister - A former policeman now working as a prison chaplain in Florida’s panhandle, John Jordan wrestles with the conflict of justice and mercy on the one hand, and justice and vengeance on the other. Mr. Lister’s Jordan becomes a flawed everyman whose determination to become a better person and a spiritual counselor to others is constantly tested as he struggles to balance the demands of his chaplaincy with his work as a crime investigator. Something that seems completely impossible has happened at the Potter Correctional Institution: Justin Menge, an inmate just short of being paroled, is murdered inside his locked cell. Most peculiarly, the pool of blood spreading under the cell door is no longer in proximity to the bloodless corpse lying on the cot — a cot whose sheets are almost clean. While Jordan and the state prison system’s chief investigator, Tom Daniels, explore the locked door part of the mystery, they come up with a variety of suspects on the basis of motive — perhaps too many plausible suspects for a jury to find anyone guilty "beyond a shadow of a doubt."

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia: A Novel by Mary Helen Stefaniak - Narrator Gladys Cailiff is eleven years old in 1938 when a new, well-traveled young schoolteacher turns Threestep, Georgia upside down. Miss Grace Spivey believes in field trips, Arabian costumes, and reading aloud from her ten-volume set of The Thousand Nights and a Night. The real trouble begins when she decides to revive the annual town festival as an exotic Baghdad bazaar. Miss Spivey transforms the lives of everyone around her: Gladys's older brother Force (with his movie-star looks), her pregnant sister May (a gifted storyteller herself), and especially the Cailiffs' African American neighbor, young Theo Boykin, whose creative genius becomes the key to a colorful, hidden history of the South.

Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop edited by Otto Penzler - Every year since 1993, Penzler, founder of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York, has asked a different genre writer to produce a short story to be published and given away as a Christmas gift to customers. The only requirements: the story must be set around the Christmas season, and it must involve the bookshop in its action. This very entertaining anthology contains all of the stories published so far, by such writers as Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Anne Perry, Mary Higgins Clark, Andrew Klavan, and Ed McBain. The stories—every single one of them—are delightful, and there’s something for everyone, too: funny stories, serious stories, charming stories, silly stories. Any time writers of this caliber are collected between the same covers, it’s a can’t-miss opportunity for mystery buffs. Even those who might find the Christmas trappings on the treacly side will enjoy the stories as stories. Reviewed by David Pitt in Booklist.

Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas - Thomas's delightfully whimsical novel riffs on the premise that ordinary lives stubbornly resist the tidy order that a fiction narrative might impose on them. Meg Carpenter, a young writer living hand-to-mouth in Devon, pens book reviews, science fiction novels, and pseudonymous YA thrillers while the serious literary novel she dabbles at keeps ballooning and shrinking back to the same 43 words. Though Meg reviews New Age titles that lay out organized plans for one's life (and afterlife), her own life is an unruly mess, encompassing a slacker boyfriend and his amusingly dysfunctional family, friends having extramarital affairs, and associates who can't balance their vocations and avocations. Enough propitious coincidences occur to suggest her life might also admit the occasional intrusion of the magical. Thomas (Popco) dexterously mixes the serious with the humorous and provides a cast of characters who come across as credible owing to their recognizable foibles and fallibility. Review from Publisher’s Weekly


Nonfiction

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff - Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and--after his murder--three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since. Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.

Get Real: What Kind of World Are You Buying? by Mara Rockliff - Rockliff outlines how mass consumerism is harming our planet, and specifically how teens can use their purchasing power to enact change. She cites examples of products that teens use frequently (high-tech electronics, clothing, junk food, etc.) and explains how their production often harms the people who make them, the environment, and, potentially, the end consumer. She explains that a chocolate bar was most likely made with cacao beans harvested by exploited workers, and that a cell phone contains enough heavy metals to seriously harm our groundwater. She covers (un)fair labor practices, environmental pillaging, factory farming, excessive marketing, local vs. corporate stores, and the pervasive throwaway mentality that drives the whole cycle. The author's in-your-face approach makes her points while still engaging readers–she is never didactic or overbearing. She encourages teens to make a difference in their world by making small changes to things they do already–buying fair-trade chocolate or saving up for an organic cotton T-shirt. The pop-art illustrations are clever and illustrative of many points. The impressive bibliography provides lists of documentaries, websites, books, articles, and other sources to help teens find out how their favorite products came to be (and came to be so cheap). Learning more about how these products are made just might make some teens think twice about their buying habits. Review by Lisa Crandall in School Library Journal.

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squid, and the Long Con that is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi - The dramatic story behind the most audacious power grab in American history,the financial crisis that exploded in 2008, isn’t past but prologue. The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi here unravels the whole fiendish story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications of the rise of the grifters. He traces the movement’s origins to the cult of Ayn Rand and her most influential—and possibly weirdest—acolyte, Alan Greenspan, and offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals that decided the winners and losers in the government bailouts. He uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world, and he shows how finance dominates politics, from the story of investment bankers auctioning off America’s infrastructure to an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform—a battle the true reformers lost. Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing, and scathingly funny account yet written of the ongoing political and financial crisis in America. This is is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in this country, and the profound consequences for us all.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand - "Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.

"It was a horse--the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.

"Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.

"On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.

"That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.
"The culmination of my journey is my new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am."