Look What's New for Teens!

Kekkaishi, volume 26 by Yellow Tanabe - Yoshimori tries to perfect the technique of emptying his mind. Some of his friends might consider this not too much of a challenge... Meanwhile, the leader of the Shadow Organization gives some shocking new orders, leading to horrific consequences for the Karasumori Site - and Yoshimori is implicated! Will Soji help him by spilling some beans...or remain as tight-lipped as ever? Then, things get even scarier with the arrival of clowns!

Look What's New for Kids!

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu - A stunning modern-day fairy tale from acclaimed author Anne Ursu. Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. But that was before he stopped talking to her and disappeared into a forest with a mysterious woman made of ice. Now it's up to Hazel to go in after him. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," "Breadcrumbs" is a story of the struggle to hold on, and the things we leave behind.

November Recommendations for Teens

Forever—Wolves of Mercy Falls #3 by Maggie Stiefvater - This final chapter in the Wolves of Mercy Falls triology finds Grace and Sam facing the biggest challenge of their lives. The wolves are being hunted, and the date has been set for elimination of the pack. Assisted by their friends, Cole and Isabelle, Grace and Sam fight for a plan to save the wolves, and their love . . . forever. A fast paced and fitting end to this series, fans of Shiver and Linger will find this read satisfying on all levels.

The Limit by Kristen Landon - When families exceed their financial debt limit, their children are wisked off to the Federal Debt Rehabilitaion Agency workhouse to work off their family debt. Matt is 13 years old and shocked when his family exceeds their spending limit and he is forcibly carted off to the workhouse. Once there, Matt uncovers suspicious occurances at the workhouse, and wonders if he and the other youth will ever be freed.

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick - Alex running from her incurable brain tumor hiked into the woods to deal with the death of her parents and her dreams. When an electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, it kills billions and destroys every electronic devise and computer. Alex fights to survive accompanied by Tom, an ex- soldier, and bratty eight year old Ellie. Who can be trusted, and who is no longer human? What will people will do to survive? A zombie thriller!

The Auslander by Paul Dowswell - Peter and other Polish boys from the orphanage have been chosen by the Nazis to be reclaimed by the German National Community and to be adopted by a German family. Peter joins the Hitler Youth, and slowly becomes aware of the creeping evil and horrors of the war; he is faced with a most dangerous decision.

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore - In Paradise, Ohio, 15 year old John, a fugitive on the run from his ruthless enemies the Mogadorians, has hidden with his guardian Henri. There were nine refugees from the planet Lorien, and the Mogadorians must kill them in order. #1 through #3 have been caught and killed- John is #4 and has amazing strength and speed. John and Henri are constantly on the move, hoping to gain enough time for John to train and his legacies to appear before the inevitable showdown.

Daughters of the Sea by Kathryn Lasky - May is forbidden from swimming, but following her fifteenth birthday, the pull of the sea becomes overwhelming. May discovers she belongs more to the world of the sea, and she meets a visiting college student astronomer. Suddenly there’s a choice between the freedom of the sea and her sisters, and love on land.

Megiddo’s Shadow by Arthur Slade - Edward Bathe is shocked and grieving for his older brother when he runs away to enlist leaving his widowed, deeply depressed father alone on the family farm. Edward wants to avenge his brother’s death at the hands of the Huns during World War I, but he is sent to Palestine where war is more brutal than he has imagined. There on the plains of Megiddo soldiers, horses and friends die from heat, disease and battle wounds. A riveting coming of age story.

November Recommendations for Kids

Fiction

The Boy in the Oak by Jessica Albarn - The boy in the cottage has a disdain for nature, and especially for the ancient oak tree in the forest adjacent to his garden. The fairies in the oak do not take kindly to his mistreatment, and decide to teach him a lesson. The boy becomes a part of the oak tree, and feels its pain. . . A new girl arrives in the cottage. Curious about the mystery of the boy who disappeared years before, she goes in search of the magic that snatched him away. Can she break the fairies’ spell?

A visually stunning book that will appeal to lovers of nature, magic, and fairy tales, this book is a solid read that is not too lengthy. A short film version of this story is in the works, which will undoubtedly increase its popularity.

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss - One bright sunny day, a duck named McKluck found a magic Bippolo Seed! When the seed is planted, whatever one hishes for will sprout and grow out of a Bippolo Tree. Unfortunately McKluck is influenced by an imaginative, greedy cat. Other exuberant tales involve a quick thinking rabbit, an overgrown goldfish and an abundance of Seussian creatures!

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick - Following the success of the 2009 Caldecott winner, the invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstuck contains two separate stories set fifty years apart, of Ben and Rose. Ben’s story is told in words of his search for the father he has never known. Rose’s story is told in pictures as she dreams of a mysterious actress and freedom from her narrow, deaf world. As Ben follows puzzling clues from his mother’s room, his story ultimately intertwines with Rose’s. A satisfying, mysterious read.

The Orphan: A Cinderella Story from Greece by Anthony L. Manna - A magical retelling of the classic Cinderella story, and a mother’s blessing which extends from beyond the grave. The orphan girl was “as brilliant as the sun, as beautiful as the moon, and as graceful as the dawn.” A tiny blue shoe stuck in a sticky mix of honey and wax sets the lovestruck prince on his quest.


Nonfiction

Inside Earthquakes by Melissa Stewart - More than one million earthquakes shake the earth every year! This book discusses the three kinds of faults, how scientists predict quakes, how quakes are measured, and how to prepare. Also covered are amazing close up shots of recent earthquakes with fold-out photos.

The Bravest Woman in America by Marissa Moss - Ida loved the sea, and was enthralled when her father was appointed the lighthouse keeper of the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island. Her father taught her to row and care for the light. Her father became ill, and at sixteen, Ida performed her first rescue. For thirty-nine years she was the keeper of Lime Rock Lighthouse, and was sixty-three when she made her last rescue. She was dubbed ‘the bravest woman in America’, and awarded the American Cross of Honor, and the Congressional Life Saving medal. Ida proved a woman could be a s brave as a man, and claimed, “anyone who thinks it is un-feminine to save lives has the brains of a donkey.”

November Recommendations for Adults

Fiction

Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses by Meredith Mileti - Mira Rinaldi lives life at a rolling boil. Co-owner of Grappa, a chic New York City trattoria, she has an enviable apartment, a brand-new baby, and a frenzied schedule befitting her success. Everything changes the night she catches her husband, Jake, "wielding his whisk" with Grappa's new waitress. Mira's fiery response earns her a court-ordered stint in anger management and the beginning of legal and personal predicaments as she battles to save her restaurant and pick up the pieces of her life.

Mira falls back on family and friends in Pittsburgh as she struggles to find a recipe for happiness. But the heat is really on when some surprising developments in New York present her with a high stakes opportunity to win back what she thought she had lost forever. For Mira, cooking isn't just about delicious flavors and textures, but about the pleasure found in filling others' needs. And the time has come to decide where her own fulfilment lies - even if the answers are unexpected.

Keenly observed and deeply satisfying, Aftertaste is a novel about rebuilding and rediscovery, about food passionately prepared and unapologetically savored, and about the singular contentment that comes with living--and loving--with gusto.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami - The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory - Descended from Melusina, the river goddess, Jacquetta always has had the gift of second sight. As a child visiting her uncle, she met his prisoner, Joan of Arc, and saw her own power reflected in the young woman accused of witchcraft. They share the mystery of the tarot card of the wheel of fortune before Joan is taken to a horrific death at the hands of the English rulers of France. Jacquetta understands the danger for a woman who dares to dream. Jacquetta is married to the Duke of Bedford, English regent of France, and he introduces her to a mysterious world of learning and alchemy. Her only friend in the great household is the duke’s squire Richard Woodville, who is at her side when the duke’s death leaves her a wealthy young widow. The two become lovers and marry in secret, returning to England to serve at the court of the young King Henry VI, where Jacquetta becomes a close and loyal friend to his new queen.

The Woodvilles soon achieve a place at the very heart of the Lancaster court, though Jacquetta can sense the growing threat from the people of England and the danger of royal rivals. Not even their courage and loyalty can keep the House of Lancaster on the throne. Henry the king slides into a mysterious sleep; Margaret the queen turns to untrustworthy favorites for help; and Richard, Duke of York, threatens to overturn the whole kingdom for his rival dynasty. Jacquetta fights for her king, her queen, and for her daughter Elizabeth for whom Jacquetta can sense an extraordinary and unexpected future: a change of fortune, the throne of England, and the white rose of York.

A sweeping, powerful story rich in passion and legend and drawing on years of research, The Lady of the Rivers tells the story of the real-life mother of the white queen.

The Night Eternal by Guillermo Del Toro - From the authors of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Strain and The Fall comes the final volume in one of the most electrifying thriller series in years.

It’s been two years since the vampiric virus was unleashed in The Strain, and the entire world now lies on the brink of annihilation. There is only night as nuclear winter blankets the land, the sun filtering through the poisoned atmosphere for two hours each day—the perfect environment for the propagation of vampires. There has been a mass extermination of humans, the best and the brightest, the wealthy and the influential, orchestrated by the Master—an ancient vampire possessed of unparalleled powers—who selects survivors based on compliance. Those humans who remain are entirely subjugated, interred in camps, and separated by status: those who breed more humans, and those who are bled for the sustenance of the Master’s vast army.

The future of humankind lies in the hands of a ragtag band of freedom fighters—Dr. Eph Goodweather, former head of the Centers for Disease Control’s biological threats team; Dr. Nora Martinez, a fellow doctor with a talent for dispatching the undead; Vasiliy Fet, the colorful Russian exterminator; and Mr. Quinlan, the half-breed offspring of the Master who is bent on revenge. It’s their job to rescue Eph’s son, Zack, and overturn this devastating new world order. But good and evil are malleable terms now, and the Master is most skilled at preying on the weaknesses of humans. Now, at this critical hour, there is evidence of a traitor in their midst. . . . And only one man holds the answer to the Master’s demise, but is he one who can be trusted with the fate of the world? And who among them will pay the ultimate sacrifice—so that others may be saved?


Nonfiction

The Beautiful and the Damned: a Portrait of the New India by Siddhartha Deb - Siddhartha Deb grew up in a remote town in the northeastern hills of India and made his way to the United States via a fellowship at Columbia. Six years after leaving home, he returned as an undercover reporter for The Guardian, working at a call center in Delhi in 2004, a time when globalization was fast proceeding and Thomas L. Friedman declared the world flat. Deb’s experience interviewing the call-center staff led him to undertake this book and travel throughout the subcontinent.

The Beautiful and the Damned examines India’s many contradictions through various individual and extraordinary perspectives. With lyrical and commanding prose, Deb introduces the reader to an unforgettable group of Indians, including a Gatsby-like mogul in Delhi whose hobby is producing big-budget gangster films that no one sees; a wiry, dusty farmer named Gopeti whose village is plagued by suicides and was the epicenter of a riot; and a sad-eyed waitress named Esther who has set aside her dual degrees in biochemistry and botany to serve Coca-Cola to arms dealers at an upscale hotel called Shangri La.

Like no other writer, Deb humanizes the post-globalization experience—its advantages, failures, and absurdities. India is a country where you take a nap and someone has stolen your job, where you buy a BMW but still have to idle for cows crossing your path. A personal, narrative work of journalism and cultural analysis in the same vein as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and V. S. Naipaul’s India series, The Beautiful and the Damned is an important and incisive new work.

The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America by Hugh Thomas - From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes a magnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566, when Spain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has written a rich and riveting narrative of exploration, progress, and plunder. At its center is the unforgettable ruler who fought the French and expanded the Spanish empire, and the bold conquistadors who were his agents. Thomas brings to life King Charles V—first as a gangly and easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesman who exceeded all his predecessors in his ambitions for conquest (while making sure to maintain the humanity of his new subjects in the Americas), and finally as a besieged Catholic leader obsessed with Protestant heresy and interested only in profiting from those he presided over.

The Golden Empire also presents the legendary men whom King Charles V sent on perilous and unprecedented expeditions: Hernán Cortés, who ruled the “New Spain” of Mexico as an absolute monarch—and whose rebuilding of its capital, Tenochtitlan, was Spain’s greatest achievement in the sixteenth century; Francisco Pizarro, who set out with fewer than two hundred men for Peru, infamously executed the last independent Inca ruler, Atahualpa, and was finally murdered amid intrigue; and Hernando de Soto, whose glittering journey to settle land between Rio de la Palmas in Mexico and the southernmost keys of Florida ended in disappointment and death. Hugh Thomas reveals as never before their torturous journeys through jungles, their brutal sea voyages amid appalling storms and pirate attacks, and how a cash-hungry Charles backed them with loans—and bribes—obtained from his German banking friends.

A sweeping, compulsively readable saga of kings and conquests, armies and armadas, dominance and power, The Golden Empire is a crowning achievement of the Spanish world’s foremost historian.

Outlaws Inc.: Under the Radar and on the Black Market with the World’s Most Dangerous Smugglers by Matt Potter - This riveting account reveals the secret corners of our supposedly flat world: black markets where governments are never seen but still spend outrageous amounts of money. Journalist Matt Potter tells the story of Yuri and his crew, a gang of Russian military men who, after the collapse of the Soviet Union found themselves without work or prospects. So they bought a decommissioned Soviet plane-at liquidation prices, straight from the Russian government-and started a shipping business. It wasn't long before Yuri, and many pilots like him, found themselves an unlikely (and ethically dubious) hub of global trading. Men like these are paid by the U.S., the Taliban, and blue-chip multinational companies to bring supplies- some legal, some not-across dangerous borders.

In a feat of daring reportage, Potter gets onto the flight deck with these outlaws and tells the story of their fearless missions. Dodging gunfire, Potter is taken from place to place by men trafficking everything from illicit weapons to emergency aid, making enemies everywhere but no reliable friends. As the world changes, we see the options for the crew first explode, then slowly diminish, until, in a desperate maneuver, they move their operations to the most lawless corners of Africa, where they operate to this day.

The story of these outlaws is a microcosm of the world since the end of the cold war: secret contracts, guerrilla foreign policy, and conflicts too thorny to be handled in public. Potter uses the story of these men to articulate an underground history of the globalized world. At once thrilling, provocative, and morally circumspect, this book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in espionage, or in how the world works today.

Warrior Police: Rolling with American’s Military Police in the World’s Trouble Spots by Gordon Cucullu - America has been at war on several fronts since the 9/11 attack. While public attention has focused on Marines, conventional Army units, and Special Operations Forces, a lion’s share of the war-fighting has been done, under media radar, by Military Police units. These squad and platoon-sized units patrol dangerous urban streets, build up local police units to improve neighborhood stability, and conduct civic action missions. On many occasions they have rushed into a vicious firefight to come to the assistance of infantry units in desperate straits. They keep villages Taliban-free, monitor balloting sites, and interdict drug shipments. In detention centers at Camp Bucha, Iraq, Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, Cuba they guard some of the most dangerous terrorists in history.

The story is told by the soldiers themselves, recounting what they have seen and experienced, along with historical context and first-hand field observations by the author team who were provided with unique inside access. Warrior Police takes readers into the bloody streets of Iraq, the dangerous back-country of Afghanistan, and wherever our Military Police are needed.