Staff Picks - February 2016
By Robert Goldsborough
Series Nero Wolfe Mystery
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
When Archie Goodwin’s life is threatened, Wolfe must find the gunman or lose his right-hand man.
By Harlan Coben
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
Finding and exposing sexual predators on television, reporter Wendy Tynes prompts the arrest of a man who worked as an advocate for abused children and tackles the case of a missing girl before a group of vigilante fathers makes Wendy fear that she accused an innocent man.
By Ann Packer
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
When their troubled youngest sibling returns, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, find their lives disrupted in ways they could have never imagined as they each tell their story that is interwoven with portraits of their family at crucial points in their history.
By George R.R. Martin
Series Song of Ice and Fire
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
Martin, George R.R. – A Clash of Kings* Six separate factions vie for control of the Seven Kingdoms, while an ancient form of magic, an everlasting winter, and an unearthly army threaten to return.
By Mark Haddon
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
By Charlaine Harris
Series ookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse turns sleuth to investigate a mysterious sniper who has set his sights on the local changeling population, especially when her brother Jason becomes the prime suspect in the deadly attacks.
By Laura Dave
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
When her wedding is cancelled after her fiancé reveals a shocking secret, Georgia Ford returns to her family's Sonoma vineyard, where she expects the comfort of her family but discovers that her fiancé wasn't the only one keeping secrets.
By Elizabeth A. Fenn
Recommended By Brenda Cherry, Reference Librarian
“Draws on important discoveries in a range of disciplines to chronicle the history of the Mandan Native Americans while sharing perspectives about their thriving commercial and agricultural practices before European diseases decimated their culture (From the Publisher).”
A memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father, a funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.
By Michael Christie
Follows the experiences of young Will, who is closeted in his home by a fiercely agoraphobic mother and who ventures out and makes a new friend with whom he searches for a missing boy.
By Andy Weir
Recommended By Cliff Hong, Library Page
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, May 10, 2016. 7:30 PM.
Stranded on Mars by a dust storm that compromised his space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, astronaut Mark Watney struggles to survive in spite of minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that test his ingenuity in unique ways.
By David Baldacci
Series Amos Decker Novels
Recommended By Betty Petreshock, Reference Librarian
More than a year after the most tragic event in Amos Decker's life, a man confesses to murdering his family and Amos, called to help with the investigation, struggles with the memories.
By Ellen Meister
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
Hiding the truth about her ability to cross into alternate realities where she has made different life decisions, a married and pregnant Quinn Braverman learns that her unborn child will be disabled and glimpses into a parallel life where she is married to someone else and childless.
By Kent Haruf
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, August 23, 2016. 1:30 PM.
A senior-aged widow and widower forge a loving bond over shared loneliness and respective histories, provoking local gossip and the disapproval of their grown children in ways that are further complicated by an extended visit by a sad young grandchild.
By Patricia Park
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
Jane Re, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, escapes to Seoul where she reconnects with her family while struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, and wonders if the man she loves is really the man for her as she tries to find balance between two cultures and accept who she really is.
By Amity Gaige
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk
"Ensconced in a correctional facility at the height of a custody battle with his estranged wife, Eric, a first-generation East German immigrant who changed his name as a youth, surveys his life to consider the disparity between his original and assumed identities (From the Publisher).”
By Emily St. John Mandel
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
With Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian
Tuesday, June 9, 2015. 7:30 PM.
The sudden death of a Hollywood actor during a production of "King Lear" marks the beginning of the world's dissolution in a story told at various past and future times from the perspectives of the actor and four of his associates.
By Daniel Kahneman
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
A Nobel Prize-winning psychological draws on years of research to introduce his “machinery of the mind” model on human decision making to reveal the faults and capabilities of intuitive versus logical thinking, providing insights into such topics as optimism, the unpredictability of happiness and the psychological pitfalls of risk-taking.
By John Grisham
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
Criminal lawyer Jake Brigance faces the fight of his life when he is asked to defend Carl Hailey, who, in a rage of anger, shot and killed the men on trial for the rape of his daughter.
Became the movie: A Time to Kill.
By Jan-Philipp Sendker
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
American expat Paul Leibovitz is living as a recluse on an outlying island of Hong Kong when the murder of a distressed American woman's son brings him out of his shell.