Book list Nimble of plot and fleet in the telling, Bowen's latest begins a new series starring the plucky Molly Murphy. Hiding her fiery red hair but not her audacious ways, Molly escapes from her Irish village after inadvertently causing the death of the young laird who tried to rape her. She finds herself in possession of a steerage ticket to New York and the custody of two small children when the kids' consumptive mother begs her to deliv...More
Book list *Starred Review* It is supposed to be Charlotte. Sixteen-year-old Gwen has always known that her cousin is the one who has the family's time-travel gene, which is about to activate at any moment. Charlotte has been trained since childhood to complete a complicated task that involves fulfilling a prophecy. Gwen tries to tell herself that the tell-tale dizzy spells she has been experiencing don't mean anything, and then she finds herself back in time. Is ...More
The Elephant Scientist by Caitlin O'Connell and Donna M. Jackson
School Library Journal Gr 5-8-O'Connell traveled to Africa in 1992 to observe wild animals; the trip turned into a job offer to study elephants at Etosha National Park; the text focuses on the scientists' work, findings, and problems encountered. The authors offer an outstanding look at new discoveries about elephant communication and how this knowledge can be used to slow the animal's slump into extinction. Combined with stunning full-color photographs by...More
Publishers Weekly Neely's deftly written first novel pays tribute to the community and culture of a working-class African American woman who becomes both a sleuth and a fugitive from the law. (Feb.)
Publishers Weekly In Black House, Straub and Stephen King wrote of "slippage," whereby the borders between reality and fantasy blur. This entire brilliant novel is an act of slippage. In this sequel to last year's lost boy lost girl, and further chapter in the ongoing adventures of Straub protagonist Tim Underhill (Koko, etc.), the most intellectually adventurous of dark fantasy authors takes the apparent slippage of the prequel-in whi...More
Library Journal Even Crumley's reliably sharp writing can't save this novel from its unlikable hero and convoluted plot. P.I. Milo Milodragovitch (Bordersnakes), usually a self-centered and reckless type, spends the entire novel trying to save a fugitive from being unfairly treated by the Texas justice system. Throughout, Crumley provides a steady stream of fighting, dull conversation, and shady but colorless characters. Milo's vices cer...More
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson
Publishers Weekly As in We Are the Ship, Nelson knits together the nation's proudest moments with its most shameful, taking on the whole of African-American history, from Revolutionary-era slavery up to the election of President Obama. He handles this vast subject with easy grace, aided by the voice of a grandmotherly figure who's an amalgam of voices from Nelson's own family. She does not gloss over the sadness and outrage of her family...More
Book list Before Burke launched his Dave Robicheaux series, he wrote several hard-edged, proletarian novels set in and around Texas. Now he returns to that setting for a new series that stars a Robicheaux-like character in the hardscrabble world of Deaf Smith, Texas. Billy Bob Holland, former Texas Ranger turned lawyer, is a man with a past, and when a teenager is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, that past makes its presence felt. Billy Bob agrees to de...More
School Library Journal PreS-Gr 3-In a tropical rain forest in Central America, a red-eyed tree frog spends the night looking for food while avoiding potential predators. Bishop's high-speed photographic techniques transport viewers to this distant world and allow them to see other creatures from the tree frog's perspective. Larger-than-life images document the hunt, brought to a satisfying conclusion as the well-camouflaged frog settles among the ...More
School Library Journal YAÂ?The second offering in the ``Mars Trilogy,'' an epic SF account of the colonization of Mars. Although it can be read independently, it continues and expands upon the themes introduced in the first volume, and is notable for its examination of issues related to ecology and the humans' relationship with the planet. The story is told from a variety of viewpoints, the first of which is that of a Martian-born boy. A well-...More
Book list Suddenly sixty, Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and best-selling novelist (Every Last One, 2010), finds herself looking back on her life. She's not so much wondering how she got where she is but, rather, considering how the choices she made and the chances she took along the way have prepared her for the road ahead. What even to call this next stage in a woman's life? Not elderly, certainly, yet definitely no longer young, this middle-aged ...More
School Library Journal Gr 10-Up This book received international acclaim after its 1999 publication in Europe. Older teens on this side of the Atlantic now have a chance to read the two complex and challenging narratives intertwined in this beautifully written novel. When 17-year-old Jacob travels solo from England as his grandmother's representative at a ceremony in the Netherlands commemorating the World War II Battle of Arnhem, he is transfor...More
The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French
Book list *Starred Review* Nobel laureate Naipaul's readers know of his fierce intellect and literary prowess, his irascibility and pitiless condemnations. So how authorized was this living biography? And how did French cope? One should never underestimate a narcissist's craving for attention, and French is fearlessly inquisitive. He is also a superb stylist who combines sharp observations with judicial analysis, a skill much in demand in portraying such a contra...More
School Library Journal Gr 5-7-Mammoths tend to get a lot of press, while their mastodon cousins accumulate footnotes, so it's nice to see mastodon getting second-banana billing in this attractive look at Ice Age favorites. Bardoe begins with the discovery of a marvelously preserved infant mammoth in Northern Siberia and goes on to discuss anatomy (comparing mastodon tusks and teeth, for example) and to postulate on probable Proboscidan behaviors...More
Book list Svelte and fit, Brzezinski is the envy of millions of women who watch her on MSNBC's Morning Joe, a bully pulpit she uses to forcefully admonish viewers about the importance of proper diet and exercise. Few would suspect that her vehemence stems from a personal addiction to junk food and binge eating that has plagued her all her life and that her ironclad willpower actually borders on an unhealthy obsession to stay thin at any cost. Only when she candi...More
Publishers Weekly In reviewing this 1996 Newbery winner, PW said that Cushman "has an almost unrivaled ability to build atmosphere, and her evocation of a medieval village, if not scholarly in its authenticity, is supremely colorful and pungent." Ages 8-12. (Sept.)
Library Journal In this novel of breathtaking virtuosity, Franzen, whose debut, The Twenty-Seventh City, chronicled corruption and decline in St. Louis, MO, presents the dysfunctional Lambert family. Enid Lambert's husband, Al, a retired engineer, is going downhill fasthis Parkinson's disease is so bad that he has trouble sitting in a chair. The rest of the family isn't doing much better. The oldest son, Gary, a banker, is depressed and suicidal; Chip has...More
Library Journal Growing up in Arkansas, Grisham dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Now, in his 28th novel, this superb storyteller takes his turn at bat in this memorable story of forgiveness and redemption. In the 1973 season, Warren Tracey, an over-the-hill pitcher from the New York Mets, tangles with Joe Castle, a hot new Chicago Cubs rookie from Calico Rock, AR-halting both their careers. Before their confrontation, Joe had demonstrated hi...More
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publishers Weekly Mukherjee's debut book is a sweeping epic of obsession, brilliant researchers, dramatic new treatments, euphoric success and tragic failure, and the relentless battle by scientists and patients alike against an equally relentless, wily, and elusive enemy. From the first chemotherapy developed from textile dyes to the possibilities emerging from our understanding of cancer cells, Mukherjee shapes a massive amount of history into...More
Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick
Publishers Weekly "This insightful debut novel charts the way a talented 13-year-old drummer's life changes when his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey, is diagnosed with leukemia," according to PW. Ages 10-14. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Publishers Weekly Acts of thievery ultimately lead to justice in the wildly prolific Roberts's latest romantic suspense novel. The little silver statues representing Greek mythology's Three Fates are an art collector's dream: they're extremely valuable individually, but priceless as a trio and legend has it that when put together, they endow their owner with power over destiny. When a German U-boat torpedoes the Lusitania in 1915, pe...More
Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants by Katy Payne
Library Journal In this mixture of personal saga, social commentary, and scientific research, Payne researches elephants' use of infrasound (sound below human hearing) to communicate over long distances. She describes the research she undertook in Kenya and in Zimbabwe, a country that condones elephant culling. Dreadfully, most of the elephants she studied there were destroyed in a 1991 cull. She found this extremely distressful, withdrawing from her ...More
I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company by Brian Hall
Publishers Weekly Though it joins a crowded field of Lewis and Clark narratives, this formidable third novel by Hall (The Saskiad) is not to be dismissed. Narrated in multiple distinct voices, this retelling of the story of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's legendary expedition is less a historical blow-by-blow than an engaging character study of the two men. Hall focuses on a few significant episodes in the journey-such as the hunting accide...More
Publishers Weekly Pierre takes a freewheeling, irreverent look at teenage Sturm und Drang in his erratic, sometimes darkly comic debut novel about a Texas boy running from the law in the wake of a gory school shooting. Vernon Gregory Little is the 15-year-old protagonist, a nasty, sarcastic teenager accused of being an accessory to the murders committed by his friend Jesus Navarro in tiny Martirio, "the barbecue sauce capital of Texas." Vernon m...More
Publishers Weekly Latro, the amnesiac visionary hero of Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete, reaches the Egypt known to Herodotus in Wolfe's splendid historical fantasy. Wounded in battle, Latro has only one day's worth of memory and must write down his experiences so he will know who he is every morning. In compensation, he's able to see gods and supernatural beings and does not distinguish them from the mortals around him. Gaps in...More
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