Mesmerizing Story of Life in an Institution

Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum
Bellwether Award winner Susan Nussbaum’s powerful new novel Good Kings Bad Kings invites us into the lives of a group of typical teenagers—alienated, funny, yearning for autonomy—except that they live in an institution for juveniles with disabilities. This unfamiliar, isolated landscape is much the same as the world outside: friendships are forged, trust is built, love affairs are kindled, and rules are broken. But those who call it home have little or no control over their fate. Good Kings Bad Kings challenges our definitions of what it means to be disabled in a story told with remarkable authenticity and in voices that resound with humor and spirit.

The Year's Best in Women's Fiction

Check out these titles that landed on Library Journal's list for 2013 Best Books in Women's Fiction:

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham
Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham - Stage and screen star Lauren Graham, best known for her work in the television series "Gilmore Girls" and "Parenthood," debuts with a novel that tells the story of a struggling actress in 1990's New York City who searches for work and the perfect hair product while befriending a rival and resisting her father's pressure to get a "real" job.

Astor Place Vintage by Stephanie Lehmann
Astor Place Vintage by Stephanie Lehmann - Amanda Rosenbloom, owner of a struggling vintage clothing shop, finds the journal of Olive, a woman who lived in New York one hundred years ago. As Amanda reads the journal, her life begins to unravel until she can no longer ignore this voice from the past. Despite being separated by one hundred years, Amanda finds she’s connected to Olive in ways neither could ever have imagined.

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore
The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore - Forging a friendship at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean meet regularly at the first diner owned by black proprietors in their Indiana city and are watched throughout the years by a big-hearted man who observes their struggles with school, marriage, parenthood and beyond.

Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer
Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer - After being fired from her job, Queenie Wake returns home to North Star to cook meals for death row inmates. Hopeful that the bad memories of her late mother and promiscuous sister (now the mother of the captain of the high school football team) have been forgotten by the locals, Queenie discovers that some people are harder to forget than others.When secrets from the past emerge, will Queenie be able to stick by her family or will she leave home again?

Book to Movie Alert: The Monument's Men


Calling all George Clooney Fans!

George Clooney's upcoming new movie The Monument's Men is based on the true story depicted in the book The Monuments Men : Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter. In a book that Bookpage Reviews states "moves like a Hollywood action adventure," Edsel and and co-author Witter trace the lesser-known effort of the Monument's Men, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others who risked their lives scouring Europe during WWII to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.

Check it out before the movie's upcoming release in February.

New Gritty Crime Novel


The Double by George Pelecanos
Looking for a gritty crime thriller to read this week? Try George Pelecanos' The Double. This second book in the Spero Lucas crime series (first featured in The Cut) received a starred review from Booklist who praises Pelecanos for delivering "another straight-ahead, head-banging, yet still character-focused crime story."

Summary: The job seems simple enough: retrieve the valuable painting "The Double" that Grace Kinkaid's ex-boyfriend stole from her. It's the sort of thing Spero Lucas, a former Marine turned private investigator, specializes in: finding what's missing, and doing it quietly. But Grace wants more. She wants Lucas to find the man who humiliated her--a violent career criminal with a small gang of brutal thugs at his beck and call. Lucas is a man who knows how to get what he wants, whether it's a thief on the run--or a married woman. In the midst of a steamy, passionate love affair that he knows can't last, in pursuit of a dangerous man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, Lucas is forced to decide what kind of man he is--and how far he'll go to get what he wants.


The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis
With a tale that sweeps across time and continents to unravel tangled knots of romance, espionage, and vengeance, National Book Award Winner author Bob Shacochis returns to writing with The Woman Who Lost Her Soul.

When humanitarian lawyer Tom Harrington travels to Haiti to investigate the murder of a beautiful and seductive photojournalist, he is confronted with a dangerous landscape riddled with poverty, corruption, and voodoo. It’s the late 1990s, a time of brutal guerrilla warfare and civilian kidnappings, and everyone has secrets. The journalist, whom he knew years before as Jackie Scott, had a bigger investment in Haiti than it seemed, and to make sense of her death, Tom must plunge back into a thorny past and his complicated ties to both Jackie and Eville Burnette, a member of Special Forces who has been assigned to protect her.

Booklist's starred review of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul praises Shacochis' latest as "a brilliant book, likely to win prizes, with echoes of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, and John le CarrĂ©." Do you agree? Let us know what you think! 

National Book Award 2013 Winners Announced

The National Book Award winners were announced on Wednesday and the winners are.....

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Fiction:
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride: 
Fleeing her violent master at the side of legendary abolitionist John Brown at the height of the slavery debate in mid-19th-century Kansas Territory, Henry pretends to be a girl to hide his identity throughout the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
Non-Fiction:
Paints a picture of the last 30 years of life in America by following several citizens, including the son of tobacco farmers in the rural south, a Washington insider who denies his idealism for riches and Silicon Valley billionaire.





Race Against Time

Time travel, government conspiracy, science and religion combine in the new page-turner by James Barney.

The Joshua Stone by James Barney
The Joshua Stone by James Barney tells the story of a secret government experiment that goes terribly awry. In 1959, in an underground laboratory, half a dozen scientists mysteriously disappeared, and all subsequent efforts to rescue them failed. In desperation, President Eisenhower ordered the lab sealed shut and all records of its existence destroyed. Now, fifty-four years later, something from the lab has emerged. Government agents Mike Califano and Ana Thorne are sent to investigate these strange events and make a discovery that shakes the very foundations of science and religion and puts them in the crosshairs of a deadly, worldwide conspiracy.

New Thanksgiving Stories


Looking for a few Thanksgiving themed stories? Check out these new releases:

Death Rides Again by Janice Hamrick
Death Rides Again by Janice Hamrick: This cozy mystery, the third in the Jocelyn Shore mystery series, finds Texas high-school teacher Jocelyn Shore's family Thanksgiving disrupted by violent disputes involving a cousin's imminent divorce, which is further complicated by a disappearance, a murder and numerous suspects.

Want Not by Jonathan Miles
Want Not by Jonathan Miles is a compulsively readable, deeply human novel that charts the course of three intersecting lives—a freegan couple living off the grid in Manhattan, a once prominent linguist struggling with midlife, and a New Jersey debt-collection magnate with a new family and a second chance at getting things right—in a thoroughly contemporary examination of that most basic and unquenchable emotion: want.

Skating Under the Wire by Joelle Charbonneau
Skating Under the Wire by Joelle Charbonneau: When a dead body turns up at her best friend's bridal shower, Rebecca Robbins, while trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner and track down the thieves responsible for a string of home invasions, must solve a murder and get her friend safely married with the help of her Elvis-loving grandmother. This cozy mystery is the fourth in the Rebecca Robbins Mystery series.

Intrigue on the High Seas

The 9th installment in Clive Cussler's popular Oregon Files Series has finally arrived!


Mirage by Clive Cussler
Fans of Cussler's fast paced action adventure series have waited over two years for Mirage, the latest release in the Oregon Files Series featuring Juan Cabrillo and the mysterious "Corporation" taking on covert missions to fight global crime and terrorism.

In October 1943, a U.S. destroyer sailed out of Philadelphia and supposedly vanished, the result of a Navy experiment with electromagnetic radiation. The story was considered a hoax but now Juan Cabrillo and his Oregon colleagues aren’t so sure. There is talk of a new weapon soon to be auctioned, something very dangerous to America’s interests, and the rumors link it to the great inventor Nikola Tesla, who was working with the Navy when he died in 1943. Was he responsible for the experiment? Are his notes in the hands of enemies? As Cabrillo races to find the truth, he discovers there is even more at stake than he could have imagined but by the time he realizes it, he may already be too late.

New to the Oregon Files Series and want to read from the beginning? Here is the list of the full series available at the Mastics Moriches Shirley Community Library:
  1. Golden Buddha (2003)
  2. Sacred Stone (2004)
  3. Dark Watch (2005)
  4. Skeleton Coast (2006)
  5. Plague Ship (2008)
  6. Corsair (2009)
  7. The Silent Sea (2010)
  8. The Jungle (2011)
  9. The Mirage (2013)



Mitch Albom's Latest Novel of Love, Forgiveness and the Afterlife

The First Phone Call from Heaven by Mitch Albom
The First Phone Call From Heaven by Mitch Albom: One morning in the small town of Coldwater, Michigan, the phones start ringing. The voices say they are calling from heaven. Is it the greatest miracle ever? Or some cruel hoax? As news of these strange calls spreads, outsiders flock to Coldwater to be a part of it. At the same time, a disgraced pilot named Sully Harding returns to Coldwater from prison to discover his hometown gripped by "miracle fever." Even his young son carries a toy phone, hoping to hear from his mother in heaven. As the calls increase, and proof of an afterlife begins to surface, the town—and the world—transforms. Only Sully, convinced there is nothing beyond this sad life, digs into the phenomenon, determined to disprove it for his child and his own broken heart.

Political Intrigue and Moral Dilemmas

The gap between rich and poor has never been wider . . . legislative stalemate paralyzes the country . . . corporations resist federal regulations . . . spectacular mergers produce giant companies . . . the influence of money in politics deepens . . . bombs explode in crowded streets . . . small wars proliferate far from our shores . . . a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life.

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin
These unnervingly familiar headlines serve as the backdrop for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s highly anticipated The Bully Pulpit : Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.

Chosen as one of Amazon's Best Book of The Month - November, The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history.

Pulitzer-prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Rivals which was the basis for the Academy Award winning movie Lincoln. Will her newest book follow suit? Check it out and let us know what you think.


Jeeves and Wooster Return

Bertie Wooster (a young man about town) and his butler Jeeves (the very model of the modern manservant)—return in their first new novel in nearly forty years: Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks.

P.G. Wodehouse documented the lives of the inimitable Jeeves and Wooster for nearly sixty years, from their first appearance in 1915 (“Extricating Young Gussie”) to his final completed novel ("Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen") in 1974. These two were the finest creations of a novelist widely proclaimed to be the finest comic English writer by critics and fans alike.

Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks
Now, forty years later, Bertie and Jeeves return in a hilarious affair of mix-ups and mishaps. With the approval of the Wodehouse estate, acclaimed novelist Sebastian Faulks brings these two back to life for their legion of fans in Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. Bertie, nursing a bit of heartbreak over the recent engagement of one Georgina Meadowes to someone not named Wooster, agrees to “help” his old friend Peregrine “Woody” Beeching, whose own romance is foundering. That this means an outing to Dorset, away from an impending visit from Aunt Agatha, is merely an extra benefit. Almost immediately, things go awry and the simple plan quickly becomes complicated. Jeeves ends up impersonating one Lord Etringham, while Bertie pretends to be Jeeves’ manservant “Wilberforce,”—and this all happens under the same roof as the now affianced Ms. Meadowes. From there the plot becomes even more hilarious and convoluted, in a brilliantly conceived, seamlessly written comic work worthy of the master himself

In Honor of John F. Kennedy

This month our main floor display is in honor of the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Here are just a few of the many titles we have available for you:


November 22, 1963: Reflections on the Life, Assasination and Legacy of John F. Kennedy by Dean Owen Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House by Robert Dallek The Letters of John F. Kennedy by Martin W. Sander


  1. November 22, 1963: Reflections on the Life, Assassination and Legacy of John F. Kennedy by Dean R. Owens: Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, this intriguing collection of interviews and commentaries from notable men and women connected to that tragic Friday afternoon investigates not only where we were that day, but where we have come since.

  2. Camelot's Court : Inside the Kennedy White House by Robert Dallek: Fifty years after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, presidential historian Robert Dallek, whom The New York Times calls “Kennedy’s leading biographer,” delivers a riveting new portrait of this president and his inner circle of advisors—their rivalries, personality clashes, and political battles. In Camelot’s Court, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy’s administration—including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam—were indelible.

  3. The Letters of John F. Kennedy edited by Martin W. Sandler: Published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 35th President's death, a definitive collection of letters by and to JFK is drawn from Kennedy Presidential Library records and offers unique insights into his character and times, in a volume that includes correspondences with such figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt and a young John Kerry.
To find more books about John F. Kennedy, visit the library's display located on the main floor or speak with one of our reference librarians.



New Nora Roberts Trilogy

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts comes a trilogy about the land we’re drawn to, the family we learn to cherish, and the people we long to love.


The Dark Witch by Nora Roberts
First in the all-new Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy, The Dark Witch by Nora Roberts: With indifferent parents, Iona Sheehan grew up craving devotion and acceptance. From her maternal grandmother, she learned where to find both: a land of lush forests, dazzling lakes, and centuries-old legends. Ireland. County Mayo, to be exact. Where her ancestors’ blood and magic have flowed through generations and where her destiny awaits. Iona realizes that here she can make a home for herself and live her life as she wants but nothing is as it seems. An ancient evil has wound its way around Iona’s family tree and must be defeated. Family and friends will fight with each other and for each other to keep the promise of hope and love alive.

"Combining myth, magic, and legend with Ireland's wild beauty, Roberts spins a mesmerizing tale of good vs. evil, providing another trio of addictive romances that readers who love her trilogies—especially "Born In" and "Three Sisters Island"—are sure to enjoy." (Library Journal Reviews)

New Novel Reflects Life and Lasting Love

The Last First Day by Carrie Brown
As this deeply moving novel The Last First Day opens, Ruth van Dusen is preparing for what will turn out to be her husband Peter's last first day. As headmaster of the Derry School for Boys, it is Peter's job to welcome students to the first day of the new school year. It will also be his last day, a long-dreaded one for the devoted couple, when illness will suddenly strike and their well-established lives will change forever.

Carrie Brown, author of five novels including Lamb in Love (1999) and The Rope Walk (2007), has written a well-crafted, meaningful story of two people and the long, happy life they have shared. From their first fateful meeting, when an orphaned Ruth is taken in by the van Dusen family, to their final days in retirement, when failing health and flooding memories compete for their attention, Brown tells the story of Ruth and Peter with a keen observer's eye. Beautifully written, with deeply memorable characters, The Last First Day is a powerful examination of love across the years and a heartfelt story of the strength of unbreakable bonds. (Booklist Reviews)

Mystery and Secrets Abound

A woman must uncover the secrets of the past before she can face her future in Margit Liesch new novel Triptych.

Triptych by Margit Liesch
In 1940, Edit Palmay left Hungary for China to meet her missionary husband. After World War II, they made their way to Chicago, where they raised their family, including their youngest child, Ildiko. Born in America, Ildiko never really listened when her mother told her tales of the old country or recounted what happened when Edit went back to Budapest to try to discover what became of her vanished sister, who may have been either a hero of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution or a spy for the hated secret police force AVO. Not until Edit is killed when she falls, or is pushed, under a train does Ildiko resolve to discover what really happened. Her romance with a married man has ended badly, but her mother's Hungarian friends introduce her to Gustav, a talented photographer who was involved in the revolution before escaping from Hungary. It's Gustav who points out some unsettling features in an uncompleted triptych that Edit made for her in needlework, which apparently tells the story of one of Ildiko's favorite fairy tales. Traveling to Hungary to visit her relatives and retrace her mother's footsteps, Ildiko finds the country still in the grip of communism and her relatives afraid of revealing too much. Gustav has also made the trip to see his dying uncle, whose past is interwoven with Edit's. In a shocking turn, Ildiko discovers that her mother's killer had a motive that goes all the way back to the revolution.

Triptych author Margit Liesch, the daughter of Hungarian refugees, cleverly weaves her family's history into a fine mystery that is an even finer tale about finding one's roots (Kirkus Reviews)

New Historical Novel by Dan Kalla

Return to World War II Shanghai in Dan Kalla's thrilling historical novel Rising Sun, Falling Shadow, the sequel to The Far Side of the Sky.

Rising Sun Falling Shadow by Dan Kalla
It’s 1943 and the Japanese juggernaut has swallowed Shanghai and the rest of eastern China, snaring droves of American and British along with thousands of “stateless” German Jewish refugees. Despite the hostile environs, newlyweds Dr. Franz Adler and his wife, Sunny, adjust to life running the city’s only hospital for refugee Jews. Bowing to Nazi pressure, the Japanese force twenty thousand Jewish refugees, including the Adlers, to relocate to a one-square-kilometer “Shanghai Ghetto.” Heat, hunger, and tropical diseases are constant threats. But the ghetto also breeds miraculous resilience. Music, theater, sports, and Jewish culture thrive despite what are at times subhuman conditions.

Navigating subversion and espionage, Nazi treachery and ever-worsening conditions while living under the heel of the Japanese military, the Adlers struggle to keep the hospital open and their family safe and united.

"Despite its grim subject matter, this gripping historical novel communicates a hopeful message about the power of love and friendship to overcome hatred." (Booklist Reviews)

Military Fiction in Honor of Veterans Day



  1. Author Ralph Peters, winner of the American Library Association's W. Y. Boyd Award for Excellence in Military Fiction,  presents a reimagining of the pivotal Civil War battle from the perspectives of a Blue Ridge Confederate sergeant, a bitter survivor of the Great Famine in Ireland, and a German political refugee in Cain at Gettysburg.


  2. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant his comrades, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.


  3. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers: In the midst of a bloody battle in the Iraq War, two soldiers, bound together since basic training, do everything to protect each other from both outside enemies and the internal struggles that come from constant danger. Author Kevin Powers earned the honor of being a  National Book Award Finalist with The Yellow Birds.
To find more military fiction books, visit the library's display located next to the Adult Fiction collection or ask a librarian.



Amazon Picks 2013 Best Books in Print

Amazon announced their "2013 Best Books of the Year: The Top 100 in Print" this past Thursday and the top spot goes to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt!


The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt gives us the story of Theo Decker, a young boy in New York City who miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld. Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America, and a drama of almost unbearable acuity and power. It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art.

The top 10 books listed in Amazon's 2013 Best Books of the Year are:

  1. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  2. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
  3. Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel
  4. Life After Life: A Novel by Kate Atkinson
  5. Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia
  6. Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scot Anderson
  7. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders
  8. The Son by Philipp Meyer
  9. A House in the Sky: A Memoir by Amanda Lindhout
  10. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Want more? See the full list at Amazon.com's 2013 Best Book of the Year: The Top 100 in Print.

New Installment in Harry Hole Crime Series

A serial killer is targeting Oslo police officers; is Harry Hole still alive?

Police by Jo Nesbo
Police
The Oslo Crime Squad hunts for the serial killer responsible for the torture and murder of police officers staged at the scenes of earlier unsolved crimes.  Author Jo Nesbo's (The Redeemer; The Phantom) newest mystery presents an entire school of red herrings as readers try to discern who is the villain, who is the next victim, and what happened to Harry Hole. In Police, a stalker/student with a peripheral connection to an earlier case diverts attention from the investigation while obstruction by the politically connected chief of police and his vicious henchman hinders the detectives in their desperate chase to stop the murderer(s) before another colleague is harmed.

Followers of the Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo·la) series will want to read this book for both the resolution to the end of a previous novel, The Phantom, and the development of an old antagonist. Though Nesbo's police procedurals have become increasingly violent and heavy on coincidences, crime fiction readers will enjoy the high level of suspense that is sustained throughout as more questions are raised than answered before the startling conclusion is reached. (Library Journal Reviews)

A Novel of Sisters, Secrets and Atonement


New York Times bestselling author Karen White delivers a novel of two generations of sisters and secrets set in the stunning South Carolina Lowcountry. 

The Time Between by Karen White
The Time Between
Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair and the feelings she harbors for her sister’s husband.

To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto. For Eleanor, it’s a chance to revisit the place where she was her happiest and to share her love of music with grieving Helena, whose sister recently died under mysterious circumstances.

An island lush with sweetgrass and salt marshes, Edisto has been a peaceful refuge for Helena, who escaped with her sister from war-torn Hungary in 1944. The sisters were well-known on the island, where they volunteered in their church and community. But now Eleanor will finally learn the truth about their past: secrets that will help heal her relationship with her own sister and set Eleanor free.

"In The Time Between, author Karen White moves smoothly between narrators as well as different time periods, crafting an intriguing and romantic family drama that will appeal to fans of Sarah Jio and Dorothea Benton Frank." (Booklist Reviews)

Margaret Atwood Concludes Sci-Fi Trilogy

Bringing together Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community and love.

Madd Addam by Margaret Atwood
Madd Addam
Madd Addam, the compelling conclusion to Atwood's dystopian trilogy, opens with a brief synopsis of the series' first two books, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, then launches directly into the story of the MaddAddamites, survivors of a global pandemic that wiped out most of humanity. Readers, even those unfamiliar with the human characters and the genetically engineered new species Atwood has created in her futuristic world, will be quickly drawn in and eager to find out what happens to the MaddAddamites and to the Crakers, a gentle, quasihuman species created by Crake. Their world is full of many dangers, including direct attacks from criminally insane Painballers and from pigoons, transgenic pigs developed to grow replacement organs for humans. Toby, Zeb, and the rest of the MaddAddamites are alive, but will they be able to continue not only to subsist but to build up their small society and, eventually, live alongside the Crakers and even flourish?

Certainly of great interest to Atwood fans awaiting this third book of the trilogy and for fans of dystopian/postapocalyptic fiction generally, this finale is a gripping read for any reader. (Library Journal) 

New Novel by Eat Pray Love Author Elizabeth Gilbert

A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth George
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love (2006), returns to fiction with her first novel in 13 years, and what a novel it is! Taking her sweet time and digressing at will into areas ranging from botany to spiritualism to illustration, she tells the rich, highly satisfying story of scholar Alma Whittaker. Born to Henry Whittaker, "the richest man in Philadelphia," who rose from his station as the son of a lowly gardener to an import tycoon, Alma has the benefit of wealth and books, spending hours learning Latin and Greek and studying the natural world. But her plain appearance and erudition seem to foretell a lonely life until she meets gifted artist Ambrose Pike. Their intense intellectual connection results in marriage, but Ambrose's deep but unorthodox spiritual beliefs prevent them from truly connecting. Alma, who has never traveled out of Philadelphia, embarks on an odyssey that takes her from Tahiti to Holland, during which she learns much about the ways of the world and her own complicated nature.

Gilbert, in supreme command of her material, effortlessly invokes the questing spirit of the nineteenth century, when amateur explorers, naturalists, and enthusiasts were making major contributions to progress. Beautifully written and imbued with a reverence for science and for learning, The Signature of All Things is a must-read. (Booklist review)

A Novel of Marriage, Family and Human Resilience

We Are Water is a disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy, from Wally Lamb, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed and She's Come Undone.

We Are Water by Wally Lamb
We are Water
After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh—wife, mother, outsider artist—has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets—dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs’ lives.

We Are Water is a layered portrait of marriage, family, and the inexorable need for understanding and connection, told in the alternating voices of the Ohs—nonconformist, Anna; her ex-husband, Orion, a psychologist; Ariane, the do-gooder daughter, and her twin, Andrew, the rebellious only son; and free-spirited Marissa, the youngest. It is also a portrait of modern America, exploring issues of class, changing social mores, the legacy of racial violence, and the nature of creativity and art.

With humor and compassion, Wally Lamb brilliantly captures the essence of human experience and the ways in which we search for love and meaning in our lives.

Sensational Novel of Murder, Financial Corruption and Redemption

Mortal Bonds by Michael Sears
Mortal Bonds
In Mortal Bonds, Jason Stafford, on probation after imprisonment for fraud, certainly has the necessary skills to be a financial fraud consultant. When William von Becker is convicted of a huge Ponzi scheme and commits suicide, his son hires Stafford to find several billion dollars unaccounted for. The FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission naturally are interested, but so are Honduran drug dealers, Balkan thugs, and several von Becker family members. At the same time, Stafford must juggle care for his autistic six-year-old son and a visit from his alcoholic ex-wife seeking reconciliation. As bodies pile up and peril stalks Stafford from more than one direction, his hard-earned prison smarts, math skills, and Wall Street knowledge prove invaluable.

Author Michael Sear's two decades of Wall Street experience support Stafford's confident movement in the international world of bearer bonds, Swiss banks, and the superrich who use them. Introduced in the Edgar and Barry Award-nominated Black Fridays, Stafford again alternates between high-stakes risk-taking plus violence and the controlled world of his son, whom he'll do anything to protect. A touching, tense, and terrific thriller. (Library Journal)

A Shocking Conclusion for Iris Johansen Series

Silencing Eve by Iris Johansen
Silencing Eve
#1 New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen is back with the shocking conclusion to the latest Eve Duncan trilogy.

This is the finale that fans have been waiting for.  In Taking Eve, the game began.  In Hunting Eve, the chase was on.  Now, in Silencing Eve, the prey is cornered.  Will Eve Duncan survive?  Will those she loves take the fall with her? And will the secrets of Eve’s past ultimately become her undoing?  In Silencing Eve, all the questions will be answered in a shocking, you never saw it coming conclusion.

Iris Johansen’s 2012 trilogy, Eve, Quinn, Bonnie was a phenomenal success, reaching number one on bestseller lists nationwide.  Now, with this newest trilogy, the stakes are even higher because it’s a question of capture and escape, hunter and prey, life and death.