New
& Noteworthy
The
following are among the latest additions to Skidompha's
collection of books, audio books and videos:
The following is partial list of books,
DVDs, and Audio Books (CDs) chosen by the Library’s
selection committee and whenever possible, in response to
patron requests. New titles are always coming in so check
back often!
New! SkidKids...New titles for
young readers.
Newest Titles
May 2008
New Non-fiction
Larson, Edward J. A
Magnificent Catastrophe: The tumultuous election of
1800, America's first presidential campaign
The presidential race between Adams and Jefferson saw
bitter infighting and sophisticated political jockeying,
and spelled the end of a dream of enlightened consensus,
resulting instead in the two-party system we know today.
Pleasant, Barbara The Complete Compost
Gardening Guide: Banner batches, grow heaps, comforter
compost, and other amazing techniques for saving time
and money, and producing the most flavorful, nutritious
vegetables ever
Need we say more?
Belt, Annie
A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel: My journey
in photographs
One of the first female photographers hired by the
National Geographic Society, the author chronicles 3
decades of international travel replete with wisdom,
excitement, humor, heartbreak, and art.
Rosen, Jonathan The
Life of the Skies
This thoughtful exploration of birding through the lens
of history, literature and loss demonstrates that
technology, which on the one hand allows us to
understand and approach nature, has also often been its
demise.
Lee, Jennifer 8
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
An unexpected and entertaining journey through culinary,
social and cultural history revolving around the origins
and popularity of the customary after-Chinese-dinner
treat.
Casey, Nell An
Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on caring for family
Original essays by talented writers reveal their
insights into being cared for themselves, or caring for
parents, children and spouses with illnesses as varied
as depression, dementia and brain injury.
Ariely, Dan
Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our
decisions
An MIT professor after 20 years of researching
behavioral economics concludes that people tend to
behave irrationally in a predictable fashion -–
irrational behavior is a part of human nature.
Vander Brink, Brian
At Home by the Sea: Houses designed for living at the
water's edge
Ranging from the historic to the ultra-modern, twenty
stunning seaside homes (including several in Maine)
display their layouts, décor and connection with outdoor
spaces. In memory of Zee Ward.
Childs, Craig The
Animal Dialogues: Uncommon encounters in the wild
This lyrical, dramatic tour of the hidden domain of wild
animals emerged from the author's own encounters with
species ranging from peregrine falcons to mountain
lions, and is replete with astonishing facts about
behavior, habitat, breeding and life span.
Rauhala, Ann The
Lucky Ones: Our stories of adopting children from China
This narrative of hope and optimism treats the challenge
of multiracial adoption and family life, with its
immense joys, its frequent feelings of dislocation and
crises of identity.
Dempsey, Amy Art in
the Modern Era: A guide to styles, schools and movements
This illuminating book is the key to understanding a
century of dynamic change in art and architecture, from
Impressionism to the digital age. In memory of Patricia
Atwood.
Raguin, Virginia
Stained Glass from Its Origins to the Present
This beautiful book of glass in sacred places traces the
key periods in which stained glass windows have emerged
as a notable art form, their connection with historical
events, their symbolism, and their production and
conservation.
In memory of Patricia Atwood.
New needle arts books in memory of Fifi
Richards, donated by the Clamshell Quilters:
Knitting on the Edge, Knitting over the
Edge, Knitting beyond the Edge, three books by Nicki
Epstein
Socks. Socks, Socks by Elaine Rowley
The New Granny Square by Susan Cottrell
Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted lace shawls,
by Alison Hyde
Ruth B. McDowell's Design Workshop: Turn
your inspiration into an artfully designed quilt, by
Ruth McDowell
New Fiction
Adiga, Aravind The
White Tiger
This first novel by an Indian writer stars a man from a
lower caste who drives for a wealthy man and, growing
increasingly angry and exploited, decides to murder him.
Harris, Joanne The
Girl with No Shadow
This sequel to Chocolat finds the
lovely Vianne in Paris running a chocolaterie and
encountering a charming helpmate who may have more
sinister motives.
Schlink, Bernhard
Homecoming
This powerful meditation on justice, history and the
nature of evil in Nazi Germany involves false identities
in a swiftly turning plot.
McCall Smith, Alexander
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
In this episode, the gracious Botswana lady detective
helps a woman who doesn't know her real name but yearns
to connect with her family, and a man who seeks a
miracle cure for his daughter.
Lescroart, John
Betrayal
In this thriller, a DA finishing the caseload of a Bay
Area lawyer who has disappeared comes across a murder
case with its origins in Iraq, involving a National
Guard reservist and an ex-Navy SEAL.
Picoult, Jody Change
of Heart
Wishing to be an organ donor, an inmate convicted of
murdering a child volunteers to donate his heart to the
child's sister, who needs a transplant.
Lowry, Malcolm The
Voyage that Never Ends
The author's compendium of fiction, poems, fragments and
letters portrays a notoriously misspent life of binges
and blackouts, as well as the creation of his literary
masterpieces.
White, Stephen Dead
Time
A
Colorado psychologist enjoying some quiet time is jolted
back into action when he receives and SOS call from his
former wife concerned that the surrogate mother for her
child has vanished, linked somehow to an earlier
disappearance of a woman from the Grand Canyon floor.
Sheers, Owen
Resistance
In a re-imagined history, the D-Day landing has Germans
invading Britain, bringing the war to the doorstep of a
small Welsh village where all the men have mysteriously
disappeared and the women are left alone to manage their
farms and herds.
Lavender, Will
Obedience
Part mystery, part thriller, this book questions blind
authority as a professor of logic assigns his students
the task of solving the disappearance of a young woman –
and her life will depend on their success.
Rice, Anne Christ
the Lord: The road to Cana
Second in her series on the life of Christ written since
her conversion, Rice recounts the miracle at the wedding
at Cana, preceded by Jesus's earlier years, including
his baptism and his temptations by the devil.
Oates, Joyce Carol
Wild Nights!
Reinventing the climactic events and final days of the
lives of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway,
Oates explores the mysterious regions of what we
recognize as “genius.”
Dudman, Martha Black
Olives
The treachery of a trusted partner brings about the
disintegration of a woman's secure world in this
examination of mature love in all of its facets.
Archer, Jeffrey A
Prisoner of Birth
A
modern retelling of The Count of Monte
Cristo puts four upper-crust friends at Cambridge U
in collusion, framing an illiterate East Ender for a
murder, resulting in a courtroom full of legal
maneuvers.
Gayden, Kip
Miscarriage of Justice
This fictionalized account of a real trial in Victorian
times stars a woman socialite who admits to killing her
lover to spare her husband's reputation. An intriguing
trial concludes with a surprise verdict.
Livesey, Margot The
House on Fortune Street
The lives of four characters revolve around a house in
London where dark psychologies and many secrets combine,
resulting in a tragedy.
Wambaugh, Joseph Hollywood Crows
LAPD police hook up with a bombshell socialite involved
in an ugly divorce and just want to have fun –- but
she's setting them up, and her plan is deadly.
LeGuin, Ursula
Lavinia
Set in Italy's Bronze Age, this story of the powerful
woman Virgil's Aeneus married recounts how the couple
founded Roman civilization.
French, Nicci Losing
You
Preparing her kids to leave the London area for a
holiday in Florida, a mother's worst nightmare occurs
when her son fails to return home.
Turner, Nancy E. The
Star Garden
In the winter of 1906, as she struggles to make a home
in the Arizona Territory after surviving drought,
storms, and cattle theft, a pioneer woman after a
stagecoach accident meets three strangers who will
change her life.
Kellerman,
Jonathan
Compulsion
A
tipsy woman needing help on a deserted highway
disappears into the night, a retired schoolteacher is
stabbed to death, two women are butchered in a beauty
parlor –- the LAPD detective and his collaborator
criminal psychologist are going to be busy indeed.
New Mysteries
Anne Perry
Buckingham Palace Gardens
It's Victorian England, and the Prince of Wales has
asked 4 wealthy entrepreneurs and their wives to the
palace to discuss the construction of an African
railroad, but the party ends quickly when the mutilated
body of a prostitute turns up on the queen's monogrammed
sheets.
Greenwood, Kerry
Death Before Wicket
An Australian hobby-detective traveling by train is
asked to help a student accused of stealing exams from a
safe in the dean's office, just as her maid discovers
that her sister has disappeared, leaving two children
with her loutish husband.
Bass, Jefferson The
Devil's Bones
After his lover's murder at the hands of an old nemesis,
a forensic pathologist at U Tenn's Body Farm learns the
killer has escaped and is presumed dead in a cabin fire.
But is he?
Dietrich, Willliam
The Rosetta Key
An American frontiersman in Egypt during Napoleon's 1798
abortive attempt to conquer the Middle East seeks a lost
love who might have died searching for a sacred scroll;
rich in detail of the Holy Land.
Von Ditfurth, Christian
A Paragon of Virtue
First in a new German series in which a history
professor is recruited to help when a wealthy Hamburg
realtor's third family member is murdered, looking like
revenge leading back to the Nazi era.
Fairstein, Linda
Killer Heat
This legal thriller stars a Manhattan assistant DA
investigating a badly decomposed body found in an
abandoned building near the Staten Island ferry, who
turns out to be the first in a number of women in
uniform targeted by a murderer with a military past.
Lerner, Eric
Pinkerton's Secret
In Chicago on the eve of the American Civil Wary, after
battling con men, train robbers and gunmen, Pinkerton,
founder of the nation's 1st
detective agency, hires the first female ever to be an
agent, to help thwart a Maryland secessionist plot.
Mina, Denise Slip of
the Knife
This thriller stars a reporter on the murder beat who
lives for crime scenes – but nothing has prepared her
for a visit from the police, announcing that her first
love has been murdered, and it may be an I.R.A. Hit.
Lutz, Lisa Curse of
the Spellmans
This humorous story stars the daughter in a family of
detectives who decides that their new next door
neighbor, whose landscape gardening business she judges
to be a cover, is somehow making women disappear.
Box, C.J. Blood
Trail
Elk season in the Rockies puts the forest-ranger
detective in the scope of a different kind of hunter,
after a body is found at a camp strung up, gutted, and
flayed, as if he were the elk the hunters are pursuing.
Choi, Susan A Person
of Interest
This dark meditation on various forms of alienation
features a solitary Chinese emigre math professor,
bitter after two failed marriages and an undistinguished
career, who is suspected of planting an exploding
package in the office of a flamboyant colleague.
Wroblewski, David
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Father, son, and an inexplicably mute character take
turns narrating this suspenseful, unforgettable thriller
that is part mystery, part Hamlet, part
boy-and-his-dog, revolving around a coldly evil family
who are breeders of unique dogs.
Newton, Charlie
Calumet City
This debut depicts a heart-pounding week in the life of
a top Chicago cop who, abused by her foster father as a
kid, learns her foster mother has been found dead in the
wall of a building, and that an assistant DA, also a
foster child, has been murdered.
Hart, Carolyn Death
Walked In
A
woman fatally shot whispers something to the wife of a
reluctant investigator, pointing to the theft of a
fortune in gold coins which may now be hidden in the
investigator's own antebellum home.
Harrison, Colin The
Finder
The murder of two Mexican illegals pulls in an
assortment of characters, including an ex-fireman almost
destroyed on 9/11, a brilliant Chinese woman on the run,
a dying police officer, some small-time mafiosi, and an
aging multibillionaire.
Barr, Nevada Winter
Study
A
Park Ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior is studying
wolves with a team of scientists in order to better
understand newcomers to her own Rocky Mountain National
Park, when the pack begins to behave in peculiar ways,
their DNA is discovered to be strangely altered, and a
female member of the study team is savaged.
New in Large
Print
Grisham, John The
Appeal
In this legal thriller, a Mississippi jury returns a
shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of
dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply,
causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history; when the
case goes to the Supreme Court, the chemical company
tries to buy themselves a new judge.
Mortenson, Greg
Three Cups of Tea: One man's mission to promote peace...
one school at a time
Patrons have loved this astonishing, uplifting story of
a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign
to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s
backyard.
New Audiobooks
McGinn, Daniel House
Lust: America's obsession with our homes
As McMansions are springing up like weeds across the
nation, this book serves as a humorous but cautionary
tale for those who long to have the biggest and best on
the block, no matter what the cost; it strikes at the
covetous soul of our culture and economy.
Hoffman, Alice The
Third Angel
The premier writer of mystical realism presents three
interrelated stories about deceit, desire and the
mercurial nature of love.
Roth, Philip Exit
Ghost
A
New Englander rashly agrees to swap homes with a NYC
couple, and now he's involved as he never wanted to be
again, with love, mourning, desire and animosity.
Wodehouse, P.G.
Carry On, Jeeves
These eight witty tales take the eccentric, bumbling
aristocrat from England to NY where his butler must keep
him safe from American aunts, mad poets, and women.
Berg, Elizabeth The
Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted
In these stories, women break out of convention and
expectation to do what they really want to do; told with
emotional truth, humor and poignancy.
New Films
Pearl Diver
Part murder mystery, part family
drama, part love story, this film presents two sisters
haunted by the 20 year old murder of their mother, who,
after years of estrangement, come together in an
emergency to lay bare the long-buried trauma.
When
Nietzsche Wept In this work of
historical fiction, obsession, love, fate and will
combine as Sigmund Freud and colleagues agree to treat
Nietzsche, a sick, poor and unknown philosopher.
Death at a
Funeral This comedy begins with a
dignified funeral ceremony which erupts into uproarious
chaos as a family is catapulted into bad behavior,
revealing outrageous faults and hidden secrets.
Atonement
When a young girl catches her sister in a passionate
embrace with a childhood friend, she is driven by
jealousy to tell a lie that will change all their lives
forever.
Dinner Rush
Tired of making commercials and music
videos, a director/restauranteur casts his own NY eatery
as a hot spot, where the manager, reformed after 25
years as a bookmaker, presides over a busy night of fine
dining and mob entanglements.
August Rush
A charismatic young Irish guitarist and a sheltered
young cellist have a chance encounter, but are soon torn
apart, leaving in their wake an infant, who ends up
being cared for by a mysterious stranger as he develops
remarkable music talent which will help him find his
long lost parents.
New! SkidKids...New titles for
young readers.
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