What’s New at Skidompha
January 2012
New Non-Fiction
Orlean, Susan Rin Tin Tin: The life and the legend
Discovered as a newborn German Shepherd in the ruins of a bombed-out kennel by a young American soldier, Rinty was brought from the battlefields of wartime France to California, where his athleticism and acting ability caught the attention of Warner Bros. As the star of 23 blockbuster films, Rinty saved the studio from bankruptcy and made him the most famous dog in the world.
MacGregor, Neil A History of the World in 100 Objects
The renowned director of the British Museum recounts a kaleidoscopic history of humanity through things man-made: jewelry, music, coins, the axe, the credit card and so on.
Hitchins, Christopher Arguably: Essays
The brilliant, brave and witty thinker invites the reader to dip into his encyclopedic knowledge and enjoy his thoughts, wherever they might lead.
New Fiction
Johnson, Adam The Orphan Master’s Son
Residing with his father at a North Korean work camp, a young man becomes a tunnel soldier trained to fight in complete darkness, targeting Japanese citizens of high rank.
Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia The Winding Road
In 1920s England, a family enjoying post-war peace will find their inner resources challenged when the Wall Street Crash brings the fabulous decade to a shattering close.
Perlman, Elliot The Street Sweeper
In contemporary NYC, the life of a formerly incarcerated black man, now a janitor at a cancer center also working to find his daughter, intersects with that of a history professor, a Polish Jew trying to get tenure.
Altenberg, Karen Island of Wings
A young Church of Scotland minister and his wife on a tiny 1830s isle intend to Christianize and modernize the island’s way of life, but the minister’s hard-edged righteousness and guilt prove to be obstacles, while his wife’s empathetic and friendly manner endears her to the local women.
McCall Smith, Alexander The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
As an inquisitive philosopher in Edinburgh works to help a friend find her biological father, she is faced with a difficult question: should the forgotten affairs of youth be left in the past, or can the memories help us understand the present?
Clancy, Tom Locked On
In this novel of high-tech warfare, the enemy within may be even more devastating than the enemy without.
Umrigar, Thrity The World We Found
In late 1970s Bombay, four college women share a bond of friendship and dreams for a better India, but drift apart after graduation; 30 years later the news that one of them has terminal cancer brings the four together again.
Cannell, Stephen Vigilante
When an aggressive police critic and gang member is found murdered in her home, a team of detectives fears the worst: that there’s a killer in their ranks.
Michaels, Fern Deadline
Having provided some much-needed psychic advice to the Frist Lady of CA, a woman and her three friends sign on to help find a trouble-prone Hollywood starlet who has gone missing.
Cook, Robin Death Benefit
A medical student researching cutting-edge organ replacement for critically ill patients finds herself in the middle of an unforeseen calamity in the hospital’s supposedly secure biosafety lab.
Fox, Lauren Friends Like Us
Inseparable since college, two friends find their relationship strained when one begins dating the other’s best friend.
Grippando, James Need You Now
With Wall Street reeling from a monstrous Ponzi scheme, a financial advisor at a prestigious Swiss bank is shocked to learn that his girlfriend could be a major player in the fraud.
Hoag, Tami Down the Darkest Road
In the 1980s, the early days of forensic police work, an FBI agent/profiler in a small CA college town shares the alarm and outrage of his neighbors when they spot a child predator who in earlier years assaulted and murdered a local family.
Griffin, W.E.B. Covert Warriors
Why are the Chinese training the Caribbean’s special forces and the Russians helping to build a Caribbean nuclear power plant? A team sent in to investigate will soon find themselves targets of the Kremlin, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, and the drug cartels.
Woods, Stuart D.C. Dead
Feeling at a crossroads in his NY practice, a lawyer is happy to respond to a summons to D.C.from the U.S. President asking him to investigate the murder suicide of the First Lady's social secretary.
Crais, Robert Taken
The son of a wealthy industrialist and his secret girlfriend are taken by professional border kidnappers, who prey not only on innocent victims but also on one another.
New Mysteries
Holt, Anne 1222
In the midst of a massive blizzard, a train steaming toward Norway’s far north derails; there’s good news – there’s a mostly-empty old lodge nearby, and bad new -- one of the passengers turns up dead. A retired policewoman, paralyzed from a bullet in her spine, reluctantly takes command in her own cantankerous way.
Koontz, Dean 77 Shadow Street
Passersby envy the residents of a beautiful limestone Gilded Age palace, now highly desirable condos, not knowing that its years have been colored by madness, kidnappings, murder, and strange, inexplicable accidents. In memory of Parker Carey.
King, Jonathon Midnight Guardians
An ex-Philly-cop nursing old wounds in a nearly inaccessible Everglades shack with his one-legged girlfriend investigates a Medicare scam which turns out to be more deadly than he ever imagined.
Tremayne, Peter The Chalice of Blood
In medieval times, a Celtic nun and her monk husband risk their lives when they are targeted by a desperate zealot murdering in the name of faith, his latest victim a brilliant but inexplicably moody Brother.
McDermid, Val The Retribution
A hardboiled police detective and her eccentric profiler colleague become the targets of a female serial-killer sociopath who during her long years in jail honed a vicious plan to wreak revenge. And now she’s out.
Nesbo, Jo The Leopard
After the murder of two Oslo women, a Norwegian detective reluctantly returns from Hong Kong to investigate, and discovers he is in the middle of a government turf war, and that the killer is far from finished.
Eco, Umberto The Plague
In 19th c. Europe, where Jesuits plot again Freemasons, Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines, French criminals bomb by day and celebrate Black Masses by night, and every nation has its own secret service, could it be that one lone man is the evil genius behind all of these conspiracies?
Ridpath, Michael Where the Shadows Lie
A Boston detective with unorthodox methods is transferred to Reykjavik as a police advisor, and walks into a murder case linked to an ancient 10th century Icelandic saga.
Gavin, Rick Ranchero
In the backwater Mississippi delta, a rental-store employee sent out to repossess a TV set is bashed in the head by the renter, who then takes the TV, his wife and son and steals the dead guy’s truck, triggering a 4-day trek by a vigilante pack of backwoods oddballs who encounter corrupt cops, addicts, and meth lords as they search for the villain.
Cornwell, Patricia Red Mist
Seeking to learn what happened to her former deputy chief, murdered six months earlier, a forensic anthropologist travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate offers info not only on the agent but also on a string of grisly killings pointing to potential terrorism on an international scale.
New in Large Print
Orlean, Susan Rin Tin Tin: The life and the legend
Discovered as a newborn German Shepherd in the ruins of a bombed-out kennel by a young American soldier, Rinty was brought from the battlefields of wartime France to California, where his athleticism and acting ability caught the attention of Warner Bros. As the star of 23 blockbuster films, Rinty saved the studio from bankruptcy and made him the most famous dog in the world.
Pintoff, Stefanie Secret of the White Rose
The murder of a high-profile judge causes his widow to call in the judge’s old classmate, a criminologist determined to steer his unorthodox methods past the police force.
Feldman, Ellen Next to Love
In a small Massachusetts town, three childhood friends feel their lives unmoored when their men are called to duty in WWII – but the war will change the women as well as the men.
New Audiobooks
Hopkins, Ellen Triangles
This piercing look at the dark side of love and friendship features three women as they face infidelity, the trials of parenting teens, and turning 40.
Hemmings, Kaui The Descendants
His successful Hawaiian life in an uproar, a married father whose wife is in a coma takes his troubled daughters away, on a road trip to a place none of them wants to go.
Graham, Lorna The Ghost of Greenwich Village
Having moved to Manhattan in search of romance and excitement, an aspiring author finds her apartment haunted by the cantankerous ghost of an old Beat Generation writer, who needs a huge favor.
Magliozzi, Tom and Ray Car Talk Classics: The Pinkwater Files
These four programs star the Car Talk guys’ favorite call-in guest, Daniel Pinkwater, NPR commentator, author, and general crank.
Bellow, Saul Seize the Day
A man separated from his family, at odds with his father, failed in his career, and in a financial mess is one day granted a moment of truth and one last hope.
Mee, Benjamin We Bought a Zoo
When the author moved his family to a dilapidated zoo with over 200 exotic animals, people thought he was crazy… then tragedy struck.
New Films
Nothing Personal Having given away her possessions, an enigmatic beauty drifting from town to town, hitching rides through the Irish countryside, comes across an isolated cabin and strikes up an uncanny relationship with its owner, each haunted by their pasts, each having something to offer the other.
Midnight in Paris Dissatisfied with his career, a Hollywood screenwriter visiting Paris with his nasty fiancee and her horrible parents wanders through Rive Gauche, where an ancient limo stops to invite him in, and thus begins his entry into the Paris of the Twenties, with its stellar abundance of writers and artists.
Rushmore Equal parts coming-of-age story and screwball comedy, this is the tale of a 15-year-old attending a prestigious academy on scholarship who is failing all of his classes but is the superstar of extracurricular activities (head of the drama club, the beekeeper club, the fencing club), who, facing expulsion, creates unlikely alliances with a melancholy self-made millionaire alumnus, and with a luscious 1st grade teacher.
The Legend of 1900 This entire film takes place on a ship at sea over 40 years, as it tells the story of a musical genius born on a grand trans-Atlantic liner, who lived and played music on it all of his life, listening and learning from the thousands of passengers he encountered and from all of the cultures of those emigrating from the Old World to the New.
The Debt In the contemporary half of this story, an ex-Mossad agent (Helen Mirren) recounts how she and her fellow agents captured and killed a Nazi war criminal, while in flashbacks to the Cold War in East Berlin, younger versions of each of them play out a significantly different series of events--and the gap between past and present takes its toll on all three in gut-wrenching ways.
Downton Abbey, Series 1 The leisurely life of a rich family is shaken by the sinking of the Titanic, a new heir, and the return of the lord's valet, who has a secret past; the 3 daughters meanwhile are occupied with finding suitable marriage partners under the very close watch of their American mother and very strong willed grandmother. In memory of Parker Carey.
Orlean, Susan Rin Tin Tin: The life and the legend
Discovered as a newborn German Shepherd in the ruins of a bombed-out kennel by a young American soldier, Rinty was brought from the battlefields of wartime France to California, where his athleticism and acting ability caught the attention of Warner Bros. As the star of 23 blockbuster films, Rinty saved the studio from bankruptcy and made him the most famous dog in the world.
MacGregor, Neil A History of the World in 100 Objects
The renowned director of the British Museum recounts a kaleidoscopic history of humanity through things man-made: jewelry, music, coins, the axe, the credit card and so on.
Hitchins, Christopher Arguably: Essays
The brilliant, brave and witty thinker invites the reader to dip into his encyclopedic knowledge and enjoy his thoughts, wherever they might lead.
New Fiction
Johnson, Adam The Orphan Master’s Son
Residing with his father at a North Korean work camp, a young man becomes a tunnel soldier trained to fight in complete darkness, targeting Japanese citizens of high rank.
Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia The Winding Road
In 1920s England, a family enjoying post-war peace will find their inner resources challenged when the Wall Street Crash brings the fabulous decade to a shattering close.
Perlman, Elliot The Street Sweeper
In contemporary NYC, the life of a formerly incarcerated black man, now a janitor at a cancer center also working to find his daughter, intersects with that of a history professor, a Polish Jew trying to get tenure.
Altenberg, Karen Island of Wings
A young Church of Scotland minister and his wife on a tiny 1830s isle intend to Christianize and modernize the island’s way of life, but the minister’s hard-edged righteousness and guilt prove to be obstacles, while his wife’s empathetic and friendly manner endears her to the local women.
McCall Smith, Alexander The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
As an inquisitive philosopher in Edinburgh works to help a friend find her biological father, she is faced with a difficult question: should the forgotten affairs of youth be left in the past, or can the memories help us understand the present?
Clancy, Tom Locked On
In this novel of high-tech warfare, the enemy within may be even more devastating than the enemy without.
Umrigar, Thrity The World We Found
In late 1970s Bombay, four college women share a bond of friendship and dreams for a better India, but drift apart after graduation; 30 years later the news that one of them has terminal cancer brings the four together again.
Cannell, Stephen Vigilante
When an aggressive police critic and gang member is found murdered in her home, a team of detectives fears the worst: that there’s a killer in their ranks.
Michaels, Fern Deadline
Having provided some much-needed psychic advice to the Frist Lady of CA, a woman and her three friends sign on to help find a trouble-prone Hollywood starlet who has gone missing.
Cook, Robin Death Benefit
A medical student researching cutting-edge organ replacement for critically ill patients finds herself in the middle of an unforeseen calamity in the hospital’s supposedly secure biosafety lab.
Fox, Lauren Friends Like Us
Inseparable since college, two friends find their relationship strained when one begins dating the other’s best friend.
Grippando, James Need You Now
With Wall Street reeling from a monstrous Ponzi scheme, a financial advisor at a prestigious Swiss bank is shocked to learn that his girlfriend could be a major player in the fraud.
Hoag, Tami Down the Darkest Road
In the 1980s, the early days of forensic police work, an FBI agent/profiler in a small CA college town shares the alarm and outrage of his neighbors when they spot a child predator who in earlier years assaulted and murdered a local family.
Griffin, W.E.B. Covert Warriors
Why are the Chinese training the Caribbean’s special forces and the Russians helping to build a Caribbean nuclear power plant? A team sent in to investigate will soon find themselves targets of the Kremlin, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, and the drug cartels.
Woods, Stuart D.C. Dead
Feeling at a crossroads in his NY practice, a lawyer is happy to respond to a summons to D.C.from the U.S. President asking him to investigate the murder suicide of the First Lady's social secretary.
Crais, Robert Taken
The son of a wealthy industrialist and his secret girlfriend are taken by professional border kidnappers, who prey not only on innocent victims but also on one another.
New Mysteries
Holt, Anne 1222
In the midst of a massive blizzard, a train steaming toward Norway’s far north derails; there’s good news – there’s a mostly-empty old lodge nearby, and bad new -- one of the passengers turns up dead. A retired policewoman, paralyzed from a bullet in her spine, reluctantly takes command in her own cantankerous way.
Koontz, Dean 77 Shadow Street
Passersby envy the residents of a beautiful limestone Gilded Age palace, now highly desirable condos, not knowing that its years have been colored by madness, kidnappings, murder, and strange, inexplicable accidents. In memory of Parker Carey.
King, Jonathon Midnight Guardians
An ex-Philly-cop nursing old wounds in a nearly inaccessible Everglades shack with his one-legged girlfriend investigates a Medicare scam which turns out to be more deadly than he ever imagined.
Tremayne, Peter The Chalice of Blood
In medieval times, a Celtic nun and her monk husband risk their lives when they are targeted by a desperate zealot murdering in the name of faith, his latest victim a brilliant but inexplicably moody Brother.
McDermid, Val The Retribution
A hardboiled police detective and her eccentric profiler colleague become the targets of a female serial-killer sociopath who during her long years in jail honed a vicious plan to wreak revenge. And now she’s out.
Nesbo, Jo The Leopard
After the murder of two Oslo women, a Norwegian detective reluctantly returns from Hong Kong to investigate, and discovers he is in the middle of a government turf war, and that the killer is far from finished.
Eco, Umberto The Plague
In 19th c. Europe, where Jesuits plot again Freemasons, Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines, French criminals bomb by day and celebrate Black Masses by night, and every nation has its own secret service, could it be that one lone man is the evil genius behind all of these conspiracies?
Ridpath, Michael Where the Shadows Lie
A Boston detective with unorthodox methods is transferred to Reykjavik as a police advisor, and walks into a murder case linked to an ancient 10th century Icelandic saga.
Gavin, Rick Ranchero
In the backwater Mississippi delta, a rental-store employee sent out to repossess a TV set is bashed in the head by the renter, who then takes the TV, his wife and son and steals the dead guy’s truck, triggering a 4-day trek by a vigilante pack of backwoods oddballs who encounter corrupt cops, addicts, and meth lords as they search for the villain.
Cornwell, Patricia Red Mist
Seeking to learn what happened to her former deputy chief, murdered six months earlier, a forensic anthropologist travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate offers info not only on the agent but also on a string of grisly killings pointing to potential terrorism on an international scale.
New in Large Print
Orlean, Susan Rin Tin Tin: The life and the legend
Discovered as a newborn German Shepherd in the ruins of a bombed-out kennel by a young American soldier, Rinty was brought from the battlefields of wartime France to California, where his athleticism and acting ability caught the attention of Warner Bros. As the star of 23 blockbuster films, Rinty saved the studio from bankruptcy and made him the most famous dog in the world.
Pintoff, Stefanie Secret of the White Rose
The murder of a high-profile judge causes his widow to call in the judge’s old classmate, a criminologist determined to steer his unorthodox methods past the police force.
Feldman, Ellen Next to Love
In a small Massachusetts town, three childhood friends feel their lives unmoored when their men are called to duty in WWII – but the war will change the women as well as the men.
New Audiobooks
Hopkins, Ellen Triangles
This piercing look at the dark side of love and friendship features three women as they face infidelity, the trials of parenting teens, and turning 40.
Hemmings, Kaui The Descendants
His successful Hawaiian life in an uproar, a married father whose wife is in a coma takes his troubled daughters away, on a road trip to a place none of them wants to go.
Graham, Lorna The Ghost of Greenwich Village
Having moved to Manhattan in search of romance and excitement, an aspiring author finds her apartment haunted by the cantankerous ghost of an old Beat Generation writer, who needs a huge favor.
Magliozzi, Tom and Ray Car Talk Classics: The Pinkwater Files
These four programs star the Car Talk guys’ favorite call-in guest, Daniel Pinkwater, NPR commentator, author, and general crank.
Bellow, Saul Seize the Day
A man separated from his family, at odds with his father, failed in his career, and in a financial mess is one day granted a moment of truth and one last hope.
Mee, Benjamin We Bought a Zoo
When the author moved his family to a dilapidated zoo with over 200 exotic animals, people thought he was crazy… then tragedy struck.
New Films
Nothing Personal Having given away her possessions, an enigmatic beauty drifting from town to town, hitching rides through the Irish countryside, comes across an isolated cabin and strikes up an uncanny relationship with its owner, each haunted by their pasts, each having something to offer the other.
Midnight in Paris Dissatisfied with his career, a Hollywood screenwriter visiting Paris with his nasty fiancee and her horrible parents wanders through Rive Gauche, where an ancient limo stops to invite him in, and thus begins his entry into the Paris of the Twenties, with its stellar abundance of writers and artists.
Rushmore Equal parts coming-of-age story and screwball comedy, this is the tale of a 15-year-old attending a prestigious academy on scholarship who is failing all of his classes but is the superstar of extracurricular activities (head of the drama club, the beekeeper club, the fencing club), who, facing expulsion, creates unlikely alliances with a melancholy self-made millionaire alumnus, and with a luscious 1st grade teacher.
The Legend of 1900 This entire film takes place on a ship at sea over 40 years, as it tells the story of a musical genius born on a grand trans-Atlantic liner, who lived and played music on it all of his life, listening and learning from the thousands of passengers he encountered and from all of the cultures of those emigrating from the Old World to the New.
The Debt In the contemporary half of this story, an ex-Mossad agent (Helen Mirren) recounts how she and her fellow agents captured and killed a Nazi war criminal, while in flashbacks to the Cold War in East Berlin, younger versions of each of them play out a significantly different series of events--and the gap between past and present takes its toll on all three in gut-wrenching ways.
Downton Abbey, Series 1 The leisurely life of a rich family is shaken by the sinking of the Titanic, a new heir, and the return of the lord's valet, who has a secret past; the 3 daughters meanwhile are occupied with finding suitable marriage partners under the very close watch of their American mother and very strong willed grandmother. In memory of Parker Carey.
Book descriptions are excerpted from dust jackets, publisher info, and book reviews.
Happy New Year!
If Santa brought you an e-reader or portable listening device,
you can take advantage of our huge electronic library of
FREE downloadable audiobooks and e-books. Use your library card to download through www.skidompha.org
Book descriptions are excerpted from dust jackets, publisher info, and book reviews.
Traveling to Portland? Got company to entertain? Need a road trip with a dose of culture?
Reserve Skidompha Library’s
FREE passes to the Portland Museum of Art,
a gift to the community from the Pemaquid Group of Artists.
One pass is given out daily, admitting two adults and up to six children for free!
Anyone in the community can use them (not just library patrons).
Choose your day and call us at 563-5513.