Classic Suggestion October 2011

Dracula by Bram Stoker

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon after wards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival. In "Dracula", Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. -Product Description






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Best in Books October 2011

The Last Child by John Hart

Awarded the 2009 Dagger Awards: CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards: Best Novel winner. The Last Child quickly moves through layers of twists and turns with surprising revelations.

Review
*Starred Review* When 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon disappeared a year ago, her family fell apart. her twin brother, Johnny, became obsessed with trying to find her, their father took off, not to be heard from again, and their mother sank into a world of drugs and booze, helped along by an abusive, wealthy boyfriend. Det. Clive Hunt is also obsessed, both with finding Alyssa and with her mother, and his preoccupation costs him his marriage and jeopardizes his job. But this is Johnny's story and his quest to find the sister he lost. Taking his mother's car while she's passed out and occasionally taking along his best friend, Jack, Johnny spies and keeps meticulous records on the townfolk of small Raven County, NC. The world is a dark place when seen through his eyes, and Johnny is an unforgettable character in this finely drawn yet disturbing thriller. With his best novel yet, the Edgar Award-winning Hart (Down River) firmly cements his place alongside the greats of the genre. Highly recommended for all public libraries. --Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach City Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL (Reviewed March 1, 2009) (Library Journal, vol 134, issue 4, p64)

Available in WMA electronic audiobook format from the Greather Phoenix Digital Library

John Hart website

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Classic Suggestion September 2011

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Summary:
Etched against the background of a dying rural society, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was Thomas Hardy's "bestseller," and Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine. Of all the characters he created, she meant the most to him. Hopelessly torn between two men--Alec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood, and Angel Clare, her provincial, moralistic, and unforgiving husband--Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.


"Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination," said Irving Howe. "In Tess he stakes everything on his sensuous apprehension of a young woman's life, a girl who is at once a simple milkmaid and an archetype of feminine strength. . . . Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting." -Amazon.com

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Tess of the d'Urbervilles is also available for download in audiobook format from the Library's Download Center.  Please visit our website to download this item.  http://www.mcldaz.org/

Best in Books September 2011

Bad Blood by John Sandford

Bad Blood is the 2011 Thriller Award winner awarded this past July at the International Thriller Writers conference in New York City. The fourth book in the Sandford's Virgil Flowers series stands alone, but will provide readers with the opportunity to catch up with the previous titles. This tightly written fast-paced story is sure to draw the reader into a plot that has shades of a similar true crime that has recently played out in Utah and Texas courts.
Review
An open-and-shut case of murder leads Virgil Flowers, of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (Rough Country, 2009, etc.),? to a twisted, century-old conspiracy.Despite his efforts to pass off Jacob Flood's death as an accident, it's no secret that Robert Tripp, 19, killed the farmer with a baseball bat. The wounds that were supposed to have disabled Flood had obviously been inflicted after death, and Bobby all but confessed to Warren County Sheriff Lee Coakley. But the case turned darker the night that Coakley arrested her suspect, whose apparent suicide in his cell is pretty clearly murder as well. Jim Crocker, the overnight deputy who was supposed to guard the prisoner but who killed him instead, didn't kill himself, since despite a death scene staged to suggest that he ate his gun, it's obvious to a trained investigator like Virgil Flowers that Crocker was enjoying the favors of a female visitor only a few seconds before he departed this life. As if three murders weren't enough, Virgil swiftly, if intuitively, ties them to a fourth: the sexual violence that claimed the life of high-school student Kelly Baker, who was found naked, violated, but conscientiously scrubbed clean of DNA 14 months ago in a cemetery just across the Iowa border. Once Virgil's begun to question everyone in the town of Battenberg, he's immediately struck by the involvement of so many of the town's citizens—from the parents who home-schooled Kelly Baker and insist that their daughter had no time for boys, to Emmett Einstadt, Jacob Flood's monumentally creepy father-in-law—in the World of Spirit, a Bible-based church that follows a very different path to salvation than Virgil's father, a Lutheran minister, ever preached. The mystery, which is resolved early on, leads to an extended series of cat-and-mouse games between Virgil and the people he knows are guilty of some truly heinous crimes.Lurid and overscaled.(Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2010)

John Sandford Website

This book is available through the Greater Phoenix Digital Library in the ePub format

Beth's Pick August 2011

CHILD OF THE MORNING

By Pauline Gedge

SPOTLIGHT ON THE AUTHOR!

ABOUT PAULINE GEDGE

Pauline Gedge (born December 11, 1945) is a Canadian novelist best known for her historical fiction trilogies, Lords of the Two Lands and The King’s Men. She also writes science fiction, fantasy and horror. Her 13 novels have sold more than six million copies in 18 languages.

Primarily known for bringing characters to life from ancient Egypt, Pauline's inspiring and thought-provoking novels have sold over six million copies worldwide, winning prizes in her native Alberta, Canada as well as abroad. She has been interviewed not only as an author but also as an expert on ancient Egypt. With thirteen novels published to date, her work continues to be enjoyed by readers all over the world. (from the author’s website)

For more info:
http://www.amazon.com/wiki/Pauline_Gedge/ref=ntt_at_bio_wiki

Author’s website:
http://www.paulinegedge.com/

REVIEWS:
She ruled Egpyt not as Queen but as Pharaoh, 35 centuries ago. Yet her name-Hatshepsut-does not appear in dynastic scrolls, nor is her reign celebrated on monuments. This is the story of the young woman who assumed the throne of Egypt, mastered the arts of war and government, lived her life by her own design, and ruled an empire-the only woman Pharaoh in history.

"A rich pageant."-Wall Street Journal

While Hatshepsut, Egypt's only woman Pharoah, was considered a god, Gedge portrays her as very much a human being in this fine historical tale. – Publishers Weekly Review

"The author’s strong sense of time and place is evident in every scene. A superb portrait of a powerful but very human queen." —Library Journal

"Splendor, splendor everywhere." —Kirkus Reviews

"A rich pageant, satisfying on more levels than simply that of narrative." —Wall Street Journal

"Combines ancient artifacts, timeless psychology and sure pacing.” —Globe and Mail

“This is as fine a novel as anyone would want to read.” —Columbus Ohio Dispatch

"A compelling and human story without a single dramatic lapse." —San Francisco Examiner

“Epic accounts of feasts and festivals, and a steady flow of details related to life in ancient Thebes . . . the sunny, sweating world of [Egypt] in filmic splendour.” — Vancouver Sun

Best in Books August 2011

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

A medical account chronicling the true series of events in U.S. history that reads like a novel sat on the New York Times Best Seller Nonfiction list for over a year. The book also received the Chicago Tribune's 2010 Heartland Prize which recognizes "recently published works embodying the spirit of the nations heartland".

Review
This distinctive work skillfully puts a human face on the bioethical questions surrounding the HeLa cell line. Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother of five, was undergoing treatment for cancer at Johns Hopkins University in 1951 when tissue samples were removed without her knowledge or permission and used to create HeLa, the "immortal cell line. HeLa has applications, including the development of the polio vaccine. Science writer Skloot, who worked on this book for ten years, en twines Lack's biography, the development for the heLa cell line, and her own story of building a relationship with Lacks's Children. Full of dialog and vivid detail, this reads like a novel, but the science behind the story is also deftly handled. VERDICT: While there are other titles on this controversy (e.g., Michael Gold's A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy--and the Medical Scandal It Caused), this is the most compelling account for general readers, especially those interested in questions of medical research ethics. Highly recommended. [See Skloot's essay, p. 126; Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09.]-- Carla Lee, Univ. of Virginia Lib., Charlottesville

Author's Website
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Classic Suggestion August 2011

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Summary
David Copperfield is the story of a young man’s adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature’s great comic creations. In David Copperfield—the novel he described as his “favorite child”—Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of his most exuberant and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. -Amazon.com from product description



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