Staff Recommendations
Daryl M.
Pages
-
The Narrowboat Summer
by Youngson, Anne
March 30, 2021
Call Number:
Eve has spent the last 30 years working for an engineering/manufacturing company managing various projects and climbing the corporate ladder. Suddenly, she has been “released” from her position. She is a corporate scapegoat for systemic problems within her company and, as the only woman at her management level, the seemingly obvious choice for where to place the blame. While she is excellent at her job, and planning/execution is her specialty, she has no idea how to deal with this unexpected development in her ordered life.Sally has decided that she can no longer live the life she has been... Read Full Review
-
Good Neighbors: A Novel
by Langan, Sarah
March 22, 2021
Call Number:
The first season of The Twilight Zone in 1960 included an episode written by show creator Rod Serling entitled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Serling presented a block of homes, filled with “typical” American families, on a summer evening. There is a bright flash of light, whose origin is unknown. Then various utilities, the foremost of which is their electricity, begin to behave unreliably. As the residents’ questions grow, panic begins to develop and overtake them resulting in wild accusations, and, ultimately death. Sterling’s closing narration for the episode includes... Read Full Review
-
N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law
by Armour, Jody David
February 1, 2021
Call Number: 343.73 A733-1
Jody Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He studies issues of race and legal decision-making as well as torts and tort reform movements. He also studies and teaches on the intersections of language, the law and ethics. His latest book directly confronts law enforcement and our legal system’s failures and culpabilities in the mass incarceration of people of color.In N*gga Theory, which is how he refers to his work in Critical Race Theory and the title of his new book, Armour systematically identifies and dismantles how our legal... Read Full Review
-
The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne
by Hart, Elsa
January 20, 2021
Call Number:
The year is 1704 and Lady Cecily Kay has returned to London from her husband’s posting as a consul in Smyrna. Upon learning of her imminent return to the British Isles, Cecily sent a letter to Sir Barnaby Mayne, a renowned collector in London with one of the most expansive collections in the country, possibly the world. Cecily is interested in identifying some plant samples she has collected while abroad and Sir Barnaby has agreed to her use of his collection for this purpose.The day after her arrival, Sir Barnaby is to conduct a tour of his collection for several other collectors and Cecily... Read Full Review
-
Hella
by Gerrold, David, 1944-
January 11, 2021
Call Number:
David Gerrold is speculative fiction royalty. His career spans six decades, over which he has won the Hugo and the Nebula awards. He has written more than 50 novels, worked on numerous television series and created cultural touchstones like tribbles (from Star Trek) and the Sleestak (from The Land of the Lost). His latest novel is an adventure in every sense of the word.Hella is Earth-like, but it is NOT Earth. Hella is 9% larger than Earth, but its iron/nickel core is smaller, resulting in only 91% of Earth’s gravity. The atmosphere is more oxygen rich than Earth’s. The... Read Full Review
-
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau
by Zapata, Michael
January 5, 2021
Call Number:
A pirate, a refugee, two pre-teen boys in love with speculative fiction stories, and two adult men who are friends and are each searching for what seems to be missing in their lives. Over the course of nearly a century, these disparate individuals will orbit the missing manuscript of a celebrated writer who died too young. And that manuscript will reach out to them over time and lead them through unimaginable danger to what they each, ultimately, need.Adana Moreau, a young woman orphaned by political unrest, flees the Dominican Republic and finds herself living in New Orleans and married to “... Read Full Review
-
The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers
by Levesque, Emily
December 29, 2020
Call Number: 520 L662
Halley's Comet is quite possibly the most famous, and infamous, comet currently known. It is a “periodic” comet, coming close enough to the earth for viewing approximately every 75 years. Over the centuries, the appearance of Halley’s Comet has been erroneously blamed for earthquakes, illnesses (including the Black Plague in England), the births of two-headed animals and the assassination of Julius Caesar. The comet was last visible from earth in 1986. Early that year, a toddler named Emily Levesque looked through her older brother’s telescope at Halley’s Comet. It was her first step in a... Read Full Review
-
The Devil and the Dark Water
by Turton, Stuart
December 2, 2020
Call Number:
In a "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery, a crime, or series of crimes, is committed under circumstances that appear, at least initially, impossible for said crime to have been enacted. Those same conditions will also seem to preclude the criminal entering or exiting the crime scene.The first “locked-room” mystery was Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” published in 1841. Other classics of the subgenre are Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room; “The Speckled Band,” a Sherlock Holmes adventure by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; and Agatha Christie’s And Then... Read Full Review
-
The Eighth Detective
by Pavesi, Alex
November 16, 2020
Call Number: M
In the early 1940s, a Scottish professor of mathematics devises a mathematical definition of the murder mystery story and writes seven provocative stories as proof of his theory. He publishes a journal article regarding his ideas and then self-publishes his seven stories in a small volume, entitled The White Murders.Decades later, the owner of a small publisher stumbles across one of the copies of The White Murders and decides he wants to reissue the book. The publisher sends an editor in search of the author, whom the editor finally locates on a small, isolated island in... Read Full Review
-
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre
by Brooks, Max
November 2, 2020
Call Number:
What if Sasquatch is real? What if there actually is a large, hair-covered hominid that lives in the undeveloped areas of the Pacific Northwest and is occasionally sighted by unsuspecting humans? What if a natural disaster displaced these creatures and their prey, forcing them to move closer to human settlements? And what if a small group of humans, desiring to get back to nature created a community that allowed them to live a distance from more urban environments while maintaining and relying on the creature comforts afforded by contemporary technologies? What if the natural disaster that... Read Full Review
-
Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond
by Skal, David J.
October 26, 2020
Call Number: e-Book
As the days grow short and the nights grow longer, as the air gets cooler and the leaves on the trees shift in color from green to brown, red, and gold, we know that we have moved into autumn. And autumn is the time for movies that provide chills, from gentle and humorous to frightful and fearsome. If you are looking to find that perfect movie for an autumnal eve, then David J. Skal has the perfect resource: Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond.Skal, a horror media expert and enthusiast, began his career with the 1990’s ... Read Full Review
-
Crossings : consisting of three manuscripts
by Landragin, Alex
October 14, 2020
Call Number:
Crossings, Alex Landragin’s debut novel is as difficult to define as it is to describe. At its most elemental, Crossings is a collection of three novellas that collectively tell a story. There are elements of several different genres present: historical fiction, mystery, fantasy, and romance. And, perhaps most surprising, the novel can be read in two distinctly different ways: traditionally (beginning on page one and reading through the book sequentially), or it can be read it using the “Baroness sequence” as described in the novel’s preface, which leads readers to an alternate... Read Full Review