Staff Recommendations
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Mechanique : a tale of the Circus Tresaulti
by Valentine, Genevieve
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibrarySeptember 3, 2012
Call Number: F
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you would do anything to get it? Something that captivated you from the first moment you saw it--and you knew that this thing would either make you happier than you ever thought possible, or it would destroy you. Would you work and wait an unknown amount of time? Work and live with people you did not like, who did not like you either? Suffer? Die? What if you were the creator of something that affected the people around you like this? Would bestowing your creation be a blessing or a curse? And how would you choose the recipients? These are just... Read Full Review
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The house in France : a memoir
by Wells, Gully.
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionAugust 27, 2012
Call Number: 071.092 W453We
In this sparkling, joyful family memoir, Gully Wells has created an homage to her mother, the irrepressible Dee Wells, not exactly a rock of stability, but who did create a vacation house that would become a solid lodestone in the lives of her children, grandchildren, husband, lovers, and friends. She bought a ramshackle farmhouse that was clinging to a hillside in southern France and made it into a vacation home that became a summer retreat, and respite for some, from a busy life in England.
Dee Wells was a femme fatale who at times unwittingly attracted men wherever she went.... Read Full Review
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The Yard
by Grecian, Alex
Reviewed by: Mary McCoy, Senior Librarian, Art, Music, & Recreation DepartmentAugust 20, 2012
Call Number: M
Alex Grecian’s debut novel is set during the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murders in a London that’s been forever changed by them. “Saucy Jack” has, as one character notes, “opened a door to certain deranged possibilities... there will be more like him.” And from the first page of The Yard, there are.
In response to the public outcry at their failure to capture Jack the Ripper, London’s Metropolitan Police Force forms an elite Murder Squad of twelve detectives. After less than a week on the job, the Murder Squad’s newest member,... Read Full Review
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The piper's son
by Marchetta, Melina
Reviewed by: Vi Thục Hà, Senior Librarian, International Languages DepartmentAugust 13, 2012
Call Number: YA
After a night of heavy partying, Tom hits rock bottom. Strung out on drugs and suffering from a concussion, Tom wakes up in the hospital to hear the news from Francesca, a former close friend, that his flatmates have lost their jobs for stealing from the Union pub and his stuff has been tossed out on the street.
At this point, Tom’s life has already fallen apart — his favorite uncle died in a terrorist bomb attack on the subway in London, his father, broken from the news, has started drinking heavily, and his mother and his sister have left his father. Unable to cope, Tom... Read Full Review
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Year zero : a novel
by Reid, Robert
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryAugust 6, 2012
Call Number: SF
What if humans were unimaginably horrible at every form of art in the universe but one: music? And what if our music was so good, compared to the efforts of our galactic neighbors, that its discovery resulted in a type of galactic reckoning where dates were revised, cultures were altered and some races were completely wiped out due to ecstatic brain hemorrhaging? And what if the collective universe’s love of our music resulted in so much unintended piracy (according to our laws) that if an attempt were made to pay the fines, the universe, and everyone in it, would be bankrupted? This... Read Full Review
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Dreaming in French : the Paris years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davi
by Kaplan, Alice Yaeger
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionJuly 30, 2012
Call Number: 920.073 K165
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis were three American women who, in their youth, spent time studying and living in Paris. Based on extensive research in archives in the United States and France, Alice Kaplan examines the lasting effects of the women's experiences which formed a lifelong French connection for all three. Living in France would sustain, nourish, and confirm a sense of independence and uniqueness in each of their lives. All three were outsiders within their social milieus in the United States.
As a Catholic with divorced parents in the 1950s,... Read Full Review
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Redshirts
by Scalzi, John
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJuly 23, 2012
Call Number: SF
What if your coworkers were regularly being killed off, and in spectacularly implausible ways, while your superiors were always left unfazed and untouched? Wouldn’t you try to figure out why and make sure whatever was happening to them didn’t happen to you? This is the premise John Scalzi boldly explores in Redshirts.
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union. But once he reports for his new posting, he can’t help but notice that things on the Intrepid are far from normal. His crewmates in the Xenobiology lab... Read Full Review
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Watergate: a novel
by Mallon, Thomas
Reviewed by: Bob Timmermann, Senior Librarian, History & Genealogy DepartmentJuly 16, 2012
Call Number: F
Although most of the events of the Watergate scandal are well-documented, there is still much that may never be known about what exactly happened. Who really ordered the break-in? What was on the missing 18 1/2 minutes of one White House tape? Who was the master organizer of the conspiracy?
Sometimes the events of Watergate sound like they should be part of a good mystery novel, but Thomas Mallon takes a different approach here. Instead of looking at the grand conspiracy, Mallon weaves a story of fact and fiction that works incredibly well.
While most of the major figures of... Read Full Review
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The night circus : a novel
by Morgenstern, Erin.
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJuly 9, 2012
“The circus arrives without warning.
"No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
"The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little... Read Full Review
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The year of the gadfly : a novel
by Miller, Jennifer, 1980-
Reviewed by: Mary McCoy, Senior Librarian, Art, Music, & Recreation DepartmentJune 25, 2012
Call Number: M
In the wake of a mysterious tragedy, 14-year-old aspiring journalist Iris Dupont is pulled out of school and enrolled at Mariana Academy, an elite private school with a strict honor code and a tightly wound, high achieving student body. Iris quickly realizes that Mariana isn’t as perfect as it seems. Rumors abound of students expelled and faculty dismissed under unusual circumstances, but no one will go on the record about it - they're all too worried that a scandal will damage the school’s reputation and crush their Ivy League dreams.
With her imaginary friend/life... Read Full Review
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Far north
by Theroux, Marcel
Reviewed by: Julie Huffman, Librarian, History & Genealogy DepartmentJune 4, 2012
Call Number: F
If Cormac McCarthy’s brutal western Blood Meridian were set in the dystopian future of The Road and then translated into homespun sentences by Larry McMurtry, you’d approach Far North by Marcel Theroux.
Narrated by Makepeace, the constable of a barren, post-apocalyptic town in Siberia, this is a story about survival in a struggling world. A “broken age,” as Makepeace tells it, one in which human beings who are deprived of food and “unwatched” are rat cunning and will not just kill you, but will “come up with a hundred and one reasons why you... Read Full Review
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The chaperone
by Moriarty, Laura
Reviewed by: Robert Anderson, Librarian, Literature & Fiction DepartmentMay 28, 2012
Call Number: F
Wichita, Kansas, 1922. Warren Harding is President, Prohibition is the law of the land, and many prominent citizens belong to the Ku Klux Klan. Cora Carlisle, at 36, is envied by her friends for her marriage to handsome, successful attorney Alan, her twin sons who are going off to college soon, and her large, comfortable home on a quiet suburban street. So why does Cora jump at the chance to chaperone the 15-year-old daughter of Myra Brooks, a casual acquaintance, to a New York dance class run by the famous Ruth St. Denis?
Cora tells Myra and others that she wants to see some... Read Full Review