All men of genius

by Rosen, Lev AC

April 30, 2012

Call Number: F

What if you were a young and gifted scientist/inventor who dreamed of attending the best college for sciences in the world, but you knew that your application would never be accepted? What would you do to make your dream a reality? These are the questions explored by Lev AC Rosen in All Men of Genius, a wonderful steampunk-infused comedy of manners.

Violet Adams spends her days tinkering in her laboratory instead of learning those things expected of a proper young lady in Victorian England. What Violet desires more than anything else is to attend Illyria College, a school dedicated... Read Full Review

In Zanesville : a novel

by Beard, Jo Ann.

April 9, 2012

Call Number: F

This is the story of an unnamed 14-year-old girl growing up in the farm-implement capital of the world: Zanesville, Illinois. It’s a wry observation of the folly and seriousness surrounding a middle-class life in 1970s America, which includes first flirtations and overworked mothers, the melodrama of cheerleaders and the drama of corporal punishment, telepathy with best friends and feral kitten abduction.

Many of the happenings in the book are, like adolescence, a combination of hilarity and pain, e.g., an alcoholic father who seems prone to suicide is obsessed with taming the... Read Full Review

Empire state

by Christopher, Adam

March 26, 2012

Call Number: SF

What if there was another New York City, a copy of New York from the 1920s, that was trapped in a parallel dimension and known to its citizens, who have never heard of New York, as the The Empire State? There are boot-leggers, private detectives in overcoats, dames and femmes fatales, rain-drenched streets, and a seemingly never-ending night. There are also police blimps, super heroes, super villains and secrets. When Rad Bradley, a low-end detective, is hired to investigate a murder, he uncovers a series of secrets that will change the lives of everyone that lives in The Empire State.... Read Full Review

Cinder

by Meyer, Marissa

March 12, 2012

Call Number: YA

What if Cinderella was a cyborg? A girl that was part human and part machine, with a mechanical foot? And what if her story was not set in a once-upon-a-time European setting, but in a brutal, war-ravaged, plague-infested Earth on the brink of war with an estranged Lunar colony? These are the questions Marissa Meyer tackles in Cinder: Book One in the Lunar Chronicles.

Linh Cinder spends her days working as a mechanic in her stall at the market. She repairs malfunctioning, broken machines of all types and sizes to provide money for her stepmother and two stepsisters. Her skills have... Read Full Review

Ghosts of Manhattan : a tale of the Ghost

by Mann, George

February 27, 2012

Call Number: M

What if the usual trappings of the Steampunk sub-genre were extended beyond the Victorian era and beyond the United Kingdom? What would an alternate New York in the 1920s look like? This is the jumping-off point for George Mann’s Steampunk-tinged, noir and pulp influenced novel.

The year is 1926 in an alternate New York from our own. The streets are choked with coal-powered cars and there are bi-plane launches off the roofs of most buildings. America is caught in a Cold War with the British Empire which has kept Queen Victoria alive, through artificial means, until the age of... Read Full Review