Author: Fawcett, Heather (Heather M.), author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F FAWCETT Format: Books Summary: "When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it's too late in this second installment of the Emily Wilde series"-- "Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world's first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She's learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival Wendell Bambleby. Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He's an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother and in search of a door back to his realm. And despite Emily's feelings for Bambleby, she's not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and dangers." --Amazon.com
Author: Goldberg, Lee, 1962- Published: 2024 Call Number: F GOLDBERG Format: Books Summary: Hidden Hills is a private celebrity enclave of white picket fences and horse trails that seems to exist in a dreamworld. But when reality superstar Kitty Winslow is killed within their gates and corpses are found in the vast state park outside them, LASD detective Eve Ronin realizes there is a deadly, razor-thin line between what's real and what's imagined. Eve discovers that Kitty's surreal on- and off-camera life, a blur of fact and fantasy, shockingly mirrors her own as she struggles to investigate the killings, wade into a music industry war, and battle a vicious Chilean gang--all while her life is being turned into a fictional cop show directed by her estranged father. Eve's grip on reality and the case is strained to the breaking point as the slayings continue, the media frenzy reaches a fever pitch, and the only inescapable truth she can see is death...and it's coming for her.
Author: Grumley, Michael C., author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F GRUMLEY Format: Books Summary: After surviving a bus accident, veteran John Reiff awakens in the hospital alive and suspicious that the doctors aren't telling him something. "The accident came quickly. With no warning. In the dead of night, a precipitous plunge into a freezing river trapped everyone inside the bus. It was then that Army veteran John Reiff's life came to an end. Extinguished in the sudden rush of frigid water. There was no expectation of survival. None. Let alone waking up beneath blinding hospital lights. Struggling to move, or see, or even breathe. But the doctors assure him that everything is normal. That things will improve. And yet, he has a strange feeling that there's something they're not telling him." --Amazon.com
Author: Grippando, James, 1958- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: LP F GRIPPAND Format: Large print Summary: "A contentious intellectual piracy case leads to an unsolved murder, and Jack Swyteck's client--a pop music icon--is the accused killer. Piracy costs the movie and music industry billions. No one has been able to stop it. But that won't stop Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck. His latest client, Imani Nichols, is a Grammy-winning popstar whose career has skyrocketed. Despite her success, she's the most underpaid superstar on the planet because of an onerous record contract she signed as a teenager with her now ex-husband Shaky Nichols, who has made himself rich off her royalties. Preferring to see thieves profit from her music than let her ex-husband pocket one more dime, Imani takes to social media and tells her millions of fans to "go pirate" and download her music illegally. Her hardball tactic leads to scorched-earth litigation, and now she needs Jack's help. The case takes a deadly turn when salacious allegations of infidelity send Imani and Shaky down a path of mutual assured destruction, each implicating the other in the unsolved murder of Imani's extra-marital lover twelve years ago. Tyler McCormick died of asphyxiation, and his body was found in Biscayne Bay, chained to a piling with the words "goodbye girl" impressed on his chest. Despite their fierce denials, Imani and Shakey are both indicted for murder, leading to a sensational trial that exposes shocking secrets about their failed marriage, their cut-throat business partnership, and Imani's astonishing success. Yet as Jack discovers, uncovering the truth about the killing and the cryptic "goodbye girl" won't just exonerate or convict his client, her ex, and their music empire. It may shape the future of the entire recording industry" --
Author: Ascher, Aurora, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F ASCHER Format: Books Summary: Hidden within an unusual circus run by a centuries-old Enchanter, Harrow, keeping her true identity and magical ability a secret, finds her destiny in an elemental with no recollection of who he is, forcing her to reveal the secrets from her own dark past to save this dangerous creature. "For humans, Salizar's is a place of mystery and wonder. For Harrow, it's a place to hide from those who slaughtered her entire clan. A haven where she can disguise both her abilities and who she really is. Until he arrives..." --Amazon.com
Author: Enrigue, Alvaro, 1969- author. Wimmer, Natasha, translator. Published: 2024 Call Number: F ENRIGUE Format: Books Summary: "From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan. One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan - today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures. Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma - who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods - the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés's captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire. You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream"--
Author: Land, Stephanie, 1978- author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: LP B LAND Format: Large print Summary: "When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn't understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line -- Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties. Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid, and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America's educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother's triumph against all odds."--
Author: Matar, Hisham, 1970- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F MATAR Format: Books Summary: "One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words--and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zawa--Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety. When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zawa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him"--
Author: Ellsworth, Lawrence, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 791.43652 Format: Books Summary: "Cinema of Swords is a history, guide, and love letter to over four hundred movies and television shows featuring swashbucklers: knights, pirates, samurai, Vikings, gladiators, outlaw heroes like Zorro and Robin Hood, and anyone else who lives by the blade and solves their problems with the point of a sword. Though swordplay thrives as a mainstay of current pop culture--whether Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars--swashbuckling was if anything even more ubiquitous during Hollywood's classic period, from its foundations in the Silent Era up through the savage bursts of fantasy films in the '80s. With this huge cinematic backlist of classics now available online and on-demand, Cinema of Swords traces the roots and branches of this unruly genre, highlighting classics of the form and pointing fans toward thrilling new gems they never knew existed..."--Amazon.com.
Author: Safina, Carl, 1955- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 598.97 Format: Books Summary: "A moving account of raising, then freeing, an orphaned screech owl, whose lasting friendship with the author illuminates humanity's relationship with the world. When ecologist Carl Safina and his wife, Patricia, took in a near-death baby owl, they expected that, like other wild orphans they'd rescued, she'd be a temporary presence. But Alfie's feathers were not growing correctly, requiring prolonged care. As Alfie grew and gained strength, she became a part of the family, joining a menagerie of dogs and chickens and making a home for herself in the backyard. Carl and Patricia began to realize that the healing was mutual; Alfie had been braided into their world, and was now pulling them into hers..."--Front jacket flap.
Author: Higgs, John, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 306.0941 Format: Books Summary: "A deep-dive into the unique connections between the two titans of the British cultural psyche--the Beatles and the Bond films--and what they tell us about class, sexuality, and our aspirations over sixty dramatic years"-- "The Beatles are the biggest band in the history of pop music. James Bond is the single most successful movie character of all time. They are also twins. Dr No, the first Bond film, and Love Me Do, the first Beatles record, were both released on the same day: Friday 5 October 1962. Most countries can only dream of a cultural export becoming a worldwide phenomenon on this scale. For Britain to produce two iconic successes on this level, on the same windy October afternoon, is unprecedented. Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Love and Let Die is the story of a clash between working class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond, and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end..." --Amazon.com
Author: Monroe, Jana, author. Navarro, Joe, 1953- writer of foreword. Published: 2023 Call Number: 363.258 Format: Books Summary: An agent in the world-renowned FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit who consulted on more than 850 homicide cases, crossing paths with some of the world's most infamous serial killers, and the real-life model for The Silence of the Lambs's Clarice Starling, shares her incredible story for the first time. "Jana Monroe was no ordinary cop. One of the first analysts--and, at the time, the only female agent--in the world-renowned FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit at Quantico, she consulted on more than 850 homicide cases, including infamous serial killers Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper, and Aileen Wuornos. Monroe was also the model for Clarice Starling in the movie version of The Silence of the Lambs; she even helped train Jodie Foster for her Oscar-winning role. Monroe's later years found her dealing with the aftermath of Columbine, heading up the FBI's post-9/11 investigation in Las Vegas, and much more..." --Amazon.com
Author: Lippman, Laura, 1959- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: LP F LIPPMAN Format: Large print Summary: Drawn back to Baltimore where she is known as "Prom Mom"--The girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her--Amber Glass is unable to stay away from Joe and vice versa, until he asks her to help him do the unthinkable Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will forever be known as "Prom Mom"--the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realizes she can have a second chance--as long as she stays away from Joe, now a successful commercial real estate developer, married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, to whom he is devoted. The problem is, Amber can't stay away from Joe. And Joe finds that it's increasingly hard for him to ignore Amber, if only because she remembers the boy he was and the man he said he was going to be. Against the surreal backdrop of 2020 and early 2021, the two are slowly drawn to each other and eventually cross the line they've been trying not to cross. And then Joe asks Amber to help him do the unthinkable.
Author: Brooks, David, 1961- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: LP 302.3 BROOKS Format: Large print Summary: Drawing from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history and education, one of the nation's leading writers and commentators helps us become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. As David Brooks observes, "There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen--to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood." And yet we humans don't do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person's story should you pay attention to? Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misconception. The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.
Author: Cooper, Anderson, author. Howe, Katherine, 1977- author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 974.71 Format: Large print Summary: "The story of the Astors is an extraordinary but true tale of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention -- and of cunning, determination, hard work, hubris, infighting, and greed. One of the wealthiest men to have ever lived, John Jacob Astor first arrived in New York in 1783 and built a fortune through a ruthless expansion of his beaver trapping business, which he grew into an empire through real estate that enriched him at the expense of Manhattan's poorest residents. In later generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society -- Caroline Schermerhorn Astor essentially invented it -- and got into the hospitality business with the legendary Waldorf-Astoria hotel, among others. Yet for all their unimaginable success, the Astors also endured crushing tragedy and reversals of fortune. John Jacob Astor IV perished in the Titanic disaster, its most famous victim. His cousin William Waldorf Astor renounced the United States. Rifts would split siblings and pit cousins against one another, legal battles would create irreparable divides, and mansions would be built and razed, or fall into disrepair. By 2009, when Brooke Astor's son was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother -- who had herself married into the family for money -- the Astor dynasty was effectively over. In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and offer a window onto the making of America itself" --
Author: Finkel, Michael, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 364.1628 Format: Large print Summary: "The true story of the world's most prolific art thief--a spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years--in museums and cathedrals all over Europe--Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser's strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them to his heart's content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to assess practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict's need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend's pleas to stop--until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down. This is a riveting story of art, crime, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost."--
Author: Oyemakinde, Tomi, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: Y OYEMAKIN Format: Books Summary: "If it was left to her, Ife Adebola wouldn't be starting at Nithercott School. Because despite her being in the Urban Achievers scholarship program, her parents can barely afford the tuition. No matter who is trying to be friends with her, like her classmate Bijal, or how much the prestigious boarding school tries to pull her in, Ife is determined not to get caught up in any of it. But when another student, Malika, begins acting strange, Ife can't help but wonder if there's more going on at Nithercott than she realizes. Could there be any truth to the school's decades-old legend of the Changing Man? Is there any connection to the missing older brother of her classmate, Ben?..." --
Author: Rajan, Karan, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: 613 Format: Books Summary: "Steeped in science, medicine and his personal hospital experience, a surgeon and TikTok sensation, in this entertaining and educational survival guide, explains the weird and wonderful bodily functions that keep us going, offering practical advice and strategies to help you thrive and take control of your day-to-day health"-- "Your body is incredible, but it's also out to destroy you. Your brain is like an early computer operating system, riddled with bad code, slow to load, and more likely to watch cat memes than go to sleep. You'd be a mess without your skeleton, but it can be a bony cage if you're tortured by backaches, niggling neck pain, and knee joints that crumble under pressure. And your nose is a design disaster, getting blocked, springing leaks, and growing random tufts of hair." --Amazon.com
Author: Ahdieh, Renée, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: Y AHDIEH Format: Books Summary: "Bastien and Celine look for allies and rally friends as war break loose"-- The Sylvan Vale and the Sylvan Wyld are at war. Now that the unsteady truce between them has been broken, lines must be drawn. In an effort to protect the weakened Winter Court, Bastien rallies powerful allies and friends in New Orleans to come to their aid. Meanwhile, under protection alongside her injured mother in the Summer Court, Celine is uncertain of whom to trust. She cannot get word to Bastien, and does not understand why he has not returned. When she realizes war between the fey courts is imminent, she journeys with Ali in an effort to find the time traveling mirror and change their fate. But when Celine's rivals realize Bastien has rallied his allies in the mortal world, they decide to take the fight to him.
Author: Eggers, Dave, author. Published: 2023 Call Number: F EGGERS Format: Books Summary: "In this long short story, or short novella, Dave Eggers gives us an unforgettable duo, Helen and Peter Mahoney, a homebody niece and her adventurous, almost-British uncle. Helen designs invitations to parties and galas to which she is not welcome, and is quite comfortable with that. One day, though, Peter wonders, "Why not print an extra invite and I'll be your plus one?" What starts out as an innocuous lark becomes much more -- a very funny and lyrical referendum on why humans congregate and celebrate." --
