The diviners - Libba Bray

The diviners - Bray, Libba

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Here's your headline, boss: "Small-Town Dame Lands in Big Apple, Goes Wild, Tries to Stop Resurrection of Antichrist." It'll sell bundles! Indeed it will, as Bray continues her winning streak with this heedlessly sprawling series starter set in Prohibition-era New York. Slang-slinging flapper Evie, 17, is "pos-i-tute-ly" thrilled to be under the wing of her uncle, who runs the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Business is slow (i.e., plenty of time for Evie to swill gin at speakeasies!) until the grisly arrival of what the papers dub the Pentacle Killer, who might be the reincarnation of a religious zealot named Naughty John. Even Evie's new pals—hoofers, numbers runners, and activists, but all swell kids—are drawn into the investigation. It's Marjorie Morningstar meets Silence of the Lambs, and Bray dives into it with the brio of the era, alternating rat-a-rat flirting with cold-blooded killings. Seemingly each teen has a secret ability (one can read an object's history; another can heal), and yet the narrative maintains the flavor of historical fiction rather than fantasy. The rest of the plot—well, how much time do you have? The book is big and wants to be the kind of thing you can lose yourself in. Does it succeed? It's jake, baby. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: One need only peruse Bray's track record (the Gemma Doyle Trilogy; Going Bovine, 2009; Beauty Queens, 2011) to see that the heavy promo plans and author tour are well earned. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews

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Destiny of the republic - Candace Millard

Destiny of the republic: a tale of medicine, madness & the murder of a president - Millard, Candace

Summary: A narrative account of the twentieth president's political career offers insight into his background as a scholar and Civil War hero, his battles against the corrupt establishment, and Alexander Graham Bell's failed attempt to save him from an assassin's bullet.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* What a shame for himself and for the country that the kind, intelligent, and charming president James Garfield did not see his administration through to completion. (He had been in office only four months when, in July 1881, he was shot by a deranged office seeker; in September, he died.) That is the sentiment the reader cannot help but derive from this splendidly insightful, three-way biography of the president; Charles Guiteau, who was Garfield's assassin; and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, whose part in the story was an unsuccessful deathbed attempt to locate the bullet lodged somewhere in the president's body. Garfield, who largely educated himself and rose to be a Civil War general and an Ohio representative in the House, was the dark-horse candidate emergent from the 1880 Republican National Convention. Guiteau, on the other hand, led a troubled life and came to believe it was his divine mission to eliminate Garfield in revenge for the new president's steps against proponents of the spoils system. Bell could have been the hero of the whole sad story, but his technology failed to save the stricken president's life. Millard's book, which follows her deeply compelling The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (2005), stands securely at the crossroads of popular and professional history—an intersection as productive of learning for the reader as it undoubtedly was for the author. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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The yellow birds - Kevin Powers

The yellow birds - Powers, Kevin

Summary: In the midst of a bloody battle in the Iraq War, two soldiers, bound together since basic training, do everything to protect each other from both outside enemies and the internal struggles that come from constant danger.



Publishers Weekly Reviews
This moving debut from Powers (a former Army machine gunner) is a study of combat, guilt, and friendship forged under fire. Pvt. John Bartle, 21, and Pvt. Daniel Murphy, 18, meet at Fort Dix, N.J., where Bartle is assigned to watch over Murphy. The duo is deployed to Iraq, and the novel alternates between the men's war zone experiences and Bartle's life after returning home. Early on, it emerges that Murphy has been killed; Bartle is haunted by guilt, and the details of Murphy's death surface slowly. Powers writes gripping battle scenes, and his portrait of male friendship, while cheerless, is deeply felt. As a poet, the author's prose is ambitious, which sets his treatment of the theme apart—as in this musing from Bartle: "though it's hard to get close to saying what the heart is, it must at least be that which rushes to spill out of those parentheses which were the beginning and end of my war." The sparse scene where Bartle finally recounts Murphy's fate is masterful and Powers's style and story are haunting. (Sept.)

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Bill Cunningham New York (DVD)

Bill Cunningham New York (DVD)

Summary: Bill Cunningham has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirees for the New York Times Style section in his columns On the Street and Evening Hours for decades. Presented is a delicate, funny, and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

Video Librarian Reviews
Richard Press' documentary offers an affectionate portrait of photographer Bill Cunningham, whose snapshots of fashion shows, high society events, and distinctively dressed people on the street have graced the pages of the New York Times for years. What makes this film particularly noteworthy are Cunningham's contradictions. While the octogenarian shutterbug is fanatic about unusual dress—he spends his days on the city streets, scampering around to shoot passersby whose clothes pique his interest—his personal wardrobe is utterly functional. Cunningham moves easily among pampered celebrities, but he travels around on his 28th bike (the previous 27 having been stolen). The shutterbug admits to never having had a serious romantic relationship, but enjoys a bevy of friends, and while he's at home in rarefied social circles, he lives a positively spartan existence, occupying a tiny rent-controlled Carnegie Hall studio lacking kitchen or private bath and almost bereft of furniture aside from the file cabinets where he stores the negatives of all the pictures he's ever shot (at least until he's evicted and forced into a larger place). Cunningham's lifestyle is partially explained by his indifference to money; the photographer has frequently turned down payment in order to maintain his prized independence. Press' approach to his subject is laidback, benefiting from interesting interviews with the voluble Cunningham, his colleagues, and myriad friends and associates. A film about single-mindedness of a cheerful, contented sort—a genial surface beneath which one can glimpse something rather poignant—this is recommended. (F. Swietek) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Eames the architect and the painter (DVD)

Eames the architect and the painter (DVD)

Summary: The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames is widely regarded as America's most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, this is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.

Video Librarian Reviews
Charles Eames (1907–78) and his second wife, Ray (1912–88), were among the most innovative and influential American designers of the mid-20th century. Narrated by James Franco, this documentary by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey serves up a chronicle of their lives and achievements, alternating archival material with comments from family, colleagues, and still-adoring members of their studio staff. Eames briefly covers the early years of both—Charles the architect and Ray the painter—but the emphasis here is on the groundbreaking work they accomplished in the circus-like atmosphere of their company headquarters in Venice, CA. The revolutionary design of the so-called Eames chair, made of malleable material and contoured to fit the human body, and the house they built—rightfully considered a milestone of modern architecture—receive due attention, but so do the advertising films they devised for major American companies like IBM, the extravagant museum exhibition on the colonial period they spearheaded for the U.S. Bicentennial, and the impressionistic film about America they created for public showing in the Soviet Union. And the filmmakers take time to reflect on the Eames' personal relationship (noting that Ray consciously deferred to the more charismatic Charles) and on the charge that the pair failed to adequately acknowledge the contributions of their staff. DVD extras include bonus scenes. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Far from the tree - Andrew Solomon

Far from the tree: parents, children, and the search for identity - Solomon, Andrew

Summary: Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon (2001), tackles daunting questions involving nature versus nurture, illness versus identity, and how they all affect parenting in his exhaustive but not exhausting exploration of what happens when children bear little resemblance to their parents. He begins by challenging the very concept of human reproduction. We do not reproduce, he asserts, spawning clones. We produce originals. And if we're really lucky, our offspring will be enough like us or our immediate forebears that we can easily love, nurture, understand, and respect them. But it's a crapshoot. More often than not, little junior will be born with a long-dormant recessive gene, or she may emerge from the womb with her very own, brand-new identifier—say, deafness, physical deformity, or homosexuality. Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium. Solomon focuses on the creative and often desperate ways in which families manage to tear down prejudices and preconceived fears and reassemble their lives around the life of a child who alters their view of the world. Most succeed. Some don't. But the truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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This book is full of spiders - David Wong

This book is full of spiders: seriously, dude, don't touch it - Wong, David

Summary: David and John become embroiled in a new set of horrific but absurd challenges when movie-induced zombie phobia enables a nefarious shape-shifter race to take over the world. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
Wong—in reality Cracked.com writer Jason Pargin—follows up his comic horror novel John Dies at the End (2009) with this wildly out-there sequel. Best friends John and Dave live in a smallish town that seems to suffer from a surfeit of supernatural and suspicious events. The story begins with a local cop being, um, intruded upon by a spiderish creature that turns its victim into, um, a zombie-like individual, and it gets a whole lot weirder from there. Wong, the book's first-person narrator and also one of its central characters (John being "John Cheese," a fellow Cracked.com contributor) focuses mainly on the laughs and the strange goings-on, but there's a very interesting idea here: What if the current pop-culture zombie mania could lead to a pseudo-zombie apocalypse? What if, in other words, enough people believe in something to turn it into reality? And how do a couple of slacker dudes defeat a creature that, technically, doesn't even exist? Full of laughs and goofiness, the book should definitely appeal to fans of John Dies at the End and to readers of comic horror fiction in general (especially, it should be noted, fans of British novelist Tom Holt, who will be familiar with the same sort of whimsy and ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-situation environment.) Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Treme Television Series (DVD)

Treme Television Series (DVD)

Summary: Amid the ruins of New Orleans, ordinary people--musicians, chefs, residents--find themselves clinging to a unique culture and wondering if the city that gave birth to that culture still has a future.


Video Librarian Reviews
The food ain't bad, but it's the music that's New Orleans' lifeblood—a truism that rings loud and clear in Treme, the outstanding HBO series set in the Crescent City. Indeed, the opening scene finds residents parading in song just three months after Hurricane Katrina. Music permeates every episode, ranging from the expected Dixieland and zydeco to hip hop, rock, and more, delivered by veteran greats (Ernie K-Doe, Lee Dorsey, the Meters, Allen Toussaint) and newcomers (such as Trombone Shorty). Of course, there's a dark side as well: New Orleans here is barely starting to recover from the epic disaster—homes are gone, neighborhoods are barren, folks are missing, the government is essentially useless, and the line between cop and criminal is sometimes nonexistent. All of this is brought to life via multiple storylines and characters, including John Goodman as loud-mouthed writer Creighton Bernette and Melissa Leo as his activist wife, Toni; Wendell Pierce as trombonist Antoine Batiste and Khandi Alexander as his ex-wife, Ladonna; Clarke Peters as Albert Lambreaux, a man who returns from Houston to rebuild his ruined home; and Steve Zahn as clueless hippie DJ Davis McAlary. Not all of them get through the season unscathed, which is only natural in a show that emphasizes authenticity—from its plain, profane dialogue to its almost complete lack of gloss and glamour. Compiling all 10 episodes from the 2010 debut season, DVD and Blu-ray extras include audio and music commentaries, and behind-the-scenes featurettes. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are interactive viewing modes featuring information about the culture and music of New Orleans. Highly recommended. (S. Graham) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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Justified Television Series (DVD)

Justified Television Series (DVD)

Summary: Due to his old-school style, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is reassigned from Miami to his childhood home in the poor, rural coal-mining towns in Eastern Kentucky. Lawman Givens is a tough, soft-spoken gentleman who never gives an inch.



Video Librarian Reviews
Originally adapted from an Elmore Leonard short story, this FX-aired series stars Timothy Olyphant as Kentucky-born U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, who is transferred (demoted actually) from Miami back to his home county. Justified has turned into one of the channel's notable critical and popular successes thanks to a superb cast, smart writing, and the decision to script each season around a self-contained story—in this case, one that will be familiar to readers of Leonard's entertaining latest novel, Raylan. Here, Raylan is dropped into the middle of a complicated standoff involving a family syndicate running marijuana, meth, moonshine, and other vital interests in coal country. Margo Martindale won a well-deserved Emmy Award as Mags Bennett, the wily matriarch of the backwoods mafia, busy taking on a corporate mining concern while her less disciplined sons (notably Jeremy Davies as Dickie, a schemer with a grudge against Raylan) stir up trouble in their dope trade. Walton Goggins is Boyd Crowder, a former criminal (and one-time buddy to Raylan) who tries to go straight but finds himself drawn back to his strengths as the balance of power in the rural crime world shifts. Compiling all 13 episodes from the 2011 second season on DVD and Blu-ray, extras include two behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes, and—exclusive to the Blu-ray release—a roundtable discussion with Leonard and the show's writers and producers. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2011.

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The physick book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe

The physick book of Deliverance Dane - Howe, Katherine

Summary: While readying her grandmother's abandoned home for sale, Connie Goodwin discovers an ancient key in a seventeenth-century Bible with a scrap of parchment bearing the name Deliverance Dane. In her quest to discover who this woman was and seeking a rare artifact--a physick book--Connie begins to feel haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials and fears that she may be more tied to Salem's past than she could have imagined.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Harvard graduate student Connie Godwin is determination personified. She will get her doctorate and find success as a historian, whether her aura-reading mother understands her bookishness or not. But first she has to contend with her tweedy adviser's oddly urgent demands and her late grandmother's incredibly old, long-abandoned house in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The house is cloaked in vines and stuffed with dusty old bottles and books, but its clutter yields a tantalizing scrap of paper carrying the words "Deliverance Dane." Connie hasn't a clue, but the reader knows, thanks to alternating chapters set in the late-seventeenth century, that Deliverance was a good woman accused of being a witch during the infamous Salem witch hysteria. Soon Connie, admirably sensible in the face of mystifying, even terrifying occurrences, zealously searches archives and libraries for healer Deliverance's "shadow book," while struggling to understand her own weird, new powers. Historian Howe's spellbinding, vividly detailed, witty, and astutely plotted debut is deeply rooted in her family connection to accused seventeenth-century witches Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor and propelled by an illuminating view of witchcraft. In all a keen and magical historical mystery laced with romance and sly digs at society's persistent underestimation of women. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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A wrinkle in time: the graphic novel - Hope Larson

A wrinkle in time: the graphic novel - Larson, Hope

Summary: A graphic novel adaptation of the classic tale in which Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Commemorating its fiftieth anniversary, L'Engle's classic couldn't have scored a better talent to adapt its story into comics form. Larson produces high-quality coming-of-age stories featuring female protagonists, with the most recent (Mercury, 2010) even including a fantasy element to highlight the tale's emotional stakes. She dives wholeheartedly into L'Engle's seminal epic, chronicling the journey of Meg Murry, her preternaturally intelligent younger brother, Charles, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe, crossing distant worlds to save the Murry's, lost patriarch. Guided by three grandmotherly guardian angels, they navigate the dangers of a mind-controlled world fallen under the influence of a cosmic force of pure evil. Larson has miraculously preserved the power of the original's social and religious themes, as well as its compelling emotional core, while staying true to her distinctive voice and aesthetic. Her soft-lined, large-eyed characters are a modern exemplar of classical American cartooning, and the metallic blue coating of the pages evokes both the timelessness of the story and the remoteness of alien worlds. This adaptation is fabulous for presenting a fresh vision to those familiar with the original, but it's so true to the story's soul that even those who've never read it will come away with a genuine understanding of L'Engle's ideas and heart. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Does this church make me look fat? - Rhoda Janzen

Does this church make me look fat?: a Mennonite finds faith, meets Mr. Right, and solves her lady problems - Janzen, Rhoda

Summary: Rhoda Janzen had reconnected with her family and her roots, though her future felt uncertain. But when she starts dating a churchgoer, the skeptic begins a surprising journey to faith and love. Rhoda doesn't slide back into the dignified simplicity of the Mennonite church. Instead she finds herself hanging with the Pentecostals, who really know how to get down with sparkler pom-poms. Amid the hand waving and hallelujahs, Rhoda finds a faith richly practical for life.

Publishers Weekly Reviews
Author of the improbable bestseller Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Janzen continues her quirky tales of finding faith in unlikely places in this dotty, squeaky-clean postdivorce sequel in which she describes life with a new boyfriend and the courage to battle breast cancer. Having fallen out of her conservative Mennonite community in California—"abgefallen" is how she is referred by her church folk—now an English professor in Holland, Mich., Janzen meets and falls for a Pentecostal born-again "Jesus-nail-necklace-wearing manly man" shortly before she is diagnosed with massive, inoperable breast cancer. With Mitch standing firmly by her, along with her resilient mom and sister, Janzen was determined to face her condition with optimism, and in startlingly breezy prose, considering the gravity of her condition, pokes fun at her professorial distractedness in contrast to Mitch's literal groundedness. She plunges into activities at his Pentecostal church, as wildly improvisational and "kooky" as her Mennonite church had been sober and dignified, with enthusiasm, embracing their particular rituals of healing and even tithing. However, underneath her limpid facetiousness (one inspired simile compares Mitch's gloomy aged father's boredom to "a stretch of wet cement that he protected with cones and tape") run serious concerns about her faith, spiritual growth, and the meaning of prayer and humility. "I had unfinished business with God," Janzen writes, sharing in this vibrant, charming narrative her own "fruits of the spirit." (Oct.)

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