Fri. Dec. 24: Closed for Christmas

Sat. Dec. 25: Closed for Christmas

Fri. Dec. 31: Closed

Sat. Jan. 1: Closed

Easy Readers Christmas Stories

The Remarkable Christmas of the Cobbler's Sons by Ruth Sawyer 
From Booklist

Ages 5-8. First published in 1941, this Tyrolean folktale introduces the legend of King Laurin, who likes to surprise people on Christmas. Fritzl, Franzl, and Hansl, the young sons of a poor cobbler, could use a surprise. There is a war going on, and there is nothing to eat in the cobbler's cottage. On Christmas Eve, their papa is out looking for work when a visitor arrives. The odd little man demands food and a bed. There is no food, but there's a bed, and even though the brothers are sleeping in it, the rude, grumbly man demands the lion's share of the sleeping arrangement. Then he kicks the boys out altogether, but before they can get too cold, he magically sets them doing cartwheels, and, as they twirl, oranges and sweets and gold and silver fall out of their clothes. When their father returns, he tells them that they've been treated to a night of tricks and treasure by King Laurin.
Stories of Santa: a Hallmark Book 
Up on the Housetop / Jolly Old St. Nicholas (A Storybook of Two Beloved Santas)

Christmas on an Island by Gail Gibbons 
From Booklist
Click for Amazon. Ages 4-6. As warm as a holiday greeting card, this seasonal offering introduces the intriguing particulars of island life as they are manifest at Christmas time. Gibbons, who lives part-time on an island off the Maine coast, depicts the ways in which a homogeneous group of islanders, who have "no grand public event to give the feeling of Christmas," draw together and create their own festive occasion. Gibbons' artwork, bright with primary colors, shows vignettes of preparation and celebration, and her signature style has been softened somewhat (the art in her nonfiction is often more formal) to match the more casual flavor of the text.

Adult

Forbidden Places by Penny Vincenzi 
From Booklist

Vincenzi’s latest sprawling saga is set in the WWII-era English countryside and revolves around the ordeals of three young women. Virginal Grace Marchant is just 19 when she meets Charles Bennett, the wealthy, remote man who becomes her husband. Though Grace feels a kinship with Charles’ father, she’s put off by his cold mother and haughty sister, Florence. Florence is married to Robert, whose apparently genial nature masks the cruelty with which he treats his wife. Unaware of Robert’s abusive ways, Grace is shocked and disgusted when she discovers Florence is seeking comfort in the arms of another man. Grace is also thrown when she learns Florence’s best friend, the glamorous and newly married Clarissa, was once engaged to Charles, and she’s perturbed that neither Clarissa nor Charles will reveal to her why their engagement ended. Vincenzi does an admirable job of evoking the bustle and fears of wartime England, and providing plenty of juicy plot twists and turns to keep readers hooked.

Nemesis by Phillip Roth 
From Booklist

*Starred Review* The fourth in the great and undiminished Roth’s recent cycle of short novels follows Everyman (2006), Indignation (2008), and The Humbug (2009), and as exceptional as those novels are, this latest in the series far exceeds its predecessors in both emotion and intellect. In general terms, the novel is a staggering visit to a time and place when a monumental health crisis dominated the way people led their day-to-day lives. Newark, New Jersey, in the early 1940s (a common setting for this author) experienced, as the war in Europe was looking better for the Allies, a scare as deadly as warfare. The city has been hit by an epidemic of polio. Of course, at that time, how the disease spread and its cure were unknown. The city is in a panic, with residents so suspicious of other individuals and ethnic groups that emotions quickly escalate into hostility and even rage. Our hero, and he proves truly heroic, is Bucky Canter, playground director in the Jewish neighborhood of Newark. As the summer progresses, Bucky sees more and more of his teenage charges succumb to the disease. When an opportunity presents itself to leave the city for work in a Catskills summer camp, Bucky is torn between personal safety and personal duty. What happens is heartbreaking, but the joy of having met Bucky redeems any residual sadness.

Young Adult

Once in a Full Moon by Ellen Schreiber

Celeste Parker is used to hearing scary stories about werewolves—Legend's Run is famous for them. She's used to everything in the small town until Brandon Maddox moves to Legend's Run and Celeste finds herself immediately drawn to the handsome new student. But when, after an unnerving visit with a psychic, she encounters a pack of wolves and gorgeous, enigmatic Brandon, she must discover whether his transformation is more than legend or just a trick of the shadows in the moonlight.
Her best friends may never forgive her if she gives up her perfect boyfriend, Nash, for Brandon, who's from the wrong side of town. But she can't deny her attraction or the strong pull he has on her. Brandon may be Celeste's hero, or he may be the most dangerous creature she could encounter in the woods of Legend's Run.
Psychic predictions, generations-old secrets, a town divided, and the possibility of falling in love with a hot and heroic werewolf are the perfect formula for what happens . . . once in a full moon.

Firelight by Sophie Jordan 
From School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up–Jacinda is extraordinary–even for a draki (descendants of dragons who can shift into human form): she is a fire-breather. Unique and invaluable to her “pride,” the 16-year-old is kept on a short leash, and it has already been ordained that she will mate with the alpha male, Cassian. Jacinda's determination to do things her own way finds her nearly captured by dragon hunters, but a surprisingly kind young hunter named Will allows her to escape. Rather than suffer the pride's punishment for her daughter's risky behavior, Jacinda's mother decides the family should flee to live among regular humans. Masquerading as a typical high school student would bury Jacinda's draki nature until it died out. When Will turns out to be a classmate, Jacinda finds that her inexplicable attraction to him keeps her feel of fire and flight alive. Being near a hunter is the most dangerous choice Jacinda can make, yet her desire for him–and need to preserve her inner dragon–cannot be ignored. This distinctive twist on the popular supernatural romance theme will appeal to fans of the genre, even if a lack of resolution at this story's culmination may frustrate some readers.

JF

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt 
From School Library Journal

Grade 4–8—Appelt brings Southern Gothic to the middle grade set. Three separate but eventually entwined stories are told piecemeal. There is the tale of an abandoned, pregnant calico cat who finds shelter and friendship with the bloodhound, Ranger. He is the abused and neglected pet of Gar Face, a broken-jawed recluse who lives in the Texas bayou, where he fled 25 years previously to escape an abusive father. And finally there is the story of Grandmother Moccasin, a shape-shifting water snake who has lain dormant in a jar for a thousand years, buried beneath a loblolly pine tree. The threads are brought together when Puck, one of the newborn kittens, breaks the rule of straying from the safety of The Underneath, the sliver of space beneath Gar Face's porch where Ranger is chained and the cats live. The pace of this book is meandering, and there is a clear effort by the dominant third-person narrator to create a lyrical, ancient tone. However, the constant shift of focus from one story line to the next is distracting and often leads to lost threads. Small's black-and-white illustrations add a certain languid moodiness to the text. Themes of betrayal, hope, and love are reflected in the three stories, but this is a leisurely, often discouraging journey to what is ultimately an appropriate ending.

Blockade Billy by Stephen King 
From Publishers Weekly

A quirky baseball player with a past shrouded in secrecy is the tragic hero of this macabre tale from the dark side of the all-American sport. In the voice of George Granny Grantham, retired third-base coach of the New Jersey Titans, King (Under the Dome) recalls the spring of 1957, when Billy Blakely, a catcher called up from the Titans' Iowa farm system, helped to boost the team out of the basement and add some excitement to the national pastime. Billy hits with such power and guards the plate with such determination (hence his eponymous nickname) that teammates are willing to forgive such eccentricities as his frequently addressing himself in the third person, or bloodying runners who collide with him. Of course, these kinks are clues to a shocking pathology that King coaxes out in a narrative steeped so perfectly in the argot of the game and the behavior of its players and fans that readers will willingly suspend their disbelief. As King's fiction goes, this suspenseful short is a deftly executed suicide squeeze, with sharp spikes hoisted high and aimed at the jugular on the slide home.

The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry

Princess Patricia Priscilla is bored with her royal life and the excitement surrounding her sixteenth birthday ball. Doomed to endure courtship by three grotesquely unappealing noblemen, she escapes her fate--for a week. Disguised as a peasant, she attends the village school as the smart new girl, "Pat," and attracts friends and the attention of the handsome schoolmaster. Disgusting suitors, lovable peasants, and the clueless king and queen collide at the ball, where Princess Patricia Priscilla calls the shots. What began as a cure for boredom becomes a chance for Princess Patricia Priscilla to break the rules and marry the man she loves.