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Story Hour. Begins Tuesday with topics dealing with spring. Peggy hopes everyone will come and help produce the flowers for her paper garden.

Writes Like Jeffery Deaver. Thomas Harris, Dennis Lehane, Chris Mooney, Ridley Pearson, Rex Stout, David Baldacci, Jonathan Kellerman, James Patterson, Kathy Reichs, Lee Child, William Diehl, Greg Isles. 

NEW MATERIALS

Adult

15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation  by L. Douglas Keeney 
From Booklist

In the 1950s, before land- and submarine-based missiles formed the backbone of American nuclear deterrence, the U.S. relied primarily upon the Strategic Air Command (SAC). When an alert was issued, it was assumed that the crews of our long-range bombers had only 15 minutes to scramble to the runways and takeoff to guarantee the credibility of a retaliatory strike against the Soviet Union. Keeney, a military historian and co-founder of cable television’s Military Channel, has utilized great amounts of recently declassified documents to tell a fascinating, often chilling story of the policies, technologies, and men responsible for maintaining our nuclear defense posture in that period. At the center of the narrative is General Curtis LeMay, a brilliant, cigar-chomping innovator who was haunted by the specter of Pearl Harbor and determined that we wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. Keeney avoids excessive technical jargon and recounts in straightforward fashion the successes and sometimes dangerous and devasting failures and miscalculations of men operating on the razor’s edge while coping with the terror of unprecedented consequences for misjudgments.

The Metropolis Case  by Matthew Gallaway 
From Publishers Weekly

In his ambitious debut, Gallaway jumps backward and forward in time between two cities, spiraling in on four characters connected by music: Lucien, an opera singer coming-of-age in mid-19th-century Paris; Anna, an opera singer reaching the height of her career in 1960s New York; Maria, an extraordinarily promising young singer but a difficult student; and Martin, an aging lawyer whose love of music might save his life. The ties between them are at first so tenuous that readers may wonder when, how, or if their narratives will converge. But Wagner's Tristan and Isolde touches each in some way, as does, eventually, eternal life, a device that allows Gallaway to chronicle 1860s Paris and 1960s New York through the eyes of one character. Gallaway, a former musician, gives music a literary presence, intertwining opera and punk by illuminating their shared passion and chaos. But ambition sometimes gives way to pretension (particularly with chapter titles such as "Fashion Is a Canon for this Dialect Also") and purple prose, but the story remains grounded by characters grappling with love, in some cases for eternity.

Paranormal Investigator: True Accounts of the Paranormal  by Stephen David Lancaster II 
Product Description

Paranormal Investigator: True Accounts of the Paranormal, is a non-fiction book focusing on eight well documented cases of paranormal activity as chronicled by paranormal researcher Stephen David Lancaster II. From his first childhood encounter to experiences twenty years later, Lancaster opens the folders of his files sharing some of the most productive, memorable and indisputable cases from his years of paranormal research. The haunting evidence of the Webb Library in Morehead City, Poogan's Porch Restaurant, the Brentwood Wine Bistro, the Music House, Emily's House and others are included. The book also includes an in depth look into the Industrial Facility case that was featured on NBC Universal in October 2009 where they revealed Lancaster's video footage of the infamous Cowboy Ghost.

Young Adult 

You Killed Wesley Payne  by Sean Beaudoin 
From Booklist
*Starred Review*

The cliques rule the rackets in Salt River High. The two top outfits, the Balls (football players, wearers of no-irony crew cuts) and Pinker Casket (thrash rockers, most appropriate for funerals or virgin sacrifices), are hurtling toward a turf war, and all the assorted mid-level cliques (and even the crooked Fack Cult T) are constantly looking for an angle to ride to prominence. At the center of the maelstrom is a body, Wesley Payne, a former member of the Euclidians (nerds, fingertip sniffers), who was found wrapped in duct tape, hanging upside-down from the goalposts. Teenage private dick Dalton Rev arrives to sort out the murder, locate a missing hundred grand, and if everything rolls his way, ride off into the sunset with the adorable Macy Payne, Wesley’s sister. Ever checking his moves against what his crime-novel hero, Lexington Cole, would do, Dalton himself is so straight hard-boiled, it’s screwy: Dalton played it cool. He played it frozen. He was in full Deano at the Copa mode. But in the end, none of the stylistic pastiche and slick patter would matter if they weren’t hitched to such a propulsive mystery, with enough double-crosses and blindsiding reveals to give you vertigo. Moreover, the opening Clique Chart might just be the funniest four pages you’ll read all year. Grades 9-12.

Real Live Boyfriends* Yes Boyfriends Plural  by E. Lockhart 
From Booklist

Everyone’s favorite neurotic, prone-to-panic high-school student is back. As always, there is a lot going on in Ruby Oliver’s life, and she is trying to sort it all out. It is senior year, and although she should be concentrating on college applications, Ruby cannot get love out of her mind. First her parents are having problems, and now Noel isn’t acting like a very good boyfriend anymore. Then there is Gideon, the brother of her ex-best friend, who is acting like boyfriend material. What’s a girl to do? Make a documentary, of course. Fans of the series will clamor for Ruby’s latest adventure. Grades 9-12.

 Picture Books

The Giving Tree  by Shel Silverstein 
Amazon.com Review

To say that this particular apple tree is a "giving tree" is an understatement. In Shel Silverstein's popular tale of few words and simple line drawings, a tree starts out as a leafy playground, shade provider, and apple bearer for a rambunctious little boy. Making the boy happy makes the tree happy, but with time it becomes more challenging for the generous tree to meet his needs. When he asks for money, she suggests that he sell her apples. When he asks for a house, she offers her branches for lumber. When the boy is old, too old and sad to play in the tree, he asks the tree for a boat. She suggests that he cut her down to a stump so he can craft a boat out of her trunk. He unthinkingly does it. At this point in the story, the double-page spread shows a pathetic solitary stump, poignantly cut down to the heart the boy once carved into the tree as a child that said "M.E. + T." "And then the tree was happy... but not really." When there's nothing left of her, the boy returns again as an old man, needing a quiet place to sit and rest. The stump offers up her services, and he sits on it. "And the tree was happy." While the message of this book is unclear (Take and take and take? Give and give and give? Complete self-sacrifice is good? Complete self-sacrifice is infinitely sad?), Silverstein has perhaps deliberately left the book open to interpretation.

NC Collection

3 Books from the Images of America Collection

Johnston County  by Todd Johnson and Durwood Barbour 
Product Description

Photographs can bring history to life and help us to make connections between the past and our daily lives. With Johnston County, authors Todd Johnson and Durwood Barbour have created a work that truly teaches us and guides us from the past of this area into the new millennium. In this exciting new work, every one of the countyÂ’s seventeen townships has been covered, with rare images dating primarily from the turn of the century to 1945. Mostly candid shots of people who have influenced JohnstonÂ’s social, cultural, and economic development, these images bring us to a time when the pace of life was slower. Other, more well-known citizens we meet include film star Ava Gardner and Lunsford Richardson, inventor of VickÂ’s VapoRub. Also featured in this book are images of important events, like the highly publicized, catastrophic munitions truck explosion near Selma in 1942.

Raleigh, North Carolina's Capital City on Postcards  by Norman D. Anderson and B.T. Fowler

Contains more than 200 postcard images, which capture what life was like during the first half of the twentieth century. This wonderful book brings to life the history of this diverse and dynamic region.






Cape Fear Beaches  by Susan Taylor Block

With more than 200 rare, black-and-white photographs, you will step back into affectionate memory, when early residents slept in hammocks in precarious beach shacks, when grand buildings, such as Lumina and the Ocean Hotel, dotted the beachscape, when road repair meant a shovelful of oyster shells to mend a pothole, and when bathing suits left almost everything to the imagination. This volume also recounts the black community's experiences along these beaches, primarily at Seabreeze and Shell Island, and shares their personal stories and triumphs in a changing social scene, in which Reconstruction values slowly gave way to Civil Rights-era equality.