Closed For M. L. King Holiday. The Webb will be closed Monday Jan. 16 in observance of the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday.
NEW MATERIALS
Adult
Break Down: A V. I. Warshawski Novel by Sara Paretsky
Book Description
Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world.
When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying.
The girls include daughters of some of Chicago's most powerful families: The grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is one of the world's wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is the Illinois Democratic candidate for Senate.
For V. I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango? Or to Chaim Salanter's childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles for answers, she finds herself fighting enemies who are all too human.
Believing The Lie by Elizabeth George
Book Description
After writing sixteen Inspector Lynley novels, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George has millions of fans waiting for the next one. As USA Today put it, "It's tough to resist George's storytelling, once hooked." With Believing the Lie, she's poised to hook countless more.
Inspector Thomas Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning, and nothing on the surface indicates otherwise. But when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging soon reveals that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives.
Deborah's investigation of the prime suspect-Bernard's prodigal son Nicholas, a recovering drug addict-leads her to Nicholas's wife, a woman with whom she feels a kinship, a woman as fiercely protective as she is beautiful. Lynley and Simon delve for information from the rest of the family, including the victim's bitter ex-wife and the man he left her for, and Bernard himself. As the investigation escalates, the Fairclough family's veneer cracks, with deception and self-delusion threatening to destroy everyone from the Fairclough patriarch to Tim, the troubled son Ian left behind.
Juvenile
Vampirates: Tide Of Terror by Justin Somper
From Booklist
Fourteen-year-old orphaned twins Grace and Connor Tempest are together again aboard the pirate ship
Diablo, but when an attack goes wrong and one of Connor's best friends is killed, Grace wants to find a way to keep her brother safe. Invited to spend a week at the Pirate Academy, Connor thrives, but Grace yearns for the life she knew among the vampirates--especially Lorcan, who blinded himself seeing to her safety. A ring he gave her allows her to walk the decks of the vampirates' ship through astral projection. Even though this is the second in the Vampirates series, following
Demons of the Ocean (2006), it is easy to pick up the threads of the story, which sets plucky young people against Pirate Federation intrigue and the evil, renegade vampirates. This provides more of the swashbuckling action and horror-tinged fantasy that characterizes the series, which offers lots of appeal for reluctant readers.
Audio Books
Transfer Of Power by Vince Flynn
From Publishers Weekly
In this long political thriller staged almost entirely around a hostage standoff, Flynn makes maximum use of his White House setting, and mixes in a spicy broth of brutal terrorists, heroic commandos and enough secret agent hijinks to keep the confrontation bubbling until its flag-raising end. The villains are led by Rafique Aziz, a
notorious Arab terrorist whose band of thugs takes over the White House by finding a weak point in American politics: they pose as wealthy campaign contributors and are welcomed through the front door. President Robert Hayes manages to escape to his bunker moments before the bloodbath, but religious zealot Aziz takes almost 100 hostages, seals off the White House and begins making demands, of which large sums of cash are just the beginning. With the president incommunicado and weak-willed yet power hungry Vice President Sherman Baxter in charge, the Pentagon and the CIA resort to their secret weapon: commando extraordinaire Mitch Rapp. After sneaking into the bowels of the Executive Mansion through an air duct, Rapp steadily disrupts the terrorists' well-laid plans. He finally calls in reinforcements when Aziz begins drilling into the president's bunker. It's a long haul to the finish, but Flynn (Term Limits) compensates for some stereotyping by creating dynamic tension between the main players, especially between military leaders and politicians, and between Rapp and Aziz. His description of the White House is impressive; readers will wonder if the secret passageways, hidden rooms and clever deception devices that help load this story with seemingly endless intrigue, really exist.
Sea Change by Robert B. Parker
From Publishers Weekly
Filled with tawdry sexual shenanigans, bestseller Parker's fifth Jesse Stone novel (after 2003's
Stone Cold)
finds the former L.A. cop, now the police chief of Paradise, Mass., tentatively reunited with his ex-wife, Jenn, and approaching a year since his last drink. The murder of a woman aboard a sailboat leads Stone into a world of wealth and depravity centered on a couple of yacht owners from Florida and their crowd. Drugs, pornography, rape and underage sex provide a degrading framework for the murder investigation. Stone gets a valuable assist from Kelly Cruz, a Fort Lauderdale cop, as he traces the backgrounds of victims and suspects. The laconic Stone with his uncertain relationship with Jenn, his struggle with alcohol and his visits to a therapist presents a striking contrast to Parker's primary hero, Spenser. But much of the dialogue is interchangeable: witty, flirtatious, droll and sexually charged. The outcome manages to be both surprising and depressing. Stone is a work in progress whose following is likely to increase as he continues to grow.
Murder In Vegas by Michael Connelly
Book Description
Las Vegas. Lost Wages. Sin City. An artificial oasis of pleasure, spectacle, and entertainment, the gambling capital of America has reinvented itself so many times that its doubtful that anyone knows for sure what's real
and what isn't in the miles of neon and scorching heat. Las Vegas is considered the ultimate players destination-no matter what your game. Almost anything is available-for a price, mind you, and sometimes losers walk away from the tables with even less than just an empty wallet or purse-sometimes they don't walk away at all.
Now the International Association of Crime Writers and
New York Times-bestselling author Michael Connelly have gathered twenty-two crime and mystery stories about the ultimate playground, Las Vegas, and what can happen behind the glitz and glamour. Come to the true city that never sleeps, where fortunes are made and lost every day, and where snake-eyes aren't found just on a pair of dice.Featuring stories by: James Swain, S.J. Rozan, Wendy Hornsby, Michael Collins, T.P Keating, J. Madison Davis, Sue Pike, Joan Richter, Libby Hellmann, Tom Savage, Edward Wellen, K.j.a. Wishnia, Linda Kerslake, John Wessel, Lise McClendon, Ronnie Klaskin, Ruth Cavin, A.B. Robbins , Gay Toltl Kinman, Micki Marz, Rick Mofina, Jeremiah Healy
Grass Roots by Stuart Woods
From Library Journal
When Georgia Senator Ben Carr has a stroke, his chief of staff, Will Lee, decides to run for Carr's seat. Concurrently Lee has been appointed public defender for a white man accused of murdering a young black woman--a case full of explosive racial tension. The election campaign is a nasty one involving a militaristic right-wing group, a TV evangelist with a mission, and a power-hungry governor. The various plot lines, though a little too contrived, move the story at a smart pace. A consummate storyteller, Woods ( Under the Lake , LJ 6/1/87) demonstrates his narrative ability by intertwining contemporary southern politics and the murder trial into a most satisfying tale.
Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell
From Booklist
Kay Scarpetta fans will miss their favorite forensic pathologist in this new thriller, as Cornwell cedes much of
the spotlight to other characters in the long-running series. Lucy, Kay's defiant niece, and Marino, the bad-tempered, opinionated cop, are here, as are several familiar depraved psychopaths--among them, "Wolfman" Jean-Baptiste Chandonne and his twin brother, who first surfaced in
Black Notice (2000). It appears that Chandonne, whose execution date is drawing near, wants to see Kay, ostensibly to reveal information about his family that will ensure the collapse of their Mob cartel and to have her administer the drug that will end his life. But, as usual in Cornwell's more recent books, absolutely nothing is what it seems. Granted, there are some compelling (and gruesome) moments, and a few loose ends from previous books are finally taken care of... Otherwise, though, this is a murky stew, indeed, with action careening in way too many directions. Oh, for a return to the Cornwell who created the tough but vulnerable Scarpetta, who, at center stage, used her intellect and forensic training to solve a more straightforward mystery.
Officer Bobby Vargas is hard-edged but idealistic, a Chicago cop who stands at the epicenter of a subterranean plot that will have horrific ramifications for both himself and the entire city. Twenty-five years earlier, a gruesome murder rocked the unforgiving streets of Four Corners. Now, suddenly, a dying Chicago paper is running a serial exposé on new evidence in that old case, threatening to implicate Bobby and his older brother, Ruben—a decorated, high-ranking detective and cop- prince of the streets. The smear campaign stirs up decades-old bad blood, leading the Vargas brothers down an increasingly twisted and terrifying path, where the sins of the past threaten to destroy what remains of the truth.
Posts
