Adult
Oath Of Office by Michael Palmer
Book Description
Michael Palmer, the
New York Times bestselling author of
A Heartbeat Away and
The Last Surgeon brings us a shocking new thriller at the crossroads of politics and medicine.
What if a well respected doctor inexplicably goes on a murderous rampage?
When Dr. John Meacham goes on a shooting spree the office, his business partner, staff, and two patients are killed in the bloodbath. Then Meacham turns the gun on himself.
The blame falls on Dr. Lou Welcome. Welcome worked with Meacham years before as a counselor after John's medical license had been revoked for drug addiction. Lou knew that John was an excellent doctor and deserved to be practicing medicine and fought hard for his license to be restored. After hearing the news of the violent outburst, Lou is in shock like everyone else, but mostly he's incredulous. And when he begins to look into it further, the terrifying evidence he finds takes him down a path to an unspeakable conspiracy that seems to lead directly to the White House and those in the highest positions of power.
Defending Jacob by William Landay
Book Description
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife,
Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.
Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.
Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.
Young Adult
Big Girl Small by Rachel De Woskin
Book Description
Judy Lohden is your above-average sixteen-year-old—sarcastic and vulnerable, talented and uncertain, full of big dreams for a big future. With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, she should be the star of Darcy
Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town?
The fact that the national media is on her trail after a controversy that might bring down the whole school could have something to do with it. And that scandal has something—but not everything—to do with the fact that Judy is three feet nine inches tall.
Rachel DeWoskin remembers everything about high school: the auditions (painful), the parents (hovering), the dissection projects (compelling), the friends (outcasts), the boys (crushable), and the girls (complicated), and she lays it all out with a wit and wistfulness that is half Holden Caulfield, half Lee Fiora,
Prep’s ironic heroine.
Big Girl Small is a scathingly funny and moving book about dreams and reality, at once light on its feet and unwaveringly serious.
GirlChild by Tupelo Hassman
Book Description
Rory Hendrix is the least likely of Girl Scouts. She hasn’t got a troop or even a badge to call her own. But she’s checked the
Handbook out from the elementary school library so many times that her name fills all the
lines on the card, and she pores over its surreal advice (Uniforms, disposing of outgrown; The Right Use of Your Body; Finding Your Way When Lost) for tips to get off the Calle: that is, the Calle de las Flores, the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.
Rory’s been told that she is one of the “third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom.” But she’s determined to prove the county and her own family wrong. Brash, sassy, vulnerable, wise, and terrified, she struggles with her mother’s habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good. From diary entries, social workers’ reports, half-recalled memories, arrest records, family lore, Supreme Court opinions, and her grandmother’s letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world even as she searches for the way out of it.
Juvenile
Black and White by Larry Dan Brimner
Book Description
Bombed, beaten, banned, and imprisoned, the Reverend Fred J. Shuttlesworth led the civil rights struggle for equality in Birmingham, Alabama, using nonviolent actions to protest segregation in schools, stores, buses, and the hiring of police officers. He pressed his congregation to register to vote and to cast their ballots for civil
rights supports. Eugene "Bull" Conner, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, became a symbol of racist hatred and violence as he organized the Southern segregationists to rally against Shuttlesworth. With a spacious design that includes archival pictures and primary source documents on almost every page, this accessible photo-essay recounts the events in three sections that focus first on the Preacher ("Fred"), then on the Commissioner ("Bull"), and finally, on their confrontation. For readers new to the subject, the biographies will be a vivid, informative introduction, but even those who have some familiarity with the landmark events will learn much more here. Thorough source notes document the sometimes harrowing details and provide opportunities for further research, as does a list of suggested readings. Never simplistic, Brimner shows the viewpoints from all sources: some middle-class blacks resented "Fred's" heavy-handed style - fiery, confrontational, dictatorial - even if they agreed with the goals; some whites in Birmingham did not wish to see an end to segregation, though their voices were drowned out. A penetrating look at elemental national history.
Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen Blumenthal
Book Description
Reading level: Ages 12 and up
It began with the best of intentions. Worried about the effects of alcohol on American families, mothers and civic leaders started a movement to outlaw drinking in public places. Over time, their protests, petitions, and activism paid off—when a Constitional Amendment banning the sale and consumption of alcohol was ratified, it was hailed as the end of public drunkenness, alcoholism, and a host of other social ills related to booze. Instead, it began a decade of lawlessness, when children smuggled (and drank) illegal alcohol, the most upright citizens casually broke the law, and a host of notorious gangsters entered the public eye. Filled with period art and photographs, anecdotes, and portraits of unique characters from the era, this fascinating book looks at the rise and fall of the disastrous social experiment known as Prohibition.
Picture Books
Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett
Amazon.com Review
Reading level: Ages 4 and up
A monochrome town gets a change of color and attitude with the help of a box of yarn and a girl named Annabelle. From the seemingly endless box of
Extra Yarn Annabelle knits clothing for everyone around her, tempering the ill-tempered, and creating beautifully patterned warmth for people, animals, and objects, alike. When a greedy clothes-loving archduke tries to buy--then steal--the box for himself, he discovers that ill-gotten gains bear no fruit--or in this case, yarn. Mac Barnett’s elegant and clever story is complemented by Jon Klassen’s illustrations, and fans of
I Want My Hat Back will enjoy the familiar faces that show up in this picture book about the magical properties of kindness and generosity.
The Great Migration: Journey To The North by Eloise Greenfield
From Booklist
Grades 2-4.
Between 1915 and 1930, more than a million African Americans left their homes in the South and moved to the North, says Greenfield in an introduction to this stirring collection of poems that honors those who took
part in the Great Migration, including the poet herself. Each spread looks at a different stage in the journey, beginning with the uprooting: Saying goodbye to the land / puts a pain on my heart, says a farmer. The beat in Greenfield's free-verse poetry amplifies the feeling of momentum, from the way news travels -They thought about it, talked about it, / spread the word - to the rhythm of the train that is felt even in the northbound passengers questions, Will I make a good life / for my family, / for myself? / The wheels are singing, / Yes, you will, / you will, you will! / I hope they're right. / I think they're right. / I know they're right. Greatly enhancing the impact of the words, Gilchrist's moving mixed-media collages layer drawings, maps, and color-washed archival images that have the slightly distorted look of photocopies, giving some of the figures an almost ghostly, translucent appearance. Together, the immediate words, striking images, and Greenfield's personal story create a powerful, haunting view of a pivotal moment in U.S. history even as they show the universal challenges of leaving home behind and starting a new life. A bibliography concludes.
Underpants Thunderpants by Peter Bently
Book Description
Underpants, thunderpants, look at them fly! Over the ocean, the jungle, and town - where will those undies come fluttering down?"" When Dog leaves his underpants on the line during a thunderstorm, they take off on quite the adventure in this light-hearted book by Peter Bently. Great for early readers, this picture book features engaging and easy-to-read rhymes. The whole family will love to read along with this story of a lovable dog and his missing underpants, featuring bright, colorful illustrations by Deborah Melmon.
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