Staff Recommendations
Mary McCoy
Pages
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Tell the wolves I'm home : a novel
by Brunt, Carol Rifka
November 26, 2012
Call Number: F
June Elbus is fourteen the year her life changes forever. It’s the winter of 1987, and in just a few short weeks, the FDA will approve AZT for AIDS patients; however, it doesn’t come soon enough for her beloved uncle and godfather, Finn, a well-known but reclusive artist.Finn means everything to June, and he's the only person in her family who seems to understand her. He takes her to Renaissance Faires and Merchant Ivory films, while her accountant parents leave dinner simmering in the crockpot, and June and her sister, Greta, become tax season orphans. Finn discusses Mozart... Read Full Review
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The Yard
by Grecian, Alex
August 20, 2012
Call Number: M
Alex Grecian’s debut novel is set during the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murders in a London that’s been forever changed by them. “Saucy Jack” has, as one character notes, “opened a door to certain deranged possibilities... there will be more like him.” And from the first page of The Yard, there are.In response to the public outcry at their failure to capture Jack the Ripper, London’s Metropolitan Police Force forms an elite Murder Squad of twelve detectives. After less than a week on the job, the Murder Squad’s newest member, Walter Day,... Read Full Review
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The year of the gadfly : a novel
by Miller, Jennifer, 1980-
June 25, 2012
Call Number: M
In the wake of a mysterious tragedy, 14-year-old aspiring journalist Iris Dupont is pulled out of school and enrolled at Mariana Academy, an elite private school with a strict honor code and a tightly wound, high achieving student body. Iris quickly realizes that Mariana isn’t as perfect as it seems. Rumors abound of students expelled and faculty dismissed under unusual circumstances, but no one will go on the record about it - they're all too worried that a scandal will damage the school’s reputation and crush their Ivy League dreams.With her imaginary friend/life coach... Read Full Review
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The gods of Gotham
by Faye, Lyndsay.
April 16, 2012
Call Number: M
The year is 1845, and crime, poverty, and political corruption are rampant in New York City. The potato famine has driven thousands of Irish immigrants into the city’s slums, and anti-Catholic sentiment is high. The streets are filled with brothels, opium dens, and hundreds of orphaned, abandoned, and runaway children.It’s in the face of these conditions that the city’s first police department is formed. Timothy Wilde has no desire to become a “copper star,” but he also has no other choice. A fire destroys the bar where he works, burns his savings, and disfigures... Read Full Review
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Why we broke up
by Handler, Daniel.
April 2, 2012
Call Number: YA
Who among us hasn’t, at least once, taken leave of our senses and fallen in love with a wholly unsuitable, entirely wrong-for-us person?Why We Broke Up, the first young adult novel by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket, author of the Series of Unfortunate Events books), is a deceptively simple story about a pair of ill-suited lovers who meet cute, fall hard, and end badly. Min is an aspiring filmmaker. Ed is a popular basketball star. When they meet at a “Bitter 16 Party,” it kicks off a 38-day whirlwind romance that ends with Min about to deposit a letter and a cardboard... Read Full Review
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Salvage The Bones: A Novel
by Ward, Jesmyn
March 19, 2012
Call Number:
2011 was a very good year for fiction, with new titles by heavyweights of contemporary American letters like Jeffrey Eugenides, Ann Patchett, and Stephen King, as well as debut authors with tons of buzz like... Read Full Review
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Hark! : a vagrant
by Beaton, Kate
February 20, 2012
Call Number: 740.914 B369
Over the past two decades, comics have become so much a part of mainstream culture as to be neither geeky nor cool, nerdy nor hip. However, it would seem that no one told Kate Beaton of this. These comic strips collected from her popular web comic Hark! A Vagrant embrace the perennially unhip topics of science, history, and classic literature, and make them not only accessible, but also screamingly hilarious.Beaton’s enthusiasm for her esoteric subject matter is matched by her skewed wit and breadth of knowledge. Whether she is imagining... Read Full Review
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The Paris wife : a novel
by McLain, Paula.
February 6, 2012
Call Number: F
Before he was Ernest “Papa” Hemingway, the big game-hunting, hard-drinking, womanizing giant of American letters, he was an unknown writer striving for the almost mythical bigness he would later attain. And before she became The First Mrs. Hemingway, an often skimmed-over footnote in the writer’s biography, she was Hadley Richardson, a St. Louis woman who played the piano, swam like a fish, and always shot from the hip.In this fictionalized memoir, Paula McLain extrapolates from letters, books, and other sources a complex inner life for Hadley, who met Hemingway in 1920,... Read Full Review
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The family Fang
by Wilson, Kevin
January 9, 2012
Call Number: F
Siblings Annie and Buster have spent most of their adult lives trying to escape the notorious legacy of their parents, the performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang. Growing up, they were frequent participants in the Fangs’ madcap art “happenings,” where they appeared as Child A and Child B. As a family, the Fangs infiltrated parks, airplanes, shopping malls, and beauty pageants like a pack of art world grifters.Having grown up being treated like theatrical props, both Fang children fled the family home the second they were old enough. Now Annie is a Hollywood actress and... Read Full Review
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How to Save a Life
by Zarr, Sara.
December 26, 2011
Call Number: YA
Recently named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2011, How To Save a Life is a young adult novel that invites - and deserves - a wide readership. Whether you’re a teen or an adult, you’ll find a lot to like in this insightful, big-hearted novel about a grieving family struggling to move forward and a pregnant teenager who makes a desperate gamble.Since 17-year-old Jill’s father died the previous year, she’s felt... Read Full Review
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Ready Player One
by Cline, Ernest
November 21, 2011
Call Number:
Ernest Cline sets some sort of land speed record in establishing the premise of his debut novel, Ready Player One. In less than ten pages, the reader will learn that:1. It’s 2044, and the planet has been more or less done in by its own excesses, humanity reduced to poverty, pestilence, and war.2. The sole bright spot in this world is OASIS, a fully interactive multiverse, where people work, go to school, meet with friends, go on vacation, and generally spend as much time as possible, because, well... see #1.3. OASIS was created by James Halliday, an eccentric genius, tech innovator, and... Read Full Review
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The magician king : a novel
by Grossman, Lev.
November 14, 2011
Call Number:
With 2009's The Magicians, Lev Grossman introduced readers to the dazzlingly imaginative wizarding world of Brakebills Academy, its angsty, college-aged students, and a premise that asked, "What if finding out you could do magic didn't fix anything that was wrong with your life? What if it made it worse?" More like the books of Bret Easton Ellis than J.K. Rowling, it's an amazing feat of storytelling that simultaneously manages to be the most magically... Read Full Review