Staff Recommendations
Pages
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Mickey7
by Ashton, Edward
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryApril 4, 2022
Call Number: SF
Mickey Barnes NEEDS to get off Midgard, the colony planet on which he has lived his entire life. Because staying on Midgard is not an option, he takes the only avenue open to him: he volunteers to be the “expendable” on Midgard’s first outgoing colony ship, the Drakkar. An “expendable” is the member of the crew designated as expendable for dangerous, difficult, and/or terminal activities. The body of the expendable is scanned and their memories are copied, allowing for the expendable to be duplicated, with all but their most recent memories intact, when needed.
... Read Full Review
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Secret Identity
by Segura, Alex
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryMarch 29, 2022
Call Number: M
In 1975, the comic book industry is struggling. It has survived, mostly, Frederic Wertham’s criticisms and claims regarding a causal relationship between reading comics and becoming a juvenile delinquent in Seduction of the Innocent. But there have been casualties. Readership is down. Publishers are closing. Writers and artists are left scrambling for available positions. And yet, amazing things are happening in the industry. Marvel has created, and is developing, characters that will define the industry in future decades. Artists like Jack Kirby, who will work at both... Read Full Review
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The chancellor : the remarkable odyssey of Angela Merkel
by Marton, Kati
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionMarch 23, 2022
Call Number: 92 M5633Ma
There are three major "firsts" in Angela Merkel’s lifetime of public service. She was the first female Chancellor of Germany. She was the first leader of Germany with a doctorate in quantum chemistry who had done extensive research in the field of quantum theoretical chemistry. She was the first Chancellor, raised in East Germany, to be elected to govern a post-World War II unified Germany. As Chancellor she transformed Germany’s economy and its status as a world leader. Never forgetting her own past that was lived under a despotic government where she could only dream... Read Full Review
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Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller
by Wassef, Nadia
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionMarch 15, 2022
Call Number: 085.462 W321
“Against all odds, we had proven to our doubters and detractors that a modern bookstore could survive in Egypt … Though Diwan was not a huge financial success, it was a moral victory, an experiment in marketing, and a mastery of the will.” These are the words of Nadia Wassef, who, along with her sister, Hind, came up with the idea for a modern bookstore in Cairo. Sharing dinner with friends, several were taken with the idea, and three more people (Ziad, Ali and Nihal) became part of this business adventure. The store called Diwan began in 2002. What began as one store in... Read Full Review
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Married love and other stories
by Hadley, Tessa.
Reviewed by: Michael C. Baradi, Librarian, Mid-Valley Regional Branch LibraryMarch 7, 2022
In Married Love and Other Stories, Tessa Hadley digs deep into the unconscious of family life. Her dense prose offers a tour into the emotional contours of sibling relationships, parenthood, and the kind of intergenerational melodrama to be found in weighty novels. She has a keen sense about the psychology of children and teenagers, who are brimming with awareness and curiosity about the world they inhabit, but are highly vulnerable to the hegemonic power of parenthood. Hadley understands how that power constricts and limits the freedom of young people to do... Read Full Review
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The City We Became
by Jemisin, N. K.
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryMarch 1, 2022
N.K. Jemisin is a multiple award-winning, speculative fiction writer. Currently, she resides in Brooklyn, New York and, as evidenced by her novel, The City We Became, she LOVES the “Big Apple”.
Every century or so, a city will “manifest”, it becomes a living thing, an entity of its own. This has happened several times throughout history: Hong Kong, Paris, and São Paulo are all “living” cities. The transition can be fraught with peril and, if it doesn’t go well, the city, and all of its inhabitants may be destroyed. New York is on the brink of becoming... Read Full Review
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Redwood and Wildfire
by Hairston, Andrea
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryFebruary 23, 2022
Redwood Phipps is an African-American girl. Aidan Wildfire Cooper is a Seminole Irish young man. The two are brought together by a hateful act of racial violence, which affects both of them for the remainder of their lives. But both are determined to keep the event from defining them. In Redwood and Wildfire, Andrea Hairston follows these characters as they live, grow, learn how to navigate the world in which they live, and challenge what they can, in order to create the world in which they want to live.
Spanning 15 years and ranging from a small... Read Full Review
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King of the blues : the rise and reign of B.B. King
by De Visé, Daniel
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionFebruary 17, 2022
Call Number: 789.14 K514De
In this extensively researched biography, which involved interviews with family, band members, other musicians, friends, managers and others, Daniel De Visé has written a biography about one of the all-time great musicians, B.B. King. It is more than a biography of one man, his art and his calling, it is a presentation of times, places, and ways of living, many that still exist in this country, which were integral to forming King's life. In meticulous detail De Visé documents the early, disjointed life of King’s childhood and young adulthood, beginning with a genealogy of... Read Full Review
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Until I am free : Fannie Lou Hamer's enduring message to America
by Blain, Keisha N., 1985-
Reviewed by: Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & FictionFebruary 9, 2022
Call Number: 323.4092 H214Bl
During the summer of 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Fannie Lou Hamer brought her voice of discontent about political injustice within the Democratic Party. She was asking for mandatory integrated state delegations, and spoke passionately and eloquently about voter suppression, discrimination and violence leveled at those who were fighting for their civil rights. In co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Hamer was challenging local Democratic Party methods to block Black participation and representation in state and... Read Full Review
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Unnatural habitats & other stories
by Mitchell, Angela, 1971-
Reviewed by: Michael C. Baradi, Librarian, Mid-Valley Regional Branch LibraryJanuary 31, 2022
There is a scene in Unnatural Habitats & Other Stories where a bobcat lounges on a bed between a man and a woman. It’s the couple’s first night together. The man loves animals and keeps them in his house, including birds and snakes, but the bobcat is special. Soon, awkwardness enters the scene, the moment the woman wakes up after her nap and feels the bobcat’s belly moving up and down beside her, instead of her date. She has awakened the bobcat now, looking at her like an unwanted third-party on the man’s bed, a rival. The woman feels... Read Full Review
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Real Easy
by Rutkoski, Marie
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJanuary 24, 2022
One woman murdered. Another woman missing. A police detective traumatized by her recent past. An unidentified killer. Was this their first victim or the latest in a series of murders? Will they strike again? If so, when?
In Real Easy, Marie Rutkoski, who has been known until now for her outstanding children’s and young adult literature, makes her debut as an author of adult fiction in a thrilling novel that will not only challenge readers’ abilities to solve the crime, but their preconceptions as well.
The primary setting for Real Easy... Read Full Review
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The adventure of the peculiar protocols : adapted from the journals of John H. Watson, M.D.
by Meyer, Nicholas, 1945-
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJanuary 18, 2022
Call Number: LT M
In 1974, author and soon to be screenwriter and director Nicholas Meyer published his first novel: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. It was a Sherlock Holmes pastiche that not only covered the foiling of a kidnapping plot, but famously chronicled Holmes’ recovery from addiction, with the help of Sigmund Freud. Over the decades, Meyer has written two other Holmes novels: 1976’s The West End Horror and 1993’s The Canary Trainer. Now Meyer is back with another previously untold story of the great detective, one that is characterized in the author’s introductory... Read Full Review