Staff Recommendations
Daryl M.
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Mother May I
by Jackson, Joshilyn
June 14, 2021
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It happens in an instant. While Bree Cabbat watches her eldest daughter rehearse a school production of Grease, her infant son, Robert, sleeps in the seat next to her in the balcony of the school’s theatre. One moment he is there, the next he is gone. In his place is a note which demands that Bree head directly home, that she is not to contact the police, and to wait for a call. She is being watched and any deviation will result in Robert’s death.Bree complies and is contacted. Robert is safe, for now, but for him to be returned, she must do exactly as she is told. She is given... Read Full Review
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A Master of Djinn
by Clark, P. Djèli
June 2, 2021
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In Cairo in the 1870’s, an inventor and investigator of mysticism named al-Jahiz made a literal breakthrough unlike any other. He pierced the boundaries between our world and other worlds, allowing magic to bleed into ours. In the process, al-Jahiz was lost to another dimension before the rupture between worlds was sealed. For the intervening four decades the world has had to learn how to live with, or attempt to ignore, the magical beings that now populate our world.The Egyptian government, as the locus of the magical in the world, set up the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and... Read Full Review
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The Dictionary of Lost Words
by Williams, Pip
May 25, 2021
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According to their website, the Oxford English Dictionary “is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.” Serially published in portions, or fascicles, the first fascicle, covering “A to Ant,” was published in 1884, 27 years after the project had begun. The first complete edition was finished in 1928. It took 71 years to complete the initial edition. To celebrate the... Read Full Review
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Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder
by Willberg, T. A.
April 20, 2021
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Imagine the following: A chilling murder, a secret detective agency with offices located in a myriad of tunnels located beneath London, and a young apprentice determined to find the killer in order to clear one of her closest friends of the murder. In her debut novel, which is the beginning of a new series, T.A. Willberg puts a decidedly fantastic spin on the mystery novel.Marion Lane has had a few challenging years. When her mother died, she was forced to move in with her grandmother, who wants nothing more than for Marion to find a well-off young man, and get married. Marion, however... Read Full Review
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The Narrowboat Summer
by Youngson, Anne
March 30, 2021
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Eve has spent the last 30 years working for an engineering/manufacturing company managing various projects and climbing the corporate ladder. Suddenly, she has been “released” from her position. She is a corporate scapegoat for systemic problems within her company and, as the only woman at her management level, the seemingly obvious choice for where to place the blame. While she is excellent at her job, and planning/execution is her specialty, she has no idea how to deal with this unexpected development in her ordered life.Sally has decided that she can no longer live the life she has been... Read Full Review
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Good Neighbors: A Novel
by Langan, Sarah
March 22, 2021
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The first season of The Twilight Zone in 1960 included an episode written by show creator Rod Serling entitled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Serling presented a block of homes, filled with “typical” American families, on a summer evening. There is a bright flash of light, whose origin is unknown. Then various utilities, the foremost of which is their electricity, begin to behave unreliably. As the residents’ questions grow, panic begins to develop and overtake them resulting in wild accusations, and, ultimately death. Sterling’s closing narration for the episode includes... Read Full Review
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N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law
by Armour, Jody David
February 1, 2021
Call Number: 343.73 A733-1
Jody Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He studies issues of race and legal decision-making as well as torts and tort reform movements. He also studies and teaches on the intersections of language, the law and ethics. His latest book directly confronts law enforcement and our legal system’s failures and culpabilities in the mass incarceration of people of color.In N*gga Theory, which is how he refers to his work in Critical Race Theory and the title of his new book, Armour systematically identifies and dismantles how our legal... Read Full Review
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The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne
by Hart, Elsa
January 20, 2021
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The year is 1704 and Lady Cecily Kay has returned to London from her husband’s posting as a consul in Smyrna. Upon learning of her imminent return to the British Isles, Cecily sent a letter to Sir Barnaby Mayne, a renowned collector in London with one of the most expansive collections in the country, possibly the world. Cecily is interested in identifying some plant samples she has collected while abroad and Sir Barnaby has agreed to her use of his collection for this purpose.The day after her arrival, Sir Barnaby is to conduct a tour of his collection for several other collectors and Cecily... Read Full Review
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Hella
by Gerrold, David, 1944-
January 11, 2021
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David Gerrold is speculative fiction royalty. His career spans six decades, over which he has won the Hugo and the Nebula awards. He has written more than 50 novels, worked on numerous television series and created cultural touchstones like tribbles (from Star Trek) and the Sleestak (from The Land of the Lost). His latest novel is an adventure in every sense of the word.Hella is Earth-like, but it is NOT Earth. Hella is 9% larger than Earth, but its iron/nickel core is smaller, resulting in only 91% of Earth’s gravity. The atmosphere is more oxygen rich than Earth’s. The... Read Full Review
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The Lost Book of Adana Moreau
by Zapata, Michael
January 5, 2021
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A pirate, a refugee, two pre-teen boys in love with speculative fiction stories, and two adult men who are friends and are each searching for what seems to be missing in their lives. Over the course of nearly a century, these disparate individuals will orbit the missing manuscript of a celebrated writer who died too young. And that manuscript will reach out to them over time and lead them through unimaginable danger to what they each, ultimately, need.Adana Moreau, a young woman orphaned by political unrest, flees the Dominican Republic and finds herself living in New Orleans and married to “... Read Full Review
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The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers
by Levesque, Emily
December 29, 2020
Call Number: 520 L662
Halley's Comet is quite possibly the most famous, and infamous, comet currently known. It is a “periodic” comet, coming close enough to the earth for viewing approximately every 75 years. Over the centuries, the appearance of Halley’s Comet has been erroneously blamed for earthquakes, illnesses (including the Black Plague in England), the births of two-headed animals and the assassination of Julius Caesar. The comet was last visible from earth in 1986. Early that year, a toddler named Emily Levesque looked through her older brother’s telescope at Halley’s Comet. It was her first step in a... Read Full Review
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The Devil and the Dark Water
by Turton, Stuart
December 2, 2020
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In a "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery, a crime, or series of crimes, is committed under circumstances that appear, at least initially, impossible for said crime to have been enacted. Those same conditions will also seem to preclude the criminal entering or exiting the crime scene.The first “locked-room” mystery was Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” published in 1841. Other classics of the subgenre are Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room; “The Speckled Band,” a Sherlock Holmes adventure by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; and Agatha Christie’s And Then... Read Full Review