New Arrivals In YA Fiction!

The library has added several titles by Wanda Brunstetter to its Young Adult fiction section located along the back wall downstairs. These titles can be found at YA/Fic/Bru.

White Christmas Pie
Brides of Lancaster County (4 books in one volume)
Brides of Webster County series
Sisters of Holmes County series

We hope you enjoy these titles and check them out the next time you come to the library!

Whistling In The Dark by Lesley Kagen

I'd pulled this exact same fire handle last summer right around this time. And boy, were those firemen steamed when they found out there was no fire. I'd done it cuz Mary Lane said she'd give me a dime if I would and, after all, she was our best friend.

from page 82, Whistling In The Dark by Lesley Kagen

Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen tells the story of the summer people started locking their doors on Vliet Street--it is told from the perspective of a ten year old girl with a very active imagination.

It is summer. It is 1959 in the Vliet Street neighborhood in Milwaukee. Young girls are going missing and then their bodies are being dumped--molested, naked, and dead. The O'Malley sisters' mother is in the hospital for a mysterious procedure and complications and the fact that she "may be dying" keep her there for most of that summer. The girls' older sister, Nell, and their stepfather are supposed to look after them, but these plans don't quite work out. Their stepfather is an abusive, mean drunk who soon finds himself in a steaming pile of trouble and the older sister is distracted by her new boyfriend, who may or may not be as bad as the stepfather. Instead the girls must depend upon the charity and kindness of their neighbors for meals and such.

Troo and Sally O'Malley are nine and ten years old respectively. They spend the summer roaming the neighborhood generally raising hell and getting into trouble. Sally's imagination works overtime with ideas about who the killer is that's stalking the neighborhood and why she might be next on his list of girls to molest and kill. The story is told through Sally's eyes in her own unique voice. The author seamlessly inhabits the perspective of this imaginative, wild, and outspoken girl. The time period in which the story is told adds another layer of complexity to the novel. The 1950's were a time of limited options for women--particularly one with children. Adults may not have believed in telling children exactly why they were going into the hospital or how serious the situation may be, but we witness how Sally tries to fill in the gaps of what the adults don't tell her by observation, by how they talk to her, and failing that, with her imagination.

This book is available upon request from Annville Free Library and Lebanon Community Library, and I highly recommend you check it out. This novel is part drama, part mystery, and part coming of age tale; there is something for everyone to relate to or enjoy in it.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Death At A Funeral

Death At A Funeral is a movie that stars Matthew Macfadyen, Peter Dinklage, and Rupert Graves. It's an independent, British comedy, and it is hilarious.

When a family's patriarch dies, friends and family of the deceased gather for a final--dignified--farewell. However, one unexpected guest throws a wrench into these plans when he demands compensation for keeping an explosive family secret under wraps. The sons of the deceased are forced to improvise increasingly out of control solutions as one after another of these solutions goes terribly wrong in order to keep this family secret buried--and to preserve the dignity of their father's wake. People and events in this dysfunctional family quickly gather steam and threaten to spin disastrously and hilariously out of control.

This black comedy is the best I've seen since Little Miss Sunshine's dysfunctional family road trip, and I highly, highly recommend you see it. It is available upon request from Annville Free Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Keepsake by Tess Gerritsen

The Keepsake is the latest installment in Tess Gerritsen's Dr. Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli (medical examiner/homicide detective, respectively) series that is set in Boston, Massachusetts. This is the other book that I was anticipating for about the past half a year since I found a listing for it on amazon.com.

The novel begins with a cryptic first chapter narrated in the first person--this is a departure from the rest of the novel and the series since the rest of the book, save for the final chapter, is narrated in third person. Gerritsen contributes a much better written installment to her series than Reichs did to the Brennan series. Gerritsen's mystery crackles with tighter, more urgent suspense as well. Gerritsen succeeds in creating and painting a more terrifying serial killer.

In The Keepsake we catch up with Isles and Rizzoli. Isles continues to see a man she cannot completely have and Rizzoli's marriage is still going strong; Rizzoli's daughter is now a year old. We also meet Josephine, an enigmatic, mysterious archaeologist who specializes in Egyptology. A mummy has turned up in Boston's Crispin Museum--it's a find that the museum didn't realize it had in its collection stored in the basement. Routine examinations reveal the mummy's origins are more modern than ancient, and this sets off a rather gruesome discovery of an especially brutal serial killer. Before long two more bodies that have been ritualistically preserved according to other ancient cultures' funeral rituals are discovered. It becomes clear that Josephine's past and present are both more tightly tied to the so-called Archaeology killer than anyone realized. In fact, Josephine's very origins may be tied to this killer and only the killer and Josephine's dead mother know the truth about how they're connected and why Josephine has only known a life of hiding and running. Rizzoli and Isles must race to solve first the identities of the victims (an investigation that is complicated by the killer's use of various preservation methods), then the identity of the killer and finally the location of the killer.

The parts of the story that deal with archaeology and historical methods of preservation of the dead that ancient cultures have used are both intriguing and fascinating--and gruesome. The mystery is made increasingly puzzling by the intertwining nature of the mysteries of Josephine's true identity, her past and her connection to the murderer. In the end the resolution is far more complicated while the story takes some unexpected twists and turns before the final conclusion. Ultimately the novel is a story of identity, family and history.

This book is available upon request from Lebanon Community Library, Myerstown Community Library, Annville Free Library, and Palmyra Public Library. I highly recommend you check it; you won't regret it.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Herstory: Women Who Changed The World edited by Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn

Herstory: Women Who Changed The World edited by Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn is copyrighted 1995, which makes me wonder who would be included in an updated volume.

Ever since high school I've identified myself as a feminist, and women's history and women's rights are near and dear to me. The marginalization, objectification, discrimination, and second class citizenship of women throughout history are ideas that still outrage and horrify me when I read about the obstacles, injustices and perils that my female forebears have had to overcome and survive to get to where we are today. I may not have personally experienced these struggles--I have come of age in the title IX era where equality or near equality is the only thing I've known--but I am acutely aware of the fairly recent period in history in which women had few or no rights and how fragile those rights remain with the current Republican president and the addition of two conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. A patron of the library recently reserved a copy of this book and when it came in for her, I saw it and placed my own request for it.

Herstory is a volume of brief biographies of women including, but not limited to, Hatshepsut, Empress Theodora, Artemisia Gentileschi, the Grimke sisters, the Bronte sisters (one quibble I had with the book: only Charlotte and Emily were featured, when Anne was also an accomplished writer in her own right and deserved mention as well), Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Mary Cassat, Ichikawa Fusae, and Wilma Mankiller. One thing that stunned me were the familial relationships between quite a few of the women listed in the nineteenth century--for example, Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the sister-in-law of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in America. These are often remarkable stories of society's marginalized citizens who managed to rise above this status to make names for themselves and advancements in their fields. Women from prehistoric to modern times, who contributed to advancements in women's rights, education, reforming labor laws, as well as performed brilliant work in fields ranging from the arts to politics to chemistry, physics, anthropology and ecology. Noted feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Betty Friedan, who worked for women's enfranchisement, equality and reproductive rights are also listed. Each section includes an overview of the developments of the historical periods in which these women lived and worked.

Until today's history books represent women as much as they do men, I think this volume or one like it should be included on every student's reading list.

This book is available upon request from Lebanon and Myerstown Community Libraries. I highly recommend you check it!

--reviewed by Ms. Angie

Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs

Before I begin the book review, I'd like to point out that this is my 100th blog post. Whoa. That is a lot of posting of reviews, news of new arrivals and notices of new YouTube videos. Here's to the next 100 posts. I hope my fingers don't get too sore.

Ever since I found out the title of Kathy Reichs' next Tempe Brennan novel and then stumbled across its listing on amazon.com with a release date attached, I was counting down the days 'til I could get my hands on the next installment of Brennan's adventures. And I was obsessively checking amazon.com nearly every day for an updated Devil Bones listing with a blurb attached. Then the book came out in August, and as soon as the title appeared in the Lebanon County Library System, I put my name on the Hold Queue. And I obsessively checked my account on its status to see if it was finally on its way. It arrived one day last week... Thursday or Friday. I finished it Saturday, and since I reviewed the last Brennan novel on this blog last year, I am now reviewing the new one. Can I just say that Reichs never ceases to amaze me? The woman puts out a new Brennan book nearly every year--on top of teaching at a university in NC, consulting for the Montreal, Quebec, Canada medical examiner office, producing/consulting on the show Bones, and travelling for book promotion, speaking engagements and any other anthropological work she does. How does she do it?

The new Tempe Brennan novel is Devil Bones. It is the eleventh novel in the series. Brennan is back in North Carolina to teach at the university and consult with Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner office. When a plumber discovers a skull on a Santeria altar secreted in a room below a basement in the city, Brennan is called in to solve the mystery. Shortly after that a headless body with satanic symbols carved into its flesh is found on the shore of a nearby lake. Are these two incidents connected or are they separate mysteries? Before long the investigation is complicated by a fanatic, Christian county commissioner who agitates and fear mongers by plying the public with descriptions of witches, devil worshippers and human sacrifice, claims that the justice system is broken and fails to protect the public. The case, goaded by the media and the shooting of a police officer, careens out of control, threatening to destroy lives and Brennan's career in the process. Andrew Ryan, the Canadian detective who broke Brennan's heart in the last novel, returns and while hope is resurrected for their relationship, that issue is still unresolved and will continue to be worked out in the next Brennan novel.

Brennan voice and humor are strong in this novel; though at times her humorous way of launching into a scientific explanation of, say, dental development, became a little too cutesy for my taste as the novel progressed. The resolution(s) to the investigations seemed a bit rushed and convoluted... and in some ways, a little predictable.

There is a short Question + Answer section with Reichs and small preview of what we can expect in the next Brennan novel at the end of this one. Though this novel had its (minor) annoyances for me, it was a quick read, and I still look forward to the next one. If you are a fan of Reichs and Brennan, I recommend you check out this novel. It is available upon request from Annville Free Library, Myerstown Community Library, Palmyra Public Library, and Richland Community Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson

Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson is a beautifully, vividly written novel coming soon to the Matthews Library. The author may sound familiar to you because I reviewed her most recent novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, on this blog a few months ago. [Click on the title to go to that review!] I believe I also mentioned Between, Georgia in that review. That was back in May, and this past Labor day weekend, I did some major reading. I finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and then started Between, Georgia Saturday afternoon. I stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish the book, which is something I rarely do, but everything was getting ready to go to hell in a hand basket (in the book) by bedtime that I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I then read a book called A Thousand Bones by P.J. Parrish on Sunday and Monday. That is also a wonderful book, and I am now getting ready to read the series by that author. Some people have picnics on federal holiday weekends; apparently I read straight through a three day weekend since I did the same thing Memorial day weekend.

Back to Between, Georgia. The novel is titled for the town that plays an integral part in the novel and the town is so named because it is half way between Athens and Atlanta, Georgia. Jackson likes strong, eccentric, vibrant female characters. There is usually a strong, overbearing, female character that the female protagonist is required to stand up to before everything can be resolved; the novel also takes place in the rural South. I was halfway through this novel before I picked up on these similarities with The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

The novel details a modern day, fictional Hatfield and McCoy-like feud between two families in a tiny Georgia town. Though tensions simmered between the Crabtrees and the Fretts for years, the feud sparked to life when the Fretts stole a Crabtree baby and kept it secret for several years from the Crabtrees. This sounds melodramatic and evil, I know, but the story of how a Crabtree became a Frett is detailed in the first wild, thirty pages of the novel. The Crabtree matriarch is outraged when the secret is spilled because the Fretts 'stole her grandbaby out from under her.'

These are two wildly different families. The Crabtrees are your stereotypical 'white trash,' uneducated rednecks and certain members of the family are prone to rage and violence. The Fretts are considered the royalty of the town; they are educated and moneyed and are resented by the Crabtrees because of this and also because they are the products of a white father and a Native American mother and their success upsets 'the natural order of things' in the Crabtrees' view.

One fateful day the feud is ignited into an all out war. Before anyone knows how to stop it or realizes where it's headed, it whips off toward certain destruction, threatening to take down everyone and everything in its path--including everything the Fretts hold dear to them.

I highly recommend you check out this wonderful novel the next time you visit the library! It will be shelved in upstairs in Adult Fiction when it arrives.

-reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I'm sorry I can't send you my notes on Charlotte and Emily [Bronte]--I used them to kindle a fire in my cookstove, there being no other paper in the house. I'd already burnt up my tide tables, the Book of Revelation, and the story about Job.

from page 52 of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.

from page 53 of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. According to a review that I read for the novel, Shaffer died before it was published; Barrows, her niece, finished and edited the novel for publication.

The novel is set in post-war London and Guernsey Island; World War II has literally just ended--it is 1946--and London, Guernsey Island, and its citizens are struggling to rebuild their towns, their homes and their lives. They are wondering if and when life will ever return to normal and how do they move on as if nothing has ever happened when the wounds of war are not yet healed.

The novel tells the story of how a London writer befriends the people of Guernsey and finds a home and family there. This is a story of postwar England--how the people survived the war and their struggle to rebuild and heal in the wake of war. It is also a story of how a unique group of people read and discussed books and used literature to cope with the German occupation of their island. The characters are eccentric with vivid voices--the entire novel consists of correspondences written back and forth between the London writer and various others. While the novel's characters each bring levity to the novel with their antics, this is set in stark relief against the heartfelt, tragic descriptions of life on Guernsey and in London during and after the war.

Readers who love historical fiction will love this novel; readers who love novels with the love of reading at their centers will also love this novel. Readers who just love a good book will love this one. I highly recommend you read it--you will not regret it. It is available upon request from Lebanon Community Library, Annville Free Library, Myerstown Community Library and Palmyra Public Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Shoot 'Em Up

Shoot 'Em Up stars Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and Paul Giamatti.

This movie is part love story, part urban western shoot out, and part dark comedy. The action literally explodes in the first minute of the film with a storm of bullets flying before it careens into conspiracy/government cover up territory. Its mysterious, eccentric characters possess unbelievable shooting skills; if Mr. Smith (Owen) is not an extremely skilled black ops trained marksman, then he is an extremely lucky man.

Mr. Smith, who has a yen for carrots, is drawn into the fight of his life when he defends a mother and her baby from ruthless guns for hire who want both mother and child dead. Smith quickly realizes that if the child is to survive, it is up to him to make sure it happens. To achieve this end, he enlists the help of a hooker from the local brothel. The two end up on the run from a brutal, violent man, who will stop at nothing to kill the baby--and anyone who stands in his way.

This movie is coming to the Matthews Library soon and when it does, I highly recommend you check it out.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie