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Libraries

New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Tom Gordon, County Executive

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell. Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’

association to their very foundations.

Amory Ames is a wealthy young woman who regrets her marriage to her notoriously charming playboy husband, Milo. Looking for a change, she accepts a request for help from her former fiancé, Gil Trent, not knowing that she’ll soon become embroiled in a murder investigation that will test not only her friendship with Gil, but will upset the status quo with her husband. Amory accompanies Gil to the Brightwell Hotel in an attempt to circumvent the marriage of his sister, Emmeline, to Rupert Howe, a disreputable ladies’ man. When Rupert is murdered and Gil is arrested for the crime, Amory is determined to prove his innocence and find the real killer, despite attempted dissuasion from the disapproving police inspector on the case. Matters are further complicated by Milo’s unexpected arrival, and the two form an uneasy alliance as Amory enlists his reluctant aid in clearing Gil’s name.

EEUPHORIAUPHORIA BYBY LLILYILY KKINGING ((PICKEDPICKED BYBY SSSS))

English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying a tribe on the Sepik River in the Territory of New Guinea with little success. Increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when he encounters the famous and controversial Nell Stone and her wry, mercurial Australian husband Fen. Bankson is enthralled by the magnetic couple whose eager attentions pull him back from the brink of despair. Emotionally and physically raw from studying the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo tribe, the couple is hungry for a new discovery. But when Bankson leads them to the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and emotional firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone’s control. Inspired by events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is a captivating story of desire, possession and discovery.

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Readers’ Advisory Committee

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Desperate to escape the Eastern front, Peter Faber, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina Spinell, a woman he has never met; it is a marriage of convenience that promises 'honeymoon' leave for him and a pension for her should he die on the front. With ten days' leave secured, Peter visits his new wife in Berlin; both are surprised by the attraction that develops between them. When Peter returns to the horror of the front, it is only the dream of Katharina that sustains him as he approaches Stalingrad. Back in Berlin, Katharina, goaded on by her desperate and delusional parents, ruthlessly works her way into the Nazi party hierarchy, wedding herself, her young husband and their unborn child to the regime. But when the tide of war turns and Berlin falls, Peter and Katharina, ordinary people stained with their small share of

an extraordinary guilt, find their simple dream of family increasingly hard to hold on to.

To find on the web go to www.nccde.org/libraries and click on “What Do I Read Next”

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It's October in Bascom, North Carolina. The Waverley women are made restless by the whims of their mischievous apple tree and all the magic that swirls around it. Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley’s Candies. Though her handcrafted confections are singularly effective, the business of selling them is costing her the everyday joys of her family. Sydney Waverley, too, is losing her balance. With each passing day she longs more for a baby. Sydney’s daughter, Bay, has lost her heart to the boy she knows it belongs to…if only he could see it, too. When a mysterious stranger shows up and challenges the very heart of their family, each of them must make choices they have never confronted before. The Waverley sisters must search for a way to hold their family together through their troublesome season of change, waiting for that extraordinary event that is First Frost.

Jay Johnson is an Average Joe, a 30-something guy with a job in sales, a regular pick-up basketball game, and a devoted girlfriend. But one weekday afternoon, he’s abducted on a Los Angeles Metro train, tranquilized, interrogated, and his paper trail obliterated. What did he see, what terrible crime—or criminal—is he keeping secret? It must be something awfully big. The trouble is, Jay has no clue. Furious and helpless, and convinced that the government has made a colossal mistake, Jay is involuntarily relocated to a community on Catalina Island—which turns out to be inhabited mainly by other protected witnesses. Isolated in a world of strangers, Jay begins to realize that only way out is through the twisted maze of lies and unreliable memories swirling through his own mind. If he can locate—or invent—a repressed memory that might satisfy the Feds, maybe he can make it back to the mainland and his wonderful, even if monotonous, life.

Co-authors Ballantine and Morris ingeniously reimagine England’s Edwardian Era in Phoenix Rising—a hilarious, rip-roaring steampunk fantasy romp. In this outrageous, non-stop adventure, we meet Agents Books and Braun of the ultra-secret Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Londoners wash up dead on the Thames, drained of blood and bone. The Ministry is forbidden to investigate. But Eliza Braun, with bulletproof corset, fondness for dynamite and remarkable devices, drags along timorous new partner Wellington Books, of encyclopedic brain, against the Phoenix Society, intent on enslaving Britons.

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Boston Detective Jane Rizzoli is on the case of a big game hunter found dead in his apartment, alone with a the body of a beautiful white snow leopard he had recently been commissioned to procure and stuff for a high-profile museum in the area. Medical examiner Maura Isles connects the case to a number of seemingly unrelated deaths where the victims have all been found hanging upside down, the hallmark of a leopard's kill. Rizzoli follows the puzzling trail of clues all the way to Botswana, where she uncovers the unsolved mystery of a deadly camping safari four years prior. When she realizes the two cases are connected, Rizzoli must track down the sole survivor of the tragic trip to discover who - or what - is behind these gruesome deaths.

FFIFTYIFTY MMICEICE BYBY DDANIELANIEL PPYNEYNE ((PICKEDPICKED BYBY SMSM))

Since her parents’ mysterious deaths many years ago, scientist Cora Sparks has spent her days in the safety of her university lab or at her grandmother Etta’s dress shop. The tiny store appears quite ordinary to passersby, but the colorfully vibrant silks, laces, and velvets hold bewitching secrets: with just a few stitches from Etta’s needle, these gorgeous gowns have the power to free a woman’s deepest desires. Etta’s dearest wish is to work her magic on her granddaughter. Cora’s studious, unromantic eye has overlooked Walt, the shy bookseller who has been in love with her forever. Determined not to allow Cora to miss her chance at happiness, Etta sews a tiny stitch into Walt’s collar, hoping to give him the courage to confess his feelings to Cora. After Walt is spurred into action, Etta realizes she’s set in motion a series of astonishing events that will transform Cora’s life in extraordinary and unexpected ways.

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New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Tom Gordon, County Executive

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F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 5

S T A F F P I C K SS T A F F P I C K S

Libraries

New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Tom Gordon, County Executive

DDIGGINGIGGING FFOROR RRICHARDICHARD IIIIII BYBY MMICHAELICHAEL PPITTSITTS (P(PICKEDICKED BYBY SMCSMC))

LLEADERSEADERS EEATAT LLASTAST BYBY SSIMONIMON SSINEKINEK (P(PICKEDICKED BYBY SLHSLH))

Each morning at first light, Michele Raffin steps outside into the bewitching bird music that heralds another day at Pandemonium Aviaries, the home and bird sanctuary that Raffin shares with some of the world’s most remarkable birds. It is a conservation organization dedicated to saving and breeding birds at the edge of extinction, with the goal of eventually releasing them into the wild. In The Birds of Pandemonium, she lets us into her world--and theirs. Birds fall in love, mourn, rejoice, and sacrifice; they have a sense of humor, invent, plot, and cope. They can teach us volumes about the interrelationships of humans and animals. Their amazing stories make up the heart of this book.

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Simon Sinek is a leader of the cultural revolution of WHY. Determining a company’s WHY is crucial, but only the beginning. The next step is how do you get people on board with your WHY? How do you inspire deep trust and commitment to the company and one another? He cites the Marine Corps for having found a way to build a culture in which men and women are willing to risk their lives, because they know others would do the same for them. It’s not brainwashing; it’s actually based on the biology of how and when people are naturally at their best. If businesses could adopt this supportive mentality, employees would be more motivated to take bigger risks, because they’d know their colleagues and company would back them up, no matter what. Sinek shows how to sustain an organization’s WHY while continually adding

people to the mix.

Marilyn Johnson’s Lives in Ruins is an absorbing and entertaining look at the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu, and excavates their lives. Her subjects share stories we rarely read in history books, about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, children of the first century, Chinese woman warriors, sunken fleets, mummies. What drives these archaeologists is not the money (meager) or the jobs (scarce) or the working conditions (dangerous), but their passion for the stories that would otherwise be buried and lost.

In 2012, archaeologists found the grave of Richard III. Its sight had been unknown for centuries. It was announced that a skeleton with a curved spine and battle wounds had been found and was thought to be that of Richard. All the studies, led to the conclusion that the skeleton was indeed Richard III, England's most disputed monarch and the probable murderer of the Princes in the Tower. The events of Richard III's reign and his death in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth are known worldwide, made popular by Shakespeare's most performed play. Digging for Richard III is the first complete narrative of a project that blended passion, science, luck and detection. Told by a noted archaeologist with access to all the parties involved, it follows the quest from an idea born in an Edinburgh bookshop to the day, fourteen years later, when two archaeologists carefully raised the bones from the parking lot in Leicester, and the scientific

studies that resulted.

LLIVESIVES ININ RRUINSUINS BYBY MMARILYNARILYN JJOHNSONOHNSON (P(PICKEDICKED BYBY SHSH))

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America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s narrative of how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the fight, amid an onslaught of lobbying, to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. He asks the head of the agency in charge of the Obamacare website how and why it crashed. Brill gets drug lobbyists to open up on the deals they struck to protect their profits in return for supporting the law. He is there with patients when they are denied cancer care at a hospital, or charged $77 for a box of gauze pads. Then he asks the multimillion-dollar executives who run the hospitals to explain why. But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting.

AAMERICAMERICA’’SS BBITTERITTER PPILLILL BYBY SSTEVENTEVEN BBRILLRILL ((PICKEDPICKED BYBY SSSS))

War of the Whales is the gripping tale of a crusading attorney who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound—and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth. When Balcomb and Reynolds team up to expose the truth behind an epidemic of mass strandings, the stage is set for an epic battle that pits admirals against activists, rogue submarines against weaponized dolphins, and national security against the need to safeguard the ocean environment.

Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, exploring the topic of mental health and recovery in the animal kingdom and turning up lessons that Publishers Weekly calls “Illuminating…Braitman’s delightful balance of humor and poignancy brings each case of life….[Animal Madness’s] continuous dose of hope should prove medicinal for humans and animals alike.”

With her groundbreaking bestseller Around My French Table, Dorie Greenspan changed the way we view French food. Now, in Baking Chez Moi, she explores the fascinating world of French desserts, bringing together a charmingly uncomplicated mix of contemporary recipes, including original creations based on traditional and regional specialties, and drawing on seasonal ingredients, market visits, and her travels throughout the country. Like the surprisingly easy chocolate loaf cake speckled with cubes of dark chocolate that have been melted, salted, and frozen, which she adapted from a French chef’s recipe, or the boozy, slow-roasted pineapple, a five-ingredient cinch that she got from her hairdresser, these recipes show the French knack for elegant simplicity.

BBAKINGAKING CCHEZHEZ MMOIOI BYBY DDORIEORIE GGREENSPANREENSPAN ((PICKEDPICKED BYBY SSSS))

Reviews excerpted from amazon.com and goodreads.com

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Food-sharing is the hot new thing in the "getting dinner on the table" conversation, and in The Soup Club Cookbook, four busy moms share not only their formula for starting a soup club--which gives you at least three meals every month when you don't have to worry about dinner--but also 150 fantastic recipes for soups and sides and storing tips for stretching those meals across the week.

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