Inyo County Free Library - New Acquisitions
March 2014 - April 2014
These are books and media new to the library and cataloged by the Inyo County Free Library.
Additional information about each title can be found in the catalog (click on the title). For older acquisition lists choose from Select another list. To request any of these titles please contact your local library branch.
By Hanif, Mohammed Publishing Date: 2012 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments are looking for a miracle, and Alice Bhatti is looking for a job. Alice is a candidate for the position of junior nurse, grade 4. It is only a few weeks since her release from Borstal. She has returned to her childhood home in the French Colony, where her father, recently retired from his position as chief janitor, continues as part-time healer, and full-time headache for the local church. It seems she has inherited some of his gift. With guidance from the working nurse's manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice brings succour to the thousands of patients littering the hospital's corridors and concrete courtyard. In the process she attracts the attention of a lovesick patient, Teddy Bunt, apprentice to the nefarious 'Gentleman Squad' of the Karachi police. They fall in love; Teddy with sudden violence, Alice with cautious optimism. Their love is unexpected, but the consequences are not. Alice soon finds that her new life is built on foundations as unstable as those of her home. A Catholic snubbed by other Catholics, who are in turn hated by everyone around them, she is also put at risk by her husband, who does two things that no member of the Gentlemen Squad has ever done, fall in love with a working girl, and allow a potentially dangerous suspect to get away. Can Teddy and Alice ever live in peace? Can two people make a life together without destroying the very thing that united them? It seems unlikely, but then Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse. |
NEW RELEASE By Harris, Robert Publishing Date: 2013 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC "Robert Harris returns to the thrilling historical fiction he has so brilliantly made his own. This is the story of the infamous Dreyfus affair told as a chillingly dark, hard-edged novel of conspiracy and espionage. Paris in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of twenty-thousand. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the ambitious, intellectual, recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that "proved" Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. At first, Picquart firmly believes in Dreyfus's guilt. But it is not long after Dreyfus is delivered to his desolate prison that Picquart stumbles on information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself. Bringing to life the scandal that mesmerized the world at the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Harris tells a tale of uncanny timeliness--a witch hunt, secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, the fate of a whistle-blower--richly dramatized with the singular storytelling mastery that has marked all of his internationally best-selling novels"-- |
By Hobbs, Roger Publishing Date: 2013 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Stunningly dark, hugely intelligent and thoroughly addictive, Ghostman announces the arrival of an exciting and highly distinctive novelist. When a casino robbery in Atlantic City goes horribly awry, the man who orchestrated it is obliged to call in a favor from someone who's occasionally called Jack. While it's doubtful that anyone knows his actual name or anything at all about his true identity, or even if he's still alive, he's in his mid-thirties and lives completely off the grid, a criminal's criminal who does entirely as he pleases and is almost impossible to get in touch with. But within hours a private jet is flying this exceptionally experienced fixer and cleaner-upper from Seattle to New Jersey and right into a spectacular mess: one heister dead in the parking lot, another winged but on the run, the shooter a complete mystery, the $1.2 million in freshly printed bills god knows where and the FBI already waiting for Jack at the airport, to be joined shortly by other extremely interested and elusive parties. He has only forty-eight hours until the twice-stolen cash literally explodes, taking with it the wider, byzantine ambitions behind the theft. To contend with all this will require every gram of his skill, ingenuity and self-protective instincts, especially when offense and defense soon become meaningless terms. And as he maneuvers these exceedingly slippery slopes, he relives the botched bank robbery in Kuala Lumpur five years earlier that has now landed him this unwanted new assignment. From its riveting opening pages, Ghostman effortlessly pulls the reader into Jack's refined and peculiar world and the sophisticated shadowboxing grows ever more intense as he moves, hour by hour, toward a constantly reimprovised solution. With a quicksilver plot, gripping prose and masterly expertise, Roger Hobbs has given us a novel that will immediately place him in the company of our most esteemed crime writers. |
NEW RELEASE By Kidd, Sue Monk Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC "The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. "The Invention of Wings" follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined"-- |
NEW RELEASE Blossom Street brides: a Blossom Street novel By Macomber, Debbie Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Does the perfect wedding make the perfect marriage? As three very different women meet in their local knitting store, they find strength in friendship to help them through their problems. After adopting a daughter, Lydia hoped her life would be complete, but traumatic memories from her daughter's past threaten to ruin their happiness. And Lauren has always yearned for marriage and a family of her own, but her long-term boyfriend just won't commit. Will a whirlwind romance with an unlikely stranger lead to the happily-ever-after she's always dreamed of? |
NEW RELEASE By Margolin, Phillip Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Margolin, author of 17 popular legal thrillers, pens a historical novel set in 1850s Portland, Oregon, based on an actual legal suit brought by a black family against a white slave owner. Free man Worthy Brown sues his former master for his daughter's freedom. Out of sheer spite and wicked lust, Caleb Barbour refuses to release 15-year-old Roxanne to her father, despite Oregon's law against slavery. Worthy hires down-on-his-luck lawyer Matthew Penny to bring a legal custody suit, though circumstances conspire against them. Throw in a money-grubbing beauty, a smitten judge, a few loudmouth hotheads, and at least two legal beagles willing to bend the law, and the Old West comes alive in heart-wrenching, violent, and wicked racist color. The plot is comfortably predictable, with a last-minute save by our brilliant hero, yet legal thriller and western fans will stay with it to the last page. Both a psychological western reminiscent of The Ox-Bow Incident and a sharp critique of Oregon's early legal process, Margolin's novel offers a compelling portrait of small town justice done right—eventually. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews. |
NEW RELEASE The days of Anna Madrigal: a novel By Maupin, Armistead Publishing Date: Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Follows ninety-two-year-old Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane, as she joins her former tenant Brian on a road trip to Nevada where she attends to unfinished business she has long avoided. |
NEW RELEASE By McCall Smith, Alexander Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC "From the author of the best-selling and universally adored No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series--a stand-alone, big-hearted, and often heartbreaking novel about unrequited love and the unexpected places it takes us. At age 4, Thursday chooses her own name. At age 6, she falls in love with her best friend, James, with whom she happily spends all her time. But in the adult world, things are not so simple: at the same time that Thursday's mother finds she's fallen out of love with her husband, she realizes that James's father is interested in her. As the children grow into adulthood, their connection becomes more complicated as well: James drifts away from Thursday, but she keeps him in her sights: she attends the same college in Scotland and then follows him to London, Sydney, Singapore, rebuilding her life in every city, hoping each time that James will see what he is missing. As Thursday and James, and their parents, navigate their irresistible but baffling mazes of emotion, we are given a beautifully realized tale about how love, even if unrequited, can shape a life"-- |
By Moore, Meg Mitchell Publishing Date: 2012 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Desperate to escape her parents' ugly divorce and a former best friend's vicious cyber-bullying, thirteen-year-old Natalie bonds with widowed librarian Kathleen over the diary of an early twentieth-century Boston maid. |
By Nádas, Péter Publishing Date: 2011 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC The agendas of three European men with dubious political histories converge in the aftermath of an 1989 death linked to the fates of myriad Hungarians, Jews, Germans and Gypsies across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century. |
NEW RELEASE The wives of Los Alamos: a novel By Nesbit, TaraShea Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC "Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago--and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with P.O. box addresses in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of a project that didn't exist as far as the public knew. Though they were strangers, they joined together--adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery. And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn't say out loud, the letters they couldn't send home, the freedom they didn't have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history. It's a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy"-- |
NEW RELEASE Free falling, as if in a dream: the story of a crime By Persson, Leif G. W. Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Its August 2007, and Lars Martin Johansson, chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Sweden, is determined once again to reopen the dusty files on the unsolved murder of Prime Minister Palme. With his retirement quickly approaching, Johansson forms a new group, comprised of a few trustworthy detectives who doggedly wade through mountains of paperwork and pursue new leads in a case that has all but gone cold despite the open wound the assassination has left on the consciousness of Swedish society. But the closer the group gets to the truth, the more Johansson compromises the greater good for personal gain, becoming a pawn in the private vendetta of a shady political spin doctor. A detailed and boldly plotted police procedural, Free Falling, As If in a Dream lifts the veil on one of historys greatest unsolved crimes, bringing dark humor, suspense, and wit to bear on a case long thought to have no answers. |
By Picoult, Jodi Publishing Date: 2001 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC When Jack St. Bride arrives by chance in the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls, he decides to reinvent himself. Tall, blond, and handsome, Jack was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school--until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his reputation. Now, working for minimum wage washing dishes for Addie Peabody at the Do-Or-Diner, Jack buries his past, content to become the mysterious stranger who has appeared out of the blue. Yet planting roots in Salem Falls may prove fateful for Jack. |
NEW RELEASE By Powers, Richard Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Composer Peter Els --the "Bioterrorist Bach" -- pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey and, through the help of his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime collaborator, he hatches a plan to turn his disastrous collision with Homeland Security into a work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around them. |
NEW RELEASE By Robards, Karen Publishing Date: 2013 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC When the chief of police and the mayor of New Orleans are taken hostage by disgraced former co-worker Reed Ware, top hostage negotiator Caroline Wallace allows herself to be taken captive by the handsome Reed only to learn that he is being targeted for his discovery of high-level government corruption. |
NEW RELEASE By Scottoline, Lisa Publishing Date: 2014 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC "Jake Whitmore is enjoying a rare bonding moment with his sixteen-year-old son, Kurt, when disaster strikes. They get in a terrible car accident that threatens to derail not only Kurt's chances at college, but his entire future. Jake makes a split-second decision that saves his son from formal punishment, but plunges them both into a world of guilt, lies, and secrecy. Just when Jake thinks he has everything under control, a malevolent outsider comes forward with the power to expose Jake's secret and taunts him to the breaking point. Keep Quiet is the powerful and gut-wrenching tale of the unraveling--and the ultimate redemption--of a family"-- |
By Stratton-Porter, Gene Publishing Date: 1986 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Orphaned and maimed, Freckles' bitterness about his fate is lessened when he is hired to guard a stretch of lumber in the wild Limberlost, and, after meeting the beautiful "Swamp Angel," he determines to find out about his past. |
By Thayil, Jeet Publishing Date: 2012 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC A tale of vice and passion set against a backdrop of late 1970s Bombay finds a New Yorker becoming entranced with the underworld culture of an opium den and brothel where he encounters a pipe-making eunuch, a violent businessman, and a Chinese refugee. |
By Tillyard, S. K. Publishing Date: 2011 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC Harriet and James's interwoven stories of love and betrayal propel this sweeping and dramatic novel as it moves between Regency London on the cusp of modernity--a city in love with science, the machine, money--and the shocking violence of war in Spain. |
By Umrigar, Thrity N. Publishing Date: c2012 Classification: FIC Call Number: FIC American divorcée Armaiti has six months to live and her last wish is to see her three best friends again--Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta, all in Bombay. But Nishta's husband, Iqbal, a fellow university idealist turned fundamentalist, will be the biggest obstacle to fulfilling Armaiti's final desire. |