April New Popular Books

The following new books have been added this month to the Popular Reading Collection located next to the circulation desk.   These books and any other titles currently checked out can be placed on hold.
See a staff member at the circulation desk for assistance.

 

All the Flowers are Dying, by Lawrence Block
Islands, by Anne Rivers Siddons
Vanishing Acts, by Jodi Picoult
Impossible, by Danielle Steel
Lost Lake, by Phillip Margolin
Cold Service, by Robert B. Parker
Burned, by Carol Higgins Clark
With No One as Witness, by Elizabeth George
The Serpent on the Crown, by Elizabeth Peters
Ya-Yas in Bloom, by Rebecca Wells


This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary



Night Fall, by Nelson DeMille

John Corey, ex-NYPD detective, is now working for an anti-terrorist task force and he is married to Kate Mayfield, an FBI agent.  It’s the summer of 2001 and Kate takes John to the fifth anniversary commemoration of the crash of TWA Flight 800.  You’ll recall that the plane exploded off the coast of Long Island shortly after takeoff from JFK.  Hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a missile strike the plane but an explosion in one of the plane’s fuel tanks was given as the official cause of the accident.  Kate worked on the case in 1996 and a number of things about the FBI investigation bothered her then and, five years later, still bother her.  After the commemoration, she takes John to meet a witness to the crash and the man who directed the reconstruction of the Boeing 747.  After talking to both men, John is not sure what happened to the TWA flight.  The next day, he and Kate are strongly warned by their superiors to lay off the case.  Well, if you’ve gotten to know John in the previous DeMille books, you know that being told to cease and desist will cause John to do the exact opposite.  Come what may, he’s going to look into the accident.  Specifically, he wants to find a man and a woman who may have videotaped the plane’s explosion while they were on the beach the night of the crash.  Kate, during the initial investigation, surmised that the beach couple was having an illicit affair—explaining why they didn’t come forward--and she got as far as finding the hotel they stayed in before she was removed from the case.  Now, five years later and with little to go on, can John find this pair, who may still hold the answer to the question: missile or fuel tank explosion?  DeMille has taken a real event and fashioned a terrific suspense novel that weaves fact and fiction and leaves you guessing right till the heartstopping end.


Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz

On the night Jimmy Tock is born, his grandfather predicts the exact time of his birth, his exact weight, and several other physical statistics.  He also predicts that something terrible will happen to Jimmy on five specific dates in the future, which he has a nurse record.  As soon as the nurse has written down all the information, Jimmy’s grandfather dies.  When Jimmy is born, his grandfather is correct with his predictions of Jimmy’s physical statistics and exact time of birth.  Since his grandfather had been accurate in what he had forseen, Jimmy grows up dreading the first date when something terrible is expected to happen to him. On that date, something terrible does indeed happen—but also something wonderful.  Jimmy survives the first predicted date, but what will happen to him with the next four?  A number of times over the years I have recommended Koontz novels to patrons looking for a good book to read and on some of those occasions the patrons have told me, no, they wouldn’t think of reading him because his novels have too much horror, are too gruesome, and so on.  Well, Koontz can still sling the ick, witness his last book The Taking, but he can also write a story like his latest, which has some suspense but is ultimately a warm, very enjoyable love story.  If you’ve never read Koontz, this is the book you should try.


Whiteout, by Ken Follett

Toni Gallo is the head of security at a medical research firm in a small town in Scotland.  Housed in a huge, old mansion, the company is doing very dangerous research with deadly viruses.  Toni is a former policewoman who was forced to resign after she clashed with her boss.  Now, she is trying to prove herself at her new position.  Secretly in love with the owner of the firm, widower Stanley Oxenford, she is also trying to repay the faith he placed in her when he hired her.  She has tightened security to the point where the lab is known as ‘The Kremlin’ but the firm has had an incident where one of its workers died after being exposed to an Ebola-like virus that he secretly removed from the lab.  Luckily, the virus did not spread into the community but Toni knows that another incident like that might cause the lab to be shut down.  She would lose her job and Oxenford would be bankrupt.  It’s now Christmas Eve and Scotland is about to get a freak blizzard.  And, someone is planning to use the Christmas holiday inactivity at the firm to steal one of the lab’s most deadly viruses--with the objective of selling it to a terrorist.  Toni is in for a harrowing Christmas.  Follett is a master of suspense and this novel, broken into hour by hour chapters that get ever more thrilling, will have you on the edge of your seat.  Terrific.


At Risk, by Stella Rimington

It’s always nice when a new talent emerges and we have one here.  Ms. Rimington spent nearly thirty years working for Britain’s MI5 (think their version of the CIA) and she ended up being the first woman to run the whole show.   Now, she has retired and written her first novel.  Wisely, she has heeded the advice to write what you know and we’ve got a female MI5 agent dealing with a possible terrorist threat against Britain.  Meet Liz Carlyle.  She’s thirtysomething, a looker, and having a rather unsatisfactory affair with a married man.  Her mother lives in the country and wishes Liz would quit her job and come help her with a nursery business she has started.  And, always lurking, is the battle she must wage against the old boy network at MI5 and its sister agency, MI6.  Liz is running a particularly valuable agent in London and he discovers that an Arab terrorist is to be smuggled into Britain to execute a terrorist act.  There’s precious little to go on save the murder of a boatman in a coastal area known for smuggling.  Liz decides to investigate the murder, accompanied by a dashing new recruit to MI6, named Bruno Mackay, who’s dispatched to keep an eye on things for his agency.   Can the two of them piece together enough clues to find the terrorist before he strikes?   This was an outstanding debut novel and I applaud Ms. Rimington’s choice of a new career.  She does a wonderful job of introducing an interesting cast of characters and weaving their actions together into a story that builds to a suspenseful finish.   I hope we will be seeing Liz Carlyle soon in another MI5 installment.

 

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Revised March 24, 2005

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