October 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.

 

Fiddlers, by Ed McBain
Angels in the Gloom, by Anne Perry
Goodnight Nobody, by Jennifer Weiner
Point Blank, by Catherine Coulter
School Days, by Robert Parker
Everyone Worth Knowing, by Lauren Weisberger
A Breath of Snow and Ashes, by Diana Gabaldon
The City of Fallen Angels, by John Berendt
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, by Alexander McCall Smith



This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary


Velocity, by Dean Koontz

Mild-mannered Billy Wiles works as a bartender in a small town in the Napa Valley.  He leads a quiet life and has no known enemies.  A lot of his spare time is spent at a nursing home—where his fiancée is in a coma.  When he is not with his fiancée he spends endless hours carving wood to help pass his empty days.  One night as he is leaving work he finds a note under the windshield of his car.  It tells him that if he doesn’t take the note to the police, a lovely blond schoolteacher somewhere in Napa County will be killed.  If he does take the note to the police, an elderly woman will be killed.  He has six hours to decide and the choice is his.  Wow, what a way to start off a book with a bang!  Billy thinks the note is a prank and decides not to take it to the police—but then a lovely blond schoolteacher is found murdered.  And another note appears on his windshield giving him another impossible choice.  I didn’t like this novel quite as much as his last one—Life Expectancy—but it was still quite good.

Rage, by Jonathan Kellerman

Alex Delaware is lounging around not doing much—his girlfriend is out of town—when he receives a phone call out of the blue from Rand Duchay.  Rand and a friend, Troy Turner, were young teenagers when they kidnapped and killed a toddler.  Before the two were to stand trial, Alex interviewed Rand a number of times to assist the judge in determining whether Rand should stand trial as a juvenile or an adult.  The point ended up being mute as a plea was struck and both were sentenced to juvenile detention.  Troy was soon murdered after he was incarcerated.  Now, eight years later, Rand has been released from prison.  And, he wants to meet with Alex.  Alex agrees to meet him at a coffee shop but Rand doesn’t show.  Later, Alex finds out that Rand was murdered about the time he was suppose to meet with him.   The case from eight years ago has remained vivid with Alex and it has never seemed quite finished.  Now, with Rand’s recent murder and Troy’s in prison, maybe it’s time for a second look--with trusty police detective Milo Sturgis’s help, of course.  This novel wasn’t my favorite in the Delaware series.  The story had a rather unsatisfactory conclusion and too many of the characters were unsavory.  Maybe I got spoiled by how much I enjoyed his last novel, Twisted, which featured the wonderful Petra Connor.


Black Wind, by Clive Cussler

It’s the waning days of World War II and a desperate Japan sends one of its last remaining submarines on a mission to the west coast of the United States.  Instead of carrying conventional missiles, the submarine is armed with potent biological weapons which, if successfully launched, would devastate America’s west coast cities.  Luckily, the submarine is sunk off the Oregon coast before the missiles could be fired.  Fastforward to the near future of 2007.  On a remote Alaskan island, several researchers suddenly die and others narrowly avoid the same fate. It appears an airborne substance is the culprit.  Dirk Pitt, Jr. happens to be doing research in the same area and, having rescued the survivors of the toxic wind, he decides to do some sleuthing.  All leads point to the sunken Japanese submarine—and a second submarine that had been sent on a similar mission.   Unfortunately, the biological weapons—which are still deadly—are in sinister hands.  And, once again they will be targeted at the United States.  Cussler is the master at marine thrillers and this is a great read filled with danger, derring-do, and suspense.

Shadows, by Edna Buchanan

This is the second installment in a new series by Buchanan that was introduced with Cold Case Squad.  This elite Miami police unit specializes in cases that were never solved.  Shadows is a historic house that is about to be demolished to make way for a high-rise condominium.  Before it is bulldozed, however, a local preservation activist wants the Cold Case Squad to take another look at a murder that took place at the Shadows in 1961.  Talk about a case gone cold!  A former mayor of Miami, the owner of Shadows, was gunned down just as he arrived home.  The murderer was never caught and soon afterwards his widow and children moved away, leaving the house vacant.  Can the squad coax enough clues out of the house to solve the murder?  While some of the squad members are investigating the former mayor’s murder, detective Sam Stone of the squad gets the green light to investigate a much more personal cold case—the murder of his parents that took place when he was just a child.  This was a nice addition to what should be a great series; both plots were intriguing and the characters likable and interesting.




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Revised Sept. 29, 2005

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