March 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.

 

Next, by Michael Crichton
Travels in the Scriptorium, by Paul Auster
The Collectors, by David Baldacci
Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks
Family Tree, by Barbara Delinsky
High Profile, by Robert Parker
Lisey's Story, by Stephen King
Love and Lies, by Kimberla Lawson Roby
Step on a Crack, by James Patterson
Brother Odd, by Dean Koontz
Natural Born Charmer, by Susan E. Phillips
Star Wars: Allegiance, by Timothy Zahn
Wild Fire, by Nelson DeMille


This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary  




Beach Road, by James Patterson and Peter de Jongle

We’re in the tony Hamptons in this latest thriller from the prolific Patterson.  Tom Dunleavy, a struggling local lawyer with his own practice, is playing a pick up basketball game at a beachfront mansion when he has to break up a fight between two of the players, one white and the other black.  Later that evening, the white player and two of his friends are found murdered on the beach.  Dante Halleyville, the black player and a major NBA prospect, is arrested for the murders.  Dante claims he was lured to the murder scene and set up.  Tom agrees to take the case and he enlists the help of his former girlfriend, Kate Costello, who has just resigned from her job with a big New York law firm and is looking for a new challenge.  Well, I hope she likes a big challenge because the evidence against Dante is compelling.  Patterson tries something different with the chapters written in the voices of all the major characters but, unfortunately, they all sound too much alike and the idea doesn’t quite work.  The novel has a surprise ending but I didn’t like the surprise at all.


Proof Positive, by Phillip Margolin

Mr. Margolin has a nice series going that features father and daughter lawyers Frank Jaffe and Amanda Jaffe, who live in Portland, Oregon.  The novel starts with the death penalty execution of Ray Hayes, who was convicted of the murder of his mother.  Ray entered a guilty plea on the advice of his lawyer, Doug Weaver, when his fingerprints were found on the murder weapon.  But, Ray had always maintained his innocence.  Ray’s death has haunted Doug, who thought he was giving him good advice when he told him to plead guilty in hopes of avoiding the death penalty.  Now, Doug is given another challenging case.  A troubled young man has been arrested for a gruesome murder that he swears he didn’t commit and the evidence, once again, seems overwhelming.  Still feeling shell-shocked over Ray’s death, Doug enlists the help of Amanda to assist him with his latest case.  Meanwhile, Frank Jaffe has his own murder case and a client also proclaiming his innocence.  Could be something fishy going on.  Fishy, indeed—and it makes for an entertaining and suspenseful read.


The Ruins, by Scott Smith

Two young unmarried American couples, Jeff and Amy and Eric and Stacy, just out of school, are having a carefree vacation in Cancun, Mexico before starting their post-collegiate lives.  While in Cancun they’ve met a young German man, Mathias, and a trio of Greek men—who don’t speak English.  Mathias’s brother, Heinrich, had met a girl in Cancun and gone off with her to visit an archaeological dig in the jungle.  When he hasn’t returned after several days, Mathias decides to go hunt for him, using a crude map of the archaeological site that was drawn on a napkin and left by Heinrich.  On a whim, the American couples and one of the Greeks, Pablo, decide to go with Mathias on what is suppose to be a day trip into the jungle.  So, off they go into the wild—first by bus to a remote village and then by taxi for about ten miles to an even more remote area where the path to the archaeological dig is suppose to begin.  The taxi driver leaves—after telling them the area is bad and offering to drive them somewhere else.   Would that they had listened to the driver!  But, then we wouldn’t have had this terrorizing story of their harrowing jungle experience.  Unlike some authors who seem to crank out a new book every other week (hello, James Patterson!), Mr. Smith takes his time—and it shows.  Highly recommended. 


Cage of Stars, by Jacquelyn Mitchard

My youngest sister, Carol, recommended this book to me and I’m glad she did—I liked it a lot.  I think the last book I read by Ms. Mitchard was The Deep End of the Ocean but that was a number of years ago.  It was nice to read this author again.  Veronica Swan, twelve, and a Mormon, is living a rather idyllic childhood in a tiny community outside of Cedar City, Utah.  Her father is a teacher and her mother is a talented artist.  Veronica, or Ronnie as she is called, has a horse and two adorable younger sisters.  One day she is babysitting her sisters while her parents are away for a few hours.  Playing hide and seek, it’s soon Ronnie’s turn to hide.  When her sisters don’t find her, she eventually goes looking for them and finds them both murdered by a crazed young man who has wandered onto their property.  What follows, told in Ronnie’s words, is the story spanning Ronnie’s teenage years of how she and her parents try to cope, and sometimes don’t cope, with the terrible tragedy that has befallen and forever changed them. 







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Revised Feb. 28, 2007

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