Readers’ Advisory Committee

STAFF PICKS - A P R I L 2 0 1 5 Libraries To find on the web go to www.nccde.org/libraries and click on “What Do I Read Next” FICTION

THE SIEGEIEGE WINTERINTER BY ARIANA FRANKLIN (PICKED BY SLH & SS) It's 12th Century England and the civil war between Queen Matilda and King Stephen is raging. But life in the fens carries on as usual until the mercenaries ride through and a small red-haired girl named Em is snatched and carried off. After the soldiers have finished with her they leave her for dead. Although she has lost all memory of her past life including her name, Em survives and teams up with Gwyl a Breton archer who has almost completely lost faith in humanity. Together Gwyl and his new protege--now crop-headed and disguised as a boy--travel through the countryside giving archery exhibitions. But there is one man who hasn't forgotten the little red- haired girl. He has some unfinished business with her and he is determined to finish it. And one freezing winter in a castle completely besieged, he might well get his chance... Winter Siege is a stand-alone historical novel started by the late Diana Norman under her pseudonym Ariana Franklin. It has been completed by her daughter Samantha Norman.

DOROTHY PARKER DRANK HERE BY ELLEN MEISTER (PICKED BY SM) Heavenly peace? No, thank you. Dorothy Parker would rather wander the famous halls of the Algonquin Hotel, drink in hand, searching for someone, anyone, who will keep her company on this side of eternity. After forty years she thinks she’s found the perfect candidate in Ted Shriver, a brilliant literary voice of the 1970s, silenced early in a promising career by a devastating plagiarism scandal. Now a prickly recluse, he hides away in the old hotel slowly dying of cancer, which he refuses to treat. If she can just convince him to sign the infamous guestbook of Percy Coates, Dorothy Parker might be able to persuade the jaded writer to spurn the white light with her. Ted, however, rejects her proposal outright. When a young, ambitious TV producer, Norah Wolfe, enters the hotel in search of Ted Shriver, Parker sees another opportunity to get what she wants. Instead, she and Norah manage to uncover such startling secrets about Ted’s past that the future changes for all of them.

THE LOOK OF LOVE BY SARAH JIOIO (PICKED BY KT) Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to see true love. Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic when, on her twenty-ninth birthday, a mysterious greeting card arrives, specifying that Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her thirtieth birthday, or face grave consequences. When Jane falls for a science writer who doesn’t believe in love, she fears that her fate is sealed. Inspired by the classic song, The Look of Love is utterly enchanting.

FIERCOMBEIERCOMBE MANOR BY KATE RIORDANIORDAN (PICKED BY SH) In the summer of 1933, Alice Eveleigh has arrived at Fiercombe Manor in disgrace. The beautiful house becomes her sanctuary, a place to hide her shame from society in the care of the housekeeper, Mrs Jelphs. But the manor also becomes a place of suspicion, one of secrecy. Something isn't right. Someone is watching. There are secrets that the manor house seems determined to keep. Tragedy haunts the empty rooms and foreboding hangs heavy in the stifling heat. Traces of the previous occupant, Elizabeth Stanton, are everywhere and soon Alice discovers Elizabeth's life eerily mirrors the path she herself is on.

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

A MEMORY OF VIOLETSIOLETS BY HAZEL GAYNOR (PICKED BY SM) In 1912, twenty-year-old Tilly Harper leaves the peace and beauty of her native Lake District for London, to become assistant housemother at Mr. Shaw’s Home for Watercress and Flower Girls. For years, the home has cared for London’s flower girls—orphaned and crippled children living on the grimy streets and selling posies of violets and watercress to survive. Soon after she arrives, Tilly discovers a diary written by an orphan named Florrie—a young Irish flower girl who died of a broken heart after she and her sister, Rosie, were separated. Moved by Florrie’s pain and all she endured in her brief life, Tilly sets out to discover what happened to Rosie. But the search will not be easy. Full of twists and surprises, it leads the caring and determined young woman into unexpected places, including the depths of her own heart.

THE FIFTHIFTH GOSPEL BY IAN CALDWELL (PICKED BY SLH) In 2004, as Pope John Paul’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. The same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a married Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in the robbery, Father Alex, desperate to keep his family safe, undertakes his own investigation into both crimes. His only hope of finding the killer is to reconstruct the dead curator’s final secret: what the four Christian gospels—and a little-known, true-to-life fifth gospel named the Diatessaron—reveal about the Church’s most controversial holy relic. As evidence vanishes and witnesses refuse to testify, Father Alex realizes the system is controlled by someone with vested stakes in the exhibit—someone he must outwit to survive.

HOW TO BUILD A GIRLIRL BY CAITLIN MORAN (PICKED BY KT) It's 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there's no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde— fast-talking, hard-drinking gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer—like Jo in Little Women, or the Brontës— but without the dying-young bit. But what happens when Johanna realizes she's built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks enough to build a girl after all? Imagine The Bell Jar—written by Rizzo from Grease.

WEREWOLF COP BY ANDREW KLAVAN (PICKED BY LD) Zach Adams is one of the best detectives in the country. Nicknamed Cowboy, he’s a soft-spoken homicide detective from Houston known for his integrity and courage under fire. He serves on a federal task force that has a single mission: to hunt down Dominic Abend, a European gangster who has taken over the American underworld. After a brutal murder gives them a lead, Zach and his tough guy NYPD partner Martin Goulart feel like they’re finally on Abend’s trail. But things get complicated. Goulart’s on-the-job enemies are accusing him of corruption and Zach is beginning to suspect that Abend’s evil goes beyond crime perhaps to the edge of the supernatural.

THE LOVE SONG OF MISSISS QUEENIE HENNESSY BY RACHEL JOYCE (PICKED BY SS) When Queenie Hennessy discovers that Harold Fry is walking the length of England to save her, and all she has to do is wait, she is shocked. Her note had explained she was dying. How can she wait? A new volunteer at the hospice suggests that Queenie should write again; only this time she must tell Harold everything. In confessing to secrets she has hidden for twenty years, she will find atonement for the past. As the volunteer points out, 'Even though you've done your travelling, you're starting a new journey too.' Queenie thought her first letter would be the end of the story. She was wrong. It was the beginning.

New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Tom Gordon, County Executive STAFF PICKS A P R I L 2 0 1 5 Libraries

NON--FICTION

MASTER THIEVES BY STEVEN KURKJIAN (PICKEDICKED BY SLH & SMC) In a secret meeting in 1981, a low-level Boston thief gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was a big score waiting to happen. Though its collections included priceless artworks by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and others, its security was cheap, mismanaged, and out of date. And now, it seemed, the whole Boston criminal underworld knew it. Nearly a decade passed before the museum was finally hit. But when it finally happened, the theft quickly became one of the most infamous art heists in history: thirteen works of art valued at up to $500 million, by some of the most famous artists in the world, were taken. The Boston FBI took control of the investigation, but twenty-five years later the case is still unsolved and the artwork is still missing. Stephen Kurkjian, one of the top investigative reporters in the country, has been working this case for nearly twenty years.

DEAD WAKE BY ERIK LARSON (PICKEDICKED BY SLH & SS) On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small--hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

POGUE’S BASICS BY DAVID POGUE (PICKEDICKED BY SR) Did you know that can you scroll a Web page just by tapping the space bar? How do you recover photos you’ve deleted by accident? What can you do if your cell phone’s battery is dead by dinnertime each day? When it comes to technology, there’s no driver’s ed class or government-issued pamphlet covering the essentials. Luckily, award-winning tech expert David Pogue comes to the rescue with Pogue’s Basics, a book that will change your relationship with all of the technology in your life. Crystal-clear illustrations accompany these 225 easy-to-follow tips such as: Bring a wet phone back from the dead · Bypass annoyingly long voice mail instructions · Use map apps on your phone without an Internet connection · See what’s in a file without opening it · How to get money for your used electronics · Rename a bunch of files in one fell swoop · Make YouTube videos sharper · and much more.

THE GREAT LEADER AND THE FIGHTERIGHTER PILOTILOT BY BLAINE HARDEN (PICKEDICKED BY RS) In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception—and escape. As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one million dollars today). The theft—just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953—electrified the world and incited Kim’s bloody vengeance.

New Castle County Libraries | Department of Community Services | Tom Gordon, County Executive STAFF PICKS NON-FICTION CONTINUED

THE GREAT BEANIE BABY BUBBLE BY ZAC BISSONNETTEISSONNETTE (PICKED BY SMC & SS) In the annals of consumer crazes, nothing compares to . With no advertising or big-box distribution, creator Warner - an eccentric college dropout - become a billionaire in just three years. And it was all thanks to collectors. The end of the craze was just as swift and extremely devastating, with "rare" Beanie Babies deemed worthless as quickly as they'd once been deemed priceless. Bissonnette draws on hundreds of interviews (including a visit to a man who lives with his 40,000 Ty products and an in-prison interview with a guy who killed a coworker over a Beanie Baby debt) for the first book on the most extraordinary craze of the 1990s.

THE LONGEST AUGUST BY DILIPILIP HIROIRO (PICKED BY SMC) The partitioning of British India into independent Pakistan and India in August 1947 occurred in the midst of communal holocaust, with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other. More than 750,000 people were butchered, and 12 million fled their homes to seek refuge across the new border: it was the largest exodus in history. Sixty-seven years later, it is as if that August never ended. Renowned historian and journalist Dilip Hiro provides a riveting account of the relationship between India and Pakistan, tracing the landmark events that led to the division of the sub-continent and the evolution of the contentious relationship between Hindus and Muslims. Since partition, there have been several acute crises between the neighbors, including the secession of East Pakistan to form an independent Bangladesh in 1971, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by both sides. Hiro amply demonstrates the geopolitical importance of the India-Pakistan conflict by chronicling their respective ties not only with America and the Soviet Union, but also with China, Israel, and Afghanistan.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER BY LAURA SNYDER (PICKED BY SLH) On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld. Scientists peered at nature through microscopes and telescopes, making the discoveries in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and anatomy that ignited the Scientific Revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses, mirrors, and camera obscuras, creating extraordinarily detailed paintings and scenes filled with realistic effects of light, shadow, and color. By extending the reach of sight the new optical instruments prompted the realization that there is more than meets the eye. But they also raised questions about how we see and what it means to see.

100 ESSENTIAL THINGS YOU DIDNIDN’’T KNOW ABOUT MATH & THE ARTS BY JOHN BARROW (SLH) Professor John D. Barrow shows us that mathematics and the arts are not so far removed from each other. He takes us on a 100-step tour, guiding us through art forms as various as sculpture, literature, architecture and dance, and reveals what math can tell us about the mysteries of the worlds of art and design. We find out why diamonds sparkle, how many words Shakespeare knew and why the shower is the best place to sing. We discover why an egg is egg-shaped, why Charles Dickens crusaded against math and how a soprano can shatter a wine glass without touching it...

THE INTERSTELLAR AGE BY JIMIM BELL (PICKED BY SMC) The Voyager spacecraft are our farthest-flung emissaries—11.3 billion miles away from the crew who built and still operate them, decades since their launch. Voyager 1 left the solar system in 2012; its sister craft, Voyager 2, will do so in 2015. The fantastic journey began in 1977, before the first episode of Cosmos aired. The mission was planned as a grand tour beyond the moon; beyond Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; and maybe even into interstellar space. The fact that it actually happened makes this humanity’s greatest space mission. Planetary scientist Jim Bell reveals what drove and continues to drive the members of this extraordinary team.

Reviews excerpted from amazon.com and goodreads.com