Author: Kurczy, Stephen, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: 975.4 Format: Books Summary: An award-winning journalist takes us deep into the Appalachian Mountains where the last truly quiet town of America exists and where its residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity, challenging us to rethink the role of tech in our lives. Deep in the Appalachian Mountains, Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned. It is home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology,. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory's telescopes, residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity; schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. Kurcxy introduces readers to a tech buster patrolling the area for illegal radio waves; "electrosensitives" who claim that WiFi is deadly; a sheriff's department with a string of unsolved murder cases dating back decades; a camp of neo-Nazis plotting their resurgence from a nearby mountain hollow; and ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible? -- adapted from jacket
Author: Cowley Heller, Miranda, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F COWLEY Format: Large print Summary: "Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at ... the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different, because last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time ... Now, over the next 24 hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas"--
Author: Michaelides, Alex, 1977- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F MICHAELI Format: Large print Summary: When a member of a secret society known as The Maidens is murdered, a brilliant, but troubled, group therapist finds her obsession with proving the guilt of an untouchable Cambridge University professor spiraling out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her life. "Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike-particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana's niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld? When another body is found, Mariana's obsession with proving Fosca's guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything-including her own life"--
Author: Pilcher, Rosamunde, author. Riley, Lucinda, author of introduction. Published: 2021 Call Number: F PILCHER Format: Books Summary: A collection of Rosamunde Pilcher's most enduring short stories, never before published in book form. The collection contains fifteen stories, which range from The Holiday, in which a wife surprises her husband of twenty-five years with a holiday full of Mediterranean sunshine, red rocks and blue seas in an effort to rekindle the romance they had before children; The Eye of Love which takes the reader to a village by the sea where old flames meet again; and A Place Like Home, where a lonely young woman goes to recuperate in a Scottish countryside after a brief illness.
Author: Putney, Mary Jo, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F PUTNEY Format: Books Summary: Called home to take his rightful place as laird, Kai Ramsey, returning to the remote Thorsay Islands, works together with Signy Matheson, a force to be reckoned with, for their people until unspoken desire and unexpected danger threaten to tear them apart. After the death of his fiancée, Kai Ramsey left Scotland to roam distant lands, even escaping certain death after being imprisoned as a spy during the Napoleonic War. Signy Matheson has dedicated her life to the people of Scotland's remote Thorsay Islands, and is a faithful ally to the aging laird. But now their leader is near death, and Signy must summon his successor at once. It is time for Kai Ramsey to come home. Signy has blossomed into an alluring beauty, and a force to be reckoned with. But their complicated past interferes with their unspoken desire as they work together for their people. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Woods, Stuart, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F WOODS Format: Large print Summary: "Stone Barrington takes down old and new enemies in the latest thriller from perennial fan favorite Stuart Woods. After a rocky jaunt in Maine, Stone Barrington is settling back in New York City when an old client reaches out for help with a delicate matter. A feud they thought was put to rest long ago has reemerged with a vengeance, and reputations--and money--are now on the line. As Stone sets out to unravel a tangled web of crime and secrets, his mission becomes even more complicated when he makes an irresistible new acquaintance. In both the underbelly and upper echelons of New York, everyone has something to hide--and if Stone has learned anything, it's that history has a way of repeating itself..." --
Author: Levy, Ashley Nelson, 1985- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F LEVY Format: Books Summary: "A tender and fierce debut novel that explores of the bond between two siblings-one the biological child and one adopted-and the complexities of motherhood, infertility, race, and the many definitions of family"--
Author: Palmer, Andrew, 1981 August 4- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F PALMER Format: Books Summary: "Reeling from a breakup with his almost-fiancée, the narrator of Andrew Palmer's first novel returns to his hometown in Iowa to house-sit for a family friend. There, a chance flick of the TV remote and a correspondence with an old grad school classmate plunge him into unlikely twin obsessions: the reality TV show The Bachelor and the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman. As his heart begins to mend, his fixation with each deepens and calcifies, and somewhere along the way, art and "reality" become harder and harder to distinguish from life. Love interests accumulate and then fall away: an old girlfriend calls and he answers; he meets a young woman at the dry cleaner. Soon he finds himself corresponding intimately, regularly with other suitors (as Berryman did in his lifetime), participating in a group outing (as The Bachelor does each season), and trying to puzzle through the strange turn his life seems to have taken"--
Author: Qu, Anna, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: B QU Format: Books Summary: "As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly twenty years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work. Traveling from Wenzhou to Xi'an to New York, Made in China is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival in immigrant families, the meaning of work, and the costs of immigration."--Amazon.
Author: Mitchell, Josh, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: 378.38 Format: Books Summary: In 1981, a new executive at Sallie Mae took home the company's financial documents to review. "You've got to be shitting me," he later told the company's CEO. "This place is a gold mine." Over the next four decades, the student loan industry that Sallie Mae and Congress created blew up into a crisis that would submerge a generation of Americans into $1.5 trillion in student debt. In The Debt Trap, Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell tells the untold story of the scandals, scams, predatory actors, and government malpractice that have created the behemoth that one of its original architects called a "monster." The tale begins in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. Afraid that America was falling behind the Soviets in science education, Congress created the first major federal student loan program to enroll more students in college. What followed were a series of well-intentioned government actions that created a cycle of reckless lending and runaway tuition. Easy access to loans allowed colleges to raise tuition to unheard of levels, which in turn led Congress to increase loan limits and interest rates and expand who could borrow. This spiral continued as the private banks that fronted the money made huge profits on interest. "Nobody was pure in this business," one former college president said. As he charts the gripping seventy-year history of student debt in America, Mitchell never loses sight of the countless student victims ensnared by an exploitive system that depends on their debt. Mitchell also draws alarming parallels to the housing crisis in the late 2000s, showing the catastrophic consequences student debt has had on families and the nation's future. Mitchell's character-driven narrative is required reading for anyone wanting to understand the central economic issue of our day. --adapted from publisher
Author: Cameron, Lindsay, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F CAMERON Format: Books Summary: "Eyes aren't the windows to the soul. Emails are. Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking--love, friends, stability--and leaves her with too much time on her hands, which she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point. While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender (and totally private) exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. Cassie knows she shouldn't read them. But it's just one look. And once that door opens, she finds she can't look away. Every day, twenty floors below Forest's corner office, Cassie dissects their emails from her dingy workstation. A few clicks of her mouse and she can see every adoring word they write to each other. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness, reveling in their penchant for vintage wines, morning juice presses, and lavish dinner parties thrown in their stately Westchester home. There are no secrets from her. Or so she thinks. Her admiration quickly escalates into all-out mimicry, because she wants this life more than anything. Maybe if she plays make-believe long enough, it will become real for her. But when Cassie orchestrates a "chance" meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something that throws the state of his marriage into question, the fantasy she's been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn't simply admire Annabelle--she wants to take her place. And she's armed with the tools to make that happen."--
Author: Turrell, Arthur, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: 539.7 Format: Books Summary: "From a young, award-winning scientist, a look at one of the most compelling and historic turning points of our time-the race to harness the power of the stars and produce controlled fusion, creating a practically unlimited supply of clean energy. The most important energy-making process in the universe takes place inside stars. The ability to duplicate that process in a lab, once thought out of reach, may now be closer than we think. Today, all across the world teams of scientists are being assembled by the world's boldest entrepreneurs, big business, and governments to solve what is the most difficult technological challenge humanity has ever faced: building the equivalent of a star on earth. If their plans to capture star power are successful, they will unlock thousands, potentially millions, of years of clean, carbon-free energy. Not only would controlled nuclear fusion go a long way toward solving the climate crisis, it could help make other highly desired technological ambitions possible-like journeying to the stars. Given the rising alarm over deterioration of the environment, and the strides being made in laser and magnetic field technology, powerful momentum is gathering behind fusion and the possibilities it offers"--
Author: Rowell, Rainbow, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: Y ROWELL Format: Books Summary: Simon, Baz, Penelope, and Agatha return to England, back to the Watford School of Magicks, and back to their families for a final adventure. Simon must decide whether he still wants to be part of the World of Mages-- and if he doesn't, what does that mean for his relationship with Baz? Meanwhile Baz is bouncing between two family crises and not finding any time to talk to anyone about his newfound vampire knowledge. Penelope would love to help, but she's smuggled an American Normal into London, and now she isn't sure what to do with him. And Agatha? Well, Agatha Wellbelove has had enough. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Santlofer, Jonathan, 1946- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F SANTLOFE Format: Books Summary: "August, 1911: The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincent Peruggia. Exactly what happens in the two years before its recovery is a mystery. Many replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, and more than one historian has wondered if the painting now in the Louvre is a fake, switched in 1911. Present day: art professor Luke Perrone digs for the truth behind his most famous ancestor: Peruggia. His search attracts an Interpol detective with something to prove and an unfamiliar but curiously helpful woman. Soon, Luke tumbles deep into the world of art and forgery, a land of obsession and danger. A gripping novel exploring the 1911 theft and the present underbelly of the art world, The Last Mona Lisa is a suspenseful tale, tapping into our universal fascination with da Vinci's enigma, why people are driven to possess certain works of art, and our fascination with the authentic and the fake"--
Author: Winstead, Ashley, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F WINSTEAD Format: Books Summary: "Jessica Miller plans to triumphantly return to Duquette University for her ten year reunion festivities. She's the most successful out of her entire group of friends, and she's ready to flaunt her achievements ... even though her "friend group," known on campus as the East House Seven, doesn't really exist anymore. Ten years ago, Heather, one of their own, was murdered, fracturing the once close knit group. And then another friend was accused of committing the vile act, shattering whatever friendly feelings remained. Jessica thinks she's coming back to campus to bask in a wave of glory. She and her friends have no idea that someone has set an elaborate trap to catch the real killer and close the cold case for good."--
Author: Parsons, Ash, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: Y PARSONS Format: Books Summary: Plum Winter and her two best friends sneak into an influencers-only festival event on a private island in the Caribbean, only to discover that a killer is in their midst. When her sister, famous influencer Peach Winter, is invited to an all-expenses paid trip to a luxurious art and music festival for influencers on a private island in the Caribbean, Plum intercepts the invite and asks her two best friends Antonia and Marlowe to come along to the fest with her. When they get to the island, it's not anything like it seemed in the invite. The island is run-down, creepy, and there doesn't even seem to be a festival-- it's just seven other quasi-celebrities and influencers, and none of the glitz and glamor she expected. Then people start to die.... Someone has a vendetta against every person on the island, and no one is supposed to leave the island alive. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Schaffhausen, Joanna, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: F SCHAFFHA Format: Books Summary: "Gone For Good is the first in a new mystery series from award-winning author Joanna Schaffhausen, featuring Detective Annalisa Vega, in which a cold case heats up. The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and after twenty years with no trace of him, many believe that he's gone for good. Not Grace Harper. A grocery store manager by day, at night Grace uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group. She believes the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods that he hunted in, and if she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity. Detective Annalisa Vega lost someone she loved to the killer. Now she's at a murder scene with the worst kind of déjà vu: Grace Harper lies bound and dead on the floor, surrounded by clues to the biggest murder case that Chicago homicide never solved. Annalisa has the chance to make it rights and to heal her family, but first, she has to figure out what Grace knew-how to see a killer who may be standing right in front of you. This means tracing his steps back to her childhood, peering into dark corners she hadn't acknowledged before, and learning that despite everything the killer took, she has still so much more to lose"--
Author: Coulter, Catherine, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F COULTER Format: Large print Summary: While FBI agent Sherlock helps an investigative journalist piece together the past to bring a killer to justice in the present, Agent Savich becomes a target as he protects a CIA operative who was betrayed on a compromised mission in Iran. "Seven years ago, Mia Briscoe was at a college frat rave with her best friend, Serena, when a fire broke out. Everyone was accounted for except Serena, who was never seen nor heard from again. Now an investigative journalist covering the political scene in New York City, Mia discovers old photos taken the night of Serena's disappearance and begins to uncover a sinister string of events going all the way back to that disastrous party. Working with Sherlock, the secrets begin to unravel. But some very powerful-and very dangerous-people will do anything to keep them from learning the truth--
Author: Brown, Sandra, 1948- author. Published: 2021 Call Number: LP F BROWN Format: Large print Summary: "Thatcher Hutton, a war-weary soldier on the way back to his cowboy life, jumps from a moving freight train to avoid trouble ... and lands in more than he bargained for"-- "Thatcher Hutton, a war-weary soldier on the way back to his cowboy life, jumps from a moving freight train to avoid trouble . . . and lands in more than he bargained for. On the day he arrives in Foley, Texas, a local woman goes missing. Thatcher, the only stranger in town, is suspected of her abduction, and worse. Standing between him and exoneration are a corrupt mayor, a crooked sheriff, a notorious cathouse madam, a sly bootlegger, feuding moonshiners . . . and a young widow whose soft features conceal an iron will." --Front jacket flap
Author: Ticktin, Allie, author. Published: 2021 Call Number: 370.15 Format: Books Summary: "A game-changing book on child development--and the importance of physical play--for this digital and screen age"-- For children to develop to their fullest potential, their sensory system--which, in addition to the big five of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, includes movement and balance (vestibular), body awareness (proprioception), and internal perception (interoception)--needs to be stimulated from the time they are born. Their senses flourish when they explore their environment by touching new textures, including their food, running, jumping, climbing, and splashing outside. The good news is that boosting your child's sensory development doesn't take enormous amounts of time or supplies, or any special skills. Here, Ticktin discusses the eight sensory systems and how a child uses them, and offers easy, fun activities--as well as advice on setting up a play area--that will encourage their development so that your little one will be better able to respond to their emotions, build friendships, communicate their needs, and thrive in school. That's the power of sensory play.--