Author: Synnott, Mark, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 796.522 SYNNOTT
Format: Books
Summary: A hundred-year mystery lured veteran climber Mark Synnott into an unlikely expedition up Mount Everest during the spring 2019 season that came to be known as "the Year Everest Broke." What he found was a gripping human story of impassioned characters from around the globe and a mountain that will consume your soul--and your life--if you let it. The mystery? On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world, where no one had stood before. They were last seen eight hundred feet shy of Everest's summit still "going strong" for the top. Could they have succeeded decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay? Irvine is believed to have carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Did the frozen film in that camera have a photograph of Mallory and Irvine on the summit before they disappeared into the clouds, never to be seen again? Kodak says the film might still be viable. . . . Mark Synnott made his own ascent up the infamous North Face along with his friend Renan Ozturk, a filmmaker using drones higher than any had previously flown. Readers witness first-hand how Synnott's quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives and museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan high plateau, and up the North Face into a massive storm. The infamous traffic jams of climbers at the very summit immediately resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese officials turned on Synnott's team. An Indian woman miraculously crawled her way to frostbitten survival. Synnott himself went off the safety rope--one slip and no one would have been able to save him--committed to solving the mystery. Eleven climbers died on Everest that season, all of them mesmerized by an irresistible magic. The Third Pole is a rapidly accelerating ride to the limitless joy and horror of human obsession. "Veteran climber Mark Synnott never planned on climbing Mount Everest, but a hundred-year mystery lured him into an expedition--and an awesome history of passionate adventure, chilling tragedy, and human aspiration unfolded"--
Author: Baldacci, David, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: LP F BALDACCI
Format: Large print
Summary: "Aloysius Archer travels to 1950s California to apprentice with a legendary private eye and former FBI agent but immediately finds himself involved in a scandal"-- The 1950s are on the horizon, and Archer is in dire need of a fresh start after a nearly fatal detour in Poca City. So Archer hops on a bus and begins the long journey out west to California, where rumor has it there is money to be made for someone who's hard-working, lucky, a criminal, or all three. Along the way, Archer stops in Reno, where a stroke of fortune delivers him a wad of cash and an eye-popping blood-red 1939 Delahaye convertible, plus a companion for the final leg of the journey, an aspiring actress named Liberty Callahan who is planning to try her luck in Hollywood. But when the two arrive in Bay Town, California, Archer quickly discovers that the hordes of people who flocked there seeking fame and fortune landed in a false paradise that instead caters to their worst addictions and fears. Archer's first stop is a P.I. office where he is hoping to apprentice with a legendary private eye and former FBI agent named Willie Dash. He lands the job, and immediately finds himself in the thick of a potential scandal: a blackmail case involving a wealthy well-connected politician running for mayor that soon spins into something even more sinister. As bodies begin falling, Archer and Dash must infiltrate the world of brothels, gambling dens, drug operations, and long-hidden secrets, descending into the rotten bones of a corrupt town that is selling itself as the promised land--but might actually be the road to perdition, and Archer's final resting place.
Author: Carr, Jack (Joint pseudonym), author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: F CARR
Format: Books
Summary: "It's been twenty years since 9/11. Two decades since the United States was attacked on home soil and embarked on twenty years of war. The enemy has been patient, learning, and adapting. And the enemy is ready to strike again. A new president offers hope to a country weary of conflict. He's a young, popular, self-made visionary...but he's also a man with a secret. Halfway across the globe a regional superpower struggles with sanctions imposed by the Great Satan and her European allies, a country whose ancient religion spawned a group of ruthless assassins. Faced with internal dissent and extrajudicial targeted killings by the United States and Israel, the Supreme Leader puts a plan in motion to defeat the most powerful nation on earth."--Dust jacket flap.
Author: Baver, Kristin, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 791.437
Format: Books
Summary: "Uncover the secrets of the Skywalkers: the family that shaped a galaxy far, far away ... The Skywalker story has everything: passion, intrigue, heroism, and dark deeds. This revelatory biography explores every twist and turn of the Skywalker dynasty: the slow seduction to the dark side of Anakin; his doomed marriage to Padmé Amidala; the heroics of Luke and Leia; the fall and redemption of Han Solo and Princess Leia's son, Ben; and the struggles of his dyad in the Force, Rey. Leaving no stone unturned in tracing the dynasty's trials and tribulations, this definitive biography of Star Wars' first family explores and explains the deeper, more personal story of the Skywalkers, their characters, motivations, and, against seemingly impossible odds, their ultimate triumph." --
Author: Lawson, Michael, 1948- author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: F LAWSON
Format: Books
Summary: "The fifteenth novel in Mike Lawson's acclaimed series follows Joe DeMarco to Wyoming, scene of an armed standoff between a defiant cattle rancher and federal agents. But DeMarco doesn't care about the standoff; this mission is personal for him. When someone close to him is shot dead in a roadside motel in a small town in Wyoming, DeMarco shirks his responsibilities as the Speaker of the House's fixer to make sure the authorities are doing everything that can be done to catch the killer. He soon realizes that the rural area is dominated by Hiram Bunt, a wealthy rancher who is willing to take on the federal government at gunpoint and seems to have a number of politicians under his thumb. But Bunt is not the only one in the way. DeMarco also learns that his friend--a woman he was once in love with--had unearthed a number of explosive secrets during her time in Wyoming, and that the deputy in charge of the investigation may be ignoring several leads to preserve a secret of his own. Surrounded by people willing to kill to maintain the status quo, DeMarco launches his own investigation into a growing list of intertwining suspects. And being DeMarco, he concludes that breaking the law to uncover the truth is the best way to ensure that justice is done."--Provided by publisher.
Author: Leder, Steven Z., author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 306.9
Format: Books
Summary: "As the Senior Rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone, but also the beauty of what remains"-- As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply. Here he takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. It was only after the loss of his own father that Leder truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Bay, Mia, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 305.896
Format: Books
Summary: "What was it like to travel while Black under Jim Crow? Mia Bay brings this dramatic history to life. With gripping stories and a close eye on the rail, bus, and airline operators who implemented segregation, she shows why access to unrestricted mobility has been central to the Black freedom struggle since Reconstruction and remains so today"--
Author: Cantor, Jillian, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: LP F CANTOR
Format: Large print
Summary: Jillian Cantor re-imagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she'd made a different choice. "In Poland in 1891, Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. But what if she had made a different choice? What if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz at the age of twenty-four, and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constant hunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted, instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie? Entwining Marie Curie's real story with Marya Zorawska's fictional one, Half Life explores loves lost and destinies unfulfilled-- and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and knowledge. Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya's life, Jillian Cantor's unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a great scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education. It examines how the lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved-- as well as the world at large and course of science and history-- might have been irrevocably changed in ways both great and small."--Publisher.
Author: Logan, Tom, 1953- author. Hirschfeld, Marc, writer of foreword.
Published: 2021 2004
Call Number: 792.02 LOGAN
Format: Books
Summary: This essential update to the classic book from the ultimate insider, Tom Logan, contains everything you need to know about the profession of acting from both sides of the camera. Previously a highly successful working actor, Tom Logan brings that experience to this updated and expanded edition of How to Act & Eat at the Same Time, the Sequel, but through the unique lens of now being an extremely successful working TV, film, and commercial director, writer, and producer. You'll learn that ultimately, success in an audition has absolutely nothing to do with acting. Rather, it's having the essential audition skills--which you won't find in a "how to" audition book. That's what you'll learn from a master who has spent a career in and around the universe of auditions and the casting process. All sixteen chapters have been brought up-to-date, making this book a must read for today's aspiring and working actors. And all of the appendices containing the essential practical information an actor needs in his toolbox has been updated too - resource websites; SAG, AFTRA, and Equity locations; rules and requirements for joining SAG, AEA, and Equity; plus, an updated glossary.
Author: Brockmeier, Kevin, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: F BROCKMEI
Format: Books
Summary: "The author of the acclaimed novel The Brief History of the Dead now gives us one hundred funny, poignant, scary, and thought-provoking ghost stories that explore all aspects of the afterlife. A spirit who appears in a law firm reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, a man haunted by the trees cut down to build his house, nefarious specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows in which they live, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead--these are just a few of the characters Kevin Brockmeier presents in this extraordinary compendium of spectral emanations and their wildly various purposes in (after) life. These tales are by turns playful, chilling, and philosophical, paying homage to the genre while audaciously subverting expectations. The ghosts in these pages are certain to haunt you well after you've closed the book"--
Author: Hall, Steven, 1975- author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: F HALL
Format: Books
Summary: "Thomas Quinn is having a hard time. A failed novelist, he's stuck writing short stories and audio scripts for other people's characters while his wife, Imogen, is working on a remote island halfway around the world. The bills are piling up, the dirty dishes are stacking in the sink, and the whole world seems to be hurtling toward entropic collapse. Then he gets a voicemail from his father, who has been dead for seven years. Thomas's relationship with Stanley Quinn--a world-famous writer and erstwhile absent father--was always shaky, not least because Stanley always seemed to prefer his enigmatic protégé Andrew Black to his own son. Yet after Black published his first book, which went on to sell over a million copies, he disappeared completely. Now strange things are happening to Thomas, and he can't help but wonder if Black is tugging at the seams of his world behind the scenes. Absurdly brilliant, wildly entertaining, and utterly mind-bending, Maxwell's Demon triumphantly excavates the ways we construct meaning in a world where chaotic collapse looms closer every day"--
Author: Martin, Madeline, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: F MARTIN
Format: Books
Summary: "August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler's forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and drawn curtains that she finds on her arrival are not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she'd wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed--a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war."--
Author: Tooley, Adrienne, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: Y TOOLEY
Format: Books
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Tamsin, a cursed witch who must steal love from others, meets Wren, a girl hiding her own dangerous magic, they strike a love bargain with life-or-death consequences. Tamsin is the most powerful witch of her generation, but after committing the worst magical sin she is exiled by the ruling Coven and cursed with the inability to love. She can only get those feelings back-- temporarily-- by stealing love from others. Wren is a source, a person full of magic despite being unable to use it herself. As the only caretaker to her ailing father, Wren has spent her life hiding her secret. When her father falls victim to a magical plague that ravages the queendom, Wren proposes a bargain: if Tamsin will help her catch the dark witch responsible for creating the plague, then Wren will give Tamsin her love for her father. -- adapted from jacket
Author: Archibald, John, 1963- author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 976.1092 ARCHIBAL
Format: Books
Summary: On growing up in the American South of the 1960s--an all-American white boy--son of a long line of Methodist preachers, in the midst of the civil rights revolution, and discovering the culpability of silence within the church. "My dad was a Methodist preacher and his dad was a Methodist preacher," writes John Archibald. "It goes all the way back on both sides of my family. When I am at my best, I think it comes from that sermon place." Everything Archibald knows and believes about life is "refracted through the stained glass of the Southern church. It had everything to do with people. And fairness. And compassion." In Shaking the Gates of Hell, Archibald asks: Can a good person remain silent in the face of discrimination and horror, and still be a good person? Archibald had seen his father, the Rev. Robert L. Archibald, Jr., the son and grandson of Methodist preachers, as a moral authority, a moderate and a moderating force during the racial turbulence of the '60s, a loving and dependable parent, a forgiving and attentive minister, a man many Alabamians came to see as a saint. But was that enough? Even though Archibald grew up in Alabama in the heart of the civil rights movement, he could recall few words about racial rights or wrongs from his father's pulpit at a time the South seethed, and this began to haunt him. In this moving and powerful book, Archibald writes of his complex search, and of the conspiracy of silence his father faced in the South, in the Methodist Church and in the greater Christian church. Those who spoke too loudly were punished, or banished, or worse. Archibald's father was warned to guard his words on issues of race to protect his family, and he did. He spoke to his flock in the safety of parable, and trusted in the goodness of others, even when they earned none of it, rising through the ranks of the Methodist Church, and teaching his family lessons in kindness and humanity, and devotion to nature and the Earth. Archibald writes of this difficult, at times uncomfortable, reckoning with his past in this unadorned, affecting book of growth and evolution.
Author: Lo, Malinda, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: Y LO
Format: Books
Summary: "Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite his hard-won citizenship--Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day"--
Author: Plokhy, Serhii, 1957- author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 972.91 PLOKHY
Format: Books
Summary: "A dramatic re-creation and urgent examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must return to the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, involving John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was avoided for one central reason: fear. Serhii Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day"--
Author: McLain, Paula, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: F MCLAIN
Format: Books
Summary: "Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When unspeakable tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino. She spent summers there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her to heal. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. Anna is in no condition to become involved with the search-- until a childhood friend, now the village sheriff, pleads for her help. Then, just days later, a twelve-year-old girl is abducted from her home. The crimes feel frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment... As Anna becomes obsessed with these missing girls, she must learn that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in."--Provided by publisher.
Author: White, Edward, 1981- author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: B HITCHCOC
Format: Books
Summary: In The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Edward White explores the Hitchcock phenomenon-what defines it, how it was invented, what it reveals about the man at its core, and how its legacy continues to shape our cultural world. The book's twelve chapters illuminate different aspects of Hitchcock's life and work. Each of these angles reveals something fundamental about the man he was and the mythological creature he has become, presenting not just the life Hitchcock lived but also the various versions of himself that he projected, and those projected on his behalf. From Hitchcock's early work in England to his most celebrated films, White astutely analyzes Hitchcock's oeuvre and provides new interpretations. He also delves into Hitchcock's ideas about gender; his complicated relationships with "his women"--not only Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren but also his female audiences--as well as leading men such as Cary Grant, and writes movingly of Hitchcock's devotion to his wife and lifelong companion, Alma, who made vital contributions to numerous classic Hitchcock films, and burnished his mythology. And White is trenchant in his assessment of the Hitchcock persona, so carefully created that Hitchcock became not only a figurehead for his own industry but nothing less than a cultural icon. Ultimately, White's portrayal illuminates a vital truth: Hitchcock was more than a Hollywood titan; he was the definitive modern artist, and his significance reaches far beyond the confines of cinema.
Author: Nicholas, Kimberly, PhD, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: 363.738
Format: Books
Summary: "...[offers] a hopeful, clear-eyed, and somehow also hilarious guide to effecting real change, starting in our own lives. Saving ourselves from climate apocalypse will require radical shifts within each of us, to effect real change in our society and culture."-- After speaking to the international public for close to fifteen years about sustainability, climate scientist Dr. Nicholas realized that concerned people were getting the wrong message about the climate crisis. Yes, companies and governments are hugely responsible for the mess we're in. But individuals CAN effect real, significant, and lasting change to solve this problem. Nicholas explores finding purpose in a warming world, combining her scientific expertise and her lived, personal experience in a way that seems fresh and deeply urgent: Agonizing over the climate costs of visiting loved ones overseas, how to find low-carbon love on Tinder, and even exploring her complicated family legacy involving supermarket turkeys. In her astonishing book Under the Sky We Make, Nicholas does for climate science what Michael Pollan did more than a decade ago for the food on our plate: offering a hopeful, clear-eyed, and somehow also hilarious guide to effecting real change, starting in our own lives. Saving ourselves from climate apocalypse will require radical shifts within each of us, to effect real change in our society and culture. But it can be done. It requires, Dr. Nicholas argues, belief in our own agency and value, alongside a deep understanding that no one will ever hand us power--we're going to have to seize it for ourselves
Author: Gardner, Faith, author.
Published: 2021
Call Number: Y GARDNER
Format: Books
Summary: Journey hadn't planned for a future, but when her suicide attempt fails she finds the life she never meant to live challenging in more ways than before: her parents don't trust her, her friends have moved on for their own good, her bipolar disorder is overwhelming. At odds with herself and lacking concrete goals, she begins volunteering at a local helpline, where she finds a community as strong yet broken as she is.
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