Blue Ribbon Book Stop

For those in a hurry for the holidays, grab a book from our newest display "Short & Sweet: Reading on the Run." These notable short story collections will be on display through December 21, 2009.

Delhi Noir edited by Hirsh Sawhney is part of the Akashic Noir award-winning series that launched in 2004. Each book is comprised of all new stories set in a distinct city and featuring dark tales. The legendary city of Delhi proves fertile ground for tales from the city's underside. The books contributors are as diverse as their stories--from Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs; Punjabis, Biharis, Bengalis, and Keralites.

Close Range: Wyoming Stories is by Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News. Set in a landscape both brutal and magnificant, Proulx's collection features stories of cowboys, rodeo riders, and ranches. It includes the tale of Brokeback Mountain from which the award-winning movie was made.

Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen by Stephanie Harrison highlights 35 great stories that have inspired great films. All About Eve, Rear Window, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are much-loved movies that began their lives as short stories. Adaptations gathers together stories that have been the basis for films, many from giants in American literature.

There are many award-winning and unique collections on display, including for specific genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Check out this display for some quick and satisfying reads.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Visit the latest holiday display this November 2009, honoring colonial America. Several standout books have been written about Jamestown, the Virginia settlement that pre-dates the Mayflower.

Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America by Benjamin Woolley is "a well-told story of discovery, conquest, business, and politics." The award-winning author and broadcaster meticulously gathers and documents many fascinating details of this first permanent English colony in North America.

Captain John Smith: Jamestown and the Birth of the American Dream by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler draws from primary sources, including John Smith's own writings, to tell the story of the colony's most famous founder. Edgar award-winning authors also deconstruct the myth of the relationship between Captain Smith and Pocahontas.

The Jamestown Project by Karen Ordahl Kupperman enlarges the colony's story to encompass all the factors that led up to its founding, including the view from England toward the New World. Kupperman, an NYU historian, also reveals the dark side of this seeming success story.

These three non-fiction works are recent additions, written to honor the 400th anniversary of Jamestown in 1607.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice is a staff pick for spring reading. No relation to Anne Rice, Luanne Rice artfully blends romance and suspense into spellbinding page turners.

Many of her books are available in the fiction section of the library including Light of the Moon. In this lyrical novel, an accomplished anthropologist travels to the fabled French Camarge to see its famous white horses and investigate her family's history. Here she falls for a horse rancher and is taken into the confidence of by a group of gypsy women as she unearths secrets in the fog-shrouded landscape.

Check the library catalog for the new feature "Similar Books," which provides links to other books by the same author and other authors who are similar in style. One such recommendation is The Secret Between Us by Barbara Delinsky, another bestselling author. Family dynamics blend seemlessly with elements of romance and suspence in this story of a mother who covers up for her daughter in a car accident by claiming to be the driver.

Both Rice and Delinsky are blue ribbon authors in this popular genre of women's fiction. For other similar authors, check with a reference librarian.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

In honor of Black History Month this February 2009, the Library is featuring two displays. Visit the standing display nearest the Reference Desk to see a wide selection of African American biographys. Awardwinning author, Louis R. Harlan's praiseworthy biography Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 examines the final fifteen years of this controversial leader's life.

For a look at a legendary black woman, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History by distinguished historian Milton C. Sernett, peels back the layers to help reveal the real Harriet Tubman, and studies how she has been portrayed in film, painting, music, theater, and books.

For those wanting quick reads about various African Americans in history, check out Black Abolitionists by Karen Coddon and The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America's First National Sport by Edward Hotaling. Whatever your area of interest, a librarian can help you get started by recommending specific books.

To get more ideas, visit the display behind the Public Information Desk and read the notes and photos on famous and inspirational African Americans.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Snow might be in the forecast, so to keep your cabin fever in check try checking-out one of these highly recommended new mystery novels. These are not your traditional mystery series novels though and they will keep you guessing till the very end.

Winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for mystery novels, Down River by John Hart tells the story of Adam Chase, newly acquitted from a New York City murder trial and heading home to North Carolina. But home only brings more trouble, as the people around him start to die Adam once again finds himself the prime suspect.

Touted by the New York Times as one of the top crime novels of 2008, The Genius by Jesse Kellerman is an enthralling murder mystery set in the art world. Art gallery owner Ethan Muller exhibits a collection of drawings that unknowingly contain the portraits of four children from a decades old murder case. This sets off a dramatic series of events that leads Ethan and a detective on the hunt for the killer.

Another Edgar Mystery Award, this time for 2007, Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree takes a historical fiction approach to the murder mystery novel. Set in the Ottoman Empire in 1836, a eunuch intelligence agent is searching for the culprit of a string of political murders that threatens to topple the sultan's delicate balance of power.

If you breeze through these recommendations we have plenty of more books in our mystery section that will keep you going through the winter.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Fantasy, fact, and fiction merge in some unusual Long Island stories. Bridging the past and the future, A Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin is a fanciful love story of a master thief and a white horse. Helprin begiles us with Baymen and billionaires and an ongoing search to stop time for the sake of love. This is the prefect tale to hunker down to on those cold winter nights.

The manipulation of time continues in The Montauk Project by Preston B. Nichols with Peter Moon. Part legend, and part conjecture, this chronicles one of the most amazing and secretive research projects in recorded history. Beginning in 1943, it culminates in bizarre experiments at Montauk Point.

Set in a small Long Island fishing community in 1947, Amagansett by Mark Mills is a dark and thoughtful story of a fisherman who finds his life transformed forever when he pulls up the body of a beautiful young woman in his fishing nets. This was previously a Long Island Reads book, part of a reading program for promoted by public libraries on Long Island.

For more fiction unique to Long Island, check with the Reference Desk.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

It's back to school for the kids and time for adults to take stock of their stock and finances. For those of you ready for some serious reading now that the summer fun is over, check out these books.

Suze Orman, personal finance guru with her own television show, has written a number of books. This classic The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop

Worrying urges readers to gain control of their finances. Attitudes and feelings about money as well as mastering the practical elements of financial planning with easy-to-follow procedures are provided in this all-encompassing book

For those who may want to gear up for retirement, try Kiplinger's Retire Worry-Free: Money-Smart Ways to Build the Nest Egg You'll Need from the editors of Kiplinger's Personal Finance. Strategies for dealing with IRAs, 401(k)s, Keoghs, profit sharing, life and long-term-care insurance, annuities and pensions, social security, and Medicare are all covered in this comprehensive read.

For a quick route to riches, take a look at The Ulitmate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches by Jeff Yeager. Dubbed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show as the ulitmate cheapskate, Yeager shows you how to buy less stuff, retire young, and live financially free, while you make a positive difference in people's lives and on the planet. He lays out practical principles that make cheap the new cool.

Check out the September 2008 "123" display for more guides to financial wisdom.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Looking for a good book to read? Or, are you searching for a new favorite author? Our librarians will be happy to assist you with suggestions to suit your taste. Here are a couple of the latest librarian-recommended books, also available in large print and CD.

The Confessor by Daniel Silva is a superbly spun thriller featuring Gabriel Allon, art restorer/Mossad spy, who returns to yet another tale of espionage. The novel's theme revolves around whether or not the Catholic Church turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities against the Jews during World War II. This solidly plotted, well-crafted story will appeal to readers who enjoy authors such as John le Carre and Allen Furst.

The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris is the sequel to Chocolat. It continues the story of Vianne, who has reinvented herself as the widow Yanne Charbonneau. Her daughter, previously known as Anouk, is now called Annie. The novel is written in several voices, and its characters are amazing, interwoven, and perfectly articulated. For all who loved Chocolat, this is a must read!

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Come on in and take a look at our new July displays! The middle display (by the large print books) features lots of blue ribbon books, recommended by librarians.

For those who enjoy exotic reads, take a look at Caravans by James Michener. Published in 1963, this is a fictionalized account of a missing American woman and a young member of the staff of the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, whose job is to find her.

There are many other great stories set in Afghanistan. If you enjoyed The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, you may want to check out his latest A Thousand Splendid Suns. This newer book plays out against the volatile events of the country's last thirty years--from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding. It is a tale of two generations brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war.

The Storyteller's Daughter by Saira Shah is real-life memoir . Risking her life to film Beneath the Veil--her acclaimed record of the devastation of women's lives by the Taliban--the English-born Shah discovers her extended Afghan family and her extraordinary heritage.

For more riveting Afghani fiction and non-fiction recommendations, reply to our blog or check at the reference desk.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Here are two recommended books sure to please...

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham is a classic novel. Set in the 1920s, it is a love story of a young English couple who marry for the wrong reasons. They relocate to Shangai, and then to a remote village in China which is being ravaged by cholera. Their journey brings meaning and purpose to their relationship.

In the month of February Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah became one of the Library's hot new books. It is the story of two unlikely girls who become the best of friends. Their devotion to each other sends a message about the power of friendship and family.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

A wide range of popular non-fiction books appropriate for discussions or individual reads are available at the Library. Here are two excellent choices.

The Bookseller of Kabul

by Asne Seierstad

Seierstad, a Western journalist, provides a remarkable true account of her experiences in Kabul, Afghanistan, as a live-in guest in the home of a bookseller and his family. Here she learns firsthand the chilling effects of censorship and the risks taken by this brave family. An international bestseller, this is a must read for those who enjoyed the novel The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini or for those who want to learn more about this fascinating country.

The Devil in the White City

by Erik Larson

Noted for his prodigious research, Larson creates spellbinding true story of two men--an architect and a serial killer--whose fates were forever linked by the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. This book is a must for true crime enthusiasts.

Check out our display (Feb. 2008) for these and other books featured on our blog!

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Whether you're having a book discussion or reading solely for your own enjoyment, these fiction books are popular library standbys.

The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

This bittersweet story tells of a mother's struggle to save her daughter and a horse in the aftermath of a tragic accident. It later became a popular movie.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Winner of the Man Booker Prize, Martel spins a unique tale of a zookeeper's son adrift at sea in a lifeboat with a hungry Bengal tiger.

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

From the author of the highly acclaimed book The Secret Life of Bees, this 2005 novel was a popular hit at the library. Set amidst a rich community of island women and the exotic beauty of the South Carolina marshes, this is both an erotic and spiritual story of a woman's yearning for soul-mated love.

Check out these books and others on our blog book display (Feb. 2008)!

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

What are Blue Ribbon Books? These are popular, best-selling, or award-winning books, or even a book that YOU may have recommended to us. We are currently featuring African-American authors for Black History Month, including J. California Cooper. This California playwright and author has received the James Baldwin Writing Award and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association. Some of her books available at the Library include:

Some People, Some Other Place

Homemade Love

and short stories:

Some Soul To Keep

Check out the book display by the Reference Desk for more African-American literature.