New for Children
The Thickety: The Whispering Trees
by J. A. White
After Kara Westfall’s village turns on her for practicing witchcraft, she and her brother, Taff, flee to the one place they know they won’t be followed: the Thickety. Only this time the Forest Demon, Sordyr, is intent on keeping them there. Sordyr is not the Thickety’s only danger: Unknown magic lurks behind every twist and shadow of the path. And then they discover Mary Kettle, an infamous witch with a horrifying past.
As An Oak Tree Grows
by G. Brian Karas
This inventive picture book relates the events of 200 years from the unique perspective of a magnificent oak tree, showing how much the world can transform from a single vantage point. From 1775 to the present day, readers watch as human and animal populations shift and the landscape transitions from country to city. Methods of transportation, communication, and energy use progress rapidly while other things hardly seem to change at all.
New for Young Adults
Rook
by Sharon Cameron
Centuries after a shifting of Earth’s poles, the city that was once Paris is in the grip of a revolution. All who oppose the new regime are put to the blade, except for those who disappear from their prison cells, a red-tipped rook feather left in their place. Is the mysterious Red Rook a savior of the innocent or a criminal?
Meanwhile, across the sea in the Commonwealth, Sophia Bellamy’s arranged marriage to the wealthy René Hasard is the last chance to save her family from ruin. But when the search for the Red Rook comes straight to her doorstep, Sophia discovers that her fiancé is not all he seems … which is only fair, because neither is she.
The Fixer
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
When 16-year-old Tess Kendrick is sent to live with her older sister, Ivy, she has no idea that Ivy is Washington D.C.’s #1 “fixer,” known for making politicians’ scandals go away for a price. No sooner does Tess enroll at Hardwicke Academy than she unwittingly follows in her sister’s footsteps and becomes D.C.’s premier high school fixer, solving problems for elite teens.
Secrets pile up as each sister lives a double life, until their worlds come crashing together. Suddenly, there is much more on the line than good grades, money, or politics, and the price for this fix might be more than Tess is willing to pay.
New for Adults
The Heart Goes Last
by Margaret Atwood
Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in … for six months of the year. On alternating months, residents must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. When their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their “civilian” homes.
At first, this doesn’t seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have shelter and food. But with each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled.
Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads
by Paul Theroux
Travel writer Paul Theroux has spent 50 years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic. Now, for the first time, Theroux explores a piece of America—the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, but also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It’s these parts of the South that have caught Theroux’s eye.
On road trips spanning four seasons, wending along rural highways, Theroux visits gun shows and small-town churches, laborers in Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi where they still call the farm up the road “the plantation.” He talks to mayors and social workers, writers and reverends, the working poor and farming families—the unsung heroes of the South, those who never left, and also those who returned home to rebuild a place they could never live without.
