Staff Picks
July 2008
Stay in touch with the personal favorites of the KDL Staff. Each title is handpicked.
Deb Baker
It’s spring in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — an exciting season of rising temperatures, budding romances, and the turkey-hunting opener. But for sheer adrenaline value, neither love nor turkeys can compete with the Credit Union being held up at gunpoint. Faster than you can say “Tom Turkey,” Gertie, Cora Mae, and Kitty are on the case, in this hoot of a whodunit.
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Ted Bell
With the help of Lord Hawke, whose children have been taken by the evil pirate Captain Billy Blood, young Nick McIver uses a time machine to rescue the two children as well as change the course of events in two time periods, the Napoleonic Wars and World War II.
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C.J. Box
Fleeing the killers whom they witnessed committing murder, twelve-year-old Annie and her younger brother William escape into the woods of northern Idaho, not knowing whom they can trust and pursued by the murderers and a group of dirty cops seeking to prevent the youngsters from revealing what they know. By the award-winning author of the Joe Pickett mysteries.
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Rick Bragg
The author details his quest to uncover the truth about the father he had never known and his unseen influence on his life and the choices he has made, inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson.
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Orson Scott Card
An expert at simulated war games, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin believes that he is engaged in one more computer war game when, in truth, he is commanding the last Earth fleet against an alien race seeking Earth’s complete destruction.
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Andrei Cherny
Draws on newly declassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and first-person interviews to document the contributions of an unlikely band of second-string soldiers and haggard military leaders in enabling the success of the Berlin Airlift humanitarian relief operation.
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Stephen Clarke
An entertaining memoir of the author’s adventures and experiences as an expatriate living in Paris describes the life and times of young British man brought to Paris by a French company to open a chain of British tea rooms, detailing his dealings with lazy French employees, a scheming boss, lusty girlfriends, and French culture.
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Dudley Clendinen
Documents the retirement of a former New York Times writer to a full-service Tampa Bay apartment populated by neighbors from all economic backgrounds and faiths, in an account that traces the community’s shared efforts to secure vibrancy and dignity throughout their final years.
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MaryJanice Davidson
Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor discovers that it is not all marital bliss in the suburbs as her husband, Sinclair, takes up reading “The Book of the Dead,” and a pack of once-feral vampires decides to pay an unwelcome visit.
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Sophie Gee
A tale based on the early eighteenth-century scandal that inspired Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” finds an impoverished Alexander Pope gaining entry into society and following a forbidden affair between the rakish Lord Petre and the coquettish Arabella.
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David Giffels
Traces the author’s attempts to renovate a crumbling Gilded Age mansion into a functional home for his growing family, an effort challenged by such factors as a lack of plumbing and electricity and a motley band of two- and four-legged squatters.
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Claudia Gray
While attending Evernight Academy, a school for vampires, Bianca is certain that she is different from the rest, but when she falls hard for an outsider who eventually reveals that he is a vampire hunter out to destroy her kind, Bianca must decide where her loyalties lie.
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Linda Greenlaw
Returning to the small Maine fishing community of her childhood, marine investigator Jane Bunker finds herself drawn into the case of a town drunk’s death, which she finds unsettlingly linked to local disputes over fishing and paternity rights.
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Jennifer Haigh
Unaware of the long-standing grievances harbored by their divorced parents, three adult siblings embark on a tumultuous summer when the oldest, a successful Manhattan doctor, investigates his sister’s chromosomal disorder against his mother’s wishes.
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Lea Jacobson
In a provocative memoir, an American woman describes her self-destructive journey into Japan’s seductive and erotic “floating world,” her difficulty conforming to the country’s rigidly structured society—a problem that cost her a job as an English teacher—her work as a nightclub hostess on the Ginza, and its addictive, seductive, and harmful impact on her life.
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Elmer Kelton
Former Texas Ranger Andy “Badger Boy” Pickard leaves his fiancâee’s north central Texas farm to pursue Luther Cordell, the outlaw ringleader he believes responsible for the death of his friend, Sheriff Tom Blessing.
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Julie Kenner
Just when she is confronted by the potential chaos of a vast neighborhood Easter party, suburban mother and demon hunter Kate Connor discovers that she must save the world once again from the High Demon Goramesh, who has returned to San Diablo, this time accompanied by an army of the undead and a powerful demonic ally.
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Lisa Lutz
Izzy struggles to retain her private investigator’s license after a pseudo engagement and her fourth arrest, a challenge that is further complicated by David’s marriage to Petra and Rae’s teenage angst.
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Joe McGinniss Jr.
Returning to Las Vegas after attending college in New York, Chase and his childhood friend, Michele, a Salvadoran immigrant, are drawn into the lucrative but perilous world of a teenage call-girl service, coming face to face with the violence, emptiness, and lust of the city and their generation.
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John Otterbacher
Sailing Grace is the author’s account of drowning in heart disease, fighting back to the surface, and sailing on. It begins with him flat on his back in a local health club and ends 31 months and 4000 miles later when he and his family maneuver their sailboat Grace to Schull Harbor, Ireland.
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Chuck Palahniuk
Narrated by Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600 as they await their turn on camera, a novel about the role of pornography in contemporary life follows porn queen Cassie Wright, who plans to break the record for serial fornication with six hundred men on camera.
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Steven Pressfield
In the fall of 1942, with Rommel’s forces poised to overrun Egypt, the Suez, and the oil rich Middle East, the British launch a desperate plan to send a small, heavily armed team behind enemy lines to stop Germany’s Afrika Korps and its commander.
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Ethan Rarick
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year’s westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force.
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Theresa Rebeck
Transformed into the fashion world’s latest “It” girls, the three Heller sisters fall prey to the venal forces and temptations of show business, unleashing a rivalry that threatens the three girls and their quiet, neglected brother with a self-destructive disaster.
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Louise Rennison
This eighth installment in the hilarious series finds Georgia Nicolson dealing with the return of Robbie the Sex God and the strange antics of Dave the Laugh.
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Eric Ryan
The creators of Method, an eco-friendly brand of cleaning products, explain how to clean one’s home without the use of the toxic chemicals that make up many household detergents and cleaning products, offering a room-by-room guide to eliminating dirt and grime.
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Kenneth Sewell
Draws on declassified intelligence files on both sides of the conflict to reveal how the sinking of the U.S.S. Scorpion, officially ruled an accident, had actually been part of a Soviet plot, in an account that identifies the contributions of Korean cryptography and the infamous spy John Walker.
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Rob Sheffield
In a poignant memoir of love, loss, and music, a rock and pop culture critic shares the story of his romance and marriage to Renée, a young woman with whom he had little in common except for the music that brought them together, and Renée’s tragic early death, all viewed from the perspective of the mix tapes that the couple had compiled.
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Garth Stein
Evaluating his life on the eve of his death, atypical canine Enzo considers the sacrifices his master, Denny Swift, has made in his pursuit of becoming a professional race car driver, and the dog’s own efforts to preserve the Swift family.
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Meg Wolitzer
Ten years after leaving high-power jobs to raise their children, four New York friends enter their forties while struggling with the differences between their past ideals and their present realities.
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Gerard Woodward
Mesmerized by Rembrandt’s portrait of his housekeeper-turned-mistress, grieving widower Aldous Jones experiences a renewed desire for life that prompts a journey to Belgium, where he reconnects with his bohemian son and forges new relationships during evening language classes.
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