Holy S**t: Managing Manure to Save Mankind

Title notwithstanding, this book is short on sensationalism and long on common sense and good humor with practical observations about sustainability and economy.  Pass this one up if the mere thought of tiptoeing around meadow muffins makes you faint.  The average urbanite may not be able to implement much in this book, but it could give one cred at the local farmers' market.  You'll learn which pitchfork is best for the job, whether the author has a composting toilet, how to toilet-train a pig... you get the idea!  Make sure to check out chapter 16 for consideration of methane and its sources - and be sure you check out Holy S**t: Managing Manure to Save Mankind @the library!

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman

Music writer Chuck Klosterman goes on a cross country trip to visit the places where rock stars died. Starting in the Chelsea Hotel where Sex Pistols Sid Vicious came to an early end, and ending in Seattle at the sight of Kurt Cobain's untimely demise, this is a journey in music. Of course, like all good solo road trips, he does a bit of thinking about his past relationships and the music that brings them up. If you've ever spent a day watching VH1 Classic, own more music than you could ever listen to, or have defined a relationship by a song, album or group, Killing Yourself to Live might resonate with you.

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell

In the 1950’s, a headstrong young woman leaves her home in the English countryside to make a life for herself in London. Meanwhile, in present day London, a young couple struggles to care for their newborn infant after the difficult labor and birth nearly killed the mother. The life of the first young woman leaps forward in months, years and decades. She broadens her life as she makes friends, takes lovers and develops a career as a world-traveling journalist. The life of the new young mother creeps by in minutes, hours and days and narrows into the exhaustion and isolation that come with new motherhood. What is the connection between these two women? Although the author drops some broad hints, these serve only to deepen the mystery, and later the suspense of the story. Check out The Hand That First Held Mine @the the library!

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) By Mindy Kaling

Writer and actress Mindy Kaling writes a book that is similar to talking to one of your best friends over coffee. Readers will see her grow up, from her early exploits as a chubby Indian girl to immigrant parents, to her years living in New York city with two best girlfriends, to finally getting her big break as a writer on the show, The Office. Filled with funny stories, observations and lists, fans of Chelsea Handler, Jen Lancaster and yes, Tina Fey will enjoy Kaling's concerns.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

When Hannah Payne wakes up, she is Red.  In a not-too-distant future United States where church and state are no longer separate, convicted felons are no longer incarcerated, but melachromed - injected with a virus that color-codes their skin depending on their crime - and then set free to live in a society that hates and fears them.  Hannah has been convicted of murder.  Her victim?  Her unborn child.  Hannah's refusal to reveal the father - United States Secretary of Faith, and married man, Aiden Dale - is an act of fierce love and devotion and results in an unusually harsh sentence of 16 years as a Chrome.  A dystopian retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter, When She Woke is a heart-wrenching tale that unflinchingly explores faith, spirituality, love and the deepest reserves of human strength, kindness, and compassion.

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Judd’s life has fallen apart after his wife leaves him for his boss.  Then his atheist father dies and requests that his family sit shiva for him after he dies.  By spending a week’s worth of forced family time dealing with his own and his sibling’s drama Judd sees his family in a new light.  This Is Where I Leave You is a funny, bittersweet look at family life.

The Orchid Affair by Lauren Willig

Laura Grey has spent the last 16 years of her rather colorless life governessing the children of England's elite.  Searching for a bit of excitement, she enrolls in the Pink Carnation's Selwick spy school and is sent to France, where she is to infiltrate the Parisian household of Andre Jaouen, a high-ranking official under Napoleon - as a governess.  With spies, swordfights, secret messages in bookshops, intrigue, secret identities and sweet romance, this latest installment in the Pink Carnation series is all fun.  This series of Regency tales of the swashbuckling adventures and romances of British spies rather incongrously named after flowers (inspired by The Scarlet Pimpernel) begins with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation - start there and read straight through to The Orchid Affair!

Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire

We are all familiar with the story of Dorothy, her dog Toto and her adventures in Oz, but what if that wasn't all of the story? Author Gregory Maguire has taken Frank L. Baum's story and twisted it just a bit. What started in Wicked, and continued in Son of a Witch and a Lion Among Men, is now coming to a conclusion with Out of Oz. Fans of the series will want to pick up the last volume, and new readers will be brought up to speed with a great introduction as well as a time line and important events. Keep your eyes peeled to references to the movie and books, as this Out of Oz is jam packed with action, adventure and a lot of cultural references.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Flavia de Luce is an eleven year old girl who loves chemistry, particularly poisons.  When she discovers a murdered stranger in the backyard of her family’s English mansion she welcomes the chance to solve the mystery.  She manages to do a much better job of it than the local police.  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is only the first in a series of Flavia mysteries that keep getting better.   The adventures continue in The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, and the just-published I Am Half Sick of Shadows. 

It Looked Different on the Model by Laurie Notaro

Laurie Notaro once again opens up and shares snippets from her colorful life again with readers. From battles at the post office to battles in the fitting room, Laurie is up to the same kind of trouble fans are familiar with. New readers looking for something to laugh out will find lots to laugh at as Laurie gives us highlights from her crazy life.

The Grace of Everyday Saints by Julian Guthrie

St. Brigid Church is over a century old and one of San Francisco’s landmarks.   In 1994 the Roman Catholic archbishop decided to close this beautiful and thriving church.  The parishioners banded together to save their church.  This group of dedicated and faithful Roman Catholics is an inspiration.  However, this story will move everyone, not just Catholics.  It is about power and its misuse, and the joy of faith.  The author is a journalist with the San Francisco Chronicle and wrote about this story over many years.  Check out The Grace of Everyday Saints: How A Band of Believers Lost Their Church and Found Their Faith @the library today!

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

London, 1888.  Jack the Ripper stalks the foggy streets of London's East End.  Fiona Finnegan and Joe Bristow are deeply in love, engaged, and saving every penny they can to open their own tea shop.  But dark events are at hand that will leave oceans and years between them.  When the Ripper strikes, murdering her mother, and Fiona's father is killed to stop his efforts to unionize the tea workers in Whitechapel, she is forced to flee London to New York to protect her baby brother, Seamie, leaving Joe and everything she knows behind.  An epic love story caught up in a whirl of history, lovers of historical fiction and family sagas will love The Tea Rose.  And when you're done with this page-turner, be sure to check out the rest of the trilogy, The Winter Rose and The Wild Rose!

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Honeymooning in the Scottish highlands in 1945 with her beloved historian husband, Frank, nurse Claire Randall is foraging for plants in the stone circle on Craigh na Dun when she hears the stones scream.  Hurled through the stone and back in time, Claire finds herself wandering in the remote Scottish country on the eve of the Jacobite rising, two hundred years earlier.  Rather abruptly kidnapped by a group of Highland raiders, who are themselves hiding from an English patrol, to dress young Highlander warrior Jamie Fraser's wounds, Claire finds herself inextricably tied to the MacKenzie clan - and Jamie. Unable to return to the stone circle despite all her best efforts, Claire must decide if she can face the future from the past.  A love story with astounding historical scope, Outlander is one of my absolute all-time favorite books.  Jamie will ruin all other fictional men for you (sorry, Mr. Darcy), and Claire's practicality, passion, and fierce devotion to those she loves will have you frantically turning the pages not just through this one, but through six more fabulously fat novels that take Claire and Jamie forward from the Rising to the American Revolution. The 20th anniversary of its original publication, don't let another year go by without adding Outlander to your must-read list!

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

This is the story of a slave woman, July, who was born on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica at the beginning of the 19^th century.  Although she lives through many hardships--slavery, violence, motherhood, a slave rebellion and the difficulties of life under newly-won freedom, the book describes the horrors of slavery with ironic wit. Humor makes The Long Song an enjoyable read.

Things We Didn't See Coming by Steven Amsterdam

What would the world be like if the Y2K disaster had happened on January 1, 2000, as some expected? Things We Didn't See Coming is a collection of related short stories which offer one view, as a young man makes his way through a dystopian future. As the years go by, the problems people face change and the unnamed protagonist, as he moves about the country, changes his strategies for survival.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I am not a gamer at all but I loved reading about Parcival and his friends navigate an online adventure filled with eighties pop culture references left behind by a reclusive billionaire.  The game takes place in the OASIS, an online virtual reality where most of the population now spends their time because the real world has become a very depressing place.  The reward is the fortune the billionaire has left behind.  Will Parcival reach Halliday’s egg before the Sixers?  Read Ready Player One and find out!

On Persephone's Island by Mary Simeti

Here is a book for those who loved Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mays.  Mary Simeti went to Sicily in 1962 to do volunteer work, fell in love, married a Sicilian and remained in Sicily, running his farm on the island. This beautifully written book covers the year 1983, the rhythm of the farm work, the work and customs of the Sicilian people, and the history and mythology of the island.  Check out On Persephone's Island @ the library!

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

In 1799, a young clerk leaves Holland for Dejima, Japan. He plans to earn his fortune by working for five years for the only European company allowed to trade with the Japanese Empire. For various reasons, including wars back in Europe, his five years turn into eighteen, and Jacob’s character develops and matures as he struggles against corporate corruption, falls in love with a Japanese midwife and deals with people from many different nations and walks of life.  Readers of historical fiction, check out The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet @ the library!

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

The mysterious process of admitting certain students to Ivy League schools and rejecting others is revealed in this interesting novel.  Portia, an admissions officer for Princeton, is so involved in her job that she doesn’t see that her life is on pause.  Soon her past catches up to her and changes her life forever.  If you’ve ever wanted an inside look at the college admissions game pick up Admission - it’s a long one but it’s a fast read!

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Once a Camellia, always a Camellia.  Both funny and heartbreaking, this coming of age novel follows sharp, witty Southern debutante Sarah Walters from Charleston's Wednesday night Cotillion Traning School to her escape to college in the North, through love, heartache, disillusionment, and her eventual return home in response to the siren song of the South. Readers of Pat Conroy, Anne Rivers Siddons and Dorothea Benton Frank's novels will want to check out Girls in Trucks!

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

If you enjoy stories in which children and animals are serendipitously rescued from abusive homes and circumstances, Started Early, Took My Dog (and others by Kate Atkinson) is for you. Tracy Waterhouse, a recently retired policewoman, impulsively buys a very young child from a drug-abusing prostitute and tries to disappear. Jackson Brodie, a private detective, hired by an adopted orphan to trace her roots, impulsively rescues a small dog from an abusive master. These two stories, seemingly unconnected, finally cross near the end of the book, and most, but not all, of the mysteries are solved.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Golden Richards is a man who has four wives and twenty eight children. The size of this family and financial worries due to a failing construction business leave him and other members of his family feeling lonely, alienated and misunderstood.  The Lonely Polygamist is a sympathetic and funny look at the lives of individual members of a polygamist family. 

To Timbuktu by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg

Casey and Steven met while studying abroad in Morocco during their junior year in college, and fell in love. Their life back in the states is spent on opposite coasts, and after college that the two decide to travel together. Their adventure starts off in China teaching English as a second language. After six months, they travel a bit, before settling in Mali, where they spend a year doing research and painting. Casey uses words to tell their story, while Steven illustrates it, giving two distinctive points of view, and making it an appealing read. Not just for young adults, To Timbuktu is for anyone who is wondering what to do next in their life, as well of those who like to travel off the beaten path.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This remarkable debut novel tells the tale of gifted magicians Celia and Marco, opponents since childhood in a game whose rules are unknown, all set on the stage of a circus that appears as mysteriously as it vanishes, always at night.   The catch is that Celia and Marco's roles as opponents are kept from them - and when they finally encounter one another in the black and silver world of the Night Circus, they fall deeply in love, each without knowing the other's darkest secret.  If you loved the films The Prestige and The Illusionist and devoured the circus-y bits of Water for Elephants, this extraordinary, magical read will delight and surprise you. The Night Circus is coming to a library near you on September 13th!

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

Midsummer, 1924.  A young poet and haunted veteran of the Great War commits suicide on the eve of a glittering society party, the only witnesses two wealthy sisters, Hannah and Emmeline, and their ladies' maid, Grace.  More than seven decades later, 99-year-old Grace recalls a childhood spent below stairs at the grand country estate of Riverton serving Hannah, Emmeline, and their brother David - and the truth behind the events leading up to what really happened by the lake on that fateful night.  Beautifully written, gorgeous and haunting, fans of Ian McEwan's Atonement will love The House at Riverton.  Also check out Kate Morton's other two novels, The Forgotten Garden and The Distant Hours!

Escape from the Land of Snows by Stephan Talty

If you love 1950s history, we highly recommend Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero.  It also explains at a basic level Tibetan Buddhism and the spiritual and political position of the Dalai Lama.  The author interviews most of the key people involved and brings this part of history to life.  This book will appeal to readers that enjoy espionage/thrillers and those seeking religious and spiritual reading.  Those genres do not combine very often!  This is a great book about an incredible person.

Overbite by Meg Cabot

Meg Cabot doesn't disappoint in this sequel to Insatiable!  Dark and hilarious, Meena Harper is back battling vampires for Manhattan and her heart - her ex-boyfriend, Lucien Antonescou, head vampire and prince of darkness, is still in love with her.  But so is Alaric Wulf, Palatine guard and vampire killer extraordinaire, who's spearheading the hunt for Lucien.  And then there's the fact that someone turned another of Meena's ex-boyfriends into a vampire and sent him after her, and a whole bunch of tourists are missing from New York - and Lucien claims not to know anything about it.  Which he should, since he's the overlord of all things evil.  If you've read and loved all the Sookie Stackhouse books and are looking for something new, check out Insatiable and Overbite!

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

When Conor Grennan spent three months volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal, a country ravaged by civil war, the last thing he expected was to discover that the children were not orphans at all, but victims of child traffickers.  This is the astonishing story of Connor's trek through Nepal on a quest to find the families of those children.  Read this incredible journey of love, commitment, and devotion, and you'll recommend Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal to everyone you know!

The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas

With her own flock of colorful hoopoes, Eleonora is a special girl living in Turkey during a turbulent time.  Her intelligence becomes apparent quickly and she is summoned to the palace and changes the course of history.  You’ll root for Eleonora as she deals with tragedy and her future in a way that makes her seem much older than she is.  If you’re looking for a great summer read with magic, history, and an exotic backdrop, give The Oracle of Stamboul a try!

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

For runners who run 3 blocks or 300 miles, twice a day or twice a year, as well as athletes, adventurers, anthropologists, world and armchair travelers, and pretty much anyone who loves a fantastic adventure story, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen is a must-read!  You'll want to make a salad for breakfast and hit the trail after finishing this tale of the world's most awesome ultramarathons.

Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz

From Blue Bloods series author Melissa de la Cruz, Witches of East End is an enchanting summer read that's perfect for the beach!  Joanna and her daughters Freya and Ingrid are witches, forced by an ancient agreement to supress their powers, but when they decide to bend the rules a bit, the town of North Hampton, Long Island is about to experience a summer of magical mayhem.