Great reads at the Maricopa Public Library

Greetings once again to all my fellow bibliophiles who are currently struggling to stay cool during our annual monsoon season. The heat may be exhausting, but knowing we all possess a comfortable chair, a cool beverage and a good book should ease the discomfort of summer. 

So much to read, so little time, but we booklovers forge on in our quest to look for the next great book, and I’m happy to share with all of you the next installment of new books at the library. As Charles W. Eliot, the longest serving president in the history of Harvard University once said, “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”  So let’s begin….

Every one of us knows someone who can’t sleep or who has trouble sleeping even though we’re bombarded with TV ads promising a good night’s sleep. In Charlie Huston’s new book, “Sleepless,” LAPD undercover cop Parker Hass is on the case working as a drug dealer, searching for the secret behind Dreamer, a drug to help people craving sleep. Fact and fiction take center stage in Ellen Horan’s “31 Bond Street,” a look at the real life murder case of Dr. Harvey Burdell, a Manhattan physician, and the prime suspect, his girlfriend Emma Cunningham, a young widow with two teenage daughters. This man’s murder gripped the nation just prior to the start of the Civil War.

Aryn Kyle is out with a new collection of short stories about the lives of young girls and women in “Boys and Girls Like You and Me.” Amanda Quick, a.k.a. Jayne Anne Krentz, takes readers back in time in her eighth book in the Arcane Society series. This time, social reformer Adelaide Pyne may possess the cure for what ails crime lord Griffin Winters in the “Burning Lamp.”

Eve Duncan’s adopted daughter, Jane Macguire, is in danger when a secretive cult plans to come for her in eight days, after one of her paintings appears in her Paris gallery, in Iris Johansen’s “Eight Days to Live.” Two time Booker prizewinner Peter Carey’s new book, “Parrot and Olivier in America,” tells the tale of two men who visit our country during the early part of the 19th century.

Michael Harvey’s “The Third Rail” is set in Chicago’s transit system, and PI Michael Kelly is on the hunt for a killer after witnessing a shooting on the city’s L platform.  Complicating the case, the killer has links to Kelly’s past and has abducted the PI’s girlfriend, Chicago judge Rachel Swenson. Inspector Lynley is grieving the loss of his wife when his replacement Barbara Havers needs him to come back to work in Elizabeth George’s “This Body of Death.” 

The women of Sex and the City were the talk of TV and the subject of two hit movies about life and love in New York City.  But what was life like for the fashionable Carrie Bradshaw before she met Mr. Big and found career success?  Here’s the opportunity to find out in Candace Bushnell’s “The Carrie Diaries.” When someone we love dies, the grief can be unbearable, but what happens when the deceased has a request and wishes it to be fulfilled. In Debbie Macomber’s “Hannah’s List” Dr. Michael Everett receives a letter from his late wife on the first anniversary of her death, requesting that he marry again; she even includes the names of three women for him to consider as his next wife.

Ty Hauck is back in Andrew Gross’s “Reckless,” book three in the series. A close friend of Hauck’s has been murdered, a wealthy banker’s world is about to be destroyed and a U.S. government agent suspects a global financial collapse, so who does one call to investigate these troubling events —Ty Hauck. Stephen King loves baseball just as much as he enjoys reading a good book and writing bestsellers. In his new novella, “Blockade Billy,” he writes about William Blakely, one of the game’s best players, whose name, team or even existence doesn’t appear in any of the sports record books.

Jennifer Weiner writes about women and the emotions, relationships and events that shape their lives.  This time she writes about friendship in her newest novel “Best Friends Forever.”  The late Robert B. Parker gave us one of fictions most intriguing PI’s in Spenser.  Now, he takes his readers back to the old west in “Blue Eyed Devil” book four in his Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch series.  The new chief of police Amos Callico has big dreams and he wants Cole and Hitch to work for him.   However, Callico has a dark side which includes bullying and when he shakes down local merchants for protection money Cole and Hitch come to the rescue.

National Book award winner Denis Johnson salutes the crime novel with the publishing of “Nobody Move.”  The story features a group of lowlifes living in Bakersfield California and a cache of 2.3 million.  Sookie Stackhouse is back this time beset with family issues and more in Charlaine Harris’ “Dead in the Family,” the tenth Sookie adventure.

If your like me, there is never enough time to get things done and when those bouts of forgetfulness creep into our psyche all we can do is breathe in, exhale and put off until tomorrow.  In Atul Gawande’s book “The Checklist Manifesto, How to Get Things Done Right,” he gives readers the details on how those simple lists can actually help make life easier.  Michael Shelden has written a biography of one of America’s preeminent writers in “Mark Twain: The Man in White.”

How would you feel if a part of you was taken away without your knowledge and used for scientific research? How would your family feel, if they had no knowledge of this until many years later? Well, this actually happened, and Rebecca Skloot tells the story in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” She tells the incredible story of cells removed without Lacks’ permission or knowledge, which would become known as “HeLa” cells in the scientific world. These are the first “immortal” cells, grown in culture and still active today, that launched a multimillion-dollar industry.

David Kirby’s “Animal Factory” gives readers an explosive look into the hazards of industrial animal farming.  In “Bounce…the Science of Success” author Matthew Syed profiles composer Mozart, tennis champ Roger Federer, famous painter Pablo Picasso and Posh Spice’s handsome better half, soccer star David Beckham, and their unique paths to achieving success. Antwone Fisher, well known filmmaker and writer, shares the lessons he learned in leading an exemplary life in “A Boy Should Know How to Tie a Tie.”

First Lady Michele Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson, head coach of Oregon State University’s basketball team, tells his story in “A Game of Character.” Stephen Prothero discusses the eight great religions of the world and how each one distinguishes itself in “God is Not One.” Donovan Webster wanted to research his ancestral journey, and the end result is “Meeting the Family: One Man’s Journey through His Human Ancestry.”  The author traces his DNA path, which leads to such places as the Middle East and Central Asia, as he writes about people he met along the way.

There are those individuals who, when given an opportunity to clean, show no mercy and will rid a house of anything that’s not needed for one reason or another. Then there are those who buy, buy and buy, hoarding to the point of extreme excess, much to the dismay of those who love them. Authors Randy Frost and Gail Steketee spent nearly a decade studying the phenomenon known as hoarding and treating many patients along the way. What they’ve learned is showcased in “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things.”

When we’re down, sometimes we seek advice and sometimes we seek the solace of our souls to find an answer to a problem. In “You’re a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice” we may get or not get the answers on a variety of topics in this advice book written by comedians, writers and actors under the authorship known as “The Believer.” The only caveat is that those who give the advice may not have any experience or knowledge on the topic they’re writing about. If you want my advice – read  for entertainment purposes only.

Our lives can change in an instant, and one man’s cancer diagnosis inspired him to reflect on how his death would affect his daughters. Three days later, Bruce Feiler contacted six men from all the stages of his life and asked each one to be present in his daughters’ lives as he formed what is now known as “The Council of Dads.” Kai Bird chronicles his life in his memoir “Crossing the Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.” Closing out the newest in non-fiction is Victor David Hanson’s “The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.”  This is a collection of essays dealing with war and how it shapes society.

There is quite a few selections here to meet just about anyone’s literary tastes, and, if you entered the Library’s Summer Reading Program, I hope this essay helps in the decision making process. As I’ve said time and again, stay tuned, as I’ll be back soon with more books to keep us bibliophiles very busy indeed.

Roberta Cianciosi, an avid reader and a published writer, will be offering information on new books available at the library each month.

Photo by Joyce Hollis

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