STAFF PICKS--VIXEN

Gina's Staff Pick is Vixen (The Flappers #1), by Jillian Larkin.  A Young Adult book.

About the book:
Jazz . . . Booze . . . Boys . . . It’s a dangerous combination.

Every girl wants what she can’t have. Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle—and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it. Now that she’s engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago’s most powerful families, Gloria’s party days are over before they’ve even begun . . . or are they??

Gina says:  Cute fluff that's fun and sexy!

PATRON PICKS: Batman: The Dark Knight Rises (DVD)

Jason's pick is Batman:  The Dark Knight Rises (DVD)

 

Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane, overwhelms Gotham's finest, and the Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.

 

Check out the movie trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8evyE9TuYk

 

Jason says:  I like it because I think Batman is a cool super hero!  Christian Bale did a good job in the role for Batman.

PATRON PICKS -- A Daughter's Tale: The Memoir of Winston and Clementine Churchill's Youngest Child

Mary's pick is A Daughter's Tale:   The Memoir of Winston and Clementine Churchill's Youngest Child, by Mary Soames

About the book:
In this charming and intimate memoir, Winston Churchill's youngest daughter shares stories from her remarkable life--and tells of the unbreakable bond she forged with her father through some of the most tumultuous years in British history. 

Now approaching her ninetieth birthday, Mary Soames is the only surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. Through a combination of personal reminiscences and never-before-published diary entries, she describes what it was like growing up as the scion of one of the lions of twentieth-century statecraft. Warm memories of a childhood spent roaming the grounds of the family's country estate, tending to a small menagerie of pets, evoke the idyllic mood of England between the wars. As she matures into one of her father's most trusted companions, we are given rare glimpses inside the glittering social milieu through which the Churchills moved--as well as the rough-and-tumble world of British politics...

Mary says:  Excellent story, fast-paced!

PATRON PICKS -- On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon

Kassie's pick is On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, by Kaye Gibbons

Synopsis:  In the year 1900--on the afternoon she suspects might be the last of her long, eventful life--Emma Garnet Tate Lowell sets down on paper what came before, determined to make an honest account of it. Born to privilege on a James River plantation, she grew up determined to escape the domination of her bullying, self-made father, Samuel P. Tate, and ultimately seceded from his control to marry Quincy Lowell, a surgeon and member of the distinguished Boston family. But then came the Civil War. Working alongside Quincy, assisting him in the treatment of wounded soldiers, she witnessed scenes that would be engraved forever in her memory. And, before beginning the long journey of her own reconstruction, she must face the shame of her relationship to her "servants" and learn the terrible secret that shaped her father's life.

Kassie says:  Pre-Civil War South, death, slavery, violence, passion--but this book is an elegy for all that.  The beauty of the writing and unexpected forms of love and redemption make it flow to the end.  

STAFF PICKS -- Contagion (DVD)

Patti's pick is Contagion (DVD).

A thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly disease and an international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the outbreak.

Patti says:  Great movie!  I loved the fast pace and the "ticker" in the background was perfect.  I'm glad the story focused more on how they dealt with the disease rather than on the people who were sick.

PATRON PICKS -- Mudwoman

Deborah's pick is Mudwoman, by Joyce Carol Oates.

Synopsis:
Meredith Ruth (M.R.) Neukirchen is the first female president of an ivy league university, clearly modeled after the author's own place of work, Princeton. She is driving to upstate New York to deliver a speech about the Iraq war, which she is opposed to in spite of the politics of her school's opinionated donors. Understandably, she's stressed. Not-so-understandably, this leads her to abandon the presentation to visit the mud flats that overrun the town where she grew up.

Soon, the trauma of her childhood is revealed to us: Her wayward mother attempted to drown her in those very flats; her mother's husband sexually abused her; she was taken in mistakenly by another fanatically religious couple. M.R. (aka Mudwoman) begins to lose herself in these memories, and her psyche begins to deteriorate, as she and the reader lose sight of what's real and what's not.

Deborah says:  Complex story that modern women can relate to.  Interesting dream-state fugues.

STAFF PICKS -- Wonder Show

Gina's staff pick is Wonder Show, by Hannah Barnaby

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show, a menagerie of human curiosities and misfits guaranteed to astound and amaze!  But perhaps the strangest act of Mosco’s display is Portia Remini, a normal among the freaks, on the run from McGreavy’s Home for Wayward Girls, where Mister watches and waits.  He said he would always find Portia, that she could never leave.  Free at last, Portia begins a new life on the bally, seeking answers about her father’s disappearance. Will she find him before Mister finds her? It’s a story for the ages, and like everyone who enters the Wonder Show, Portia will never be the same.

Gina says:  Cute circus story.  Light read with excitement and a lot of story.