Dearly Departed opens with an opening—exhumation of the body of a glamorous Russian-born film star, a double agent working for FBI Special Agent Maggie Sachet and Russian intelligence chief Vasili Selishanko. The exhumation launches a mesmerizing international spy story, with intelligence and counterintelligence plots, secrets and tantalizing revelations, and trickery from Hollywood to Arkhangelsk. A web of intrigue circles around an atmospheric scientist who apparently committed suicide by hurricane, an elderly Chinese widow with all the answers, and a dead body in Maggie’s bedroom. The ultimate burning question: Are the lives of millions in danger?

(Review courtesy of Amazon Books)
It's 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood at the peak of her powers.

Public Safety Announcement: If zombies aren’t your thing - or if you need to sleep tonight, you should stop now! Seriously, don’t go any further, return to your life and forget you ever knew that this amazing book existed.
Up until a few months ago the worst thing in Kady and Ezra’s existence was their recent breakup. However, after a – mostly – unprovoked biological attack plus a more traditional invasion by a rival company on their illegal mining colony, a month’s long evacuation across the galaxy, a rogue AI, and a large number of lies, manipulations, and propaganda from the people in charge of this disaster of an Evac, Kady and Ezra may be the only people each other can trust. Especially when it may be up to them to save what’s left of the fleet and perhaps the rest of the galaxy from a mutant zombie-like virus that could bring them all to the brink of extinction.   
Told through a series of interviews, video transcripts, maps, blueprints, and instant-messages, plus a series of beautiful illustrations created from the words of the story itself (typography) this unique dystopian sci-fi novel is sure to delight.
If you loved this title, don’t forget to check out the other two novels in the series Gemini and Obsidio!
           

(Review courtesy of Amazon.com)
In the days before cheap air travel, families didn’t so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them—from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks.

Pod, Homily, and little Arrietty Clock live under the kitchen floor behind a standing clock that can never be moved. They are Borrowers and if you don’t know what that means, just ask yourself where all the socks, and postage stamps, and hairpins you ever bought all ended up. They can’t all be where you left them or you wouldn’t have to keep buying such things over and over again. That’s where the Borrowers come in, because, you see, they have developed the queer idea that Human Beans (that’s us) only exist to provide them with things to live on…maybe it would help if I described them. The Borrowers are people just like you and I, they have their faults and their virtues, their hopes and fears, but they are small, so small that dollhouse furniture is just right for them, so small that great big people like us scare them silly just as they, being the size of mice, might scare some of us silly. And so, the Borrowers “borrow” everything they need from the unsuspecting Human Beans in the house above, but are the humans really so unsuspecting and what happens if a Borrower gets “seen”?
This enchanting novel from master storyteller Mary Norton provides a unique and fantastic world set inside our own more ordinary one in a way that is delightfully believable. Readers young and old will thoroughly enjoy this classic children’s story.
Related Recommendations:
If you enjoyed The Borrowers you might also check out The Littles by John Peterson and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM by Robert C. O’Brien  

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes is a kooky, cozy mystery with a slight paranormal twist. The first part of this book is a little slow to start but that’s because it has two tones, one before the event and one for after. Once Rose starts to find herself it gets really good. Each book in the series has twists and turns you don’t see coming. I found this book many years ago, before even half the series was out, and it was torture waiting on each one.

I have two superheroes. One of them is Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17 for championing education for girls in the Middle East. Malala grew up in the Swat Valley in Pakistan and gave her first speech when she was eleven years old. It was called “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” and it led to her being shot through the head on a school bus four years later. After recovery, she still perseveres in her advocacy for education for all girls.

My second, more recent, superhero is Tara Westover. Though they come from opposite sides of the world, these two women are far more alike than they are different, and what defines them both is the fact that succumbing is simply not an option.

Youngest of seven children, Tara Westover was raised in a fundamentalist Mormon family in Buck’s Peak, Idaho. In an age when many Americans are plugged in 24/7, some remoter areas of America can actually slip off the grid and receive little attention from the rest of society. Tara’s father ekes out a living, along with his children as soon as they are able, by salvaging scrap metal. Tara’s mother is a faith healer and unlicensed midwife. Hospitals and Western medicine are not allowed to the Westover children.

Brutalized by enforced hard labor and injuries from the heavy scrap yard equipment, as well as by physical and mental abuse from an older brother, Tara also refuses to succumb. Too absorbed in their own lives, her parents become very lax in her home schooling, so she begins to educate herself from her brothers' schoolbooks. Despite the discouragement and never-ending terror and turmoil of the family drama, Tara manages to teach herself enough to pass the ACT test and enter Brigham Young University at the age of 17.

Though suffering severe culture shock, self recrimination and isolation in college, Tara progresses from needing to raise her hand in her Freshman history class to ask what the word holocaust means, to becoming a Cambridge scholar with a PhD in history.


I highly recommend this remarkable memoir.

Lee Westfall has a wonderful life, parents that love her, a good friend, and a terrible secret…a power that anyone in the gold crazed American West would love to get their hands on. When this secret rips her peaceful world apart, Lee heads west to the newly discovered gold fields of California. With nothing but some boy’s clothes (a bit big), her trusty horse (a bit conspicuous), and her hunting rifle (which may get stolen), Lee hides the only way she can, by becoming someone else.

This first book in the Gold Seer trilogy by the popular author of the Girl of Fire and Thorns series perfectly blends the saga of the American wagon train with a well-conceived fantasy element. Fans of either genre are sure to love this delicately balanced epic of courage, loss, and the human spirit at its finest. Also be sure to check out the other two books in the trilogy, which are also available at the library.