What We Do in the Shadows

DVD

Do you like horror-comedy? Mockumentaries? Vampires trying to be modern? Me too!

Four vampires - Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, and Petyr - share a flat in the Wellington suburb of Te Aro, New Zealand. They are all centuries old and not modern at all but are trying their best. Before the annual Un-Holy Masquerade Ball, these guys decide to invite a documentary crew into their home to show people what vampires are really like. While they enjoy going out on the town looking for people to eat, they also need to take turns with chores and pay rent.

~Crystal

Soul Surfer

By Bethany Hamilton

They say Bethany Hamilton has saltwater in her veins. How else could one explain the passion that drives her to surf? How else could one explain that nothing—not even the loss of her arm—could come between her and the waves? That Halloween morning in Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany responded to the shark’s stealth attack with the calm of a girl with God on her side. Pushing pain and panic aside, she began to paddle with one arm, focusing on a single thought: “Get to the beach....” And when the first thing Bethany wanted to know after surgery was “When can I surf again?” it became clear that her spirit and determination were part of a greater story—a tale of courage and faith that this soft-spoken girl would come to share with the world.

~Crystal

The Choice

By Nicholas Sparks

Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life - boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies -- he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. 

Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, THE CHOICE ultimately confronts us with the most heart wrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?

~ Crystal

Summer Secrets

By Jane Green


Struggling with a shocking family secret, London journalist Cat Coombs finds herself drowning her sorrows in a bottle of vodka. This family secret leads her to her father and half-sisters who lives in Nantucket. This story takes you through the trials in her life including possibly losing the people she loves most. The AA meetings she attends help her not only gain her sobriety they help her with her relationships. This story will have you thinking about summer (here in the freezing cold winter months) and keep you captivated till the very end.


~ Beckie H.

Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)

By Cassandra Clare

The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters—including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them...

~Crystal

The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era

By Jessica Fellowes & Matthew Sturgis

Downton Abbey. Need I say more? The photos are gorgeous. Each chapter highlights a different character. Check out all our other Downton Abbey books!

~ Dixie

Before the Awakening

by Greg Rucka

I've seen the movie "Star Wars The Force Awakens" and have been impatiently waiting for the novelization - this little gem gives you something to get you through the wait!  While it's considered a children's book, it's 224 pages and still full of juicy stories about these three characters (Finn, Rey, & Poe). The book is divided into three sections for each, and covers the months to days before the events of the movie. I was hoping for a much deeper history, but it was still worth spending 2 hours reading it. A must-read for any Star Wars fan.

~Becky

iPhone: the Missing Manual

The book that should have been in the box
By David Pogue

You’ve heard the old saying ‘you only use 10% of your brain’? Well I think the iPhone is like that. It can do so much more than you are doing right now. It’s easy to look up the topic you need help with. It isn’t too technical and I did learn a few things.

~ Dixie

What Alice Forgot

By Liane Moriarty

Alice is twenty-nine, happily married, and pregnant with her first child. Life couldn’t get sweeter. What a shock when she finds out that she fell at the gym and has lost 10 years of her memory. She needs to be convinced that she is thirty-nine, in the midst of a nasty divorce and has three children.

For Alice it is like stepping into someone else’s life. She is crazy in love with her husband. They can’t possibly be getting a divorce. As for the kids – she doesn’t even remember giving birth once let alone three times. What do you even do with three kids?

Slowly Alice starts piecing together the last ten years of her life. She needs to find out what happened to her marriage and to her so maybe she can start over.

~ Dixie

The Hidden

By Heather Graham
Audiobook format

Estes Park, Colorado is a simply lovely place and the setting of this book. Part love story, part ghost story, this story discovers the identity of killers from long ago and today. The story is well told and intriguing but you have to accept communications with ghosts. I listened to the CD in my car and really enjoyed the entertainment, I think you will too.

~ Beckie H.

Winter

Lunar Chronicles #4

By Marissa Meyer

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana. Winter despises her stepmother and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

~Crystal

Very Merry Cookie Party: How To Plan And Host A Christmas Cookie Exchange

By Barbara Grunes

Today's busy bakers want to make a gorgeous variety of delicious Christmas cookies without spending days upon flour-smudged days mixing, rolling, and baking. This is a guide to the Christmas cookie exchange, where everyone shows up with a few batches of homemade cookies to swap. It's all the variety without the fuss, with 120 recipes to choose from, plus tips for decorating, planning, and throwing the party.

~Crystal

First Sight

By Danielle Steel

At the center of the storm and avalanche of work that is Fashion week, that is four cities on four continents in a month, is American Timmie O’Neill, whose renowned line, Timmie O, is the embodiment of casual chic, in fashion and for the home. She has created a business that inspires, fills, and consumes her life.  Timmie has built an international empire in the last two decades that has brought her enormous satisfaction and success. Yet as blessed as she feels by her success, Timmie harbors the private wounds of a devastating childhood and past tragedy. She is too smart, too experienced, and too hurt to want much in her personal life beyond a succession of convenient, very limited relationships. Always willing to take risks in business, she never risks her heart.

But despite her well-ordered and highly controlled world, it turns out that Timmie O’Neill is not immune to magic when it strikes in Paris during Paris Fashion Week, when an intriguing French doctor comes into her life when she gets sick. At first, Timmie and Jean-Charles Vernier are only patient and physician. They become confidants and friends, corresponding at a safe distance between Paris and Los Angeles once she goes home. There is every reason why they must remain apart. But neither can deny their growing friendship and the electricity that sparks whenever they meet. 

~Crystal

Déjà Dead

By Kathy Reichs

Her life is devoted to justice; for those she never even knew. In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her, her best friend and her own daughter in mortal danger.

~ Crystal

Staff Favorite Christmas books from years past!

  

Friday, November 21, 2008

An Irish Country Christmas

An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

The wonderful characters of Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’ Reilly, his young protégé Dr. Barry Laverty, and their housekeeper Kinky are brought to life again in An Irish Country Christmas. Share their warmth, humor, and holiday traditions, and get to know the patients and people living in the cozy Irish village of Ballybucklebo.

Other delightful books by this author are An Irish Country Doctor andAn Irish Country Village. You will enjoy reading how Dr. Laverty came to Ballybucklebo to join Dr. O’Reilly’s medical practice and how he gained the trust and respect of Kinky, the village, and Dr. O’Reilly.

- Rose

Monday, December 29, 2008

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

by Christopher Moore.

If you are NOT in the mood for a sappy Christmas tale, try the The Stupidest Angel. It isn't brand new (published 2004) but it is definitely worth a look if you enjoy black comedy. It's the story of Christmas in tiny Pine Cove, California. Though Pine Cove is a typical small town, where everyone knows everyone else's business, this particular Christmas is anything but typical. An angel's blunder makes this year's Christmas celebration go terribly, terribly wrong. I liked this laugh-out-loud tale very much - just be aware that, if books were rated like movies, this would be rated R!

- Linda

Friday, December 5, 2008

Christmas on Jane Street

Christmas on Jane Street
by Billy Romp with Wanda Urbanska

This is an uplifting, real-life tale of the Romp family from Salisbury,Vermont and their annual trek to Manhattan, New York to sell Christmas trees on Jane Street. They arrive the day after Thanksgiving and leave just in time to make it home for Christmas morning. For a few weeks, this family transforms a corner of the Big Apple into a Frank Capra-esque small town alive with heartwarming holiday spirit. An ideal Christmas story, it is about the lasting and profound difference one person can make to a family and one family can make to a community.

- Ann

Monday, December 21, 2009

Christmas Tale

Christmas Tale
(DVD - French with English Subtitles)

Catherine Deneuve stars as Junon, matriarch of the troubled Vuillard family. The family gathers at Christmas after Junon discovers she needs a bone marrow transplant from a family member. However, a family holiday with the Vuillard family is no ordinary gathering.

I loved this French Christmas film. It's funny, sad, dramatic, emotional & unpredictable. In other words - very French.
-Holly

Monday, October 20, 2008

A Cedar Cove Christmas

A Cedar Cove Christmas

by Debbie Macomber

It's the holiday season and Mary Jo Wyse is single and pregnant. The baby's father, David Rhodes, has not contacted Mary Jo but she remembered he was spending Christmas with his father and stepmother is Cedar Cove. Mary Jo goes to Cedar Cove to find David, but instead finds comfort with strangers who open their hearts and homes to her. This is a delightful Christmas story that will warm your heart.

- Rose

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Kissing Christmas Goodbye

Kissing Christmas Goodbye
By M. C. Beaton

Agatha Raisin is a private investigator who owns her own detective agency in the Cotswolds of England. The only joy in her life is the anticipation of her upcoming Christmas festival and hopeful reunion with her ex-husband, James Lacey.

Excitement begins when a wealthy widow hires Agatha because she is afraid a member of her own family is about to murder her. Her premonition comes true and she drops dead after high tea is served at her manor with her family in attendance.

Follow Agatha and her teenage detective trainee, Toni, as they uncover clues in and around the quaint and sleepy village of Gloucestershire. Will they solve this murder in time to finish planning her Christmas party? Read on and find out!

- Ann

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

1225 Christmas Tree Lane

1225 Christmas Tree Lane (A Cedar Cove Novel)
by Debbie Macomber

It saddened me to learn this is the final book of the Cedar Cove Series. I eagerly waited for each sequel and looked forward to reading about the families, how they grew, and solved their problems.

I decided not to write a summary about 1225 Christmas Tree Lane but to let the you, the reader, enjoy the final chapter of the town of Cedar Cove and the families we intimately came to know and love. A good read for the holiday season!

- Rose

Monday, December 13, 2010

An Amish Christmas

An Amish Christmas
by Cynthia Keller

Follow Meg Hobart and her family as they go from being rich and successful in Charlotte, North Carolina to being penniless and homeless, brought on by her husband's bad decisions and lies.

Forced to go live with Meg's parents, they head north with only the shirts on their backs, when a frightening twist of fate forces the Hobarts to take refuge with a kind Amish family in Pennsylvania.

I highly recommend this holiday story, where forgiveness, hard work, and the power of love overcome a desperate situation.

- Ann