New DVD.

"The Beaver" - a former toy company executive digs himself out of depression in a bizarre manner - directed by and co-starring Jodie Foster - stars Mel Gibson and Jennifer Lawrence

Bridget Jones Fans? Good news!

Entertainment Weekly has confirmed that there is a third book and movie in the works for the Bridget Jones series. Helen Fielding's popular books were brought to life on the Big Screen by Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, and Colin Firth. Read (or re-read) the first 2 books and watch or (re-watch)the movies to prepare for this long-awaited treat! All are available in Merrick Library's collection!

Read-A-Likes

If you enjoyed Room by Emma Donoghue, try these titles for a similar reading experience:



In Malice, Quite Close by Brandi Lynn Ryder
A haunting and sophisticated debut in which priceless art and unspeakable desires converge. French ex-pat Tristan Mourault is the wealthy, urbane heir to a world- renowned collection of art-and an insatiable voyeur enamored with Karen Miller, a fifteen-year-old girl from a working-class family in San Francisco. Deciding he must "rescue" Karen from her unhappy circumstances, Tristan kidnaps her and stages her death to mask his true crime. Years later, Karen is now "Gisele" and the pair lead an opulent life in idyllic and rarefied Devon, Washington. But when Nicola, Gisele's young daughter, stumbles upon a secret cache of paintings-all nudes of Gisele-Tristan's carefully constructed world begins to crumble. As Nicola grapples with the tragedy that follows, she crosses paths with Amanda Miller, who comes to Devon to investigate the portraits' uncanny resemblance to her long-lost sister. Set against a byzantine backdrop of greed, artifice, and dangerous manipulations, In Malice, Quite Close is an intoxicating debut that keeps its darkest secrets until the very last page.

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
On the day she was abducted, Annie O'Sullivan, a thirty-two year old realtor, had three goals--sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever- patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she's about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all. Interwoven with the story of the year Annie spent as the captive of psychopath in a remote mountain cabin, which unfolds through sessions with her psychiatrist, is a second narrative recounting events following her escape--her struggle to piece her shattered life back together and the ongoing police investigation into the identity of her captor.

The truth doesn't always set you free.

Still Missing is that rare debut find--a shocking, visceral, brutal and beautifully crafted debut novel.

Adult Books for Teens

Looking for a great read to share? Check out any of the following books -all were written for an adult audience but are also recommended for teens to enjoy!


Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray
The author offers an account of her journey from a fifteen-year-old living on the streets and eating garbage to her acceptance into Harvard, a feat that prompted a Lifetime movie and a successful motivational-speaking career.

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
When 11-year-old Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life, like her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition, Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Homeschooled teenager Sebastian Prendergast is forced by his grandmother's stroke to venture out of his geodesic dome habitat and befriends a chain-smoking teen who introduces him to pop culture through the punk band they form together.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Being able to taste people's emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

The Radleys by Matt Haig
Struggling with overwork and parenting angst, English village doctor Peter Radley endeavors to hide his family's vampire nature until their daughter's oddly satisfying act of violence reveals the truth, an event that is complicated by the arrival of a practicing vampire family member.

Room by Emma Donoghue
Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
Reviled in her German village home where her only friends are a fellow outcast and an elderly storyteller, eleven-year-old Pia investigates the disappearances of three local girls whom she believes are tied to unsolved missing persons cases from decades earlier.

Let Us Pick Your Next Read

Merrick Library's Reference Department would like to make choosing your next read easier. Fill out this short questionnaire and our staff will provide you with up to 5titles according to your preferences. You will be notified when your selections are available at the Reference Desk.

Now in Theaters "The Help"

Based on one of the most talked about books in years and a #1 New York Times best-selling phenomenon, “The Help” stars Emma Stone as Skeeter, Academy Award®–nominated Viola Davis as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as Minny—three very different, extraordinary women in Mississippi during the 1960s, who build an unlikely friendship around a secret writing project that breaks societal rules and puts them all at risk.

Overbooked.com All Stars!

Starred Review Lists

Lists of books receiving at least one starred review (indicating a noteworthy book) from one of these major review sources: Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, or Publishers Weekly are listed here.

All Star genres include

Crime Fiction
Fiction
Historical
Nonfiction
Romance
Speculative
YA and Teen

New Audiobook Fiction Arrivals!

Wars come to an end. But then new ones begin. Just weeks after Hitler's suicide, Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS find themselves up to their necks in battles every bit as fierce as the ones just ended. The first is political-the very survival of the OSS, with every department from Treasury to War to the FBI grabbing for its covert agents and assets. The second is on a much grander scale-the possible next world war, against Joe Stalin and his voracious ambitions. To get a jump on the latter, Frade has been conducting a secret operation, one of great daring-and great danger-but to conduct it and not be discovered, he and his men must walk a perilously dark line. One slip, and everyone becomes a casualty of war.




There's nothing like home renovation for finding skeletons in the closet or otherwordly portals in the attic. Now, for any homeowner who's ever wondered, "What's that creaking sound?" or fans of "how to" television who'd like a little unreality mixed in with their reality shows, editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner return with an all-new collection of the paranormal perils of Do-It-Yourself. Includes tales from Patricia Briggs, James Grady, Heather Graham, and Melissa Marr, and features a never-before-published Sookie Stackhouse story from Charlaine Harris.



Devastated by the discovery that his wife, Helen, was murdered, Special Agent Pendergast must have retribution. But revenge is not simple. As he stalks his wife's betrayers-a chase that takes him from the wild moors of Scotland to the bustling streets of New York City and the darkest bayous of Louisiana-he is also forced to dig further into Helen's past. And he is stunned to learn that Helen may have been a collaborator in her own murder. Peeling back the layers of deception, Pendergast realizes that the conspiracy is deeper, goes back generations, and is more monstrous than he could have ever imagined-and everything he's believed, everything he's trusted, everything he's understood . . . may be a horrific lie.



Growing up, the only place tomboy Thayer Wentworth felt at home was at her summer camp in the North Carolina Mountains. It was there that she escaped the weight of her mother's expectations and the grief of her father's tragic death, and it was there that she met Nick Abrams, her first love...and first heartbreak.
Years later, Thayer marries Aengus, an unconventional Irish professor, and they move into her deceased grandmother's house in Atlanta, only miles from Camp Edge-wood on Burnt Mountain, where her father died in a car accident. There, Aengus and Thayer lead quiet and happy lives, content with their easy routines and friendly neighbors. But when Aengus is invited up to the camp on Burnt Mountain to tell Irish tales to the young campers, things slowly begin to change. As Aengus spends less time at home and becomes more immersed in his life up at the camp, Thayer is forced to confront dark secrets, about her mother, her first love, and, most devastating of all, her husband.


Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont uncovers a dark and deadly conspiracy that reaches deep into the halls of state government. At first glance, the video appears to be showing a childish game: a teenage girl with dark wavy hair smiles for the camera, a blue scarf tied around her neck. All of a sudden things turn murderous, and the girl ends up dead. It’s as bad as a snuff film can get, and what’s worse, the clip has been discovered on a phone that belongs to the grandson of Washington State’s governor. However, the boy, who has a troubled background, swears that he’s never seen the victim before. Fortunately, the governor is able to turn to an old friend, J. P. Beaumont, for help. The Seattle private investigator has witnessed many horrific acts over the years, but this one ranks near the top. Even more shocking is that the crime’s multiple perpetrators could be minors. Along with Mel Soames, his partner in life as well as on the job, Beaumont soon determines that what initially appears to be a childish prank gone wrong has much deeper implications. But Mel and Beau must follow this path of corruption to its very end, before more innocent young lives are lost.

Booklist's Top Horror Fiction

Booklist has rated the top titles horror fiction. You can find these titles on the list at the Merrick Library:

American Vampire by Jennifer Armintrout
Cunning, ruthless, and rattlesnake mean, Skinner Sweet has a reputation for cussedness as long as he is ornery. As the first vampire conceived on American soil, however, he's not your usual creature of the night. Stronger, fiercer and powered by the sun, Sweet is the first of a new breed of bloodsucker: the American Vampire. Forty-five years after rising from his grave, Sweet finds himself in 1920s Los Angeles, where the young and beautiful are drawn like moths to the burning lights of Hollywood. Something beyond simple human greed is at work here, however, as struggling young actress Pearl Jones is about to discover. When her movie-star dreams are transformed into a bloody nightmare, Sweet provides her only chance for survival as well as the power to take revenge





Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King


Prolific author Stephen King presents a collection of four new novellas. In the story 1922, a man plunges into the depths of madness when his wife attempts to sell off the family home. A mystery writer, who was beaten and raped while driving home from her book club, plots her revenge in Big Driver. Diagnosed with a deadly cancer, a man makes a deal with the devil in Fair Extension. And in A Good Marriage, a woman discovers her husband's darker side while he is away on a business trip.

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher


In his life, Harry's been shot, stabbed, sliced, beaten, burned, crushed, and tortured. And after someone puts a bullet through his chest and leaves him to die in the waters of Lake Michigan, things really start going downhill. But even trapped in the realm between life and death, Harry can't catch a break. He learns that three of his friends are destined to experience unbearable torment and agony. Only by bringing his murderer to justice can he save his friends and move on to what comes next--a feat that would be a lot easier if he had a body and access to his powers. Instead, Harry must work as a ghost, unable to interact with the physical world, invisible and inaudible to almost everyone. Unfortunately he's not the only specter roaming Chicago. There are malevolent shadows who haven't forgotten Harry's predilection for putting evil in its place while he was alive. And now that Harry's on their turf, they are looking for some serious payback. So the late Harry Dresden will have to pull off the ultimate trick without using any magic--or face an eternity as just another lost soul.

The Glass Demon by Helen Grant
When seventeen-year-old Lin and her family move to an ancient German castle for a year while her medievalist father searches for the famed Allerheiligen glass--lost stained glass windows that are said to be haunted by a terrifying demon--she becomes involved in a horrific murder mystery.



The White Devil by Justin Evans


When 17-year-old Andrew Taylor is sent to the 400-year-old Harrow School, a British institution for privileged adolescents, he is soon cast as an outsider and, spurned by nearly all of his peers, becomes immersed in a 200-year-old literary mystery when he finds a friend in the school's poet-in-residence.

New DVD Arrivals!

"The Conspirator" - Robert Redford's treatment of the Lincoln assassination with emphasis on the lone female conspirator - starring Robin Wright, James McAvoy and Kevin Kline

"Jane Eyre" - vivid adaptation of the classic Charlotte Bronte novel - starring Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender and Judi Dench

"Something Borrowed" - a story of love and/or friendship based on the popular novel by Emily Giffin - starring Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin

Suggested Reading to Achieve Simple Happiness

Jim Ryan is a local motivational speaker and author of "Simple Happiness, 52 Easy Ways to Lighten Up". The following is his recommeded reading list to destress and achieve happiness:


The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer

The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Check the Merrick Library catalog for the print or audio format available.

Young Adult Books for Adults

Young Adult publishing is a major force in the industry and there is a ton of great quality material that will appeal to adult readers. If you haven't been watching the pub lists for teen books, try these titles for starters:


The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them. Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson's extraordinary novel takes place at a time when American Patriots rioted and battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their lives for a freedom they would never claim. The first of two parts, this deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence’s most powerful girls—and their foray into the spiritual world—lead to?


The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games." The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Katniss's sister is chosen by lottery, Katniss steps up to go in her place.


A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Sixteen-year-old Mattie has a word for everything. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can't write down in stories.
The fresh pain of her mother's death. The burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his brokeback farm. The mad welter of feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, who says he wants to marry her. And the secret dreams that keep her going--visions of finishing high school, going to college in New York City, becoming a writer. Yet when the drowned body of a young woman turns up at the hotel where Mattie works, all her words are useless. But in the dead woman's letters, Mattie again finds her voice, and a determination to live her own life. Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.


Teach Me by R.A. Nelson
What happens when a high school student and her teacher cross that line? From the very first page, Nine speaks in a voice that is at once raw, honest, direct, and unusually eloquent. "There has been an earthquake in my life," she says, inviting you inside an experience that fascinates everyone-an affair between teacher and student-and giving a personal answer to the question: How does this happen? R. A. Nelson's strong writing is paired with a story we all want to hear, resulting in a novel that will speak to every teenager. A novel about a love so intense that the person you're with becomes your world, and when you lose that person, you lose your world.

Books on the Big Screen

Two titles on our Staff Picks list are coming to theatre near you this August:

One Day
Based on the novel, "One Day" by David Nichol
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson
Release Date: August 19th
After one day together --- July 15, 1988, their college graduation --- Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew begin a friendship that will last a lifetime. She is a working-class girl of principle and ambition who dreams of making the world a better place. He is a wealthy charmer who dreams that the world will be his playground. For the next two decades, key moments of their relationship are experienced over several July 15ths in their lives. Together and apart, we see Dex and Em through their friendship and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears.


Hedgehog
Starring: Josiane Balasko, Togo Igawa, Ariane Ascaride
Based on the novel, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery
Release Date: August 19th
The Hedgehog is the timely story of Paloma, a young girl bent on ending it all on her upcoming 12th birthday. Using her father’s old camcorder to chronicle the hypocrisy she sees in adults, Paloma begins to learn about life from the grumpy building concierge, Renée Michel. When Paloma’s camera reveals the extensive secret library in Renée’s back room, and that the often gruff matron reads Tolstoy to her cat, Paloma begins to understand that there are allies to be found beneath the prickliest of exteriors. As the unlikely friendship deepens, Paloma’s own coming of age becomes a much less pessimistic prospect.

New DVD Arrivals!

"Mars Needs Moms" - An animated Disney adventure about discovering a certain person's true worth - featuring the voices of Seth Green and Joan Cusack


"Paul" - This is where UFOs meet road trip comedy - starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Seth Rogen


"Super" - A man who can't cope becomes a superhero - starring Rainn Wilson, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon

A List of Lists

Do you love lists?

We found the ultimate list of reading lists. Check out this blog for a variety of lists of recommended book titles. It has a list of almost anything you can think of (and some you wouldn't!): Classics, Influential Books, Harvard's Book Store Staff Favorites, Best of the Century, 75 Books Every Man Should Read and much more!!

Do you have your own list or would you like the staff here at the Merrick Library to create a particular list? Let us know in the comments!

New & Noteworthy Nonfiction Audiobooks

Mel Robbins, one of America's top relationship experts, combines the latest scientific research with her own hard-earned wisdom in a self-help book that goes beyond offering tired platitudes and instead delivers real, effective techniques for getting what you truly desire out of life.






Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea—a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally.
Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA—past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.






The Secrets of the FBI by New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler reveals the FBI’s most closely guarded secrets and the secrets of celebrities, politicians, and movie stars uncovered by agents during their investigations.

Based on inside access, the book presents revelations about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, the recent Russian spy swap, Marilyn Monroe's death, Vince Foster’s suicide, and J. Edgar Hoover’s sexual orientation. For the first time, it tells how the FBI caught spy Robert Hanssen in its midst and how the FBI breaks into homes, offices, and embassies to plant bugging devices without getting caught.
From Watergate to Waco, from congressional scandals to the killing of bin Laden, The Secrets of the FBI presents headline-making disclosures about the most important figures and events of our time.

New DVD arrivals!!

My Name Is Khan" – A drama concerning what distances an Indian man will travel to win back his true love - starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol

"Rio" – An animated family comedy about learning to fly in more ways than one! - Featuring the voices of Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway and George Lopez

"The Perfect Game" - An ex-baseball player in 1957 Mexico coaches a team into the Little League World Series (based on a true story) - starring Clifton Collins, Jr., Cheech Marin and Bruce Mc Gill

"Soul Surfer" - Losing an arm to a shark will not stop a teenager from competing as a surfer (based on the life of and book by Bethany Hamilton) – starring Anna Sophia Robb, Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt

"United States of Tara: The Third Season" - Showtime comedy chronicling the chaotic life of a woman with multiple personalities and her family - starring Toni Collette and John Corbett

"Band Baaja Baarat" - A comedy from India: A student with many goals and another with none meet by chance - starring Manu Rishi

Read-a-Likes

Did you enjoy reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett?

Try one of these for a similar reading experience:



Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It's their open secret. Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don't bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory--but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change



Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas
The critically acclaimed debut novel from pioneering actress and writer Denise Nicholas tells the story of one young woman’s coming of age via the political and social upheavals of the civil rights movement. Nineteen-year-old Celeste Tyree leaves Ann Arbor to go to Pineyville, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to help found a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. As the summer unfolds, she confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also deep truths about her family and herself. Drawing on Nicholas’ own involvement in the movement, Freshwater Road was hailed by Newsday as “Perhaps the best work of fiction ever done about the civil rights movement.”

Books to Movies: Did you know?

Did you know the recent sci-fi flick, Cowboys & Aliens, starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford is based on the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg ??

Cowboys & Aliens
Cast: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde
Director: Jon Favreau
Release Date: July 29th
Based On: COWBOYS AND ALIENS by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg

1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger with no memory of his paststumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to hishistory is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What hediscovers is that the people of Absolution don't welcome strangers,and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by theiron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde. It's a town that lives in fear.
But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehendas the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screamingdown with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct thehelpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residentshave ever known.
Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation.

Featured Staff Picks! Beach Reads

Some Nerve by Jane Heller
Struggling with her ethics, secret phobias, and job loss after failing to score an important interview with a reclusive actor, Hollywood magazine reporter Ann Roth returns to her Missouri home only to discover that the actor is in her hometown, where he is using an alias while undergoing heart surgery.







Set Up in Soho by Dee Davis
When Andrea Sevalas’ long time boyfriend announces he’s seeing someone else, Andi’s thrown for a loop—well, actually, down a cellar. Head throbbing and nose out of joint, she’s rescued by one of New York’s finest – attorneys that is. Ethan McCay is the Upper East Side heir to the kingdom of Manhattan. But Andi isn’t interested in princes. At least not the uptown variety. She’s a downtown girl with no time for Park Avenue royalty.






Fifteen Minutes of Shame by Lisa Daily
Dating expert Darby Vaughn's life is turned upside down when she discovers that her husband is cheating on her on national television, a discovery that forces her to make some tough choices between her career and her philandering husband as her personal life becomes fodder for tabloids across the country.

NPR needs YOU!

Vote for NPRs Top 10 list of Science Fiction & Fantasy titles here

Everyone gets 10 votes. Select your top 10 favorite titles, and then scroll down to the bottom of the poll and click "Submit."