New DVDs

New DVDs

Out January 29:

"Agatha Christie's Poirot: Series 6" - David Suchet returns as the immortal Belgian detective tackling cases involving theft, kidnapping and murder during the holidays - features Hugh Fraser as Captain Arthur Hastings and David Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp

"The Forgiveness of Blood" - acclaimed drama from Albania in which a blood feud over land forces a teenage girl to leave school and take over the family bread delivery business - honored at the Berlin, Chicago and Hamptons Film Festivals

"Hotel Transylvania" -  it is the 118th birthday of Dracula's daughter and the party brings together a Who's Who of monsters plus a mortal with romance in mind - features the voices of Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Kevin James and Steve Buscemi (TV's "Boardwalk Empire")

"Downton Abbey: Season 3" - World War I is over and is the Grantham estate now at peace? Think again! - as seen on the PBS series "Masterpiece Classic" with a stellar cast led by Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern and Maggie Smith (Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner)

"Seven Psychopaths" - what will finish first for Marty: his screenplay or his life given involvement with gangsters? - stars Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken

Are you ready for some football...parties?

Super Bowl Sunday is February 3, 2013!

The Merrick Library has some great party food titles 

that will help make the dish you're bringing a success 

OR 

if you're hosting, be the host or hostess with the mostest.

Come in for these tasty titles today!

A road map to hassle-free, hustle free entertaining including 33 themed get-togethers for groups of 4 to 20!

 

Delicious recipes and entertaining ideas using only foods and drinks from Trader Joe's grocery store. Serving up over 150 delicious treats.

 

 

 

Throughout the book you'll find irresistible recipes ideal for get-togethers. 

Not enough? Come see the book display at the

Reference Desk featuring MORE cookbooks to create that "touchdown" meal. 

Then all you have to do is let us know what time to arrive! 

Enjoy Super Bowl Sunday!

New Audiobooks!

My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor
The first Hispanic American on the U.S. Supreme Court shares the story of her life before becoming a judge, describing her youth in a Bronx housing project, the ambition that fueled her ivy league education, and the individuals who helped shaped her career.



Twelve Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis
A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family. 





The Last Runaway, by Tracy Chevalier
New York Times bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier makes her first fictional foray into the American past in The Last Runaway, bringing to life the Underground Railroad and illuminating the principles, passions and realities that fueled this extraordinary freedom movement.


The Fifth Assassin, by Brad Meltzer
The hero of The Inner Circle, archivist Beecher White, discovers a connection that may link the individuals responsible for the only four successful assassinations of American Presidents after discovering a modern-day killer who is recreating the assassins' crimes.



Suspect, Robert Crais
Struggling to reclaim his career after the devastating murder of his partner eight months earlier, LAPD cop Max Kent is teamed with a traumatized military canine named Maggie who assists Max in an effort to track down his late partner's killer. 



Private Berlin, by James Patterson & Mark Sullivan
The Berlin office of the world's most renowned investigation firm looks into the disappearance of an agent, Chris Schneider, whose last case involved an unfaithful billionaire, a cheating soccer player, and a seedy nightclub owner.





The Future, Six Drivers of Global Change, by Al Gore
The former vice president and #1 best-selling author of An Inconvenient Truth offers a frank assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come—economic globalization, worldwide digital communications, a growing balance of global power, unsustainable population growth, scientific revolution and disruption of ecosystems.

Home Improvement Reference Center Database

The Home Improvement Reference Center Database is available now through June 2013 to assist those with recovery efforts in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.  This is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in home improvement and repair.  This database provides information and instruction through full text color articles and videos. It can be found under the Research Tab on the Merrick Library Homepage. Click on Databases by Subject and then choose Home Improvement.

2012 National Jewish Book Award Winners Announced

City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, edited by Deborah Dash More won top honors in the 2012 National Jewish Book Awards. It is a three-volume study of New York's highly influential Jewish community.  For more information and other Book Award Winners visit  thejewishweek.com. 

Rock & Roll Memoirs

 2012 was a big year for the rock star memoir and biography.

In case you missed them, here they are: 

      
                     

Looking for more?   Try these from previous years:

My Cross to Bear, by Gregg Allman
When I left Home, by Buddy Guy
Just Kids, by Patti Smith
Life, by Keith Richards
I Am Ozzy, by Ozzy Osbourne
No Regrets, by Ace Frehley
See A Little Light, by Bob Mould
Iron Man, by Tony Iommi

President Obama was sworn into office today, and his inauguration party will take place tomorrow.  This may be a good time to read one of the many books we have available at the Library about the Obamas.

The Oscars will be awarded on February 24th.  To see the full list of 2013 Academy Award nominations based on books, visit the Early Word.

For Mystery Lovers

Don't miss these mysteries recommended by BookPage!  Mystery lovers will find a wide range of titles from adventure/thrillers and historical mysteries to classic police procedurals to enjoy!

New Audiobooks!

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich
When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 14-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.



Robert B. Parker's Ironhorse, by Robert Knott
For years, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have ridden roughshod over rabble-rousers and gun hands in troubled towns like Appaloosa, Resolution, and Brimstone. Now, newly appointed as Territorial Marshalls, they find themselves traveling by train through the Indian Territories. Their first marshaling duty starts out as a simple mission to escort Mexican prisoners to the border, but when the Governor of Texas, his wife and daughters climb aboard with their bodyguards and $500,000 in tow, their journey suddenly becomes a lot more complicated.

Empire and Honor, by W.E.B Griffin
In the aftermath of the surrenders of Germany and Japan in October 1945, Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS are given the life-threatening task of maintaining security during a covert U.S. deal with Germany for intelligence about the identities of Soviet spies in the American atomic bomb program.


Dream Eyes, by Jayne Ann Krentz
Returning to the Oregon small town where fellow members of a research team were killed two years earlier, psychic counselor Gwen Frazier, convinced that her mentor's untimely death is related, searches for answers at the side of psychic investigator Judson Coppersmith, who is haunted by urgent dreams and a primal attraction to Gwen.

On January 10 in Beverly Hills, California,  nominations were announced for the 85th Annual Academy Awards. The following films in Merrick Library's DVD collection were among the nominees:

 

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" - Best Picture, Best Actress (Quvenzhane Wallis), Best Director (Behn Zeitlin), Best Adapted Screenplay - At age nine, Miss Wallis is the youngest person ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.

 

"Brave" - Best Animated Feature

 

"Frankenweenie" - Best Animated Feature

 

"Marvel's The Avengers" - Best Visual Effects

 

"Mirror Mirror" - Best Costume Design

 

"Moonrise Kingdom" - Best Original Screenplay

 

"ParaNorman" - Best Animated Feature

 

"The Pirates! Band of Misfits" - Best Animated Feature

 

"Prometheus" - Best Visual Effects

 

"Snow White and the Huntsman" - Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects

 

"Ted" - Best Original Song ("Everybody Needs a Best Friend")

 

The Academy Awards will air on ABC television Sunday evening, February 24. The first-time host will be Seth MacFarlane, creator of and chief voice artist for the animated Fox TV series "Family Guy" plus writer/director/stuffed bear voice for the movie "Ted."

LONG ISLAND READS...

The Merrick Library has loaded all our lending Nooks with the newest Long Island Reads title:

Sutton, by J. B. Moerhringer

"SUTTON is an entertaining and delightful book. In the beginning, you may wonder what is true and what is embellishment, but eventually it becomes irrelevant. Willie Sutton was quite a character, and J. R. Moehringer has captured his spirit on the pages of this novel."   - Bookreporter.com


Come in today to reserve your Nook and read along with the rest of Long Island!

Booklist Editors' Choice: Adult Fiction 2012

 

By Brad Hooper

From Booklist, January 1, 2013

Angelmaker. By Nick Harkaway.
In this sublimely intricate and compulsively readable tour de force of Dickensian bravura and genre-blending splendor, Harkaway tells the tale of a mild-mannered London clockmaker faced with saving humanity from extinction.
Arcadia. By Lauren Groff.
This beautifully crafted novel invokes the fragility of community as it follows Bit Stone, the first child to be born in the late 1960s on an upstate New York commune called Arcadia, from childhood through the year 2018.
Astray. By Emma Donoghue.
Inspired by newspaper stories from the last four centuries, Donoghue’s masterful short story collection explores the unexpected in people’s lives in such varied settings as Victorian England, Civil War–era Texas, and early twentieth-century New York City.
The Bartender’s Tale. By Ivan Doig.
Doig’s latest historical novel set in the fictional Two Medicine Country in northern Montana stars an affable bartender and his precocious 12-year-old son, whose coming-of-age takes place in a saloon. Rich in character and detail.
Beautiful Ruins. By Jess Walter.
In 1962, an American movie starlet arrives at a small hotel on the Italian coast, there to recuperate from a disaster on the set of the movie Cleopatra. A sparkling reimagining of history.
The Beginner’s Goodbye. By Anne Tyler.
Tyler’s sparkling, covertly philosophical tale about a man who refuses to be defined by his disability or denied communication with his deceased wife reveals how ill-prepared we are for life’s contrary demands.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. By Ben Fountain.
Written in a voice that is at once hopeful, cautious, and completely lost yet utterly knowing, Fountain’s novel delivers a brilliant, powerful examination of how modern warfare affects soldiers who have returned home.
Bring Up the Bodies. By Hilary Mantel.
This second volume in the author’s planned trilogy brilliantly reconstructing the life of Henry VIII’s secretary Thomas Cromwell follows Wolf Hall (2009) and tells the story of the fall of Anne Boleyn.
By Blood. By Ellen Ullman.
A disgraced professor becomes obsessed with the client of a psychiatrist working next to him. This poetic and mysterious story suggests both Poe and Kafka.
The Cove. By Ron Rash.
In a powerful novel that skillfully overlays its tragic love story with pointed social commentary, Rash effortlessly summons the rugged Appalachian landscape as well as the xenophobia of a country in the grip of patriotic fervor.
Dear Life. By Alice Munro.
Her latest collection advances the widely held conviction that Munro reigns as the best short story writer in English today.
The Dream of the Celt. By Mario Vargas Llosa. Tr. by Edith Grossman.
The ever-creative Peruvian novelist takes as his subject Roger Casement, an Irishman in the British diplomatic service executed for treason during WWI.
Flight Behavior. By Barbara Kingsolver.
In this passionate novel on global warming, feisty, funny Dellarobia Turnbow gains new and galvanizing insight into her life when a fluke of nature draws hordes of reporters, scientists and tourists to her Appalachian town.
Gods without Men. By Hari Kunzru.
Kunzru’s lively, hugely ambitious novel explores humans’ desperate search for meaning—whether it be through drugs, religion, computer programming, or UFOs—within the chaos of life, both modern and ancient.
Home. By Toni Morrison.
With the economical presentation of a short story, the rhythms and cadence of a poem, and the total embrace and resonance of a novel, Morrison writes a cogent story about a black Korean War veteran.
In One Person. By John Irving.
Irving’s charming and audacious novel about the confusing coming-of-age of a bisexual boy in a small Vermont town features a glorious cast of misfit characters, an intricately constructed plot, and a call to celebrate human sexuality.
The Lower River. By Paul Theroux.
When his marriage and clothing store fail, a sixtysomething man returns to Africa to rekindle the intense feeling of his days in the Peace Corps. A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene. (Top of the List winner—Adult Fiction.)
The Round House. By Louise Erdrich.
Erdrich’s profound intimacy with her characters, beginning with 13-year-old Ojibwe Joe Coutts, electrifies this stunning and wise novel of family bonds, hate crimes, and vengeance set within a web of history, cruel loss, and bracing realizations.
Skagboys. By Irvine Welsh.
Nearly 20 years after Trainspotting, Welsh delivers a stunning prequel that shows how his characters got hooked on heroin. As before, it’s the remarkable characterizations that give this haunting work its devastating impact.
Sutton. By J. R. Moehringer.
Moehringer relays, in electrifying prose, the highs and lows of bank robber Willie Sutton’s dramatic life, from the thrill of the heist to the brutal interrogations by cops and the hell of years spent in solitary confinement.
Sweet Tooth. By Ian McEwan.
McEwan goes back in time to enter the spy world of British intelligence in the early 1970s, and in the book’s heroine, he has created a resonant female character.
Telegraph Avenue. By Michael Chabon.
Chabon’s exuberantly alive novel of two families, one African American, the other Jewish, and a beloved but imperiled used record store is an intricate, funny, and revelatory saga of family and friendship and the soul of American life.
The Testament of Mary. By Colm Tóibín.
Irishman Tóibín delivers a stunning interpretation of the life and role of the mother of Jesus that is as beautiful in its presentation as it is provocative in intention.
That’s Not a Feeling. By Dan Josefson.
This remarkable debut novel follows the growing friendship between students at the Roaring Orchards School for Troubled Teens. The matter-of-fact prose, studded with perfectly phrased gems, provides a cool surface to a work that is rich in feeling.
This Is How You Lose Her. By Junot Díaz.
Each tale of unrequited and betrayed love and family crises is electric with passionate observations and off-the-charts emotional and social intelligence as MacArthur fellow Díaz charts the struggles of Yunior, a beleaguered Dominican American.
True Believers. By Kurt Andersen.
A onetime Supreme Court nominee sets out to reveal a deadly truth from her radical past but manages to do much more. An ambitious and remarkable novel, wonderfully voiced, about memory, secrets, guilt, and the dangers of certitude.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. By Rachel Joyce.
Joyce’s debut novel about a new retiree who embarks on a mission of mercy involving a solitary 500-mile walk across the north of England is quirky and charming but also haunting in its examination of love and devotion.

New Audiobooks!

Collateral Damage, by Stuart Woods
Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan and pleased to receive an unexpected visit from his friend and sometime lover Holly Barker, now an assistant director at the CIA. Holly's visit isn't only for pleasure.  An explosive incident requires her immediate attention and Stone's investigative expertise.  What initially appears to be a clear-cut case soon becomes increasingly complex and dangerous.


The Husband List, by Janet Evanovich & Dorien Kelly
Pressured by her mother to marry a proper gentleman, Caroline Maxwell reluctantly considers Lord Bremerton while harboring a secret longing for adventure and passion with her brother's world-traveling friend, Jack, whose new money and lack of title render him an unsuitable candidate in her mother's eyes.


Kinsey and Me, by Sue Grafton
In 1982, Sue Grafton introduced us to Kinsey Millhone.  Thirty years later, Kinsey is an established international icon and sue, a number-one bestselling author.  To mark this anniversary year, Sue has given us stories that reveal Kinsey's origins and Sue's past.

Just Out:

 

"Cosmopolis" - you're 28 and a billionaire in asset managing - reality is about to crash in! - stars Robert Pattinson ("Twilight" series), Paul Giamatti and Juliette Binoche

 

"Looper" - imagine meeting your future self  whose mission is to execute you - stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis

 

Out January 8:

 

"Compliance" - the controversial film based on true events that questions how far someone should go to obey an "authority" - stars Ann Dowd and Drema Walker

 

"Dredd" - want to represent order in a future of chaos? Then become judge, jury and executioner all at once! - stars Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby

 

"Frankenweenie" - from Disney and the mind of Tim Burton - Victor only wanted to bring his dog Sparky back from the dead - see what else happens! - featuring the voices of Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short and Winona Ryder

Not Available in Overdrive?

Did you ever wonder why you are not able to find the book you are looking for on the library's downloadable collection?

A number of publishers do not make their titles available for library lending.  The NPR article, "Libraries and E-Lending: The 'Wild West' of Digital Licensing," may explain why your book isn't available to borrow.