Whoever thought learning about what gives you gas would be so much fun? Mary Roach's Gulp explores all the things I never thought would be in this book—smuggling objects, sewing parts of rats closed, Elvis, etc. I couldn't stop talking about this book and telling my friends and family what I was learning about. It's like the Magic School Bus for adults!
In Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil, Deborah Rodriguez offers an account of Afghan life from a unique vantage point as an American beautician serving local and foreign women in Kabul, where she not only ran a salon but also operated a beauty school.
"Why are we here? What is love? Is there a Loch Ness monster? Does God send text messages?" These four lines, and "Jessie's Girl," were about all I had to go on before cracking open Rick Springfield's debut fiction novel. It follows an early thirties, recently divorced, recovering slacker as he ponders his existence. It leads him on a quest that ends up with a 1-800 hotline to God, a recently "freed" nun, and a date with the Loch Ness monster.
This fall, Johnson County Library has been looking at race: stereotypes, self-awareness, and what it means to look beyond the surface. We’ve invited you to tell us how you have been affected by race. Justin Carter, in the following essay, shares his experience. As a suburban white woman, it’s easy to subconsciously, or otherwise, believe that issues of race don’t happen in my community, my city, or even my state. My country, sure, but that’s Missouri. That’s the other United States.
Life hasn’t been easy for Jim Stark, the protagonist of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim. His old apartment isn’t his anymore, his lover Alice has been murdered, and, oh, yeah, he’s just spent the last 11 years in hell. Returning to Los Angeles to murder the cohorts who sent him to hell, Stark finds himself in the middle of something bigger, with the fate of the world at stake. In this showdown, the bad guys are terrifying and the good guys are only good by comparison. And Stark?
Second in the Walter Day series, The Black Country finds Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad called to a small mining town to investigate the disappearance of a child and his parents.
James Swain has written a series of novels featuring Tony Valentine as the main character. Mr. Lucky is the fifth in a series that has been one enjoyable read after another.
Caitlin Moran, The Times (London that is, not New York) columnist who is known primarily for her non-fiction writing (How to Be a Woman, Moranthology), excessive eyeliner, and very big hair, has published a novel for the first time since she was 16.
Morgan measures her likeability by how many Twitter followers she has. Her goal is to reach 5000 and she is getting very close. If she has 5000 followers, she has to be likeable, right? Even if she doesn't have any real life friends, even if the father she's never known didn't like her enough to stick around and help raise her. She is currently tweeting about things she thought were true.
Mysti Murphy is not having a good 7th grade year. Her only friend, Anibal Gomez, has developed a crush on a Cheer Squad girl and has decided to change his image in an effort to be noticed. Part of Anibal's "social experiment" is to develop a hipster persona that he thinks his new crush will admire. To see if his experiment works, he needs to ditch Mysti. Anibal decides that he and Mysti can talk and text in the evenings and on weekends, but they must have NO contact during school. Mysti has no other friends, so she now sits alone at the Loser Island in the cafeteria at lunchtime.
