Reviews

This is Jane Yolen's first graphic novel about Aliera Carstairs, a young girl who doesn't fit in at school.  But everyday after school she goes to practice fencing, which she happens to be very good at. Her sword is from a second hand store, where her mom likes to find bargains. She becomes lab partners with a cute boy who likes to cut up dead things.  That is the beginning of the story but there is much more. Aliera is a very complex character who needs to discover what her strengths are used for. I hope that there are many more stories about Aliera Carstirs.

This a fun, fast, chic-lit read. It is the a book about Joile Goodman who has quit her job as a real estate agent because her boss was being unethical. She now works at Neimen Marcus selling shoes to make ends meet. It is also a start of a new friendship with Carlotta, the party crashing queen. Jolie's boyfriend goes missing and she meets the man of her dreams.

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin and the Race of a Lifetime is a behind-the-scenes account of the presidential primaries leading up to the 2008 election of Barack Obama. It was written by two nationally known, and seemingly well-respected, journalists.

The narrative follows the lives of fourteen British children of various economic backgrounds from the 1960s to the present, posing the question of whether socioeconomic background predetermines our future. The children are questioned on their present beliefs, past accomplishments and future plans, with each child revisited every seven years.

As India's independence from Britain nears, political tensions mount as Pakistan, in turn, seeks it's independence from India.   Author Bapsi  Sidhwa uses the growing awareness of a Lenny, a 5 yr old Parsee girl living in 1940's Lahore to illustrate the origins of prejudice.  "Will the crack

A novice newspaper journalist recounts his experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.  He’s never been a foreign correspondent; he’s never been a war correspondent.  So his reader will learn through him how to blindly set out to a war-torn country bereft of the simplest comforts…running water, for example.   The heart of the book is the story of Garcia, a social worker

If you have ever had any curiousity at all about the world of music, and the amazing diversity of rhythms, instruments, vocalizations, melodies and harmonies to be found outside of pop rock or classical, you would do well to listen to the variety of Putumayo Presents recordings JCL and Olathe Libraries own!

 The basic pitch for this book would make it seem like it's a fairly straightforward detective novel: a world-famous detective goes missing and his lowly file clerk is promoted to take his place.

Drift is a very appropriate title for this collection of 13 short stories. The dysfunctional characters in these stories drift through life struggling with various addictive behavior including drugs and sex. Many of the stories are interconnected and all take place in Newport Beach, California. Each story follows many of the same characters during different times in their life.

David Byrne and Brian Eno's 1981 album "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" changed pop music forever. The "vocals" weren't conventional pop- or rock-music vocals at all; instead they consisted of "found" voices such as those of radio personalities, Arabic singers and even an exorcist.