Witches are the new zombies…..

According to an Entertainment Weekly article, there’s a “coven craze” coming to to movies and television. (Summer Movie Double Issue, 2013).

They’ve listed movies such as Oz The Great And Powerful, The Lords of Salem and Seventh Son as proof.

There have been a fair amount of new book titles with witches as central characters. Here’s a few that are sure to charm you!

Deborah Harkness has the first two parts of her trilogy ready to read.
A Discovery of Witches is the first and Shadow of Night follows.  In them, Diana Bishop, the last of a line of powerful witches, prefers academia over magic but she soon finds herself entangled in a war between witches, daemons and vampires!

Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz is the first in a series, as well.  A mother and her two daughters are living a quiet life on Long Island but they harbor a secret… they are witches, banned from using their powers.  But when strange things start plaguing their town, they know they have to use those powers to keep the town safe.

Circle of Five by Dolores Riccio introduces us to a group of women  with special powers.  But, in their attempt to solve and prevent murders, they find themselves in danger.  A bit of humor lightens the creepy feel of this book, according to reviews.

The After Wife by Lexi Davis finds Nia trying to find love, but everytime she comes close to it, strange things happen to drive Mr. Right away.  The problem is that Nia is not an ordinary girl but a powerful witch’s daughter pledged to a demon!

Janet Evanovich’s contribution to this witchy world is a series that begins with  Wicked Appetite.   Lizzy Tucker has a bakery in Salem, Massachusetts but soon finds herself caught up in a frenzied hunt for ancient relics.

Happy Reading!

Action, Adventure, and Women Protagonists!

I must confess, I love James Bond; he is witty, debonair, and gets to drive all of those classy cars. Now, I have found some classy fictional women who pull their own comparatively, but without the cars and martinis.

I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with Stephanie Plum, and if you’re not, shame on you! Just kidding! She’s classy in a Jersey way, quick on her feet (sometimes), and has a great sense of humor. There are cars, but they usually don’t remain functional for too long, if you know what I mean. Janet Evanovich’s latest adventure is  Notorious Nineteen. But if you love Stephanie Plum, I have other amazing women sleuths to introduce you to!

Lisa Lutz has created a series, starting with The Spellman Files.  Who are the Spellmans, you ask?  Just a family whose members all work in the family private detective business.  Of course, they are all just a bit dysfunctional, and find issues with each other and their clients, but they should make you laugh.

Kat Richardson’s  series introduces us to Harper Blaine, a private investigator. The first title in this series is Greywalker and is fantasy, but action packed and a refreshing take on mystery solving. Harper Blaine becomes a greywalker, able to walk both the world of the living and the dead as a result of an accident in the beginning of the series.

Carolyn Haines has created Sarah Booth Delaney.  The first book in the Bones series is called Them Bones. Sarah has a lot in common with Stephanie Plum in the beginning of her series: she’s single, jobless and broke! But Sarah is haunted by the ghost of her great-great-great grandmother’s nanny and she falls into detective work after a bout of innocent criminal activity!

K.J. Larsen’s  creation is Cat DeLuca and her mystery series begins with Liar, Liar. Cat is a recently divorced Private Investigator and owns her own detective agency, catching other people’s cheating partners and more!

Charlaine Harris has written the Harper Connelly series, among others, but this one begins with Grave Sight. Harper has a unique ability to find the dead. As you can imagine, this can be a pretty nifty gift given the right circumstances, but Harper typically finds cold receptions and threats made against her as she tries to make a living helping put the dead to rest.

For more serious series:

Mallory’s Oracle is the first in a series by Caroll O’Connell. Mallory is a NYC police officer who follows her own rules. People who like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series would like Mallory.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith is the first of many in this series.. African detective, Precious Ramotswe, is devoted to helping others and quickly becomes involved in solving mysteries in her home, Botswana.

Check out Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series. Kay Scarpetta is a forensic analyst and medical examiner whose investigative work often makes her the target of her victims’ murderers. Start with Postmortem to meet Scarpetta for the very first time.

Tess Gerritsen is the author of the  Rizzoli & Isles series, beginning with The Surgeon. This is a thrilling and suspenseful series that involves a female Boston homicide detective and is chock full of forensic investigative material.

Hope this is enough to keep your adrenaline levels up!

Kate

Earth Day 2013

Can you believe that  the very first
Earth Day was April 22, 1970? 

 If you are looking for something to do this year, check out this list for Southeast Michigan events and this list for some events in Detroit proper.

And, if you’re in the mood for some books and movies, here are some to help provide some food for thought….

No Impact Man by Colin Beavan, in both book and movie form, covers his quest to go off the grid for a year – using no electricity, creating no trash, burning no gasoline!  He then shares how the rest of us can lessen our own impact on the earth.

You are Here by Thomas Kostigan shows how the direct relationship between our actions and the earth is too often ignored. But the seemingly insignificant things we do every day have the power to literally alter the landscape in the ongoing battle to resuscitate the planet.

50 Plus One Tips For Going Green by Alice Smith passes along what the experts tell you about how to accomplish simple, basic green tasks without hassle and a great deal of expense.

An Inconvenient Truth  is based on the book by Al Gore and delves into global warming and its consequenses.

Samasara, a DVD,  is a wonder-filled trip through the splendors of our beautiful planet.

Don’t forget that everytime you borrow a library item, you are recycling!

Downton Abbey Withdrawal??

 

It’s going to be a long wait until Season 4 of Downton Abbey is released!
So here are some tv show and movie suggestions to get you through. You can check them out from Southfield Public Library to watch while we wait (impatiently!):

Upstairs Downstairs
This television series is a British drama television series originally produced by London Weekend Television and revived by the BBC. It ran on ITV in 68 episodes divided into five series from 1971 to 1975.
Set in a large townhouse in Edwardian, First World War and interwar Belgravia in London, the series depicts the lives of the servants “downstairs” and their masters—the family “upstairs”. The series stands as a document of the social and technological changes that occurred between 1903 and 1930. It was revived by co-producers, BBC Wales and Masterpiece in 2010. The newly released Upstairs Downstairs is a continuation of the original.
We own both the original and the new series!
(I just finished watching the first season of the new series and it is great! I definitely recommend this for avid Downton Abbey Fans!)

Wives and Daughters
Set in a richly portrayed society well-stocked with eccentric nobles and gossipy villagers, this story centers around Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a respected country doctor. The well-ordered world of Molly’s childhood is soon to be complicated by new people and unexpected situations. Most devastating is her father’s decision to remarry after many years of widowhood. Molly’s faltering efforts to cope gracefully with an impossible stepmother, a beguiling stepsister, burdensome secrets and burgeoning romance ring as true today as when Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the novel in 1865.

The Forsyte Saga
Set in the 1920s, two decades after the first series ends, the plot follows the courtship of two teenage Forsyte cousins: Fleur and Jon. Fleur, the daughter of Soames and Annette, and Jon, the son of Irene and Jolyon, meet by chance as youngsters; now Irene’s son has fallen in love with the daughter of Soames, the man she despises above all others. Fleur and Jon haven’t a clue that Soames and Irene were once married, all they know is that the family won’t talk. Little do they suspect that their parent’s dark secret will turn their nuptial dreams into a Romeo and Juliet ordeal.

North and South
When the privileged Margaret Hale’s father uproots the family to take work in the northern mill town of Milton, she is shocked by the dirt and gruffness of the people. But she reserves her highest contempt for the charismatic mill-owner John Thornton.

Sense and Sensibility
Tells of the Dashwood sisters, sensible Eleanor and passionate Marianne, whose chances at marriage seem doomed by their family’s sudden loss of fortune.

Brideshead Revisited
A Londoner of lower class befriends and begins a romantic relationship with an aristocrat that becomes complicated when the aristocrat introduces his new friend to his sister.

Gosford Park
Drama set at the country estate of Sir William McCordle in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guests and downstairs servants at a hunting party weekend when one of the group is murdered.

Berkeley Square
Three young women from very different backgrounds meet, become friends and share experiences when they all gain positions as nannies in the wealthy households of London’s exclusive Berkeley Square.

Remains of the Day
The story of blind devotion and repressed love between a fanatically proper butler and a high-spirited, strong-minded young housekeeper employed by a British lord who is unwittingly a Nazi dupe.

….We hope you enjoy these titles!

When Oh When Will Spring Get Here??

I don’t know about you, but this cold weather and grey sky that seems to be the norm in Michigan can go away anytime!  Just a little blue sky and sunshine makes all the difference in the world, no matter what the temperature.
But, until Spring decides to show herself for reals, here are a few books whose titles, at least, should  help you imagine it. 

Butterflies of  Grand Canyon by Margaret Erhart has some nature lovers caught up in a mysterious death in a spectacular setting.

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd tells the tale of a young girl searching for her mother.  That hunt takes her to the Boatwright sisters, keepers of bees, tenders of souls, and healers of hearts.

Spring Break by Kayla Perrin has three best friends going to a tropical island for their college spring break, but things go terribly wrong.

Spring Fever by Mary Kay Andrews finds Annajane attending her ex-husband’s second wedding, confidant in the fact that she is over him.  But when that wedding comes to an unexpected halt, she has second thoughts herself.

Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach explores the madness of the 16th century when a single tulip bulb could make its owner rich.

Violets Are Blue by James Patterson finds Alex Cross on the hunt for a crew of blood-drinking murderers.

Happy Spring!  Happy Reading!

 

 

 

 

Everyone’s lucky on St. Patrick’s Day

 

 

 

 

You just might find a hidden  treasure in one of these books….

Tananarive Due
Living blood
A widow with a young daughter has to protect her young daughter  when her strange powers attract the attention of some evil beings.

David R. Gillham
City of women
Taking on the guise of the ideal German wife, a woman risks it all to hide a Jewish family from the Nazis

Bonnie Glover
Going down South
Set in the 1960’s,  teenager Olivia finds herself pregnant and whisked away from New York by her mother down South to live with her estranged grandmother.

Jaimy Gordon
Lord of Misrule
You’ll find yourself immersed in the shadier side of horse racing in this National Book Award winner. 

Dave King
The Ha-Ha
A traumatized Vietnam vet who cannot speak finds himself taking care of an angry adolescent who never gets heard. 

And, of course,  a tale set in Ireland….

Patrick Taylor
An Irish Country Doctor
Step back in time and onto the lovely Emerald isle as you follow the trials and triumphs of a young doctor finding his place in a small village.

 

 

Music To Soothe Your Soul!

Music that soothes the soul

 “When my mind is free
You know a melody can move me.
When I’m feelin’ blue
The guitar is comin’ through to soothe me…
Thanks for the joy that you’re giving me.
I want you to know I believe in your song.
Rhythm and rhyme and harmony;
You’ve helped me along,
Making me strong….OH!…
Gimme the beat boys to free my soul,
I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n roll and drift away…”

 Do those lyrics resonate with you? They sure do with me! Maybe there have been plenty of times where you have been angry or upset or tense, and have reached for that perfect song or CD that alleviates those feelings and brings you to a place of calm. There are so many songs that do that for me, so I can understand if it’s classical music, soft rock, or even rap that does it for you. Sometimes when I’ve had a rough day, I like hard rock! Shocking, I know!

I’ve cultivated a list of artists, organized alphabetically by genre and then by CD title, that we have here in the library that may do all that and more. Just be prepared for goose bumps, sudden urges to sing along, or unexpected tranquility and peace. This is definitely not a complete list, so please feel free to share your own “go-to” song, artist, or CD; I’d definitely like to hear about it!

And if you don’t see something in our catalog that you’d like to hear, if you’re a resident of Southfield or Lathrup Village, we may be able to request it for you from a participating library in our network!

 Classical

Beethoven

            Favorite Beethoven sonatas

            The 9 symphonies

Chopin

            The piano concertos

George Gershwin

            The essential George Gershwin

Mozart

            Mozart: symphonies nos. 35, 36, 38, 39-41

Yo-Yo Ma

            Songs of joy & peace

            Yo-Yo Ma plays the music of John Williams

 Country

Vince Gill

            When I call your name

 Jazz

Ella Fitzgerald

            Ella Fitzgerald [sings] the George and Ira Gershwin songbook

Kenny G

            Heart and soul

            Greatest hits

Louis Armstrong

            20 best of Louis Armstrong

Ray Charles

            The best of Ray Charles the Atlantic years

Tony Bennett

            Duets an American classic

 New Age

Enya

            Amarantine

Jim Brickman

            Beautiful world

Yanni

            Devotion the best of Yanni

 Pop/Rock

Moody Blues

            The best of the Moody Blues

Enigma

            M C M X C a. D.

 Religious

Amy Grant

            Age to age

 Soundtrack

John Williams

            John William’s Greatest hits

 Miscellaneous

            Soft and soothing moods

            Celtic Women

 

Happy Listening! 

Kate