By Jan Pease
These long days of June are my favorite part of
summer. The library feels like a busy,
vibrant place. More than 260 young
people ages 2 through 16 are participating in summer reading, but there is
still plenty of time to sign up and start playing the summer reading game.
Several well-known authors have released new books in
recent weeks.
Erin Hunter wrote the six books in Survivors, a series about
dogs surviving the end of human civilization . Hunter’s new series is called “Survivors:
The Gathering Darkness.” The first book is
titled A Pack Divided and the title of the second book is Dead of Night. Expect more tension and a lot of action in
this one. I don’t think my dogs would last long if we
disappeared, but it’s nice to think they could join a pack and survive. The back cover of Dead of Night states, “In a pack, loyalty is everything – but some
dogs should never be trusted.”
Another book cover asks, “In a game of lies, who can you
trust?” The title of the book is The Long Game, by Jennifer Lynn
Barnes. This is the second novel in the
“Fixer” series. The fixers are a
family named Kendricks who help make the problems of the Washington elite
disappear. This thriller is written by a
very qualified author. Jennifer Lynn
Barnes has advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science
and writes a believable political thriller.
The Notorious Pagan
Jones is a work of fiction that reads like headlines about some of the
young self-destructing actresses in Hollywood.
Nina Berry set her story in the 1960’s, with a young actress killing her entire family in a car accident. She is released from jail and sent to Berlin to make a movie which is only a cover for herinvolvement with the CIA. Interesting twists and turns make this a political thriller set in a turbulent time in Germany.
Nina Berry set her story in the 1960’s, with a young actress killing her entire family in a car accident. She is released from jail and sent to Berlin to make a movie which is only a cover for herinvolvement with the CIA. Interesting twists and turns make this a political thriller set in a turbulent time in Germany.
Karen Cushman was a Newbery Medalist for The Midwife’s Apprentice and knows how to tell a good story. In Grayling’s Song our heroine must free
all of the magic makers in the kingdom from a powerful curse. Ms. Cushman stated that while she enjoys
writing historical fiction, she wanted to set a book in a place like medieval
England, but with magic.
Finally, a noted nonfiction author, Sy Montgomery, brings
us The Great White Shark Scientist. The scientist profiled in this book is Greg
Skomal, and he does what I could never do.
He is an expert on shark biology.
This book is filled with wonderful photographs both above and under the
water. Many children tell me that they
want to be marine biologists, an odd vocation for someone from the
Midwest. This lovely book might just
inspire some more would-be young scientists.
These books, and more, are waiting for you at Litchfield
Public Library.
