Adult/High School

Chaired by Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Adult/High School—This novel transports readers to dark, damp, gritty Victorian London as surely (but less bloodily) as Johnny Depp's movie Sweeney Todd. Secret pasts, hidden identities, class divisions, romance, criminal behavior, police procedures—Lantern has it all. The suspenseful tale features well-drawn characters whose secrets are slowly revealed, leaving readers unsure of who can be believed or trusted. Brightwell's detailed descriptions of the grueling work of a Victorian housemaid offer many reasons to sympathize with Jane Wilbred, an orphan who has accepted a position in the Bentley home. As she struggles to figure out the politics of the household and keep up with her endless chores, she worries about who may know (or find out) about her mother's shameful past. Jane's employers and fellow servants are hiding secrets too, and they continually regard one another with suspicion. The author's use of dialogue and action to advance the story is highly effective. An omniscient narrator allows the tale to unfold from multiple points of view, with Jane as the main protagonist. Brightwell manages to reveal the secrets and interconnections among her characters without creating confusion for her audience, and the story remains suspenseful through the final pages. The ending is satisfying but open to discussion.Lantern will appeal to readers of historical fiction, suspense, and coming-of-age stories.—Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH

Adult/High School—Long John Silver makes no apologies for his life as a thief and murderer. Writing his last testament as a prisoner on his own ship, he hopes to avoid hanging by revealing the secrets behind his coveted treasure. Using characters both new and familiar to readers of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Chupack presents the bloody tale of Silver's rise to sea captain and journey to discover the stolen Crown Jewels. As a child, Silver lived on the streets of Bristol and was eventually sold to the pirate Black John and taken aboard the Linda Maria. As he rises through the ranks of the crew, he works to solve the mysterious ciphers that will lead him to Treasure Island. Love, betrayal, thievery, and, of course, murder mark the path. In the end, he uncovers a final secret that will change the course of his captor's quest for justice and fortune. This title will be of interest to fans of Stevenson's classic or other pirate stories. Readers unfamiliar with the original incarnation of Silver may find themselves lost at the outset of the story due to the pirating jargon and overwhelming plethora of characters. While the plot meanders to the climactic discovery of Treasure Island, the closing chapters capture the mystery and intrigue of the quest. Recommend this to teens who are ready to move beyond such young adult adventures as Tanith Lee's "Piratica" series (Dutton).—Lynn Rashid, Marriots Ridge High School, Marriotsville, MD

Adult/High School—This collection of cutting-edge writing has appeal to older teens familiar with the demands of speculative fiction at its best. The 16 pieces include tales of alien abduction and war, murder, familial abuse, and alternate histories of the world. Many are emotionally charged and most keep readers working hard to keep up with the inventive narrative and leaps of unexpected science and fantasy. There are ghosts and monsters here, and two stories with strikingly different examples of golems. One is a tragic sacrificial figure named Sonny Liston, otherwise known as a famous American boxer; the other is a creation made literally from Hebrew letters and brought to life by a rabbinical student for his own purpose. To the man's surprise, his golem has its own agenda, which is to fulfill its destiny as a vengeful agent of God's Word. Several of these stories are puzzling and lack clear resolutions; they make readers ponder what they mean and how they end-just what speculative fiction should do. An anthology that's thought-provoking and intellectually challenging.—Will Marston, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Adult/High School—This novel begins where Genghis: Birth of an Empire (Delacorte, 2007) leaves off. After defeating the last of the Mongol tribes, Genghis, with his formidable army, sets his sights toward the Chin, whom he has long vowed to conquer. He has become a fearsome force who, with his ruthlessness and cunning need to vanquish, will lead his army to unfathomable victories. Along the way, readers are introduced to the devious shaman Kokchu and witness the troubled relationship between Genghis and his first born, the dynamics between Genghis and his brothers, and Genghis's complicated romantic interests. Treachery, intrigue, and rivalry carry the powerful story to its satisfying conclusion, though with the understanding that there will be a third novel that will likely continue with the next generation. Iggulden is a master storyteller who keeps readers hooked with the unexpected twists and turns of an intriguing plot along with insightful character development. A real page-turner.—Jane Ritter, Mill Valley School District, CA

Adult/High School—His body hobbled by an explosion he suffered less than a year earlier when he was a police officer, and his emotional life bruised by his longtime girlfriend's departure, private detective Harry Lind finds himself at the nexus of a crowd of mysteries. An alcoholic newspaper reporter is killed shortly after the two have a casual conversation. The reporter's protégée, a young woman with moxie to match his, attaches herself to Harry, not for emotional support but to browbeat him into helping her solve the murder and to identify the story on which her mentor was secretly working. That story, it turns out, involves another young woman, one with a mysterious past, which may mean that she is the grown version of a girl believed to have died at the age of eight. Kray keeps all these balls nicely aloft, but it is her characters who make this mystery a winner. Methodically, she develops Harry's-and readers'-understanding that the little girl lost may have grown into a woman who has no desire to be found, and who will tell lies and half-truths to steer detectives (journalistic and otherwise) away from discovering who she is and what she did as a teen. Mystery fans will appreciate the storytelling here.—Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Adult/High School—This novel takes a minor character from Vergil's Aeneid and creates a thoughtful, moving tale of prophecy, myth, and self-fulfillment. Lavinia is the teen princess of Latium, a small but important kingdom in pre-Roman Italy. As she moves into womanhood, she feels pressure from her parents to choose one of her many suitors as both her husband and the future ruler of the kingdom. But the oracles of the sacred springs say she will marry an unknown foreigner. This stranger is none other than Vergil's Aeneus, proud hero, king without a country, and the man who will lay down the foundations of the Roman Empire. Their marriage sparks a war to control the region; while readers don't see the glorious battles, they do get the surprisingly moving perspective of the home front through Lavinia's eyes. Best known for her works of fantasy, Le Guin takes a more historical approach here by toning down the magical elements; gods and prophecies have a vital role in the protagonist's life, but they are presented as concepts and rituals, not as deities playing petty games with the lives of mortals. This shifts the focus of Vergil's plot from action to character, allowing Le Guin to breathe life into a character who never utters a word in the original story. Lavinia is quite compelling as she transforms from a spirited princess into a queen full of wisdom who makes a profound impact on her people. The author's language and style are complex, making this a title for sophisticated teens.—Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA

Adult/High School—Abandoned by her mother when she was a baby, Jamie has lived with her elderly grandparents until recently, when she was uprooted to live with her emotionally detached uncle Raymond. She is 15 in 1973, when her worldly wise cousin Fawn, 16, arrives to spend the summer with them. Insecure and lonely, Jamie loves the idea of having a live-in friend and she immediately falls under Fawn's spell. Wanting more than anything to have Fawn approve of her, Jamie begins to remake herself, and a foreboding sense of the future emerges. Woven throughout the story are flashbacks that shed light on the intense and disturbing relationship between Uncle Raymond and Jamie's mother, Suzette. The parallel stories of Suzette and Fawn shed light on two people who are both disturbed and manipulative. Raymond and Jamie are the victims of the manipulation, but McLain deftly conveys the poor choices each has made along the way. Beautiful writing makes vivid the stark malevolence of Fawn, and the foreshadowing of impending tragedy is so palpable it is frightening. Characters are well drawn and the prose magnificent. Teens will appreciate the dramatic events that lead to tragedy and will ultimately root for Jamie and her uncle.—Jane Ritter, Mill Valley School District, CA

Adult/High School—An awkward and disheveled man arrives in a small village at the time of October rains. Soaked, he seeks refuge in the corridors of a small empty church. Alone and in a moment of sublime space, light, and feeling, when a "delicate religiousness penetrates his lungs and his heart," he begins the first few notes of a whistle. This whistle arrives with the ability to shift emotion, perception, and reality in its unearthliness. Angolan author Ondjaki has created characters and a premise infused with enough magical realism and mystery to satisfy the most steadfast enthusiasts of García Márquez or Fuentes. Through dreams, histories, and memories, he introduces mysterious sea-women, overworked gravediggers, lascivious widows, madmen, donkeys, death cheaters, sentient baobab trees, and traveling salesmen versed in the science of alchemy. This delightful group is so seduced by the melodies of the whistler that they finally come together, literally, by the end of the tale. As engaging as the context is, the story lacks a fluidity in storytelling that would leave readers as satisfied as their characters ultimately become. Whether this is a result of less-than-stellar translation or a jarring pace and style is difficult to tell. While Whistler is exciting yet slightly disharmonic, Ondjaki is obviously brimming with serious imagination and depth. If readers of multicultural literature and surreal whimsy don't latch on to him here, they should definitely keep an eye out for any future flights of fancy.—Shannon Peterson, Kitsap Regional Library, WA

Adult/High School—This is a fascinating examination of the changing notions of what it means to be clean, and how those concepts fit into the worldview of different societies. The book is especially valuable for exploring the daily lives of people in past societies, but also for providing perspective on our attitudes toward ourselves, our bodies, and our world. It begins with the communal baths of the Greeks and Romans and explores the religious and ritual aspects of bathing, including Christian baptism. The public bath returned with the Crusaders, who brought the custom back to Europe in the form of the Turkish bath. With the plague and fears of communicable diseases, people avoided water-which they feared made the body vulnerable-in favor of linen cloth, which could be changed regularly, in lieu of bathing. Fear of immersing the body in water continued into the 20th century. Ashenburg, who uses interesting quotes from contemporaries to illustrate her history, speculates that in the future, when water shortages dictate new concepts of cleanliness, our own day may be seen as an age of excessive bathing and deodorizing.—Tom Holmes, King Middle School, Berkeley, CA

Adult/High School—Boylan's follow-up to She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (Broadway, 2003) is a richly portrayed-and often laugh-out-loud funny-memoir of her youth. The author was a teen in the 1970s, living in a quaint old house in Philadelphia's Main Line. Her family, home, and boyhood share equally in this tale. Until a decade ago, Boylan was male, but as a youth she was coming to terms with the fact that she longed to have a body that matched her feminine identity. Instead, she was named Jim, escaped some social awkwardness by playing piano to the thrill of almost any crowd, and adored her older sister Lydia, the only character here who, years later, can't accept the departure of Jim for the arrival of Jennifer. Combining incisive memories of events as they may or may not have happened with compelling emotions that must be true, Boylan takes readers through family losses (the death of Lydia's horse), mysteries (the footsteps overheard in the old house's attic), comedies (finding himself trapped in that same attic in his sister's wedding dress), embarrassments (his drunk and irrepressible grandmother on the eve of Lydia's wedding), and thoughtful excursions (the responses of Jim's spouse and children to his transgendering). Teens who dote on family stories, as well as those who wonder what life might be like if you could change and still look back at what you had been with a large degree of comfort, will find much to delight in here.—Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Adult/High School—Jumbo, an African elephant captured in 1862, endured a grueling journey to Europe, where he was housed in zoos in Paris and London. He was finally shipped to America to become part of Barnum & Bailey's "Greatest Show on Earth." Chambers has meticulously researched elephants in captivity during the Victorian era to tell the fascinating story of Jumbo's life and the eccentric humans who were part of it. Two such individuals were Matthew Scott, the keeper who spent 20 years by the animal's side, and the famously flamboyant Phineas Taylor Barnum. The showman purchased Jumbo from the London Zoo in 1882, during the height of the "Jumbo craze," and through his own deceptively clever marketing created a similar craze in America. Jumbo became victim to the Barnum & Bailey curse in 1885: one night while traveling on supposedly unoccupied railroad tracks, a locomotive struck him and the other elephants, and he died at the scene. Chambers asks readers to consider ethics and cruelty to animals in captivity; while activist groups existed in the late 1800s, zoological societies did not necessarily attend to their concerns. Jumbo was not only the inspiration for Helen Aberson's 1939 children's story Dumbo, but his name was also the first known use of the word "jumbo." While this title may not initially appeal to teens, booktalking and handselling it will prove rewarding to even the most reluctant readers.—Jennifer Waters, Red Deer Public Library, Alberta, Canada

Adult/High School—Johnson pulls together nearly a dozen sketches of scientific moments-and, almost more importantly, the interesting minds and personalities that brought them into being-dating from Galileo's experiments with motion through Millikan's exposure of the electron. Along with compelling, often witty descriptions of the daily lives of the likes of the Lavoisiers and of Michelson's quest for peace of mind as well as astronomical insight, the author describes encounters with contemporary scientific players, such as the Santa Fe-area fellow who runs a kind of creative-reuse shop for neighbors in search of enormous cells and cabling with which to perform their own experiments. Teen autodidacts will love this book, both for its science and its respect for the quirky geniuses who dreamed up ways of demonstrating standards and physical laws that we now take for granted. Illustrated with the experimenters' own sketches, as well as portraits of each of the canonized 10, the narrative is accessible and a far cry from the aridity of a textbook.—Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Adult/High School—Each book contains 50 short essays on key thinkers and practitioners in the field. While each entry provides brief biographical information, the focus is on the individual's contributions. Also included are several short pieces that discuss major concepts and theories. Lipczynski covers not only famous businessmen such as Frank Woolworth and Bill Gates, but also management strategists like Michael Porter and Kenichi Ohmae, and theorists such as Peter Drucker and Sumantra Ghoshal. The thematic essays treat risk, monopolies, and multinational companies. The second volume discusses political thinkers, rulers, revolutionaries, and great leaders from Plato to Simón Bolívar and Julius Nyerere, and concepts from libertarianism to totalitarianism. These clear and concise works are packed with information and will provide both solid introductions and food for thought for teens interested in careers in business, politics, or economics.—Sandy Schmitz, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Adult/High School—Lynas has gathered global-warming information from an array of authoritative scientists: geologists, glaciologists, oceanographers, climate scientists, and paleoclimatologists, as well as "major scientific projections" from computer modelers. He divides his findings into six main chapters representing the consequences of a one- to six-degree shift in temperature rise. More factual than hysterical and using accessible language, the author portrays a sobering, but broad and fascinating, view of the problem. He discusses not only the environmental consequences of melting icecaps, ocean warming, coral reef bleaching, CO₂ emissions, deforestation, and severe weather, but also cultural and economic reverberations-the result of population shifts, animal migrations, and societal collapse. Through computer-modeling simulations he looks back into the past (the Pliocene, the Mayan civilization) and projects into the future for CO₂ comparisons. His premise: the problem is now at global scale and will not just impact the disappearance of one group alone as it did the Maya. Claiming that solutions must be political, and that it is too late for quick fixes using renewable energy sources or technology, he concludes with some cautionary possible solutions: relocalization of goods and services, less consumption, global-scale carbon rationing, and a "2 degree increase target." Anyone studying climate change will find this a helpful reference as much current research has been precompiled and interpreted within one resource.—Jodi Mitchell, Berkeley Public Library, CA