Alex the Parrot : No Ordinary Bird
Publishers Weekly: Alex, as adult readers may recall, was indeed no ordinary bird: for 30 years, this African grey parrot, purchased in a pet shop, was the research subject of animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, who taught Alex how to count and do simple arithmetic; recognize shapes, materials, sizes, and colors; and speak and understand hundreds […]
My Beloved World
"The book delivers on its promise of intimacy in its depictions of Sotomayor's family, the corner of Puerto Rican immigrant New York where she was raised and the link she feels to the island where she spent childhood summers …This is a woman who knows where she comes from and has the force to bring […]
Phantom
Library Journal: Nesbø's books have sold more than 14 million copies worldwide in 47 languages; The Snowman was bought by Working Title Films, with Martin Scorsese attached to direct. In his latest outing, Harry Hole has abandoned Oslo for Hong Kong—until he learns that the son of the woman he loved and left behind has […]
The Dog Stars
Library Journal In the near future, a flu pandemic has decimated civilization, leaving only scattered pockets of survivors to fend for themselves. Hig is one of the healthy ones. For the past nine years, he has coexisted with a loner named Bangley at an abandoned airport in eastern Colorado. Trying not to think of his […]
Talulla Rising
Library Journal Duncan did something remarkable in The Last Werewolf. Instead of glamorizing werewolf protagonist Jake (and his stinky enemies, vampires), he made the werewolf act of transformation and feasting ("fuckkilleat") viscerally ugly. Yet at the same time, Jake is sympathetically, conflictedly, yes, human. Jake met his end, having discovered that he really wasn't the […]
Wonder
Children's Literature August Pullman has always been homeschooled. During the summer before he is to start fifth grade, August's parents inform him they've applied for him to attend a private school. Shocked, August immediately puts up a fight. He doesn't want to attend school looking the way he does. He would want to go if […]
The Chemistry of Tears
Library Journal Twice a Booker Prize winner and a Commonwealth and Miles Franklin honoree as well, the incomparable Carey returns with a story of secret grief assuaged. A museum conservator in London, Catherine learns that her lover and colleague has died but hides her pain because he was a married man. Her boss, the only […]
Wild : From Lost to Found On the Pacific Crest Trail
It's uplifting, but not in the way of many memoirs, where the uplift makes you feel that you're committing mental suicide. This book is as loose and sexy and dark as an early Lucinda Williams song. It's got a punk spirit and makes an earthy and American sound…[Strayed] hammers home her hard-won sentences like a […]
Chomp
School Library Journal Gr 6–9—Things are looking bleak for Wahoo and his animal wrangler father; the mortgage is months overdue, and Wahoo's mother has left for the summer to work in China. They think it is the answer to their financial frustrations when the hit reality TV show Expedition Survival! wants to hire Mickey and […]
The Beginner's Goodbye : a Novel
Library Journal Although crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron has spent much of his life fending off his family's attempts to protect him from the world. A successful editor of a vanity press in Baltimore that publishes a series of beginner's guides to various subjects, Aaron one day finds himself falling in love […]