I know you’ve been dying for some truly happy, summer-esque music and here it is: Mika’s Life in Cartoon Motion. Not only has this album sold 5 million+ copies worldwide since its 2007 release, it has been known to make people dance and hug random strangers. Okay, so maybe that’s just me.

You can’t help but groove along as Mika takes you through this colorful coming of age album. Life in Cartoon Motion tells simple, elegant stories, while emoting positivity and acceptance. Consider his song "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)", embracing women of all sizes to love themselves and be loved. Then there’s Mika’s first single "Grace Kelly," which wraps you up in his struggle to be liked by the music industry. Other tracks that are sure to get you humming include "Lollipop," "Love Today," and "Happy Ending."

So, have some fun and sing along (even if someone’s watching). Who cares about keeping up with appearances, when you finally have something to smile about?

JP Protasio – Savage Branch

By day, Grace Rutherford is caregiver to her fizzy-brained Mum, her naive widowed sister Nancy, and a beloved nephew. But by night, with her no-nonsense bob, ebony cigarette holder, and nose for celebrity snooping, she’s the sexy, witty Sapphire Sharp — columnist for The Picadilly Herald (think People magazine circa 1927).

In fact, it’s at her favorite hangout, The American Bar, where she first encounters “The Devil In A Dinner Suit” — infamous playboy writer, Dexter O’Connell (whom Davis slyly models after F. Scott himself). Not only is this fortuitous — he is, after all, the author of Veronique — but he’s too cute to resist, especially under the spell of speakeasy champagne.

And then she meets John Cramer, an American expatriate with a thin mustache and rugged good looks. (Yup, Davis modeled him after Hemingway.) Cramer is not only another power author, but O’Connell’s long-time nemesis.

Between secrets, sex and the satin sheets of the Savoy Hotel, Grace soon finds herself in the middle of a mysterious ménage à trois, very loosely based on Hemingway’s intense dislike of Zelda Fitzgerald.

The Jewel Box, by British author Anna Davis, is a Pavlova-like confection that tattles on those who made the Jazz Age famous.

A delectably compulsive read.

Aimee Zuccarini – East Columbia Branch

An American sex symbol is found floating in the Hudson River and the newspapers are reporting that it’s a murder. A famous author known for his detective series claims he will get to the bottom of the mystery. Is this another episode of Castle? No, it’s the true story of the murder of Mary Rogers, and Edgar Allan Poe’s attempt to solve the crime.

In The Beautiful Cigar Girl, Daniel Stashower captures New York’s political climate of 1841. "The beautiful cigar girl" is Mary Rogers, a sales clerk and local celebrity — many of New York’s famous men frequent the cigar store for a glimpse of her. Mary’s behavior made her a darling of the media and her death precipitated a call for reform. Also present is Edgar Allan Poe, a once famous writer for the literary magazines, now looking for his next story. Although considered brilliant, his brutally honest book reviews and erratic behavior have alienated him from society. 

I enjoyed The Beautiful Cigar Girl because of the mystery. Who did kill Mary Rogers? And why? In The Mystery of Marie Roget, Poe attempts to answer these questions through deductive reasoning. I equally enjoyed the story’s history, as well as the author’s inclusion of Poe’s biography. Stashower tells Poe’s story, from his turbulent childhood though his untimely death in Baltimore. The telling of Poe’s life is critical to both the mystery and the reason why he would care so much about writing Mary Roger’s story.  In some way, they are kindred spirits, each bent on the same destination.

Robert Bates – Glenwood Branch

Everyone knows that World War II was big, but not too many people grasp what this particular use of the word "big" really means. The Greatest Battle gives a reader the beginnings of a notion. 

This book is an account of the Battle for Moscow, fought between the Germans and the Russians during the winter of 1941-42. During six months of bitter fighting, a total of 2.5 million men (more than 600,000 Germans, nearly 1.9 million Russians) were killed, wounded, or captured. It was, Andrew Nagorski claims, the most important battle of the Second World War because outside Moscow, for the first time, and despite horrific Russian losses, Hitler’s armies were stopped in their tracks. 

The book’s broad scope covers diplomatic maneuverings, espionage, the German view of events, etc., in addition to the fighting. More than anything, though, The Greatest Battle is a window into the workings of Stalin and his regime. The view is horrifying. 

Balancing the evil inflicted by Stalin against the crimes of Hitler is kind of pointless. The crimes of each are so far beyond the imaginings of most common mortals that they tend to be as bewildering as they are horrifying. Stalin was lucky, though. Being on the winning side, much of what he did managed to get overlooked. To this day, there are surprising numbers of people who ignore his crimes and celebrate his supposedly determined and competent leadership during the Second World War.   

Actually, there’s less to celebrate than many would think.

As Nagorski makes plain, Stalin seemed more paralyzed than determined at the outset of the war with Germany. As for competence, his military ineptitude was so vast that it resulted in the collapse and even surrender of Russian armies numbering hundreds of thousands of men. Yet, during and after the war, the millions of men lost to German captivity as a result of Stalin’s lack of capability were punished as traitors by the very man whose own shortcomings caused them to fall into the hands of the enemy.

For many reasons, but particularly because of what it tells the reader about Stalin’s regime at war, The Greatest Battle is an utterly fascinating book, also available on CD. You can only feel sorry that the people of Russia had to fight under such a leader. 
 
Joe McHugh – Administration Office

She’s finally back! It has been nine long years but Jane Whitefield has finally come out of retirement, and I hope she is here to stay. Jane, a Native American Indian of the Seneca tribe, possesses the special talent of helping people in mortal danger to disappear. She is a resourceful one-woman witness protection program, with lots of unusual and clever tricks up her sleeve.

Thriller/suspense award-winning author Thomas Perry is a master of the hunt and chase novel and the Jane Whitefield series does not fail to thrill. At the end of Blood Money, book five in the series, Jane has promised her husband that she will no longer put her life in danger. She settles into a quiet life under the alias Jane McKinnon, wife of a surgeon in Amherst, NY.

Runner opens with Jane attending a hospital fundraiser. Susan Monahan, a pregnant young woman, has been desperately searching for her when a bomb explodes. Jane learns that the girl has been tracked across the country by hired killers and is the target of the bombing. Jane realizes, despite her promise, that she has to transform one more person into a runner. The two women flee cross-country and Jane is able to outwit her pursuers. She leaves Susan with a new identity and strict instructions for survival, but something happens and now Jane becomes the hunter and as the hunter she is lethal. Read an excerpt of the first chapter here.

Jane’s physical prowess is better developed in the series’ earlier books, so I hope that readers will like Runner enough to want to read all the Jane Whitefield books:

Vanishing Act (1995)
Dance For the Dead (1996)
Shadow Woman (1997)
The Face Changers (1998)
Blood Money (1999)
Runner (2009) 

Eve Olsen – Central Library

For the last few days I’ve been driving around with Diana Krall…on CD, that is. Jazz is a genre which eludes me – maybe I can’t relate to the (occasional) smooth (when I’m craving passion in my music) or possibly I don’t understand the (sometimes) free form (when I’m seeking structure). But given that, I’m fascinated with Quiet Nights, Krall’s latest release.

I’m not from Generation Y, or even X. I’m sharing this information because what I find most intriguing about Quiet Nights is that it seems like the ultimate adult music…..for sophisticated adults, at that. And yet despite the fact that I hail from the generation starting with Baby and ending with Boomer, I often don’t quite feel like an adult. (Please don’t pass this confession on to my kids!) Quiet Nights is music to which I aspire.

Listening to Krall, I imagine dining after dark with my lover on a Manhattan rooftop as millions of stars and building lights compete to illuminate our private table. I’m dressed in a simple floor length black gown, my dining partner matching my elegance with a beautifully cut tuxedo. The food is sumptuous, but secondary to the tone set by the evening’s soundtrack. My imaginary rendezvous is the stuff of dreams and a tribute to the amorous power of Quiet Nights.

While her work is a listening departure for me, it is definitely a welcome one. My only suggestion to Krall might be to change the title of the CD to Romancing the Nights — a more apt name defining and harnessing the heightened sensual mood set by the music.

Fritzi Newton – Miller Branch

Sauscony Valdoria is one of my favorite heroines, tough-minded and tender-hearted. Sauscony, nicknamed Soz, is great at math, science, assembling weapons, survival, and figuring tactics. She’s not as great at figuring out people, which can lead to some funny situations. She’s completely literal minded and embodies a series of contradictions.

Soz’s family rules great expanses of the universe, but lives in a rural castle on a protected world. She’s a military genius whose father expects her to get married and have babies. She’d rather run obstacle courses and fly fighter planes than talk about emotions or feelings. In another twist, Soz comes from a family gene-gineered to be the ultimate telepaths, which means she’s empathic to the nth degree. Soz is a super-soldier who feels the hatred of her enemies.

In Asaro’s universe, three interstellar empires share the universe … Earth, The Ruby Empire (Soz’s family), and the Aristo Traders. The Rhon telepaths (mostly Soz’s family) and the Aristo Traders are absolute anathema to one another. Where Soz and her family are extra empathetic, the Traders completely lack that quality. In fact, they achieve a sort of ecstasy from the pain of others, particularly from telepaths who can broadcast their suffering. This makes for some very intense scenes in many of books. Earth plays a sort of intermediary role, trying to keep the peace to varying degrees of success.

Schism is a great place to enter Catherine Asaro’s Skolian series because it introduces Soz as she leaves home for the military academy as war looms on the horizon. Her tale continues in The Final Key, Primary Inversion, and The Radiant Seas. Her story is as fascinating as her funny, strong, ironic character. Other books in the series advance the timeline while focusing on several of Soz’s relatives (parents, siblings, and cousins). Diamond Star, about one of Soz’s brothers and his rock-star career on Earth, was published recently.

Asaro is an award-winning Howard County writer with a Ph.D in chemical physics from Harvard University. Her books have believable hard science elements, along with strong romantic elements.

Kristen Blount  – Administrative Office

Updating Broadway with one stroke, Jonathan Larson’s Rent manages to combine rock music and musical theater to create a modern, vibrant, and challenging show that is great fun to watch. Focusing on a community of artists living on the lower East Side of New York City, Rent documents their efforts to survive and produce relevant and worthwhile art. Meanwhile, their community struggles to deal with gentrification in the neighborhood and the spread of AIDS at the close of the 1980s.

Rent recently closed on Broadway after twelve years and more than five thousand performances. The final performances were filmed, and Rent filmed live on Broadway looks and feels like a stage play. The bare set, with band platform and multi-purpose tables, comes alive as the actors inhabit various locations. A great final performance of "Seasons of Love" unites members of the original cast with the current performers.

After almost a decade as a successful musical, Rent was adapted into a movie, directed by Chris Columbus and released in 2005. This slightly abridged form of the story includes many of the original Broadway cast, as well as Tracie Thoms as Joanne, and Rosario Dawson as Mimi, both of whom excel. The movie seamlessly blends theater and cinema, and takes up more space to tell the story. Thoms and Idina Menzel’s version of “Take Me or Leave Me,” for instance, is staged as a walk and talk that fills up an entire building.

You can listen to Rent too, of course. The original Broadway cast recording dates from 1996, and features, amongst others, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Anthony Rapp, Jesse L. Martin, Taye Diggs and Menzel. This selection includes the complete show, and spans two discs. The movie soundtrack omits a few numbers from the stage show, but includes all of the major songs. If you’d like to know more about the history of the show, take a look at the libretto for Rent, which includes comprehensive behind-the-scenes information, photographs, and details about its development in addition to the lyrics and script for the early performances. Watch or listen to Rent today. You’ll love it.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

Back in 1907 rural America, long before the duplicitous and the depraved enjoyed the opportunities of online chat rooms and dating services, the only way to "connect" was to place an ad in the local gazette, as wealthy, uptight, and seriously sexually-deprived Wisconsin businessman Ralph Truitt does when he advertises for "a reliable wife."

Catherine Land, "a simple and honest woman," replies, but when she steps off the train that frigid winter afternoon, a furious Truitt realizes she is not the same person on the now fraying photograph in his breast pocket.

Then, a whiplashing plot shift — a bizarre accident leaves Ralph Truitt near death, and as a relentless blizzard rages, Catherine, good mail-order bride that she is, tends to him in his gothic Wisconsin palace.

Deceit, personal tragedy, and palpable loneliness consume the pair. But in the way of steel-backed Midwesterners (indeed author Robert Goolrick’s inspiration for this debut was photo-essayist Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip — a revealing series of dry-plate images chronicling the dark side of the pioneer experience), both Ralph and Catherine hold their cards close. Each one deals with their wounded inner child through a steady physical release of pent-up desire — and all out vengeance.

Disconcertingly, the reviews for A Reliable Wife have been lavish, despite histrionic and downright wonky writing — not to mention despicable and undeserving characters, or the illusion that this is a romance rather than uncorseted soft porn.

Yet having said the above, this is one suspenseful thrilling conflagration! From that first heart-stopping moment when, along with Ralph Truitt, you taste arsenic at the back of your throat, to the moment when both he and Catherine must face their conjoined demon — you’re Goolrick’s hostage.

A sure bet for a high-voltage book discussion — though not for the faint-hearted.

Aimee Zuccarini – East Columbia Branch