Lone by Stuart Moore, Russ Manning, Jerome Opeña and Alberto Panticelli

1182212Years after a massive nuclear & biological war laid waste to the Western U.S., radioactive zombies, mutants and murders roam the Western Wasteland. Luke, a gifted sharpshooter and her brother Mark barely escape with their lives after zombies overtake their town of Desolation. Once their family reaches safety, Luke sets out on her own to track the zombies – while they are somewhat intelligent, they are nowhere near smart enough to take over a town. Luke follows the zombies to the caves where she discovers … something leading the zombies. Luke has never seen anything like their leader, she only knows that it bleeds yellow.

Once Luke returns and reports what she saw (and barely escaped from) her mother sends her and her brother on a journey thought the Western Wasteland to find a man named Lone. Only he, their mother says, can save them.

Travelling across the dangerous wastes, Luke and Mark find an old farmer, who, once he learns of the “zombie boss” that bleeds yellow, agrees to help them find Lone. But while finding Lone is one thing, it is quite another to convince him to help.

Lone had been in the war and he had been changed, experimented on, and became something more powerful than a man. His fellow soldiers in this private army were the same, and elite force to protect mysterious masters. Gunfathers, they were called, and they were not like anything Lone had seen before. And they bled yellow.

Lone had long thought the Gunfathers had all been killed in the apocalypse that followed. Lone agrees to help Luke and Mark stop these Gunfathers and the monsters that follow them. And ultimately, finally discover who the Gunfathers are and why they destroyed the world. Or, at least, kill them all.

Moore’s (Wolverine Noir, Firestorm) Lone reads like a classic Western, with a science fiction twist. Fans of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series will enjoy this tale.

 

Don’t You Cry by Mary Kubica

don't you cryDon’t You Cry is a psychological mysterious thriller. It falls along the same lines as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, but I found the twists that happened in this book to be less predictable, at least to me. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Don’t You Cry by Mary Kubica is a twisting tale of deception, obsession, strangers, friends, and missing people. Quinn Collins is a young woman living in downtown Chicago with her roommate, Esther Vaughan. Everything seems to be going perfectly fine in Quinn’s life until she wakes up one morning and discovered that Esther has disappeared from their apartment without a trace. reporting Esther as missing only results in Quinn being told that Esther will probably come back in 48-72 hours and she should just wait. Quinn decides to take matters into her own hands and goes through Esther’s room looking for any clues. What she finds there leads Quinn to question who Esther really is and where she has disappeared to.

Alex Gallo is an eighteen-year-old boy working at a coffee shop an hour outside Chicago. Alex lives in this small lake town with his alcoholic father across from an old abandoned house that everyone thinks is haunted. One day, a mysterious woman walks into the coffee shop and Alex finds himself drawn to her. Alex is quickly pulled into Pearl’s spell, feeding and clothing her even though he knows nothing about her. Alex gets closer and closer to Pearl and realizes that he actually knows almost nothing about the town that he lives in.

While Quinn searches for Esther and Alex tries to learn more about Pearl, there are other factors simmering in the background of the book that demand the readers attention. This book is told in alternating voices, a fact that I enjoyed since I listened to this book through OverDrive and was able to dive into the characters more. Mary Kubica does a fabulous job of weaving a missing person story with family drama, mysterious pasts, old ghost stories, and alternate life stories. The tension slowly lives under the surface of this book until the end when the narrative explodes. Highly recommended.


This book is also available in the following formats:

New Philosophy, Psychology & Self-Help in October

Featured new additions to DPL’s Philosophy, Psychology & Self-Help collections! Click on the title to place a hold. For more new books, visit our Upcoming Releases page. As always, if there’s a title you would like to read, please send us a purchase suggestion.

y648Jump: Take the Leap of Faith to Achieve Your Life of Abundance by Steve Harvey – On January 13, 2016, at the close of a taping of Family Feud, Steve Harvey spontaneously began to speak. Not knowing that the cameras were still rolling, he offered his studio audience insights into his own happiness and success. His staff, also moved by Steve’s passionate words, shared the riveting six-minute video on social media. In this very personal and illuminating guide, Harvey  elaborates on those spontaneous remarks. His message is simple: You need to jump like your life depends on it – because it does – if you truly want a life of peace and abundance.

 

51-0ynurwdlOn Living by Kerry Egan – As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan didn’t offer sermons or prayers, unless they were requested; in fact, she found, the dying rarely want to talk about God, at least not overtly. Instead, she discovered she’d been granted an invaluable chance to witness firsthand what she calls the “spiritual work of dying”–the work of finding or making meaning of one’s life, the experiences it’s contained and the people who have touched it, the betrayals, wounds, unfinished business, and unrealized dreams. Most of all, though, she listened as her patients talked about love–love for their children and partners and friends; love they didn’t know how to offer; love they gave unconditionally; love they, sometimes belatedly, learned to grant themselves.  Each of her patients taught her something – how to find courage in the face of fear or the strength to make amends; how to be profoundly compassionate and fiercely empathetic; how to see the world in grays instead of black and white. In this poignant, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along all their precious and necessary gifts.

51xu-tbfaql__sx329_bo1204203200_American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag – In American Philosophy , John Kaag – a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career – stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy – self-reliance, pragmatism, the transcendent – and sees them in a twenty-first-century context. American Philosophy is an invigorating investigation of American pragmatism and the wisdom that underlies a meaningful life.

614dfzpgwllGhostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey – Colin Dickey is on the trail of America’s ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and “zombie homes,” Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living – how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted?

voices-within-the-history-and-science-of-how-we-tal-1497582-5e148f4d561644358a67The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves by Charles Fernyhough – At the moment you caught sight of this book, what were you thinking? Was your thought a stream of sensations? Or was it a voice in your head? Did you ask yourself, “I wonder what that’s about?” Did you answer? And what does it mean if you did? When someone says they hear voices in their head, they are often thought to be mentally ill. But, as Charles Fernyhough argues in The Voices Within , such voices are better understood as one of the chief hallmarks of human thought. Whether the voices in our heads are meandering lazily or clashing chaotically, they deserve to be heard. Bustling with insights from literature, film, art, and psychology, The Voices Within offers more than science; it powerfully entreats us all to take

how-the-secret-changed-my-life-9781501138263_hrHow the Secret Changed My Life: Real People, Real Stories by Rhonda Byrne – Since the very first publication of The Secret a decade ago, Rhonda Byrne’s bestselling book has brought forth an explosion of real people sharing real stories of how their real lives have miraculously changed for the better. How The Secret Changed My Life presents a selection of the most heartwarming and moving stories in one inspirational volume. Each story provides an authentic, real-life illustration of the pathway that leads to success in every area of life: money, health, relationships, love, family, and career.

Mother, Can You Not? by Kate Siegel

mother can you notIntroducing your parents or grandparents or even cousins or siblings to any new form of social media means that there is going to be a learning curve where mistakes are made and ridiculous things said. We’ve all been there. Before you bridge the social media gap however, there is one important step that needs to happen: text messaging. Author Kate Siegel’s mother is the queen of off-the-wall text messages, so much so that Kate decided to broadcast their most ridiculous conversations all over Instagram for everyone to see. (Want to follow their antics? Check out @crazyjewishmom on Instagram!)

Mother, Can you NOT? : And you thought your mother was crazy… follows Kate’s Siegel’s decision to broadcast her and her mother’s text messages online and the crazy journey it proved to be for her. This book is chock full of anecdotes featuring Kate’s mom and the conversation that she has with her on a daily basis.

Kate’s mother is the classic helicopter parent and you can even go as far as to call her a drone parent, which Kate certainly does. Kate’s mom is a hovering Jewish mother who only wants the best for her daughter and the best just happens to be married to a wealthy Jewish doctor and pregnant with his many children. Never mind the fact that for a long time, Kate was single and her boyfriends weren’t even Jewish. These are just unnecessary obstacles in Kate’s life that her mother knows all the solutions for: hanging out with the Princeton rabbi, going out even when you don’t want to, talking to a new doctor about sex when your mom is right in the room, etc. All perfectly normal things. This book is a very humorous and hilarious read chronicling the many adventures that Kate and her mother find themselves on and the many different ways all of our mother go on to help better their children’s lives even if their children’s don’t even ask for the help.

New Religion & Spirituality in October

Featured new additions to DPL’s Religion & Spirituality collections! Click on the title to place a hold. For more new books, visit our Upcoming Releases page. As always, if there’s a title you would like to read, please send us a purchase suggestion.

51w5mgcl1slA Second Wind: Time to Own Your Future by T.D. Jakes – While focusing on his core mission to preach the gospel worldwide, T.D. Jakes has seen many good people not spend enough quality time with family, friends, and God. They have gotten so swept up in the daily grind that they have failed to live the rich life that God desires for each of His people.  In his new book, Jakes provides readers with strategies that will help them rejuvenate their life and turn their “busyness” into a “business.”

 

 

41h3k7jitxl__sy344_bo1204203200_The Broken Way: A Daring Path Into the Abundant Life by Ann Voskamp New York Times best-selling author Ann Voskamp sits at the edge of her life and all of her own unspoken brokenness and asks: What if you really want to live abundantly before it’s too late? What do you do if you really want to know abundant wholeness? This is the one begging question that’s behind every single aspect of our lives – and one that The Broken Way rises up to explore in the most unexpected ways.

 

 

51n4vwbnnl__sy344_bo1204203200_What Pope Francis Really Said: Words of Comfort and Challenge by Tom Hoopes – His likeable, spontaneous, unguarded manner has drawn both estranged Catholics and even non-Catholics to take a closer look at the Catholic Church. He has also puzzled and even outraged the faithful who listened uncritically to the media’s interpretation of Pope Francis’s off-the-cuff commentary on hot-button issues such as abortion, marriage, divorce, the environment, immigration, and a host of other issues.  Nationally respected Catholic journalist Tom Hoopes explores how Pope Francis is bringing the Catholic Church to bear on a dramatically changing world, not by altering its teachings but by applying enduring truths to new realities in fresh ways.

 

51psqpts6wlThe Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron –  Ignorance is bliss–except in self-awareness. What you don’t know about yourself can hurt you and your relationships–and maybe even how you make your way in the world. In The Road Back to You Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile forge a unique approach – a practical, comprehensive way of accessing Enneagram wisdom and exploring its connections with Christian spirituality for a deeper knowledge of God and of ourselves. Witty and filled with stories, this book allows you to understand more about each of the Enneagram types, keeping you turning the pages long after you have read the chapter about yourself. Beginning with changes you can start making today, the wisdom of the Enneagram can help you get on the road that will take you further along into who you really are–leading you into places of spiritual discovery you would never have found on your own, and paving the way to the wiser, more compassionate person you want to become.

k10820Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation by Eric Leigh Schmidt – A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation’s moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet, village atheists–as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century–were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to majoritarian entanglements of church and state. Village Atheists explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life

9780802414502Keeping Love Alive As Memories Fade: The 5 Love Languages and the Alzheimer’s Journey by Gary D. Chapman – Across America and around the world, the five love languages have revitalized relationships and saved marriages from the brink of disaster. Can they also help individuals, couples, and families cope with the devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease? Coauthors Chapman, Shaw, and Barr give a resounding yes. Their innovative application of the five love languages creates an entirely new way to touch the lives of the five million Americans who have Alzheimer’s, as well as their fifteen million caregivers. At its heart, this book is about how love gently lifts a corner of dementia’s dark curtain to cultivate an emotional connection amid memory loss.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder

moon girl and devil dinosaurMarvel seems to be switching up plot lines every couple years, but the one that is all over my radar right now revolves around the inhumans. Do I have a basic understanding of what’s going on with the inhumans? Yes. Do I feel qualified to explain it to someone else? No, not really, but I can certainly muddle my way through and look up a good explanation. Since I’m not a fan of having to rely on something else to fill my knowledge holes, I decided to look up inhumans. I struck gold.

I discovered Moon Girl and the Devil Dinosaur, a juvenile Marvel graphic novel, about Lunella Lafayette, a preteen genius who also happens to be an inhuman. Lunella, aka Moon Girl, wants to change the world and is using her genius to create inventions that are helping her. Slight problem though. Ever since Lunella discovered that she has a latent inhuman gene, she’s been terrified of the terrigen mist cloud that is encroaching on New York City that will change her into something inhuman, something she isn’t even remotely prepared for. Lucky for Lunella because she has a plan. She has been chasing something called an omni-wave projector and she thinks she knows where it is.

Everything seems to be working out for Lunella until she finds the omni-wave projector and then a giant red-scaled beast, a devil dinosaur, is teleported from the pre-historic past to today! to a bustling New York City. With the devil dinosaur comes the Killer-Folk, prehistoric savages that want the Omni-wave projector too. Lunella finds herself battling monster hunters and the killer-folk at the same time as she is dealing with school and her parents. Getting into a good school and changing the world is proving to be more difficult than Lunella thought it would be!

Haunt by Robert Kirkman, Todd McFarlane and Ryan Ottley

Hauntvol1-covWorld-weary priest Daniel Kilgore has fallen. Arriving at his church after his usual visit with a prostitute, he is asked to take the confession of his brother Kurt, who works as an agent for a secret intelligence outfit. Daniel listens, grudgingly, more out of duty than love or divine inspiration.

Soon after, Kurt is killed during a covert operation in Bolivia and Daniel finds himself quite literally haunted by his brother. Kurt begs him to look after his wife, who he believes in is danger from the same people that killed him. However, Daniel is reluctant – hostile, really – to do so. He’s not sure of his own sanity, and worse, he was once in love with Amanda until his brother stole him away. He eventually agrees, if only to keep his brother’s spirit quiet.

That night in Amanda’s apartment, just as Kurt had suspected, two hit men appear to kill her and Daniel is quickly overcome (priests don’t get much combat training). In desperation, Kurt’s spirit attempts to enter his brother’s body. As they merge Kurt and Daniel transform into, well, something powerful enough to defeat the assassins and resilient enough to withstand a hail of bullets.

Physically drained and horrified at his brutal actions, Daniel returns to his church, only to find another hitman, Cobra, waiting. Cobra slaughtered the parish priest and Daniel narrowly escapes. Kurt insists that Daniel seek out the organization Kurt once worked for. Upon his arrival, he is drugged and imprisoned, along with some of the people Kurt had rescued in Bolivia, where they had been undergoing some kind of horrific experimentation by a Doctor Schiller. A female prisoner, traumatized and quite possibly insane, tells Daniel that he is Haunt – a spirit caught in the physical realm, bound by blood and unable to move on.

But none of this helps Daniel who now finds himself at the center of a deep conspiracy within Kurt’s old agency. All sides are searching for what is left of Dr. Shiller’s research, none trust Daniel and further blood and betrayal await Daniel and Kurt. And what – or who – is Haunt?

Kirkman (Walking Dead) writes action and violence adeptly – this not a comic for the faint of heart. There are reminders here of other characters like Spawn and Venom. McFarlane drew the 2009-10 series of Spawn and two Spider-Man series in the early ’90s, and those characters’ influence is strong here. If you enjoyed Kirkman & McFarlane’s previous work, and if you’re in the mood for some grimdark action, you should definitely pick up Haunt.

Online Reading Challenge – Young Adult Books

online colorIt’s October and we’re starting on a new genre for our Online Reading Challenge – Young Adult!

Feeling a little unsure about reading a Young Adult book? Not sure that there will be anything in this area that you’d enjoy? Think again! Young Adult books have come a long way in the last couple of decades – you will find compelling stories and stellar writing, the kind of books anyone will want to read.

Still need some convincing? Listen to our own Young Adult Librarian, Amber. A huge fan of the genre, Amber also buys the books for this area for the Davenport Library, so she knows Young Adult books, inside and out. Here’s some words of wisdom from her:

–if you are new to YA, start where you are familiar! YA covers all genres and types of literature so if you like historical fiction, read a book like Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly or Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. If you like science fiction, read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card or Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. If you like romance, read Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins or To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. Or start with an author you already enjoy; many “adult” authors have also written Young Adult books including James Patterson, Jasper Fforde, Jodi Picoult and Sophie Kinsella.

–Part of what makes Young Adult literature so appealing and universal is that authors are able to explore complicated and emotional topics through narrators who are dealing with these topics for the first time and are able to be more honest, more passionate, more open than many adult characters are able to be. When asked why she chose to write young adult romances at a YA Lit conference in 2012, Stephanie Perkins replied that it was because she had such an intense romantic experience as a teen. People often remember every little detail of their first kiss, their first dance, their first heartbreak, and yet sometimes can barely remember the name of a person they dated in their thirties. We remember every time we were bullied in high school, the first time someone close to us passes away, and the confusion of a national tragedy happening.

Amber’s listed a bunch of great suggestions and believe me, you can trust Amber’s recommendations! I’m going to read Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, historical fiction set in France. What about you? What are you going to try this month?

Keep Quiet by Lisa Scottoline

keep-quietKeep Quiet by Lisa Scottoline is a gut-wrenching book that begins by introducing Jake Whitmore, his son Ryan, and Jake’s wife, Pam. Tensions seem to be running high in the Whitmore family, stemming from Jake’s loss of job a year ago. The family bore the brunt of his frustration and as a result, Ryan distanced himself from his father and became closer with his mother. Jake and Pam went into therapy to rebuild their relationship. Their current focus is on bringing Ryan and Jake closer together.

Jake is sent to pick up Ryan from the movies when they get into a car accident. This accident threatens the stability of their family and the tenuous relationships that hold them all together. Ryan’s future is on the line and in a split-second, Jake makes a decision that saves his son from a disastrous future. While at the time this seems like the best decision, it instead sends them both down a dark spiral of secrets, lies, and immense guilt. Jake thinks he has everything under control, but someone emerges from the woodwork with the power to destroy his carefully laid plans and expose Jake and Ryan’s dark secret. That life changing accident holds the power to destroy all their lives and Jake is struggling to hold the family together. This book is an intensely powerful guilt-laden journey into the lives of a family who are trying to redeem themselves while their whole world is unraveling around them.


This book is also available in the following formats:

Banned Books Week – Young Adult

Thanks to ALA, we’re focusing on books with diverse content and books with diverse authors this Banned Books Week, so we thought a blog post full of young adult books would be in order. There are lots of young adult books for us to choose today, so if we skipped your favorite, you may see it later this week or even way down at the bottom of this post in our extra bonus Banned Books reads.


miseducation-of-cameron-postMiseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth is a young adult novel that was released in 2014. This book centers around the life of Cameron Post. Cam’s parents die suddenly in a car crash and she finds herself feeling relief. With them both gone, neither of them will know that she had been kissing a girl just hours before they died.

After their death, Cam has to move in with her aunt and grandmother. Her aunt is conservative and her grandmother is immensely old-fashioned. She is living in Miles City, Montana, a town where she has to hide who she really is from everyone around her. This conservative ranch town is hard for Cam to adjust to, so she tries to blend in and bury her feelings.

Coley Taylor moves to town then and Cam’s life changes. Coley is a perfect cowgirl, beautiful, and driving a pickup. She also has the perfect boyfriend. Coley and Cam become super close and Cam finds herself seeing that something more may happen. Right when this seems actually possible, her ultrareligious Aunt Ruth sends her to a religious camp to be ‘cured’.


fallen-angelsFallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers was number 26 on the list of most frequently challenged books written by authors of color from 1990-1999 and is currently number 11 of the top 100 Banned/Challenged books: 200-2009 list. This book is frequently banned for reasons of racism, offensive language, and violence. Myers also won the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award for this book.

Fallen Angels tells the story of Richie Perry, a seventeen-year-old student who has just left his Harlem high school. He has decided to enlist in the Army in the summer of 1967 after his college plans fall through. As a result, Richie spends a year on active duty in Vietnam, something that changes his life forever. He has illusions about what he will face over there and doesn’t believe that he will be sent overseas because of his knee injury.

Richie finds himself face-to-face with the horrors of warfare and the Vietcong they are fighting every day. He struggles with all the violence and death around him, but those are not the only thing haunting him and his comrades. They are told they will encounter light, easy work, something that proves to be untrue when one of the first new recruits he meets is killed during his squad’s first patrol. He is deeply shaken and the increasing levels of destruction and brutality he witnesses leave him questioning the morality of war and the virtues of the people around him. Richie also finds himself questioning why the black troops are given the most dangerous assignments and why the U.S. has even involved themselves in this war.

Walter Dean Myers also has several other books that are banned because of diverse content: Monster, Hoops, and Scorpions.


will-grayson-will-graysonWill Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan has been banned/challenged multiple times for its content. Levithan also has multiple other books that have been challenged for the same reasons. This book deals with homosexuality and relationships.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson tells the story of two different Will Graysons: one gay and one straight. Will Grayson meets Will Grayson, one cold night on a very unlikely street corner in Chicago. This chance meeting changes both of their lives, and the lives of their friends, forever. Will Grayson and Will Grayson find their worlds meshed together, collided and intertwined. One straight Will Grayson and the other gay Will Grayson are both dealing with romantic relationships, complicated friendships, and friends that think they know what is best for them.

David Levithan has more books banned/challenged for diverse content: Two Boys Kissing, Boy Meets Boy, Hold Me Closer, and Full Spectrum.


Here are a list of other young adult books that are frequently banned or challenged that are either by diverse authors or have diverse content! Click on the title for more information. There are many, many other young adult books that have been banned, but we just don’t have the room in this blog post to share them all. For more information, contact us!

(Here’s a list of frequently challenged young adult books to help you get started! http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/YAbooks )

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this-book-is-gaybeyond-magentathis-one-summermexican-whiteboy