And a frigid one it is, dear readers.   Though many of us consider ourselves hale and hearty New Englanders who tweak the nose of bad weather and giggle at climatic extremes…it’s really cold out there, and it never hurts to read, reread, and reminder ourselves of these helpful tips from the Red Cross about keeping everyone, humans and furry friends alike, safe during weather like this. They also have some winter tips and advisories for you to peruse.

We are here and the heat is on, so feel free to come warm up here at the Library, and take a gander at our books, movies, audiobooks, and other material to help pass these long winter nights.  Here’s just a preview of some of the sensation books that have sidled onto our shelves this week:

After the End of the World: Personally speaking, I could not be more excited that this book has arrived on our shelves.  It’s an open secret that Jonathan L. Howard is a Free-For-All favorite author, and his Carter and Lovecraft series is a terrific sci-fi adventure–particularly for fans of H.P. Lovecraft…particularly for those fans who would really like to confront and defy Lovecraft’s own odiousness while still enjoying the weirdness of his fiction.  In this second book in this series, PI Daniel Carter and his erstwhile partner Emily Lovecraft find themselves trapped in the Unfolded World.  In this world, the Cold War never happened because the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1941. In this world the Nazi Großdeutschland is the premier superpower, and is not merely tolerated but indulged because, in this world, the Holocaust happened behind the ruins of the Iron Curtain and consumed only Bolsheviks, Communists, and others the West was glad to see gone. In this world, there are monsters, and not all of them are human.  But even in the Unfolded World, there are still bills to pay and jobs to do. Carter finds himself working for the German secret security service to uncover the truth behind a major scientific joint project that is going suspiciously well. The trail takes Lovecraft and him to a distant, abandoned island, and a conspiracy that threatens everything. Fortunately, if there is a character who is going to face down the mind-bending darkness at play here, it’s Emily.  And she has a shotgun.  If my praise for Howard’s limitless imagination, fiendishly clever and detailed plotting, and talent for creating character you would willingly follow to the gates of Hell (often literally), then trust Booklist, who said in their review “This is a wonderful novel, ambitious on many levels and thoroughly successful. Its central characters are even more compelling than they were in their first appearance…and the story is diabolically clever and convoluted. As readers wait for the next installment, they will ask themselves where Howard will take Daniel and Emily next.”

The Lady Travelers Guide to Larceny With a Dashing Stranger: Victoria Alexander’s Lady Travelers series is just what the armchair adventurer needs for days like this–intriguing characters, beautiful locales, smart adventures, and plenty of witty banter and chemistry to keep things moving at a wicked clip.  When  Lady Wilhelmina Bascombe’s carefree, extravagant lifestyle vanishes with the demise of her husband, her only hope lies in retrieving a family treasure—a Renaissance masterpiece currently in the hands of a cunning art collector in Venice. Thankfully, the Lady Travelers Society has orchestrated a clever plan to get Willie to Europe, leading a tour of mothers and daughters…and one curiously attentive man.  Dante Augustus Montague’s one passion has long been his family’s art collection. He’s finally tracked a long-lost painting to the enchanting Lady Bascombe. Convinced that the canvas had been stolen, he will use any means to reclaim his birthright—including deception. But how long before pretend infatuation gives way to genuine desire?  Willie and Dante know they’re playing with fire in the magical moonlit city. Their common quest could compromise them both…or lead them to happily-ever-after.  The Lady Travelers series has already won plenty of acclaim already, and this second installment has been praised by critics and readers alike, with RT Book Reviews saying “”Alexander is an original and so are her romances…[she] fulfills readers’ desires and then some.”

Fool’s River: Timothy Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty thrillers deal with some pretty rough themes, including the Bangkok sex trade, but Hallinan balances these issues with such humanity and genuine sympathy that it makes his stories quite the compelling read.  In this eighth book in the series, Poke, a Bangkok writer, is facing down the worst days of his life.  It all started when Edward Dell, the almost-boyfriend of Poke’s teenage daughter, Miao pays an emergency visit.  The boy’s father, Buddy, a late-middle-aged womanizer who has moved to Bangkok for happy hunting, has disappeared, and money is being siphoned out of his bank and credit card accounts. It soon becomes apparent that Buddy is in the hands of a pair of killers who prey on Bangkok’s “sexpats”; when his accounts are empty, he’ll be found, like a dozen others before him, floating facedown in a Bangkok canal with a weighted cast on his unbroken leg. His money is almost gone.  Over forty-eight frantic hours, Poke does everything he can to locate Buddy before it’s too late.  Publisher’s Weekly gave this series entry a starred review, calling it “Outstanding . . . Fans of hard-boiled detective fiction will feel right at home.”

What It’s Like to Be a Dog: People with pets–and, no doubt, people without pets–often wonder just what is going on in the brains of the animals with whom we share this planet.  Enter  neuroscientist Gregory Berns, who set out to discover what it’s like to be a dog…and a bat….and a dolphin? Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner–completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. It turns out, they are as emotionally complex, in many ways, as the humans they love.  And dogs were just the beginning. In this fascinating, insightful, and wonderfully educational book, Berns explores the fascinating inner lives of wild animals from dolphins and sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger.  This book has gotten high praise from critics and readers, as well as experts like Temple Grandin and the Humane Society of the United States, who noted “Gregory Berns is a remarkable scientist, whose pioneering MRI studies of the brain across a range of species have opened up a pathway to deeper understanding of animals’ internal awareness and perspectives. He’s also an exceptional thinker, whose grasp of the ethical and practical significance of his findings for the status and treatment of animals is pervasive in this absorbing work.”

Hellfire Boys: The rules and experience of war changed permanently in 1915 when the German Army successfully unleashed poisoned gas along the Western Front of the First World War, earning international fury, as well as launching a new kind of international arms race.  The development of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service in 1917 left an indelible imprint on World War I. This small yet powerful division, along with the burgeoning Bureau of Mines, assembled research and military unites devoted solely to chemical weaponry, outfitting regiments with hastily made gas-resistant uniforms and recruiting scientists and engineers from around the world into the fight. Drawing from years of research, Theo Emery brilliantly shows how World War I quickly spiraled into a chemists’ war, one led by the companies of young American engineers-turned-soldiers who would soon become known as the “Hellfire Boys.” As gas attacks began to mark the heaviest and most devastating battles, these brave and brilliant men were on the front lines, racing to protect, develop, and unleash the latest weapons of mass destruction.  Emery’s book emphasizes the importance of the First World War to American history, not only in terms of military technology, but also in understanding the ruthlessness of modern military ideology, in a work that earned a starred review from Library Journal, who praised both his research and storytelling skills: “Moving crisply between stateside turf wars and battlefront combat, this well-written and well-researched slice of history will appeal to virtually any history or war buff.”

Until next week, beloved patrons, happy reading!

And happy first Friday of winter, beloved patrons!  It looks like winter has finally remembered us, and it’s going to be rough going this weekend.  So this seemed as good a time as any to remind you about our Winter Weather Policies.  If you have any questions about Library Hours during the wintry season, just give us a call.   The answering message will be updated to reflect any changes in our hours (this includes holiday closings).

Main Library: (978) 531-0100
South Branch: (978) 531-3380
West Branch: (978) 535-3354

Also, we would also like to make you aware of the new Parking Advisory in Peabody, which you can access via this link here.  This should help in the case of parking bans and emergency closures.

But, in advance of any climactic unpleasantness, why not come into the Library and check out a few films, audiobooks, or books to help while away the long winter evenings?  Here are just a few of the titles that have braved the elements to make it onto our shelves this week, and would love a chance to spend the holiday season with you!

The Emerald Circus: Multiple-award winning author Jane Yolen’s first full collection in more than ten years is a vibrant, wondrous, and thought-provoking journey through some of the best-known fairy tales and children’s stories.  Her characters may be familiar, but these stories are all refreshingly unique: Edgar Allan Poe’s young bride is beguiled by a most unusual bird. Dorothy, lifted from Kansas, returns as a gymnastic sophisticate. Emily Dickinson dwells in possibility and sails away in a starship made of light. Wendy leads a labor strike against the Lost Boys.  Beauty sneaks out to get a Christmas gift for the Beast, with…interesting results.  Like fun house mirrors, these stories flip the tales you know upside down, stretch them and skew them, but always create something that is wholly unique and simply delightful.  Library Journal agrees, giving this collection a starred review and saying, “These delightful retellings of favorite stories will captivate newcomers and fans of Yolen as she once again delivers the magic, humor, and lovely prose that has attracted readers for years.”

Improv Nation: How We Make Great American Art: At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots—the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others.  Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative that, like its subject, moves fast and digs deep.  He revels in the anecdotal stories of the now-famous improv artists and comedians who have made this genre great, from the chance meeting at a train station between Mike Nichols and Elaine May to the after-hours bar Dan Aykroyd opened so that friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner would always have a home.  This is a fast-paced book full of nostalgic photos and fun stories that The Seattle Times called “A fast-paced, thoroughly engaging road map of how improv — that rapid-fire art of entirely unscripted performance — came to infiltrate and shape the American pop-culture landscape . . . A whirlwind of quick, sharp anecdotes, never lingering too long yet still giving the reader a full sense of the people and the history shaping improv into what it is today.”

Signal Loss: Readers looking for a bit of an escape this holiday season might want to consider Garry Disher’s Australian noir series featuring  Inspector Hal Challis.  Although there are six books in the series to date, this mystery can certainly be read as a stand-alone–and may be the perfect way to get into this gritty, gripping series.  A pair of hit men working a job for a meth kingpin have a very bad day, and the resulting bushfire draws attention to a drug lab and two burned bodies in a Mercedes.    With meth-related crime on the rise, interdepartmental tensions mount, and Challis soon finds himself fighting to keep control of his case. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ellen Destry—newly minted head of her department’s sex crime unit and Challis’ partner— is hunting for a serial rapist who is extremely adept at not leaving clues.  Darkly funny and compulsively readable, this series installment earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, who called it “Excellent . . . A searing commentary on the meth crisis and its tremendous toll on users and communities alike.”

One of Us Will Be Dead By Morning: Fans of David Moody’s Hater trilogy will be delighted to know that it isn’t over yet.  Returning to his near-apocalyptic world, this psychological thriller is one that longtime readers–and newcomers, too!–will be on the edge of their seat to finish.  Fourteen people are trapped on Skek, a barren island in the middle of the North Sea somewhere between the coasts of the UK and Denmark. Over the years this place has served many purposes―a fishing settlement, a military outpost, a scientific base―but one by one its inhabitants have abandoned its inhospitable shores. Today it’s home to Hazleton Adventure Experiences, an extreme sports company specializing in corporate team building events. Life there is fragile and tough. One slip is all it takes; and when the body count quickly begins to rise after a single seemingly tragic accident, questions are inevitably asked. Are the deaths coincidental, or something else entirely? Those people you thought you knew, can you really trust them? Is the person standing next to you a killer? Will you be their next victim?  This isn’t a tale for the faint of heart, but horror and slasher aficionados shouldn’t miss this winner of a series.  Booklist gave it a starred review, gushing that “Moody really knows how to write creeping, claustrophobic terror, effectively sneaking up on his readers and, finally, scaring the life out of them. Top-drawer horror.”

London’s Triumph: Merchants, Adventurers, and Money in Shakespeare’s City: For most, England in the sixteenth century was the era of the Tudors, from Henry VII and VIII to Elizabeth I. But as their dramas played out at court, England was being transformed economically by the astonishing discoveries on the American continents and of direct sea routes to Asia. At the start of the century, England was hardly involved in the wider world and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city. But as the century progressed something extraordinary happened, which placed London at the center of the world stage forever.  In this fascinating story, Stephen Alford neatly side-steps the “rise of the West” histories that are typically invoked to explain this period of history, and instead describes the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks, and sailors who traded with Russia and the Levant, explored areas now known as Virginia and the Arctic, and searched the Indian Ocean for exotic spices and new flavors.  This is an intriguing tale about big personalities, wondrous discoveries, and the growth of the human world that continues to have echoes in our lives to this day.  Kirkus Reviews wrote a glowing report of this book, saying “Alford makes expert use of individual lives to bring London’s various stages to life…These and many other stories bring the past to life in warmly human terms, as do Alford’s evocative descriptions of the city’s changing landscape and architecture…Solid scholarly history written with an accessible verve that will appeal to general readers.”

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading!