Scat ...on CD

by Carl Hiaasen read by Ed Asner

Having Ed Asner narrating is a bit like hearing a great tall tale told by a favorite grandfather. His gruffness of tone and quirky interpretations of Hiaason’s usual band of over the top odd balls makes for a ruckus read. Sticking with his reoccurring theme of environmental exploitation of Florida’s remaining wilderness, this story starts off with the disappearance of a much feared and despised biology teacher on a field trip to Black Vine Swamp. Together three students become unlikely sleuths trying to unravel this mystery that has at its heart one Florida’s most endangered species. Hiaason knows better than anyone writing since Edward Abby how to mix serious content with laugh out loud humor and Mr. Asner delivers it all with rib tickling hilarity

KATHERINE OSBORNE-MANAGER OF OUR PORTLAND STORE- REVIEWS THE YOUNG ADULT TITLE- STAR OF KAZAN-A BOOK SHE RECENTLY FELL IN LOVE WITH.

Star of Kazan

_The Star of Kazan_ by Eva Ibbotson
The Star of Kazan is a gorgeous dream of a novel. It tells the story of Annika, a foundling raised by two women, Ellie and Sigrid, who are servants in the wealthy household of three eccentric sibling professors in Vienna. She spends her time in school or helping Ellie in the kitchen, running errands for the professors and playing with her friends, Stefan and Pauline.
Her love for Vienna runs deep and Ibbotson’s descriptions of the city are moving and passionate.
Annika’s life is turned upside down when her long lost aristocratic mother appears on their doorstep. While she had always dreamt of her mother coming for her, she had not thought ahead to what it would mean and how her circumstances would change. Her mother takes her home to the crumbling family estate in Germany, where Annika befriends a servant boy named Zed, who helps to solve the mystery behind her new family’s sudden appearance in her life.
The characters that bustle about Annika's neighborhood in Vienna are so wonderfully drawn and fully rounded that you are as sad to leave a Annika. By the end of the novel, Ibbotson has created such a sense of longing for it's beauty, serenity (and pastry) that you are ready to immigrate to Austria immediately. The Star of Kazan is a wonderful tale of love, family and belonging that has taken its rightful place in my list of favorites.

Karen Keyte who is the manager of our Falmouth store loved this book so much she wrote the following review

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
by Beth Fantaskey (ages 12 & up)
Harcourt, Inc.
Twilight fans rejoice! Jessica’s Guide is an atmospheric and satisfying romance, full of conflict and passion - one of those books you dive into and don’t resurface from until you’ve read the final page.
Jessica Packwood is really looking forward to her “once-in-a-lifetime senior year in high school. Then HE shows up. Jess knows right away that something is seriously off about handsome Romanian exchange student Lucius Vladescu. As soon as she talks to him, she knows what it is - he’s crazy, for sure.
Lucius claims that he is a vampire, for God’s sake, a Vampire Prince to be exact, and that she is the Vampire Princess betrothed to him since infancy. He’s obviously delusional, as well as ridiculous, absurd, arrogant and very, very hot. No wait, forget about that last part - he’s very, very unbalanced.
If all that is true, then how does Lucius know her birth name, Antanasia Dragomir, given to her in a remote East European village by her long dead parents? And why aren’t her adoptive parents surprised by his arrival or his tale?

Karen then sent this message to Beth Fantaskey asking her to tell us a little bit more...

One of my favorite new books for teens this spring is Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, a fresh and fabulous look at the world of vampires. I liked it so much that I actually sent an e-mail off to the author, Beth Fantaskey, to thank her for writing such a wonderful book. Through the course of our e-conversation, Beth volunteered to write a guest blog and I, of course, said "Yes, yes, please!" So, here it is

Beth Fantaskey's Guest Blog:


Our parents. We love them. They make us crazy. We (think we) know everything about them. Yet they are also complete mysteries. (Seriously - why do they seem intent embarrassing us? Even those of us in our forties?) There's just something about that relationship - mother/child, father/child - that really intrigues me. This has become especially true since I became a mom, myself, by adopting two girls from China. Along with learning to be a parent in my own right, I am keenly aware that my kids have another mother, too, somewhere on the other side of the globe. Anther mother who maybe loves the, as much as I do, and perhaps misses them more than I can imagine. Sometimes, I even feel guilty for enjoying my kids so much. My happiness means that two women, far away, are missing out, probably because of circumstances beyond their control, which compelled each of them to wrap a baby in a blanket, leave the child on a doorstep, and slip away unnoticed. The other day, my 5-year-old, Paige, wondered alound, "Do you think my tummy mom kissed me goodbye?" Of course, I'd bet my life that she did - but the truth is, we'll never know. Questions and answers like that lodge in your heart and your mind. A lot of people ask me, "What was the inspiration for /Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side/?" Honestly, inspiration came from a lot of places. But the fact that Jessica is adopted and knows nothing about her birth parents definitely springs from that aspect of my personal life. My children are already wondering what their parents were like, and as they grow older, I imagine their curiosity will strengthen. And I wonder, too. I thinks my girls are special - so by extension, I imagine that their birth parents must also be special. I wonder... Does one have Paige's powerful imagination? Does one share Julia's weird addiction to fried eggs? In /Jessica's Guide/, Jess has /super/ special birth parents... but not special in the way that she'd perhaps hoped. Jess has to come to grips with who she is, by nature of her birth. The process is painful, but ultimately rewarding, and Jess forges a strong bond with her birth mom, even beyond the grave. Chances are, my kids' birth parents will never read my book in rural China. And if they do, they won't know that the woman who adopted their babies wrote it. Yet, in a weird way, by allowing Jess to connect so strongly to /her/ birth mom, and by acknowledging the Dragomir's tremendous sacrifice in giving Jess away, I hope that I did something small to honor my own children's biological parents. It's kind of a way of saying, "I'm grateful, and would share them with you, if I could..." I wish I could give my daughters' birth parents more, in exchange for the gift they've given me."

Princess Ben
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (ages 13 & up)
Houghton Mifflin Company
Although she is the presumptive heir to the throne in the tiny kingdom of Montagne, Princess Benevolence is not much of a princess. Sheltered by her mother and father, Ben is spoiled, rough-mannered and childish. He days are filled with little more than gorging herself on her mother’s cooking, getting into scrapes with her friends in the village, and reading from her vast collection of fairy tales. 
Ben’s life is dramatically changed in a single afternoon, however, when her uncle, King Ferdinand and her mother are both killed in an ambush. Ben’s father is missing and presumed dead, so it falls to Ferdinand’s widow, the icy and excruciatingly correct Queen Sophia, to rule the kingdom as regent and prepare Ben for her own future reign.
Scared and alone, Ben resists every attempt to turn her into a proper princess. As the weeks go by, her life becomes increasingly desolate. When all hope seems lost, Ben discovers a secret, magic room in the castle that will change her life, and her country’s future, forever.