Don’t shoot the messenger, but there are only 35 shopping days left until Christmas! I know, I know, you’re now screaming, “WHAT?!” No matter how well we plan during the year,  the holidays always seem to get away from us, don’t they? I do have a solution for holiday stress, however, a good book! We have several new books that are guaranteed to give you at least a few moments of peace during an otherwise crazy time of year. 

Fleece Navidad by Maggie Sefton continues her popular knitting mystery series.  In this book the town librarian turns up dead, and the knitters must put aside their Christmas projects to find the murderer.

A Christmas Star: A Cape Light Novel by Thomas Kinkade continues the Christmas theme with a gentle Christian story.

A Christmas Grace by Anne Perry brings us a new holiday mystery by one of our most popular authors. Continue Reading…

This month at Powell Branch Library we have received several new books in the fantasy genre. Christine Feehan’s two new books areDark Curse and Dark Possession. They are continuations in her Carpathian series. We had a patron request for Feehan’s books about fighting vampires, discovering inner werewolves, shapeshifting, and falling in love. Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon was also a patron request, and looks to be part of a promising fantasy series. Acheron, the leader of the Dark Hunters, meets up with a mysterious woman on an equally mysterious quest. Simon Green’s sequel to The Man with the Golden Torc brings us into a modern-day setting where a shaman battles daemons leftover from World War II in Daemons Are Forever. Falling back in time a thousand years, or so, Alexander the Great’s mother is the center of Judith Tarr’s new book, Bring Down the Sun. It blends fantasy, mythology, and magic with political power to bring her story to life. Continue Reading…

August brought the Powell Branch Library a lot of supense and mystery!  We received Clive Egleton’s new book Pandora’s Box.  It is a great spy thriller by a genre master.  We also aquired Gerald Seymour’s The Walking Dead.  It’s a thriller set in England that shifts between the terrorists, the suicide bomber, and the authorities trying to stop him.  Tana French’s new book is titled The Likeness, and is the 2nd mystery featuring the detective Cassie Maddox.  It combines police procedure, psychological thrills, and gothic romance with great prose.  What more could you ask for……?  Well, Brad Thor thrusts us into a thriller that explores secrets of Thomas Jefferson that may lead to an ancient Koran in The Last Patriot.  Not to be outdone, Barbara Cleaver takes us to 1927 France to investigate mysterious deaths in Folly Du Jour.  Flash forward a year to ’28 and you’ll find yourself in Australia this time with flamboyant flapper and amateur sleuth Phyrne Fisher in Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood.  Come back to the present with Bill Pronzini in Fever where The Nameless Detective tracks down a woman addicted to internet gambling, and last but not least, Nicola Upson has her character, Josephine Tey become a sleuth in the old-fashioned cozy mystery, An Expert in Murder. If this isn’t enough to make you dust off your pipe and deerstalker hat then you’re always welcome to come peruse our Mystery section at the library!