Highlight: Youth fiction

I know I often do a YF Highlight section; however, with so many new books coming through, why not point out a couple you could be reading?

White fox

Sara Faring

After their world-famous actor mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Manon and Thaïs leave their remote Mediterranean island home -- sent away by their pharma-tech tycoon father. Opposites in every way, the sisters drifted apart in their grief. Lured home a decade later, they discover their mother's legendary last work: White Fox. The clues in the work draw them deep into the twisted secrets hidden by their family to reveal the truth about their mother and themselves.

100 remarkable feats of Xander Maze

Clayton Zane Comber

Xander Maze loves lists, and his grandmother is #1 on his list of People I love most in the world. But now that Nanna has Stage Four cancer, can a new list of 100 Remarkable Feats really save her? Particularly when his list contains difficult things like #2 Make a friend and #3 Make a best friend, plus #10 Kiss a girl (preferably Ally Collins, the girl of Xander's dreams). 

Any place but here

Sarah Van Name

Seventeen-year-old June is completely wrapped up in her best friend Jess. The two girls are inseparable and June feels so lucky that they found each other, even if June thinks she may like Jess more than a friend. But after June is expelled from school at the end of her first semester of junior year, she's forced to move to Virginia, to live with her grandmother and attend an all-girls boarding school. Even as she starts to find friends and an attraction to a boy named Sam, Jess is always on her mind, even as Jess starts to pull away from her. June can't let Jess go; but she needs to figure out how to move forward, and how to find the place she really belongs.

Being black 'n chicken, and chips

Matt Okine

Mike Amon is a regular teenager who wants to fit in at school. He also wants his mother to survive the advance breast and brain cancer she has been diagnosed with. Mike knows it's a long shot, but if he manages to achieve his dreams, maybe it'll give his mum enough strength to beat the disease. In the meantime, he has to live with his African dad whom he doesn't really know and who Mike doesn't really feel comfortable sharing his teenage desires and deepest fears with. He doesn't even want to think about what it might mean if his mum never comes home from the hospital. The book is based off not only Okine's life and loss of his mother at the age of twelve, but his stand-up comedy show to be an example of how people can deal with grief and growing up.

Highlight: Classic fiction

 

Classic fiction (has almost) literally been around for years and years. These books last because of their themes, characterisation and impact on Western society in some way. 

So this means that some of the movies you might love have come from these authors. These, in Western society, are household name authors with big titles behind them that have impacted general lives and pop cultural references. 

It's time to highlight a few that you may not have tried yet!

Secret agent by Joseph Conrad

"London is under threat. It has become a haven for political exiles and anarchists. Frequent bomb threats and disturbances interrupt the lives of the city's inhabitants, who live in fear of the terrorists in their midst. One such terrorist is Verloc. He is the secret agent who is given the mission to strike right at the heart of London's pride by blowing up Greenwich Observatory. But his decision to drag his innocent family into the plot leads to tragic consequences on a more personal than political level."

You might know Conrad for Heart of Darkness. A lot of his work has been also turned into other formats; such as a 1993 film for 'Heart of Darkness', and currently should be expecting 'Lone Wolf' with Hugo Weaving, which is based off Conrad's 'Secret Agent'. Read it for some context before you see it!

Emma by Jane Austen

"Emma, a self-assured young lady in Regency England, is determined to arrange her life and the lives of those around her into a pattern dictated by her romantic fancy."

This too has adaptations, though the newest version of this film can be found in our library here.

Great expectations by Charles Dickens

"Pip's life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events leads him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a London gentleman bring him into contact not just with the upper classes but also with dangerous criminals. Pip's desire to improve himself is matched only by his longing for the icy-hearted Estella, but secrets from the past impede his progress and he has many hard lessons to learn."

Dickens wrote plenty that has been adapted; the newest one for 'Great expectations' coming out in 2013. You can reserve your copy here.

Highlight: Western fiction

 

Before we get even more of a fix on any Western fiction coming to the Library this year, let's highlight some of last year's arrivals that you may not have read yet!

Click on the covers to be taken to the catalogue so you can reserve your copy!

William W. Johnstone had been writing fiction, particularly Western fiction, from 1979. This totalled to over two hundred books (though not two hundred Westerns). After his death; the name continued with his nephew J. A Johnstone so that the Westerns he was well known for could continue coming. 

The Jensen boys are back! They find themselves inside the meanest, dirtiest prison in the Arizona territory with no chance of surviving unless they bust out of their hellhole.

Once upon a time in the Old West, Buck Trammel was a Pinkerton agent with a promising future. But after a tragic incident in a case gone wrong, he struck out for the wide-open spaces of Wichita, Kansas. But soon enough, his gun skills are put to the test. The Bowman gang show up, turning a friendly card game with a Wyoming cattleman into a killer-takes-all shooting match. Buck saves the cattleman's life, but at the cost of Bowman's two sons. That's when Deputy Wyatt Earp arrives. He warns Buck that he'd better get out of town, pronto, and take the cattle baron with him. The rest is history--if he lives long enough to tell it.

E. Jefferson Clay is a pseudonym for the Australian author, comic book writer and illustrator Paul Wheelahan. So not only should I be highlighting the fact he was an Aussie, but also his talent at Western fiction. Again, his novels ranged in the hundreds as well; but be aware that because he has passed these books are reprints ... still as good as they were the first time round!

They are an odd pair: a one-time Union captain and the former Confederate sergeant. They'd fought each other during the Battle of Pea Ridge and then ended up fighting shoulder to shoulder when a common enemy showed his face and stole two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Confederate gold. Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict never forgot that day, or each other. And when their trails cross again after the War, they team up to reclaim the gold for themselves and get revenge for that day back in 1862.

There was trouble in Fortitude Valley. Someone had set up a lumber camp smack in the middle of cattle country run by paroled convicts! Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict are back and hired to keep the peace between the lumber camp and the Cattleman's Association; however, they have instead landed themselves right in the middle of an all-out war, in which neither side intends to go down without a fight...