AMC's best day hikes in the Catskills and Hudson Valley

 by Peter Kick. With more than 600 miles of trails within just a few hours of New York City, the Catskills and Hudson Valley are a hiker’s paradise, boasting varied and scenic terrain from Westchester County to Albany.  This fully updated guide leads beginner and experienced hikers alike along 60 of the region’s most spectacular trails, from shorter nature walks to longer day hikes. From classic hikes like Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Highlands, to carriage road walks in the Shawangunks and a historic walk around the grounds of Oleana, to 25 Catskills hikes such as Wittenberg and Cornell Mountains, to ridgewalks along the Taconic Range, this guide offers a variety of trails for all ability levels and interests. An at-a-glance chart highlights the best hikes near public transportation, for kids, and for winter snowshoeing and skiing. --Summary (Check Catalog)

Please look after mom : a novel

 by Kyŏng-suk Sin, This novel from widely acclaimed Korean author Shin focuses on motherhood and family guilt. Park So-nyo, mother of four now-adult children, has gone missing in a Seoul train station on the way to visit them. The novel is told in four parts, from the perspectives of, first, her daughter, and then, her firstborn son, her husband, and finally, So-nyo herself. Composed almost entirely in second-person narration, the writing is sharp, biting, and intensely moving. So-nyo's children continually battle with their own guilt for not taking better care of her while reminiscing about the times when they were young, growing up in incredible poverty in the countryside. The children come to terms with their mother's absence in their own ways, and their father repents for a lifetime of neglect. When So-nyo's voice enters the narrative, the portrait of a troubled but loving family is complete. Secrets are revealed, and the heart of a mother is beautifully exposed. This Korean million-plus-copy best-seller is an impressive exploration of family love, poverty, and triumphing over hardship. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

On China

 by Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, at the age of 88, presents a beguiling, penetrating, and indispensable survey of China's classical and modern relations with the world. It is not perfect. Specialists will fault the premodern chapters for accepting the myth of China's Middle Kingdom complex and disagree with particular points in later chapters. Still, the story of relations since the 1950s is at once full of insights into the leaders and their psychologies, epic in its sweep, and challenging in its underlying argument on the nature of diplomacy. Critics charge that Kissinger's realpolitik subordinated morality to great power hegemony and stability, but the narrative aims to show that America's foundational principles of freedom and human rights are not advanced by unilateral declarations and ritualistic denunciation. Because Chinese leaders have long since ceased to spread their ideology and perceive Americans as hypocritical in seeking to impose theirs, to hector China is to ignore genuine popular hypersensitivity to imperialism, undermine projects of mutual benefit, and discredit leaders who seek a "peaceful rise" as being in China's national interest. Verdict Essential for everyone with an interest in China. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Faith : a novel

 by Jennifer Haigh. Father Arthur Breen has devoted his entire career as a priest in Boston's South Shore community to a life of quiet but determined faith, enthusiastically serving his parishioners while unobtrusively placating his superiors in the Catholic hierarchy. Only marginally involved with his own family devout mother, alcoholic stepfather, go-getter half-brother, and contemplative half-sister Breen takes an instant shine to eight-year-old Aidan, the emotionally fragile son of the rectory's housekeeper, and makes tentative arrangements to help Aidan's newly clean-and-sober mother, Kath, start a new life. So when a sex abuse scandal rocks the Boston archdiocese, everyone is shocked, though no one is exactly surprised, to learn that Kath has accused Father Breen of harming Aidan. Looking back on the tragedy, Breen's sister Sheila chronicles the events leading up to and beyond the incident, revealing a family shattered by profound secrets. With an exquisite sense of drama and mystery, Haigh delivers a taut, well-crafted tale that potently but subtly explores myriad gray areas within essential issues of truth and trust, punishment and absolution. Indelibly rendered characters, suspenseful pacing, and fearless but sensitive handling of a controversial subject will make this a must-read for book discussion groups. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Wicked bugs : the louse that conquered Napoleon's army & other diabolical insects

 by Amy Stewart.  When it comes to methods of torture, the insect world is quite accommodating. Victims can, so to speak, pick their poison, from the merely painful to the downright deadly, the mildly horrific to the out-and-out dangerous. Creeping, crawling, slithering, stalking insects that bite, spray, ooze, and sting use these weapons of mighty destruction to snag a meal, slay an enemy, or seduce a mate sometimes all at once. Ranging from verdant South American jungles to Manhattan's cold concrete canyons, Stewart amusingly but analytically profiles the baddest bugs around in quick but attention-grabbing snapshots of little creatures that pack a lot of punch. Bed bugs and bookworms, rat fleas and filth flies all come under Stewart's curious gaze as she exposes their evil habits and lethal charms. No alarmist setting out to stoke preexisting phobias, Stewart shares her natural fascination with the insect world to help readers recognize both the threats and the wonders that could be lurking in corner crevices or come wafting in on the next gentle breeze. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The lake

 by Banana Yoshimoto. Balanced with deft reminders of impermanence-from vivid dreams and outdoor art to once-a-year cherry blossoms and death-Yoshimoto's latest is a love story with a higher-than-usual satisfying-sigh factor. Chihiro, an artist, and Nakajima, a graduate student in genetics, finally meet after watching and waving to each other from their respective apartment windows across a Tokyo street. They're both unconventional and seemingly untethered souls; they've both lost their beloved mothers. They meander into a sweet, simple life together, although past secrets involving a mysterious brother and sister who live by an ethereal lake threaten to create an emotional divide. VERDICT Yoshimoto aficionados who have savored any of the dozen-plus novels she's written over the last three decades since she became a near-instant pop literary phenomenon with Kitchen will recognize her signature crisp, clipped style (thanks to exacting translator Emmerich's constancy) and revel in her latest cast of quirky characters. Newbies with a penchant for Haruki Murakami's mind-bending protagonists or Yoko Tawada's sparse precision will do well to begin their so-called Bananamania with this beguiling title. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The nature principle : human restoration and the end of nature-deficit disorder

 by Richard Louv. Louv struck a resounding chord in the best-selling Last Child in the Woods (2005) when he identified nature-deficit disorder, a debilitating syndrome affecting children who spent scant time playing outdoors. But what about adults? Louv distills his latest findings about our lifelong need for direct experience of nature into another essential concept, the Nature Principle, which holds that reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival. A prodigious researcher and inspired interpreter and synthesizer, Louv offers a finely crafted interdisciplinary argument to support this claim, drawing on eye-opening scientific and medical studies as well as the timeless observations of poets. Louv profiles such trailblazers as public-health expert Howard Frumkin and South Central L.A. ecoactivist Juan Martinez as well as citizen naturalists who are strengthening our understanding of the crucial connections between human, economic, and ecosystem health. As he cogently explains why time spent in nature is quantifiably therapeutic, Louv reminds us that nature is everywhere and that the simplest of engagements with nearby nature, such as taking a walk or admiring a tree, are immensely restorative to mind and body. Louv's vital, inclusive, and inspiriting call to better our lives by celebrating and protecting the living world marks the way to profound personal and cultural transformation. --Booklist (Check catalog)

Buried prey

 by John Sandford. Sandford's outstanding 21st novel to feature Lucas Davenport of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (after Storm Prey) offers fans the chance to compare the young with the mature protagonist. In 1985, Davenport, then an eager patrol cop, made his bones as a homicide detective in an ugly kidnapping murder case. The present-day discovery of the mummified bodies of two girls wrapped in plastic, sisters Nancy and Mary Jones, leads Davenport to realize that he "messed up": the wrong man was credited with the crime and the real killer never caught. Cracking this very cold case becomes intensely personal for Davenport, who uses his own resources, including manipulating the media and pushing Marcy Sherrill, head of Minneapolis Homicide, to use all of her resources as well. A fusion of old-fashioned doggedness and modern technology pressures the killer into deadly action. Expert plotting and a riveting finish make this one of Sandford's best. --Publishers Weekly. (Check Catalog)

A drop of the hard stuff : a Matthew Scudder novel

 by Lawrence Block. When a character ages from book to book, a series has a built-in life span. At some point, the hero can only walk the mean streets with the help of a cane. Given Block's allegiance to verisimilitude and that he returns to a series only when he has something fresh for the characters to say and do, readers might have wondered whether they'd ever see Matt Scudder again, after the powerful ending of All the Flowers Are Dying (2005). Scudder is indeed back, but with a story from the past, told to Mick Ballou over a late-night drink of club soda. The premise is typical of Block's genius. It's so perfect that you can't believe you haven't seen it before. As Scudder nears his first anniversary of sobriety, he's hired to investigate the murder of another alcoholic who may have been killed because he was following the Twelve Steps to the letter, for when you make amends to a partner in crime, he's going to wonder who else you've been talking to. Scudder fans, and there are many, will enjoy both the mystery and the history, glimpsing characters who did (and didn't) make it into the later story line. And the prose, as always, is like the club soda Scudder sips in the opening pages: cool, fizzy, and completely refreshing. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Among the truthers : a journey through America's growing conspiracist underground

 by Jonathan Kay. Kay, the managing editor and columnist at Canada's National Post newspaper, delivers an insightful (and slightly scary) exploration of America's conspiracy movements. Focusing primarily on the Truthers (who believe the U.S. government engineered the September 11 attacks)-and to a lesser extent, the Birthers (those who claim President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim), Holocaust deniers, and JKF assassination theorists-he argues that we must take these movements seriously, however outre they may seem, for the disturbing anti- intellectual trend they epitomize: a "nihilistic distrust of government" and a "rejection of logic and rational discourse." Kay, who spent three years immersing himself in conspiracy culture, traces America's flourishing conspiracism back to Greco-Roman times and explores the technological developments that allow conspiracy theories to flourish: Web sites and message boards where Truthers and Birthers can get news "tailored to their pre-existing obsessions." Kay, although generally a fair-minded conservative, reveals that he isn't immune to conspiracy theories himself: he excoriates the rise of multiculturalism and feminism in the academy for prompting a "reconstruction (and in some cases wholesale invention) of history according to the viewpoint of women, blacks, gays... a project that replaced the historian's once unquestioned goal of objective truth with an explicitly political, Marxist-leaning agenda aimed at empowerment and solidarity-building." --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Doc : a novel

 by Mary Doria Russell. Russell creatively reimagines Doc Holliday's early years in this authentically detailed, evocatively rendered fictional biography. Beginning long before the ill-fated shootout at the O. K. Corral, she paints a portrait of the tubercular young Doc, heading west for his health. Thoughtful, well-educated, and genteel, the young would-be dentist joins forces with the love of his life, Maria Katarina Harony, a Hungarian prostitute with a razor-sharp intellect and her own interesting backstory. As dentistry takes a back seat to gambling, and the action moves to Dodge City, Doc also befriends Morgan Earp, and a host of familiar real-life figures are introduced. What elevates the novel above standard western mythologies lies in its crystalline characterizations, crackling dialogue, and vivid, less than idyllic descriptions of the time and the place. This robust realization of the man before he was replaced by the legend is not for genre fans only. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Skipping a beat : a novel

 by Sarah Pekkanen. High-school sweethearts Julia and Michael have left their humble West Virginia roots far behind for a glamorous life in Washington, D.C. As they achieve more in their careers she as a high-end events planner, he as the CEO of his own sports-drink company they lose themselves as a couple. After Michael has a near-death experience, he decides to give away all their wealth and focus on his relationship with Julia. But she's not ready to forgive him for choosing his work over her when she needed him most. Pekkanen's novel traces the couple's attempts to make amends for allowing success to replace love. In her previous novel, The Opposite of Me (2010), Pekkanen delved into the complex relationship between sisters, and she now uses the same insightful tone in this examination of a marriage. The moving story and bittersweet ending will draw in readers. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Popular crime : reflections on the celebration of violence

 by Bill James. Here's a book that belongs in every true-crime collection. James, best known for The Baseball Abstract (an essential sports reference tool), here tackles a very different subject but one that is clearly of great interest to him: the relationship between crime and popular culture. Beginning with the December 1799 murder of New Yorker Elma Sands and touching on such notable cases and criminals as Lizzie Borden, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Birdman of Alcatraz, the Boston Strangler, Sam Sheppard, the Menendez brothers, O. J. Simpson, JonBenét Ramsey, the Onion Field, and the Zodiac Killer not to mention dozens of lesser-known cases James explores not just the facts of the crimes but also the way they were investigated and the way the media handled them. It's a very personal book. James isn't shy about telling us what he thinks and offering cogent reasons for his opinions, even when they contradict popular wisdom (Albert DeSalvo wasn't the Boston Strangler; ?Arthur Leigh Allen wasn't Zodiac; Sam Sheppard was responsible for his wife's murder); and he doesn't pull any punches when it comes to his opinions about investigators (a detective's theories about the Ramsey murder are palpably false, and most of them ludicrous) and the media (noting that reporters turned the sociopathic, two-time murderer Robert Stroud into the kindly Birdman of Alcatraz). This is a remarkable book, smart and thought-provoking and as impossible to put down as any gripping work of fiction. For readers of true crime, an absolute, gold-plated must-read. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

A drop of the hard stuff : a Matthew Scudder novel

 by Lawrence Block.  When a character ages from book to book, a series has a built-in life span. At some point, the hero can only walk the mean streets with the help of a cane. Given Block's allegiance to verisimilitude and that he returns to a series only when he has something fresh for the characters to say and do, readers might have wondered whether they'd ever see Matt Scudder again, after the powerful ending of All the Flowers Are Dying (2005). Scudder is indeed back, but with a story from the past, told to Mick Ballou over a late-night drink of club soda. The premise is typical of Block's genius. It's so perfect that you can't believe you haven't seen it before. As Scudder nears his first anniversary of sobriety, he's hired to investigate the murder of another alcoholic who may have been killed because he was following the Twelve Steps to the letter, for when you make amends to a partner in crime, he's going to wonder who else you've been talking to. Scudder fans, and there are many, will enjoy both the mystery and the history, glimpsing characters who did (and didn't) make it into the later story line. And the prose, as always, is like the club soda Scudder sips in the opening pages: cool, fizzy, and completely refreshing. --booklist (Check Catalog)

The age of airpower

 by Martin van Creveld. This landmark study chronicles both the technological and the strategic evolution of combat aircraft from the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12) to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Van Creveld (history, emeritus, Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) insists that airpower's golden years ended after 1945 owing to the growing costs of manned aircraft and personnel training. Other deterrents he points to were the dawning of the nuclear age and the displacement of piloted warplanes with ballistic missiles, earth-circling satellites, and drones. Yet such advances have known only moderate success in 21st-century engagements with insurgents and terrorists. In a final nostalgic lament the author decries the culture of social correctness imposed by Washington, the unsatisfying nature of asymmetrical warfare, and the passing of the combat pilot's sense of self-worth, as onboard technical advances have denied pilots personal mastery of their aircraft. VERDICT A brilliantly formulated, exhaustively researched, and engagingly written critique of America's once vaunted military service, this is sure to arouse much controversy among interested parties, so most libraries should have it on hand. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Eve

 by Iris Johansen. After searching for years over the course of Johansen's popular, long-running series, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is finally close to solving the mystery of daughter Bonnie's murder. With the help of her CIA friend Catherine Ling, Eve narrows the field of suspects down to either Paul Black or John Gallo, both of whom work for a corrupt military intelligence officer. Paul has a history of killing children, and John is mentally unstable after a stint in a North Korean prison. The specter of Gallo forces Eve to relive her tumultuous past, growing up in the projects of Atlanta, intent on staying out of trouble until she meets John. He was about to join the army to become a Ranger, but first they had a brief yet highly charged affair, which left Eve pregnant with Bonnie. Now nothing will stop Eve from learning the truth about her daughter's fate as Johansen launches a trilogy that takes the reader on an action-packed journey filled with killers and heroes, leaving readers on tenterhooks for Quinn (July 2011) and Bonnie (October 2011). HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a seven-figure marketing campaign and 400,000-copy print runs for each title, Johansen's next three titles will be hot. --Booklist (Check catalog)

A bittersweet season : caring for our aging parents and ourselves

 by Jane Gross. As baby boomers age, the U.S. population older than 85 has brought Americans to a. unprecedented demographic crossroad. according to New York Times reporter Gross. How will we care for aging parents without robbing them of the dignity that accompanies independence? How will we manage care for them and care for children, marriages, careers? Gross faced many of those questions when her widowed mother, living in retirement in Florida, began to decline in her eighties. Gross and her brother moved their mother back to New York and began a three-year negotiation of tasks and responsibilities that consumed their lives. Drawing on her own experience and interviews with experts, Gross details the myriad decisions along the way, from the first signs of parents' declining health to later decisions about extraordinary measures to keep them alive. She explores how the process of watching the long, slow deaths of parents should prepare one for making arrangements for one's own decline and death. A heart-wrenching story and an informative guide for those caring for aging parents. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Night road

 by Kristin Hannah.  Hannah's gripping new novel centers around a tragedy that rocks a family to its core. When her twins start high school, overprotective Jude worries that her daughter Mia, who has always lived in the shadow of her popular brother Zach, will be lost in the shuffle. When Mia meets Lexi, an introverted girl who has been scarred by the abandonment of her feckless mother and a life in foster care, Jude is relieved to see that Mia has found a kindred spirit. When Lexi and Zach fall in love during their senior year, they are happy that sensitive Mia accepts their relationship. Though college plans threaten to separate them, the three are on top of the world as they head off to their graduation party until a catastrophic decision that night changes everything. Hannah effectively builds tension as the novel moves towards the pivotal tragedy and maintains suspense afterward not only with several surprising twists but, more subtly, with the way she limns the grief and eventual healing of her appealing characters. A breakout for popular novelist Hannah. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a 400,000-copy first print run and ramped-up promotion and cross-country tour, this will be another best-seller for Hannah. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Secret daughter

 by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. In her engaging debut, Gowda weaves together two compelling stories. In India in 1984, destitute Kavita secretly carries her newborn daughter to an orphanage, knowing her husband, Jasu, would do away with the baby just as he had with their firstborn daughter. In their social stratum, girls are considered worthless because they can't perform physical labor, and their dowries are exorbitant. That same year in San Francisco, two doctors, Somer and Krishnan, she from San Diego, he from Bombay, suffer their second miscarriage and consider adoption. They adopt Asha, a 10-month-old Indian girl from a Bombay orphanage. Yes, it's Kavita's daughter. In alternating chapters, Gowda traces Asha's life in America her struggle being a minority, despite living a charmed life, and Kavita and Jasu's hardships, including several years spent in Dharavi, Bombay's (now Mumbai's) infamous slum, and the realization that their son has turned to drugs. Gowda writes with compassion and uncanny perception from the points of view of Kavita, Somer, and Asha, while portraying the vibrant traditions, sights, and sounds of modern India. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Powering the dream : the history and promise of green technology

 by Alexis Madrigal. Technology journalist Madrigal rises above politics to review the surprisingly long and fruitful history of renewable energy in the U.S. From the water-powered turbines of the Lowell factories to windmills dotting the Great Plains in the mid-nineteenth century, he makes it clear that Americans were eager to utilize green power from the earliest days of industrialization. Readers will likely be startled by hopeful early-twentieth-century declarations that Pacific Ocean wave motors would render Los Angeles a smokeless and sootless city. While the motors were a failure at the time, the enthusiasm for their success is echoed in the current use of tidal power. From modern-day transcendentalists to suburban solar homes of the Ozzie-and-Harriet era, Madrigal disproves any notion that an energy-conscious attitude is a twenty-first-century invention. Rather, it is one that has been as much a part of our national fabric as the frontier ideal itself. He shows beyond a doubt that the past will lead the way to a greener future, one that nods to Thoreau while embracing the tools to finally make green technology a real success. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The love of my youth

 by Mary Gordon. Miranda and Adam were each other's first love, but they've had no contact for 30 years. Their heady reunion takes place in Rome, a city of myths and ghosts Adam knows well, allowing him to show Miranda, there for an environmental health conference, the sights and allowing Gordon to make the most of gorgeous settings redolent with ancient secrets and sorrows. The ensuing intense conversations between Miranda and Adam are so psychologically intricate and complexly metaphysical and aesthetic that they seem impossibly theatrical. And yet, as the novel deepens in extended flashbacks, their intoxicating exchanges become exquisitely involving. We learn that their blissful love bloomed when they were 16 in the mid-1960s and slowly withered during their twenties as Adam devoted himself to becoming a great pianist and Miranda searched for a way to help make the world a better place. The more they talk on their Roman rambles, the more the reader burns to know what finally drove them apart. In her first novel since Pearl (2005), virtuoso and versatile Gordon offers brilliantly fresh takes on family conflicts, women's lives, war, and global suffering while ingeniously meshing classic love stories with modern mores, and ecstasy with wisdom, to create an enthralling drama of innocent passion, crushing tragedy, and the careful construction of stable, nurturing lives. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Gordon is a major writer, and her alluring novel will be supported by a big media push and national tour. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The great sperm whale : a natural history of the ocean's most magnificent and mysterious creature

 by Richard Ellis. Anyone familiar with Ellis's work knows his fascination with Physeter macrocephalus, the sperm whale; these creatures are included in his previous The Book of Whales and Men and Whales but here take center stage. Rather than rehashing that info, Ellis intends to "pull together all those disparate discussions and add substantial new material." In homage to Herman Melville, he and his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, are referenced throughout as Ellis approaches these cetaceans from a number of facets-their history (as well as we know it) and legend, biology, social lives, human interaction (they're friendly), adversarial relationship with and taste for squid (best chapter title: "I'll Have the Calamari"), the whaling industry, and efforts to protect them. Buttressing the text, which incorporates science lingo but is still accessible to lay readers, are 122 photos and illustrations, including many of Ellis's original artworks. VERDICT At once a richly detailed, informative, scientific exploration as well as a love sonnet to the ocean's greatest leviathan, this will appeal to fans of nautical history, nature, Melville, and armchair cetologists. A superb addition to Ellis's canon. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)