Complete guide to puppy care : everything you need to know to have a happy, healthy, well-trained puppy

by Stacy Kennedy
This book will help prepare you for all of the joys and the responsibilities of bringing a new best friend into your home. This manual is indispensible to novice and experienced owners alike, with clear, easy-to-find information on the essential aspects of finding and raising a puppy.  A photo gallery of the top American Kennel Club (AKC)-registered breeds provides insight into today's most popular breeds. Learn where to purchase your puppy and how to feed, groom, socialize, housetrain, crate train, prevent common problem behaviors, travel, and have lots of fun with your puppy.

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The lifeboat : a novel

by Charlotte Rogan     (Get the Book)
A young woman's first-person story of survival against seemingly insurmountable odds reveals truths about human nature and, particularly, about herself. Married just four weeks earlier, Grace and Henry Winter cut short their visit to London in 1914 after Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated. Wealthy Henry is able to book their passage back to New York on the Empress Alexandra and then to wangle space on a lifeboat for Grace as the ship is sinking. Grace's survival is never in question in the opening pages, she's one of three women from her lifeboat being tried for murder but her story is no less harrowing for that, since she reveals more of herself throughout her ordeal. Early on, ship's crewman Mr. Hardie is a hero on the boat, providing invaluable if harsh leadership, whether deeming that some must be sacrificed for the sake of all or strictly doling out limited rations. But things change as conditions worsen. This is an accomplished first novel, noteworthy for its moral complexity and the sheer power of its story. --Booklist

The John Lennon letters

by John Lennon   (Get the Book)
A lifetime of letters, collected for the first time, from the legendary musician and songwriter. John Lennon was one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever known, creator of "Help!", "Come Together", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Imagine", and dozens more. But it was in his correspondences that he let his personality and poetry flow unguarded. Now, gathered for the first time in book form, are his letters to family, friends, strangers, and lovers from every point in his life. Funny, informative, wise, poetic, and sometimes heartbreaking, his letters illuminate a never-before-seen intimate side of the private genius. This groundbreaking collection of almost 300 letters and postcards has been edited and annotated by Hunter Davies, whose authorized biography The Beatles (1968) was published to great acclaim. With unparalleled knowledge of Lennon and his contemporaries, Davies reads between the lines of the artist's words, contextualizing them in Lennon's life and using them to reveal the man himself. (Publisher)

The secret keeper : a novel

by Kate Morton     (Get the Book)
Australian Morton's (The Distant Hours, 2010) latest will appeal to fans of Daphne du Maurier, Susanna Kearsley, and Audrey Niffenegger with its immensely relatable characters, passion, mystery, and twist ending. Laurel Nicholson is a teenager when she witnesses a shocking crime: her gentle, kind mother, Dorothy, kills a man. It becomes a family secret that Laurel never divulges or tries to fathom until five decades later, when Dorothy is on her deathbed, and Laurel finds a photograph of her mother with an old friend, snapped back in 1941, when Dorothy was barely out of her teens. As Laurel begins to dig, her burning questions become, Who was Vivien Jenkins, and why was she once so important to Dorothy? With the narrative shifting between Laurel, Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy, a man who also profoundly affected Dorothy's life long ago, both reader and Laurel breathlessly hurtle into an astounding family secret that unfolds slowly and temptingly. Despite some loose threads and rather too leisurely pacing, this is likely to keep readers reading into the wee hours. --Booklist

Rise to greatness : Abraham Lincoln and America's most perilous year

by Dave Von Drehle    (Get the Book)
The year 1863 is often described as the decisive of the Civil War, given the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Von Drehle, editor at large at Time and author of the widely acclaimed Triangle (2003), the story of the infamous 1911 New York factory fire, asserts that 1862 was the transformative year that led directly to the ultimate Union triumph. It commenced with Union fortunes appearing bleak. Confederate forces threatened Washington, and Union general McClellan had a bad case of the slows, despite his command of a huge army. In the political realm, Lincoln was struggling to master the strong egos in his cabinet, and he seemed to lack the will or confidence to demand more aggressive action from McClellan. As the year advanced, von Drehle illustrates Lincoln's transformation into a great political and war leader, who learned to manage and effectively utilize the talents of his advisors and decisively assumed the role of commander in chief, dismissing McClellan and beginning the advancement of fighting officers, especially Grant. This is an excellently researched chronicle of the year that helped change the direction of the war. --Booklist

Christmas jars

by Jason F. Wright   (Get the Book)
Where had it come from? Whose money was it? Was I to spend it? Save it? Pass it on to someone more needy? Above all else, why was I chosen? Certainly there were others, countless others, more needy than me...   Her reporter's intuition insisted that a remarkable story was on the verge of the front page.  
Newspaper reporter Hope Jensen uncovers the remarkable secret behind the "Christmas Jars", glass jars filled with coins and bills anonymously left for people in need. But along the way, Hope discovers much more than the origin of the jars. When some unexpected news sets off a chain reaction of kindness, Hope's greatest Christmas Eve wish comes true. (Voted best Christmas book of all time on GoodReads)

In praise of messy lives : essays

by Katie Roiphe       (Get the Book)
In her latest essay collection, controversy-magnet Roiphe (Uncommon Arrangements, 2007) addresses a felicitous assortment of subjects, from travels in Asia to Jane Austen. The book's enticing title stems from her analysis of the enormous popularity of the television series Mad Men and its cigarette-smoke-laced, alcohol-fueled interpretation of the glamour of spectacularly messy, self-destructive behavior. What's most interesting is how Roiphe turns the camera, so to speak, on the socially correct, health-obsessed habits of today's new puritanism, and on her feminist writer mother, Anne Roiphe, whose memoir, Art and Madness (2011) records her experiences during the Mad Men era. Roiphe is equally bracing and hilarious in her dissection of the Fifty Shades of Grey craze. Roiphe writes with an archer's aim and a bullfighter's bravado. While it's true that the world she dissects is an elite one, it is also highly influential. And her cultural soundings do run deep, whether she's critiquing incest in literature; sex scenes in Roth, Mailer, and Updike versus Franzen, Chabon, and Wallace; or, from a more personal stance, entrenched attitudes toward divorce and single mothers. --Booklist

Flight behavior : a novel

by Barbara Kingsolver    (Get the Book)
Drawing on both her Appalachian roots and her background in biology, Kingsolver delivers a passionate novel on the effects of global warming. Dellarobia Turnbow got pregnant in high school; now, some 11 years into her unhappy marriage, she's ready for a big change, and she thinks she's found it with a randy young telephone lineman. But on her way to a rendezvous, she is waylaid by the sight of a forest ablaze with millions of butterflies. Their usual migratory route has been disrupted, and what looks to be a stunningly beautiful view is really an ominous sign, for the Appalachian winter could prove to be the demise of the species. The phenomenon draws the whole world to Dellarobia's doorstep scientists, the media, hordes of tourists and gives her new and galvanizing insight into her poverty-stricken life on the sheep farm of her disapproving in-laws. Kingsolver, as always a fluent and eloquent writer, skillfully sets the hook of her fascinating story before launching into activist mode with more than a few pointed speeches delivered by an eminent scientist (and Kingsolver stand-in). By that time, though, readers will be well and truly smitten with feisty, funny, red-haired Dellarobia and her determined quest to widen the confines of her world. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: On the heels of the beloved author's best-selling The Lacuna (2009), which won the Orange Prize, her latest novel will receive a 500,000-copy first printing and be supported by an eight-city author tour. --Booklist

Railroads and the American people

by H. Roger Grant     (Get the Book)
Grant (history, Clemson Univ.) takes a topical approach in his social history of the Golden Age of American railroads, from 1830 to 1930. Chapters cover trains, stations, communities, and the railroad's legacies. Grant's use of numerous period quotes, some lengthy, enliven and contextualize his text, as do scores of richly captioned illustrations. He covers topics such as the controversy over operating trains on Sundays, railroad memorials, and the roles of railroads during wartime. The railroads were, he shows, integral to the birth, life, and even death of many towns. To confirm the enduring legacy of the railroads, he recounts the origins and growth of the rail hobbyist and railroad preservation movement. VERDICT Consisting of hundreds of -vignettes containing a wealth of detailed descriptions and remembrances, Grant's work is highly recommended to train buffs and others in love with early railroading. --Library Journal