by Erin Duffy. After a childhood introduction to the fast-paced world of Wall Street, sweetly naive Alex has landed a position at one of the finance industry's most prestigious firms. Instead of being guided through the finer points of bond trading, however, Alex is initially given tasks mostly centered on taking lunch orders and keeping everyone's nicknames straight. As she is accorded more responsibility, the realities of the financial industry and the mostly male egos around her conspire to make her job a little more difficult than she anticipated. Like The Devil Wears Prada (2003) set on Wall Street, Duffy's first novel is a sharp, witty look at the intricacies of the trading floor and the people who populate it. The writing is clever and articulate, and Alex's story of personal growth makes her a sympathetic, likable heroine. Filled with too-good-to-be-true anecdotes and enough of a biting, cynical bent to offset the chick-lit romance angle, Bond Girl is a fun read-alike to the canons of Weisberger, Kinsella, and Green. Duffy's acknowledgment of the recent financial collapse and ensuing recession makes Bond Girl an entertaining and timely read. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Coming apart : the state of white America, 1960-2010

 by Charles A. Murray.  Despite the subtitle, Murray's book is actually about class in America, not race. By zeroing in on troubling trends in white America, he keeps the focus on the country's increasing polarization along class lines,onthe growing isolation of the well-off from the poor, with each group developing radically different cultures, perspectives, and expectations from the other's. Murray provides historical context, showing that, before the 1960s, Americans of all races and classes had similar perspectives and expectations. Using census data for 1960 and 2000, Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994), shows increasing segregation of a college-educated elite living in SuperZips from those with little education, eking out a living in poor neighborhoods. Murray also shows strong divergence in education, employment, marriage, crime, and other indicators. Beyond statistics, Murray offers sketches of life lived in the upper class and the lower class and argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power, the ideals that have held a highly diverse nation together: religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality. Writing from a libertarian perspective, Murray offers a hopeful long view of elites, who have enormous influence on economic and social policy, coming to understand the peril of their disconnection from the rest of America. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The flight of Gemma Hardy : a novel

 by Margot Livesey.  The talented Livesey updates Jane Eyre, changing the setting to Scotland and the Orkneys during the 1950s and '60s but taking care to home in on the elements of this classic story that so resonate with readers: a resourceful orphan makes her way in an uncaring world and not only endures but also triumphs. Despite readers' familiarity with the story line, they will be held rapt as Gemma Hardy, orphaned at age 10, is taken in by a loving uncle only to lose him, too. Her aunt so cruelly shuns her in the wake of her uncle's death that she looks forward to attending boarding school, but her status as a working girl means that she has little time for her schoolwork, often laboring to the point of exhaustion. Still, Gemma's high intelligence and fierce resolve see her through many difficult experiences until she lands a dream job as an au pair on the isolated yet beautiful Orkney Islands. There she meets the family that will change her life (minus the madwoman in the attic). A sure bet for both book clubs and Bronte fans. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Fiction ruined my family

 by Jeanne Darst. The memoir craze has left many writers ruing their happy, functional childhoods. Not Darst: her father was a failed novelist, her mother an alcoholic clinging to her socialite youth. That's enough fodder to keep Darst under publishing contract for decades. Her debut opens as the family moves from St. Louis to New York, where her father can focus on his latest book. Early chapters feel reminiscent of David Sedaris: off-kilter domestic scenes played for laughs. But Darst's humor gains bite as she reaches adulthood and begins to exhibit the worst traits of both parents as a stalled writer and a falling-down drunk. Darst is fearless in presenting herself as selfish, callous, and out of control, which is entertaining in a raunchy, R-rated, gross-out-comedy kind of way. At 30, Darst takes stock of her future: I'd be that aged temp . . . waiting for five o'clock to get blotto. So she sobers up, dials down the crazy (though not all the way), and redefines what it means to be an artist. A more reflective voice emerges, one capable of living with her past. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The maid of Fairbourne Hall

  by Julie Klassen. Margaret Macy really has no choice. Margaret's new stepfather, Sterling Benton, is plotting to gain control of the money Margaret will inherit from her recently deceased aunt by marrying Margaret off to his nephew Benton. With no one to turn to for help, Margaret runs away from her home in London. What little money Margaret brings with her is quickly exhausted, forcing her to accept a job as a maid at Fairbourne Hall. All Margaret has to do is quietly remain in hiding there as Nora Garret until she comes into her inheritance. But her new employer is none other than Nathaniel Upchurch, whose offer of marriage Margaret rejected years ago. Christy Award winner and RITA nominee Klassen delivers another impeccably crafted romance rich in fascinating details about life both upstairs and downstairs in a country estate. An excellent choice for fans of faith-based fiction and readers who miss traditional Regency romances. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The Watervliet Arsenal : a history of the nation's oldest arsenal : 1813-2009

by John Swantek. Contents:

The early years -- Years of growth 1824-1845 -- The Mexican War -- The Civil War -- The lean years -- Conversion to a cannon factory -- Spanish-American War to World War One -- World War One and the long Armistice -- World War II -- World War II to the Korean War -- The Korean War and the growth of the research center -- The Southeast Asia buildup -- Modernization -- A new world, a new arsenal -- The lean years, revisited -- Partnerships and the War on Terror.

Item Description:

"A complete account of America's oldest, continuously active manufacturing arsenal. From the War of 1812 to the War on Terrorism, Watervliet Arsenal has been at the center of the struggle for freedom and democracy"--P. [4] of cover. (Check catalog)

Ragnarok : the end of the gods

 by Antonia Susan Byatt.  Booker Prize winner Byatt, a writer of exceptionally deep thinking and mischievous humor, who often incisively contrasts the great web of the wild with the tangles of human yearning and invention, presents a commanding retelling of her favorite myth, Ragnarok, the Norse myth to end all myths. Byatt reinvigorates this gripping vision of the end of the world and all its creatures through the eyes of her young self, a thin child evacuated to the countryside during the German Blitz. A thoughtful child who devoured stories with rapacious greed, she becomes utterly engrossed and stringently comforted by Ragnarok. Following the myth's arc of disaster, Byatt first brings its lush, singing world to rhapsodic, scientifically precise life in a grand litany of living things as entwined as the fine threads in a vast, breathing tapestry. Then we meet the flawed, reckless gods: Odin, Thor, Frigg and her beloved son Baldur, and shapeshifter Loki, chaos incarnate, whose pranks turn the gleaming, fecund splendor of life into a wasteland of bone, ash, and darkness. In her bracing closing essay, Byatt shares her fear that we are unconsciously emulating the irresponsible and wayward and mocking Norse gods and truly bringing about the end of nature and ourselves. A gorgeous, brilliant, and significant performance. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Wanted women : faith, lies, and the war on terror : the lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui

  Scroggins (Emma's War, 2002) immersed herself in the world of radical Islam through the lives of two committed women, Aafia Siddiqui, linked to al-Qaeda and convicted by U.S. authorities, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former member of Holland's parliament and outspoken critic of the religion. Scroggins profiles the women in alternate chapters, considering how both were subjected to Western influence and each ultimately embraced diametric positions on the religion they were born into. To understand their paths, she delves deeply into the politics and cultures of Somalia, Pakistan, the Netherlands, and the U.S., all while peeling back the layers of family and society that supported and opposed Siddiqui and Ali. Readers will be rocked by their own misconceptions of Islam and by the manner in which Islam has been misrepresented by both those who support and those who oppose it. They will be stunned by the vitriol espoused by two individuals who could not disagree more and yet manage to echo each other's zealotry. Scroggins' research is wide-ranging and impeccable, and she keeps readers on the edge of their seats with her compelling prose. If we can understand Siddiqui and Ali, then we will have a better chance of understanding the war on terror. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The rope (An Anne Pigeon Novel)

 by Nevada Barr.  Sooner or later, every hero gets an origin story. Anna Pigeon, the park ranger who's starred in a series of popular novels, gets hers now. It's 1995. Anna, a new hire at the Dangling Rope Park, has disappeared. Her coworkers (most of whom consider her to be a little odd anyway) figure she's just wandered off somewhere, maybe gone back to New York. But, as we learn in terrifying detail, she's been taken by an unknown assailant and tossed naked into the bottom of a hole. The hole, as it turns out, has had previous occupants, one of whom, relatively recently deceased, Anna digs up this is sure to turn some stomachs and then takes her clothes. Eventually, she escapes from captivity by bashing her captor on the head; but, returning to the hole with law-enforcement officers, Anna discovers she's bashed not her captor but one of her colleagues, who had been trying to rescue her, or so he says. Dark and visceral, the novel is sure to appeal to Barr's legion of fans, especially those who have been clamoring for the author to light the shadows of Anna's past. Here we see a familiar character in a sort of rough-draft form, the way Lee Child's novels about Jack Reacher's early days show us a still-forming, rough-around-the-edges version of the familiar hero. A crisply written and revelatory entry in the Pigeon series. --Booklist (Check Catalog)