Monday mornings : a novel

 by Sanjay Gupta.  In the high-stakes profession of neurosurgery, the bigger you are, the harder you fall. Or so it seems in the nifty first novel by CNN's chief medical correspondent Gupta, who is also a practicing neurosurgeon and nonfiction author. At the Chelsea General Hospital in Michigan, Dr. Ty Wilson is suffering from a serious crisis in confidence after a child dies during an operation. His medical colleagues include George Villanueva, a hulking former NFL player turned ER doctor, and Tina Ridgeway, a meticulous neurosurgeon whose home life is a mess. For quirkiness, there's a patient who undergoes surgery for bleeding cerebral aneurysms and develops an unusual postoperative mania for sketching human ears. For irony, the perfectionist head of surgery makes a jumbo mistake, and a middle-aged Korean neurosurgeon is afflicted with a deadly brain tumor. Despite their flaws, these fictional physicians possess extremely high empathy quotients. They make clinical and personal blunders, yet some attain redemption, and nearly all experience epiphanies. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to write a novel, but with Monday Mornings, readers will be glad one did. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Grace and grit : my fight for equal pay and fairness at Goodyear and beyond

 by Lilly M. Ledbetter. In 1998, after Ledbetter had spent 19 grueling years working at a Goodyear plant, an anonymous note showed her that she made 40% less than her male counterparts. So began her decade-long legal battle for equal pay, a story she tells movingly and frankly with coauthor Isom. After a hardscrabble childhood in a small Alabama community, Ledbetter knew a job at the nearby Goodyear plant meant lifelong financial stability. In 1979 as a manager there, Ledbetter found men reluctant to take orders from a woman, and faced blatant sexual harassment (a performance review ended with a solicitation). Ledbetter tried to take it in stride, but the stress took a mental and physical toll. Goodyear continually transferred her between departments, citing poor performance, but failed to produce evidence when Ledbetter requested it. After discovering the anonymous note, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, leading to her landmark discrimination lawsuit under Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. While Ledbetter lost the case on appeal (a decision upheld by the Supreme Court), the experience prompted her to become a spokesperson for equal pay. In January 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, a satisfying coda to this inspiring tale. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank : stories

 by Nathan Englander. The sense comes easily that Englander, author of the celebrated short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999) and the absorbing novel The Ministry of Special Cases (2007), will always favor the short story form. In his new collection, the reader feels the musculature beneath the skin of his short fiction and keenly appreciates that this is where his supreme power lies. Englander is his own writer. One may think of, say, Bernard Malamud as a possible influence, but which masters, if any, guided him in the early stages of his career have been bid adieu, as Englander sails his own personally mapped seas. His plots are richly developed, and traditional short story techniques are used only when suitable. A case in point is the complex Sister Hills, which, fablelike in its deep resonance and applicability to human behavior beyond its particular circumstances, sees the growth of a Jewish settlement at various points in time, from 1973 to 2011. But in the drama unfolding in the foreground, one woman gives her child to another woman to protect the youngster from unidentified evil. The stresses between Jewish orthodoxy and a more secular practice of religious life are apparent in the title story, in which two school friends, grown now and with husbands and children, visit together 20 years after one couple moved to Israel and turned Hasidic. Their discussion of lifestyle choices, specifically within the context of a hypothetical second Holocaust, leads to uncomfortable realizations about one woman's spouse. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Gypsy boy : my life in the secret world of the Romany Gypsies

 by Mikey Walsh.  A runaway number-one best-seller in the UK following its 2009 release, this controversial memoir is being made into a feature film and has already spawned a sequel. Having written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family, Walsh has ongoing concerns for his safety after leaving the highly secretive Romany Gypsy community 15 years ago, and his true identity has not been publicly revealed. He claims his ultraviolent father once put a contract out on his life. He was born into a roving caravan of outsiders, brutally abused as a child (both physically by his father and sexually by an uncle), and never received any formal education growing up. He is also gay. This kind of harrowing life story is a publisher's dream and, in our post-James Frey world, skeptical detractors have made accusations regarding the book's authenticity. But none of that would make a lick of difference if this wasn't a gripping and heartfelt page-turner. Calling it enjoyable, however, is a big stretch. There are gasp-worthy moments on almost every page, and, if every word is true, it's a miracle Walsh survived at all, let alone found happiness and success. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The darlings

 by Cristina Alger.  Probably the most compulsively readable fiction to come out of the Wall Street financial scandal so far, this debut novel by a former Goldman Sachs analyst offers readers plenty of schadenfreude, if only of the imaginary variety. Paul Ross, married to the daughter of billionaire investment manager Carter Darling, has lost his job. The pressure to maintain a Manhattan lifestyle trumps his unease about working for his father-in-law, and he is hired as general counsel. Two months into Carter's new post, one of his closest friends, who also runs the fund in which the firm is most heavily invested, takes a header off the Tappan Zee Bridge. Turns out the feds were closing in. Now Paul has to answer for the millions of dollars that have vanished from the fund, which turns out to have been nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. Alger knows the ins and outs of both Wall Street and an upscale NYC lifestyle, nailing all the details, from the plush, hushed atmosphere of high-end law firms to the right tennis togs for a casual weekend in the Hamptons. Delicious reading. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The power of habit : why we do what we do in life and business

 by Charles Duhigg.  According to Duhigg (investigative reporter, New York Times), if people can understand how behaviors became habits, they can restructure those patterns in more constructive ways. He presents information on habit formation and change from academic studies, interviews with scientists and executives, and research conducted in dozens of companies. Three sections deal with the neurology of habit formation in individuals, the habits of successful companies and organizations, and the habits of societies and tough ethical issues. Duhigg offers a fascinating analysis for the college-educated reader. --Library journal (Check Catalog)

The shadow of your smile : a Deep Haven novel

 by Susan May Warren.  Quiet yet powerful, like a blizzard in Deep Haven, Minnesota, Warren's latest inspirational novel is a story of hidden pain. When daughter Kelsey is murdered, the Hueston family breaks. Suffering is all they know until an accident causes Noelle to lose her memory. As her husband, Eli, and sons Kirby and Kyle help her rebuild her life, she gets reacquainted with her family and reclaims her past passions and youthful joy. Eli soon confronts his own coping methods, which involve another woman, Lee Nelson, whose husband was killed the same day as Kelsey. Emma Nelson was Kelsey's best friend. They dreamed of making music together, but Emma's songs now feel incomplete. A chance encounter with Kyle spurs Emma and him to believe their fates might not already be sealed. Like the spring thaw, Warren's novel is cold and hard at the outset, but as the story unfolds, characters with frozen hearts begin to revive. At the end, hope is in full bloom. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

How to buy and maintain a carpet : avoid losing a fortune when buying a carpet

 by Robert Selby. Endorsed by the present and past president of the California Carpet Cleaning Institute and Ralph Nader's Cal-Perg organization, this resource explains how carpets are made, how to avoid making big purchasing mistakes, and how to care for carpet. --Summary (Check Catalog)

Celebrity in death

 by J. D. Robb. NYPD lieutenant Eve Dallas doesn't do glitz or glam, but she has no choice when Hollywood director Mason Roundtree and his wife, Connie Burkette, issue an invitation to dine with the cast of The Icove Agenda. Based on one of Eve's earlier cases, the movie is just wrapping up production, and everyone wants face time with the real Lieutenant Dallas. Everyone except actress K. T. Harris, who plays the part of Eve's partner, Delia Peabody, onscreen but in real life is just as bitchy to Eve as she is to everyone else. So when K. T.'s body is found floating in the Roundtree and Burkette's penthouse lap pool, it really isn't that big of a surprise. The real challenge for Eve will be narrowing down her list of suspects since practically everyone at the dinner party had at least one motive for murder. Readers count on Robb to deliver the goods, and her thirty-fourth (!) Eve Dallas book will not disappoint. The plot is cleverly conceived, cinematically riveting, and sexily charming, and Eve is her usual no-nonsense self. --Boooklist (Check Catalog)