On the shelves - Nov. 11

The following are available for checkout at:

Clovis-Carver Public Library

“No Place to Hide” by Lynette Eason leaves Jackie Sellers dumbfounded when she sees her childhood friend and onetime crush on national news and wishes it were under different circumstances. She can’t believe that Ian Lockwood is wanted in connection with a terrorist plot and she's determined to find him and help him clear his name. But she’s not the only one looking — the FBI wants him captured and the bad guys want him dead. Ian just wants to stay alive long enough to save thousands of innocent lives.

“Dear Mrs. Bird” by A.J. Pearce takes you to London in 1940 where Emmeline Lake finds that her dreams of becoming a lady war correspondent suddenly seem achievable, yet is regrettably assigned as a typist for advice columnist Henrietta Bird. When she is instructed to discard letters containing any unpleasantness, Emmeline secretly takes it upon herself to write back to the readers who have poured out their troubles.

“Tear Me Apart” by J.T. Ellison crackles with drama after competitive skier Mindy Wright suffers a serious accident. During surgery, doctors discover she has severe leukemia and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. When her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges — Mindy is not their daughter. Racing to save her life, questions arise. Was Mindy accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play?

“Move Fast and Break Things” by Jonathan Taplin clearly explains why and how the creative arts and crafts are under assault. Musicians must tour endlessly, copyrights are ignored, films are pirated, writers are paid by the word (if at all) and newspapers and magazines are going belly-up. Having amassed enormous wealth, Facebook, Amazon and Google now enjoy political power on par with big oil and big pharma, posing a real threat to democracy as they monopolize the future of the media and entertainment industries.

“Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart” by Alice Walker crafts a bilingual collection that is both playfully imaginative and intensely moving through nearly 70 works of passionate and powerful poetry. Bearing witness to our troubled times, Walker chronicles a life well-lived, while offering a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and above all, gratitude.

“Roped In: Creative Craft Projects Made With Rope (and Other Awesome Things)” by Gemma Patford demonstrates how to create a range of fun do-it-yourself projects for your apartment, your wardrobe, your pets, your kids or a dinner party with friends. Projects that feel fancy but are simple and fun to make feature Gemma’s famous ropework, but also a range of other craft projects, tips and tricks for dressing up the everyday.

Portales Public Library

“Elevation” by Stephen King

Set in the fictional small town of Castle Rock, Maine, the setting of many of King's stories, Scott Carey is in the midst of both a personal and a public crisis. In addition to being in a battle with the lesbian couple next door whose dog continues to go on his front lawn, Scott has been losing weight, strangely weighing the same in and out of his clothes, and he has no idea why, or how he is continuing to lose weight. He trusts his doctor, Bob Ellis, and doesn't want anyone else to know or look into his baffling case. With his health becoming a steady worry for him, he has no desire to fight with the women in the house next door, who are trying to open a new restaurant in town. But while one of the wives is perfectly friendly, the other is cold toward Scott and apathetic about where their dog does its business. When Scott finally begins to understand what kind of prejudice the women face in trying to live in a traditional small town in Maine that doesn't want any part of a gay married couple, he does his best to help them. When the secret of his weight loss comes out, the women, as well as the town, rise to the occasion of being their best selves in order to support him.

“Rise of the Mystics” by Ted Dekker

In “The 49th Mystic,” Rachelle Matthews discovered that she was the titular 49th Mystic, able to live in two worlds at once and prophesied to find five ancient seals before being destroyed by dark and powerful enemies known as the Horde. Like Thomas Hunter before her, who was supposedly the last human with the same ability, she can travel through the gateway to the greater reality of Other Earth and back, and Rachelle has already managed, through many perilous trials, to find the first three seals. If she succeeds in finding all five, peace will triumph, but if not, darkness will reign in Other Earth. Now in the sequel to “The 49th Mystic,” Rachelle still has two seals to uncover. But after being allowed to leave Eden after saving it, she is imprisoned by the Elyonites along with her friend Jacob, and the Horde knows that they are in prison and will stop at nothing to capture them for themselves. Additionally, the rest of the mystics, including Thomas Hunter himself, believe that should she end up finding the last seals, the Fifth Seal will cost Rachelle everything.

“The Fox” by Frederick Forsyth

Adrian Weston, the former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, is woken in the middle of the night by the prime minister calling him with the incredible news that the Pentagon, the NSA, and the CIA have all been hacked at the same time by an unknown individual known as “The Fox”. The fact that anyone could breach the supposedly unbreakable firewalls of America's three most secret organizations is astounding, but Adrian is even more floored by the discovery, upon investigation, that the hacker is a young British teen named Luke Jennings, who has no harmful plans but is only extremely brilliant and curious to see how far his hacking skills can go. Although the British government at first plans to turn Luke over to America for reckoning, Adrian realizes that both Britain and America can use the talented teenager to their advantage by turning his skills on the West's enemies. But in using their new weapon to battle the two nations’ opponents, Luke is also placed in the middle of a dangerous geopolitical game.

— Summaries by library staff