Peggy Blair, a Canadian attorney-turn-novelist opens what we anticipate to be a superb series with The Beggar's Opera *, winner of the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers' Choice award.

On Christmas morning Inspector Ricardo Ramirez, head of the Havana Major Crimes Unit was called when fishermen found the body of a young boy last seen begging on the Malecon, and the sore subject of a heated argument between visiting Canadian policeman Mike Ellis and his estranged wife. With his wallet in the pocket of the dead boy, Ellis became the prime suspect. But Ramirez only have 72 hours to prove his case while dealing with a form of dementia, when the ghosts of the victims of his unsolved cases haunt his every step.

"The Beggar's Opera exposes the bureaucracy, corruption, and beauty of Hemingway's Havana".

The Caretaker * * by A.X. Ahmad opens Christmas week on Martha's Vineyard. With most of the summer folks gone, Ranjit Singh, an landscaper is lucky to get work as caretaker for Senator Neal's home, and saves him from crawling back to Boston to work as a grocery clerk. A broken furnace forces him to move his family into the Senator's house until 2 armed men break in, searching for something hidden among the Senator's antiqued doll collection. Forced to flee, Ranjit is pursued and hunted by unknown forces, and becomes drawn into the Senator's shadowy world. As the past and present collide, Ranjit must finally confront the hidden event that destroyed his Army career and forced him to leave India.

"Tightly plotted, action-packed, smart and surprisingly moving, The Caretaker takes us from the desperate world of migrant workers to the elite African-American community of Martha's Vineyard, and a secret high-altitude war between India and Pakistan".

"Beyond the masterfully crafted, high-adrenaline story, readers will be fascinated by Ranjit's strong Sikh faith, rarely seen in American fiction".

"Top-notch effort in the first of a promising trilogy".

* = starred review
* * = starred reviews

Monday June 17, 2013: 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm -- Downtown Library: Training Center

Attention Teens and Adults! Learn how to interact with a Linux machine from the command-line! In this class you will learn how to navigate the file system, create directories, edit files, write shell scripts, connect to other machines over the internet, and much more. This class is a good (although not strictly necessary) preparation for the upcoming programming classes, including the Python classes and Web App classes. Go to aadl.org/classes to view the complete schedule.

Registration is not required and the class is filled on a first-come, first-served basis. The classroom will open 15 minutes before the class begins. See you in class!

You may be interested in the following books in our collection: Linux Bible by Chris Negus and Ubuntu Linux Bible by William Von Hagen.

Will you be traveling during summer vacation? Do you have a long commute to work? How about listening to something while you clean the house or cook dinner? These are all great times to get a little reading in - by ear, of course! June is National Audiobook Month, and the Ann Arbor District Library has plenty of books on CD to help you celebrate.

For the younger set, Jim Dale brings life to all of the Harry Potter audiobooks, and Tim Curry brings mystery and intrigue to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. You may know James Avery as Will Smith's uncle in the 90's TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but he's also an extremely talented voice actor, and you can hear his work in the audiobook version of Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud Not Buddy.

If you're looking for a few good laughs, check out Stephen Colbert's satire I Am America (And So Can You!) or Tina Fey's biography Bossypants, each read by the author. For a gut-busting funny fiction read, try Lunatics, written and recorded jointly by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Barry and Zweibel take turns reading chapters from their respective characters, and I dare you to get through a single chapter without cracking a smile.

For the ultimate audiobook experience, however, you must try something from the inestimable Bill Bryson. Bryson is mostly well known for his travelogues like A Walk in the Woods (in which he walks the Appalachian Trail), but he has also written Shakespeare in Shakespeare : The World as Stage, the history of science in the extremely informative A Short History of Nearly Everything, and the history of private life in At Home. (Note: All the commercially available copies of Bryson's audiobooks are read by Bryson himself. However, several titles in the AADL collection are library edition copies and thus have different readers.]

If you are like me and cannot get away to far away destinations but enjoy learning about them, you may enjoy watching travel shows. A few years ago I discovered Samantha Brown’s travel program on the Travel Channel and her show quickly became my favorite. She has a bubbly personality that wins people over no matter where she goes. This is proven every time she randomly approaches a stranger and makes a joke or asks them a question. She seems fearless, but she has the charm to make anyone feel at ease, including the viewer.

The library has recently added Samantha Brown’s Asia disc 1 and disc 2 to our collection. In these two DVDs Brown takes us on a tour of Thailand, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, and Bali. Meeting up with natives who then show her around their home, Brown provides viewers with practical advice and insight into the individually unique cultures of these different locations.

If you breeze through these two discs and want more, AADL does own quite a few Anthony Bourdain DVDs that will keep you occupied for a while.

Jean Stapleton, who forever endeared herself to millions of TV viewers in her role of the ditzy-but-wise Edith Bunker, has died.

As Edith Bunker, sweet wife to the unapologetic, stuck-in-his-ways, working class Queens, NY conservative bigot Archie Bunker (played by the late Carroll O'Connor) in the popular 1970s sitcom All in the Family, Stapleton packed whole essays of timid disagreement into her nasally, softly screechy "Oh, Archie" or "Oh, my!". And when Archie would go too far and Edith stood up to him, Archie cowed and audiences cheered.

Ms. Stapleton played against character. She was a strong feminist playing the role of a meek, submissive, taunted housewife to Archie's often-derisive persona. As the women's movement gained traction on the national political stage, the shows' writers kept pace. One of the most memorable episodes centered on Edith's rare flare-up, pushing back against Archie's resistance to her volunteer work in a senior citizens' residence.

In addition to the four consecutive Emmys that the show won, Ms. Stapleton earned three (19721, 1972, and 1978) or her own.

For those who thought glass would shatter on a weekly basis with the opening song of All in the Family, sung by O'Connor and Ms. Stapleton, whose latter contribution was to hit impossibly loud off-key fingers-down-the-blackboard notes, it may come as a surprise to learn that Ms. Stapleton had a lovely voice, as evidenced by her extensive work on Broadway, the movies Bells Are Ringing (2005), and TV (she sang with The Muppets).

Ms. Stapleton, who was 90, died Friday in New York.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D) of New Jersey, who was the last living World War II veteran serving in the U.S.Senate as well as its oldest member (he turned 89 in January), died early this morning at a New York Hospital.

Sen. Lautenberg was a first-generation American (his parents were Polish and Russian). He and two childhood friends founded the first automated payroll system in the U.S. (ADP -- Automated Data Processing) which became a worldwide company.

In 1982, Sen. Lautenberg won his first term in the U.S. Senate and retired at the end of 2000. Just two years later, he was drafted by NJ Democrats to save the 2002 Senate race from sinking due to the multi-scandal-ridden career of Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli. He won that election and the election of 2008 with wide margins.

Sen. Lautenberg was one of the most liberal members of the Senate and proud of it. He won successful legislative battles to ban smoking on airplanes and to prevent domestic abusers from owning guns. He tightened the drunk driving laws and was instrumental in getting the drinking age raised to 21. He was one of the most active Senators -- he cast his 9000th vote in in December of 2011.

As his health failed earlier this year, he announced that he would serve out this term and not seek re-election in 2014.

Sen. Lautenberg died of complications stemming from viral pneumonia.

Hawards End

When Wendell Berry gave the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Jefferson Lecture (read it here, listen to it here) in 2012, the title of his lecture was, “It All Turns on Affection”. He explained that he borrowed the title from a passage in the book Howards End, by E. M. Forster, and that the novel, published in England in 1910, has been an inspiration to him. It elaborates all the themes of Berry’s own work over the years. Being a devoted fan of Berry’s work, I knew I had to read Howards End.

Having loved the movie, I had thought of reading it before, but I had a completely irrational fear that an Edwardian novel, and a novel by Forster, would be difficult or boring or chauvinistic, or all three. I could not have been more wrong. It is delightful, enlightened, complex but entirely approachable.

Forster examines England and human relationships through the themes of class; industrial versus land-based economics; the growth of London versus the decline of attachment to rural traditions and family; the new propensity for mobility and displacement of home; and the invasion of technology and materialism into everything, particularly the new practice of happy motoring all around the countryside of England. The Wilcox’s obsession with their houses and “motors”, their business acumen and upper-crust snobbishness, is in stark contrast to the Schlegel sisters’ liberalism, artistic sensibilities, and philanthropy. Still, even they admit that enough money is a necessity to make life tolerable, as it is not for the impoverished and immobile Basts. The interplay between these three positions in society weave throughout the story.

Rising above all the mundane obsessions, standing with quiet dignity, is Howards End, a very old house and farm, bequeathed by the owner, who loves it above all else, to its spiritual, if not familial, heir, who is thwarted from the inheritance, but by a long series of chance (or not) encounters finds her destiny merging with that of the house by the end. I have read that the story is full of allegory, that Howards End represents England itself and who will inherit it. That is as it may be. I just know the story is beautiful, the characters true, the language breath-taking, the denouement satisfying, and, yes, it is a match for Berry’s themes of care and affection for one’s place. The land, well-cared for and loved, is our true home and inheritance.

Father Andrew Greeley, devoted and devout Chicago Catholic priest, author of forward-thinking (read: controversial) scholarly articles on the future and relevancy of the Catholic Church, and bestselling author of mysteries and stand-alone romances that were so steamy, they earned him the label,of a clerical Harold Robbins, has died.

Father Greeley was ahead of his time on a number of social issues that still make headlines today. He believed in the ordination of women. For decades he urged the Catholic Church to relax its stand on birth control and divorce. He never stopped pushing the Church to stop defending and hiding priests guilty of child sex abuse. He did, however, never waver in his support of the Church's opposition to abortion.

It was his bestselling novels and the popular Father Blackie Ryan mystery series (i.e., The Bishop in the West Wing (2002) and The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood (2005) that really put him at odds with the Catholic Church, so much so that Cardinal Bernardin (Chicago) rejected Father Greeley's million dollar pledge from his book royalties.

In 2008, Father Greeley published the last Blackie Ryan mystery -- The Archbishop in Andalusia. That same year his clothing got caught in a taxi's closed door. The resulting head injury ending his writing and speaking career.

Father Greeley, who was 85, died in Chicago at home.

Jack Vance, one of the most underappreciated masters of science fiction and fantasy and mystery, died Sunday at his Oakland, CA home.

The award-winning author (he won an Edgar, a Nebula, and a couple of Hugos, among others) got his start writing short fantasy stories for pulp magazines in the 1940s while serving in the merchant marine during WWII. In 1950, he published the first of his Dying Earth stories, which have since been collected in Tales of the Dying Earth (2000).

Vance had a unique, beautiful writing style that was described by fellow science fiction writer, Norman Spinrad as a "...baroque tapestry..." Vance was not much of a Gadget Guy. He found gadgets boring and said that his forte was telling "...a history of the human future."

Two of his closest chums, Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson built a houseboat together which they used on the Sacramento Delta.

Vance was 96 when he died on Sunday.

As the school year winds down, you may be looking for ways to keep your young thoughtful readers engaged over the summer. Why not check out one of our new Kids Book Clubs To Go bags?

The Library provides 12 copies of the featured book, one copy of a movie DVD (if available), and a resource guide that includes information about the book, author biography, book reviews, discussion questions, suggested read-alikes, and book group tips.

There are 21 different book titles to choose from. Each Kids Book Clubs to Go kit circulates for six weeks and may be renewed if there are no outstanding requests. Kits are checked out to one library cardholder representing the book club and can be requested through the online catalog or by calling Material Requests and Renewals at (734) 327-4219.