When in the throes

Teenagers are often faced with bewildering challenges that leave them and their families wondering which way to turn for help. Some teens struggle with eating disorders, while others may worry about a friend who is using drugs or is suicidal.

We recently added several titles to our reference ebook collection which offer a starting point for people needing information about sensitive health issues. These include the Eating Disorders Sourcebook, Drug Information for Teens, Mental Health Disorders Sourcebook, Suicide Information for Teens, Domestic Violence Sourcebook, and Child Abuse Sourcebook. These ebooks are identical to the print versions, but can be viewed in privacy at any time, whether or not the library is open.

You can find these books in our catalog or in the Gale Virtual Reference Library. To find direct links to all of our eReference books, go to our Database page and click on the eReference Books link. Select a book and enter your Newport library card number. You can browse through its table of contents or index, or search for a particular word in the book to find where you want to start reading.

Sections of each book can be downloaded to your computer, printed, or emailed. You can transfer pages to an ebook reader, or save them to compatible mobile devices such as iPads, iPhones, and Androids.

If you have questions about how to use these eReference books, come in to the library or call us at 541.265.2153.

Miles to go before I sleep

Christine wakes up, confused and frightened. She does not know where she is; the man in bed with her is a stranger. Patiently and kindly, he explains: he is her husband, Ben, and he loves her. She suffers from a brain injury that prevents her from remembering more than one day's events. Whenever she goes to sleep, she forgets everything. Ben shows her pictures of their life together.

How long ago? she asks. When she was twenty-seven, he tells her. They've been having this conversation every morning for twenty years.

That's the setup of Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson. At first it seems like a heartwarming tale of a loving marriage that's endured in spite Christine's disabling short-term memory problem. Then things get sinister: Christine finds a journal, written by herself, headed with these words: "DON'T TRUST BEN."

Christine depends upon Ben utterly for everything she knows about herself and her life. But for some reason, at some point, she began to doubt him - and to write the journal, cataloging what she knows, and what Ben isn't telling her.

Watson's narrative cleverly tantalizes the reader - With no memories to base her conclusions on, how can Christine know anything for sure? Is Ben a villain? Is Christine just a raging paranoiac? And how can she find out the truth before she forgets everything again?

The narrative technique isn't flawless. Christine must have lots of time alone every day to secretly read her journal, and then to write down each day's discoveries. As the journal gets longer and longer, the setup gets a little improbable - sometimes the husband seems to go away specifically so that she can update the journal.

Still, it's an exciting and suspenseful book, full of poignant moments and shocking surprises, and it's satisfying the way the puzzles introduced in the first confusing pages are solved one by one. If you like psychological thrillers, give Before I Go To Sleep a try.

Two great books to add to the kids' summer reading lists-- and your own!

In Savvy, Mibs (short for Mississippi) is coming up on her 13th birthday, an exciting milestone in a family that develops a special magical talent at age 13. Mibs’ mother’s talent is being perfect (imagine living up to that!) and her older brother Rocket has influence over storms and electricity. Mibs can’t wait to find out what her savvy will be—but when her dad is in a car accident that lands him in a coma, she knows exactly what she wishes it will be! Her need to help her father propels her into an adventure full of surprises and tough lessons. Savvy was a Newbery Honor Book in 2009.

Scumble chronicles the 13th year of Mibs’ cousin Ledger 9 years later. Ledger’s savvy seems to be too much to handle, so he’s sent to live at the family ranch until he can learn to scumble, which means to balance out his talent so it doesn’t overpower his life. His older cousin Rocket, who’s still frightened of his own potential danger to others, stays in an electricity-free sod cabin at the ranch, and Ledger lives in fear of him and also of being like him; too dangerous to live in the wider world. Ledger meets Sarah Jane, the 13-year old daughter of a banker who’s threatening to foreclose on the ranch. She’s an aspiring tabloid writer, single-handedly ferreting out peculiarities and oddities and serving them up in lurid headlines in her home-made newspaper. When Sarah Jane sniffs out the strange goings-on at the ranch, Ledger makes it his mission to keep her from learning about his family’s secrets, but his efforts keep backfiring.

These books will capture the imagination of all the kids who fantasized about getting an invitation to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on their eleventh birthday. Getting your savvy—and learning to scumble it--are great metaphors for the tumultuous magic of adolescent development. Savvy and Scumble are intended for the 9-12 crowd, but would be fun and satisfying for anyone who loves good children’s fantasy writing.

The Good Apprentice

Edward Baltram is looking for redemption. After a practical joke on his best friend goes horribly awry causing the friend’s suicide, Edward seeks refuge in the dilapidated country mansion of the father who’d abandoned him, the famous painter Jesse Baltram. Among extended family within the cloister-like confines of his father’s house, Edward is determined to pare his life down to a monkish simplicity.

Although the plot of Iris Murdoch’s 22nd novel, The Good Apprentice, sounds straightforward enough, be prepared for a complex and compelling ride across 1980’s upper-crust England.

Edward’s step-brother Stuart is seeking a turn-around of his own. Leaving his university studies, Stuart decides to pursue a life of the mind and a shocking affair with the son of his father’s mistress, Midge.

And what of Midge? She falls unexpectedly in love with Stuart and turns to Edward for support. Getting a little complicated, isn’t it?

Like all of Murdoch’s 20-plus novels, The Good Apprentice is filled with witty, overly-educated characters spending the weekends getting into all sorts of mischief at friends' country houses. Her books are densely plotted and deceptively philosophical for all their sensual shenanigans. There was a time when I eagerly awaited her next book. Alas, her death in 1999 from Alzheimers at the age of 79 left me bereft. And so? I may just start reading them all over again.

Click here if you’d like to reserve The Good Apprentice.

A Tale of Two Towers

Allisa and Eduardo were expecting their first child when Eduardo lost his job with a Manhattan brokerage firm. Pressure to pay bills overshadowed the joy of the upcoming birth, and Allisa sometimes fantasized a new life, far away without her husband. A job offer from Cantor Fitzgerald promised an end to their worries, and Eduardo started work on September 10, 2001 at the World Trade Center.

American Widow by Allisa Torres is an unflinchingly honest account of one woman’s experiences in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Presented as a graphic memoir, the book follows Alissa from the evening she and Eduardo met, to the nightmare of his loss, through the labyrinth of bureaucratic paperwork she had to navigate as a 9/11 widow.

Much of the text is brief, beginning a thought that is complemented and completed by the artwork. Sungyoon Choi’s illustrations ably capture the nuances of emotion throughout the book—love at first sight, petulant anger, numb grief, and Allisa’s slow journey to healing.

The few, longer blocks of text are powerful and poetic. Not having allowed herself the time or energy to grieve, Allisa finally does so during labor:

“I welcomed the grief in the screams of my hard-earned labor. I invited you into each one, mourning you each time as I had not done previously. So badly, I now wanted these moments of unfettered noise that I didn’t have to explain….As my body was torn apart in the rhythmic convulsions, so too was my heart, in the sudden full realization of my loss. The shock had parted during these moments of contraction, as a sun of reality peered in and I was still alive and this being bearing the name of tragedy would never know you except as I built you in his memory.”

Allisa struggles throughout the book to claim the benefits promised to her, but Eduardo is never far from her thoughts. Sprinkled throughout the book are telling vignettes: how Eduardo worked his way up from toiling in a sweatshop to brokering Latin American currencies; how as a boy he fended off bullies; and how a parachuting lesson presaged his leap from the Second Tower. In American Widow, Torres shares a grief both private and public, and creates a beautiful gift for her son.

Cowboy Buck & Elizabeth Bring Comedy, Music and Ventriloquism to the County

One World, Many Stories, Newport Public Library's summer reading program, features Cowboy Buck & Elizabeth this week at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 22. All children and families are invited to attend this free program.

Cowboy Buck & Elizabeth promise to put on high energy shows that include interactive musical comedy with dancing, singing and ventriloquism. Cowboy Buck spent many years as a manager, singer and songwriter for the New Christie Minstrels. When he settled in the Pacific Northwest, he and his wife, Elizabeth, developed music education programs that let children write, sing and record their own songs. Their shows engage audiences, letting everyone sing, make jokes and wonder at Elizabeth's ventriloquist magic. Click here for a medley of their tunes.

Wednesday, June 22, the music, comedy and ventriloquism show will be at Waldport Public Library (10 a.m.), Newport Public Library (1 p.m.), and Driftwood Public Library in Lincoln City (6:30 p.m.). On Thursday, June 23, they will be at Toledo Public Library (11 a.m.) and Siletz Public Library (1 p.m.).

Their Lincoln County shows are funded by Ready to Read grants from the Oregon State Library and the Lincoln County Library District. Their lodging is provided by the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport and the D Sands Condominium Motel in Lincoln City.

For more information about Cowboy Buck and Elizabeth’s performances or other summer reading presentations, please contact your local library.

The Devil Went Down to Austin by Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan is famous for his best-selling Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, but prior to that, he was just a very respectable mystery author whom I had never read. (The guy won the Edgar, Anthony, and Shamus awards for his mysteries, but I didn’t know that at the time!) My dad passed one of his books on to me lately and I thought, “Nah, this guy’s a children’s fantasy book writer, no way can he write gritty grown-up mysteries.” Then, of course, I ran out of things to read and boom—had to pick up the story of professor/private investigator Tres Navarre.

Guess what? Grit galore. The Devil Went Down to Austin starts something like this: Tres’s big brother Garrett lost his legs in a train-hopping accident as a teenager. Now he’s a grizzled, foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking software engineer who bitterly resents the up-and-comers who’ve made millions on startup companies; he wants a piece of the pie, and may finally have created a program that will do it. He may also resent Jimmy, best friend, business partner, and possible cause of that train-hopping accident—oh, and husband of the woman Garrett loved before he lost his legs. When Jimmy turns up dead, the police don’t feel the need to look much farther than Garrett for a suspect. But Tres knows things aren’t that simple. Garrett and his business partners have been getting threats from Matthew Pena, a man they refused to sell out to—a man with a trail of very unfriendly takeovers and coincidentally dead bodies behind him. Would Pena have gone so far as to set Garrett up for murder? Or is there something more under the surface?

The Devil Went Down to Austin is a Texas-flavored mystery/thriller with really nice moves. Tres Navarre is a little unpredictable, a little edgy with his martial arts skill and his inability to back down from a fight—but he’s also a fairly smart guy, a professor who’s as comfortable deconstructing Beowulf for college classes and matching wits with CEO’s as he is drinking beer with Parrotheads (otherwise known as obsessive Jimmy Buffet fans.) Riordan has an enviable way with imagery—his descriptions take you by surprise even as the character or scene snaps into perfect clarity.

The novel dips into the worlds of scuba-diving, software engineering, and biker bars for added color, and of course Tres has a love interest, hard-hitting lawyer and martial artist Maia Lee. If you missed out on the Tres Navarre books like I did, never fear—we’ve got you covered.

The books in order:
Big Red Tequila
The Widower’s Two Step
The Last King of Texas
The Devil Went Down to Austin
Southtown
Mission Road
Rebel Island