Scottsdale Public Library - Staff Recommendations

The Soloist: a lost dream, an unlikely friendship and the redemptive power of music / Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez befriended Nathaniel Ayers in 2005. Nathaniel is a homeless musician. Steve is a Los Angeles Times columnist. What began as a series of columns on the accomplished (but mercurial) Ayers became much more. As the story opens Ayers is playing his music in a tunnel frequented by dangerous vagrants. During their relationship, Lopez watched Ayers play on donated violins and cellos, tried to encourage him to come in off the street, connected him with musical mentors, and brought the plight of the city’s skid row homeless to the attention of LA’s readers. The Soloist is just full of twists and turns, as the story unwinds of how this talented man started among the best and brightest yet came to be living on the streets. The reader feels by turns the pathos, humor, and injustice of the situation. The effect on Lopez’s own life and family is unexpected as well. Finally, the book is in production to become a movie by the same name. Jamie Foxx, and Robert Downey Jr are expected to play the roles of Ayers and Lopez.

From Dead to Worse / Charlaine Harris
From Dead to Worse, Book 8 in the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries by Harris, finds Sookie and her friends dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, which left everyone - human and supernatural - reeling and stressed out. On top of that, Sookie's latest boyfriend, the were Quinn, has gone missing. It's clear that things in Sookie's corner of Louisiana are changing - whether the weres and vamps like it or not - and Sookie is caught up in those changes. In the ensuing battles Sookie faces danger, death, and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying, literally, Sookie will find her world forever altered.

Secrets / Jude Devereaux
At the age of twelve, Cassandra Madden falls in love with Jefferson Ames, a young man she meets at one of her mother's business conferences. Over the years, during periods of loneliness and struggle, Cassie holds onto this unrequited love in order to cope with her mother's cold affection. When she travels to Williamsburg after college, she soon becomes the now-widowed Jeff's daughter's nanny, but he still doesn't even notice her. Then one day she and a neighbor hear shots at the nearby mansion of the world's greatest living actress, Althea Fairmont, and rush to her aid. In an instant, Cassie's life is turned upside-down, and she begins to suspect that all the people around her aren't who she thinks they are, and that everyone has Secrets. Until Cassie can unravel those secrets, she and Jeff will never have a chance to be happy together.

A remarkable debut novel that pulls the reader in from the opening page. The heartbreaking tale of Sara Walters, an unenthusiastic Southern debutante whose endless quest for love and fulfillment takes her around the world and back again. Orbiting Sarah is a cast of characters whose misadventures keep the story moving, including Sarah's fellow members of the Charleston Cotillion Training School, and her mother and godmother, who are graduates and lifelong members of the same. Crouch's sharp wit and keen insight into the dynamics between mothers and daughters, sisters, friends, and lovers make Girls in Trucks a wry, wise and heartbreaking novel.

The First Patient / Michael Connelly
In this entertaining thriller from bestseller Connelly, a country doctor is pitted against a conspiracy to assassinate the president. Dr. Gabe Singleton is brought to Washington when his old friend, President Andrew Stoddard's personal doctor goes missing. Almost immediately things start to fall apart as Stoddard suffers a random episode of incoherency and Gabe is shot at in D.C. traffic. Complicating matters is Alison, a nurse to whom Gabe is immediately attracted. Gabe must find out what's behind the president's mysterious illness, investigating everyone from the Secret Service agents to the vice-president. The First Patient is a roller coaster ride of a thriller which builds to an undeniably shocking conclusion.

The Orphanage centers on Laura, who purchases her beloved childhood orphanage with dreams of restoring it and reopening as a place for disabled children. Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her son's imagination but the ongoing fantasy games he plays with an invisible friend quickly turn into something more disturbing. Upon seeing her family increasingly threatened by the strange occurrences in the house, Laura looks to a group of parapsychologists for help in unraveling the mystery that has taken over the place. Spooky, chilling and heartbreaking.

In this powerful debut novel, Consumption, a beautiful Inuit woman spends her youth in the 1960's in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Montreal, learning French and mathematics from the nuns. Upon returning to her home Victoria feels alienated from her culture and people, and marries a Kablunauk (Inuktitut for white person). Her husband's ambitions increasingly rankle the native community, and when he wants to allow a South African mining company to drill for diamonds, things come to a boiling point. A New York doctor who comes to the community becomes increasingly entwined in Victoria's family's life, and the themes of murder, sex and intrigue are handled seamlessly, while delivering a message of love, loss and dislocation.