Newbery Medal Award

Association For Library Services to Children

Present

An Award

to the 

Most Distinguished Contribution

to

American Literature for Children

The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

There is a fascinating history behind this award. It was the first award that was given to children's books. To learn more about the history and how the award got started:

History

A book must fit a certain criteria before being considered for the award. 

Terms and Criteria

2014 Medal Winner

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, written by Kate DiCamillo 

and published by Candlewick Press

Comic book fan and natural-born cynic Flora Belle Buckman and Ulysses, a flying, superhero, poetry-writing squirrel, join forces to overcome Ulysses’ arch-nemesis, Flora’s mother and encounter a quirky cast of characters. Through poignant, laugh-out-loud episodes, this homage to comic books is a testament to the power of love. 

Find in County Cat:

Flora and Ulysses

To See the Honor Books:

Newberry Medal Award

Macavity Award Nominations for 2014

Mystery Reader's International

Book Award

The Macavity Awards are a literary award for mystery writers. Nominated and voted upon annually by the members of the Mystery Readers International, the award is named for the "mystery cat" of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.[1] The award is given in four categories -- best novel, best first novel, best nonfiction, and best short story. 

Need a new mystery book? 

Check out the nominations for this award...

Best Mystery Novel:

Thomas H. Cook: Sandrine's Case (Mysterious Press)
Mick Herron: Dead Lions (Soho Crime)
William Kent Krueger: Ordinary Grace (Atria Books)
Alex Marwood: The Wicked Girls (Penguin Books)
Louise Penny: How the Light Gets In (Minotaur Books)
Ian Rankin: Standing in Another Man's Grave (Reagan Arthur Books)

Best First Mystery:

Matt Coyle: Yesterday's Echo (Oceanview Publishing)
Becky Masterman: Rage Against the Dying (Minotaur Books)
Jenny Milchman: Cover of Snow (Ballantine Books)
Derek Miller: Norwegian by Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Terry Shames: A Killing at Cotton Hill (Seventh Street Books)


Best Mystery Short Story:

Reed Farrel Coleman: "The Terminal" (Kwik Krimes, edited by Otto Penzler; Thomas & Mercer)
John Connolly: "The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository" (Bibliomysteries: Short Tales about Deadly Books, edited by Otto Penzler; Bookspan)
Martin Limon: "The Dragon's Tail" (Nightmare Range: The Collected Sueno and Bascom Short Stories, Soho Books)
Gigi Pandian: "The Hindi Houdini" (Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology, edited by Ramona DeFelice Long; Wildside Press)
Travis Richardson: "Incident on the 405" (The Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble, edited by Clare Toohey; Macmillan)
Art Taylor: "The Care and Feeding of Houseplants" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2013)

Best Nonfiction:

Roseanne Montillo: The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece (William Morrow)
Charles J. Rzepka: Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Daniel Stashower: The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (Minotaur Books)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award:

Susanna Calkins: A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (Minotaur Books)
Robert Kresge: Saving Lincoln (ABQ Press)
Catriona McPherson: Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses(Minotaur Books)
David Morrell: Murder as a Fine Art (Little, Brown)
Stuart Neville: Ratlines (Soho Crime)

Learn more:

Macavity Award

Winners

Find in County Cat:

Sandrine's Case by Thomas H. Cook

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle

The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Montillo

A Murder at Rosamund's Gate by Susanna Calkins

Science Fiction Movies

Feel like watching something out of this world? Need a dose of futuristic problems? Check out this movie list...

1) Blade Runner
In a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specializes in terminating replicants. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when four replicants escape from an off-world colony to Earth.

The Cast included: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and more...
In theaters in 1982.



Find it in County Cat:

Final Cut
Director's Cut

2) Star Wars Trilogy: New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi

Part IV in George Lucas' epic, Star Wars: A New Hope opens with a Rebel ship being boarded by the tyrannical Darth Vader. The plot then follows the life of a simple farm boy, Luke Skywalker, as he and his newly met allies (Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, R2-D2) attempt to rescue a Rebel leader, Princess Leia, from the clutches of the Empire. The conclusion is culminated as the Rebels, including Skywalker and flying ace Wedge Antilles make an attack on the Empire's most powerful and ominous weapon, the Death Star. 

In theaters in 1977

Fleeing the evil Galactic Empire, the Rebels abandon their new base in an assault with the Imperial AT-AT walkers on the ice world of Hoth. Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca and the droid C-3PO escape in the Millennium Falcon, but are later captured by Darth Vader on Bespin. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker and the droid R2-D2 follows Obi-Wan Kenobi's posthumous command, and receives Jedi training from Master Yoda on the swamp world of Dagobah. Will Skywalker manage to rescue his friends from the Dark Lord? In theaters in 1980

Darth Vader and the Empire are building a new, indestructible Death Star. Meanwhile, Han Solo has been imprisoned, and Luke Skywalker has sent R2-D2 and C-3PO to try and free him. Princess Leia - disguised as a bounty hunter - and Chewbacca go along as well. The final battle takes place on the moon of Endor, with its natural inhabitants, the Ewoks, lending a hand to the Rebels. Will Darth Vader and the Dark Side overcome the Rebels and take over the universe? 

In theaters in 1983

The Cast included: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and more...



Find all three on County Cat:

A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi

3) Alien

A commercial crew aboard the deep space towing vessel, Nostromo is on its way home when they pick an SOS warning from a distant planet. What they don't know is that the SOS warning is not like any other ordinary warning call. Picking up the signal, the crew realize that they are not alone on the spaceship when a alien stowaway is on the cargo ship. 

In theaters in 1979

The cast included: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt



Find in County Cat:

Alien

4) The Matrix

Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality, but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines that live off of the humans' body heat and electrochemical energy and who imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents: super-powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion. 

In theaters in 1999

The cast included: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss



Find in County Cat:

The Matrix

5) 2001: A Space Odyssey

"2001" is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past, someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith on Earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well). Evolution then enabled humankind to reach the moon's surface, where yet another monolith is found, one that signals the monolith placers that humankind has evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and human (Bowman) to reach the monolith placers. The winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be. 

In theaters in 1968

The cast included: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester and more...

Find in County Cat:

2001: A Space Odyssey

6) The Fifth Element
In the twenty-third century, the universe is threatened by evil. The only hope for mankind is the Fifth Element, who comes to Earth every five thousand years to protect the humans with four stones of the four elements: fire, water, Earth and air. A Mondoshawan spacecraft is bringing The Fifth Element back to Earth but it is destroyed by the evil Mangalores. However, a team of scientists use the DNA of the remains of the Fifth Element to rebuild the perfect being called Leeloo. She escapes from the laboratory and stumbles upon the taxi driver and former elite commando major Korben Dallas that helps her to escape from the police. Leeloo tells him that she must meet Father Vito Cornelius to accomplish her mission. Meanwhile, the Evil uses the greedy and cruel Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg and a team of mercenary Mangalores to retrieve the stones and avoid the protection of Leeloo. But the skilled Korben Dallas has fallen in love with Leeloo and decides to help her to retrieve the stones. 

In theaters in 1997

The Cast included: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman and more...



Find in County Cat:

The Fifth Element

Best Bathroom Book List

Need something to read while on the toilet? Want a book that makes you laugh by the title alone? This book list has what you are looking for!

1) "The Book of General Ignorance" by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again.
Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,

The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.
Revealing the truth behind all the things we think we know but don’t, this book leaves you dumbfounded about all the misinformation you’ve managed to collect during your life, and sets you up to win big should you ever be a contestant on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Besides righting the record on common (but wrong) myths like Captain Cook discovering Australia or Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, The Book of General Ignorance also gives us the skinny on silly slipups to trot out at dinner parties (Cinderella wore fur, not glass, slippers and chicken tikka masala was invented in Scotland, not India).
Thomas Edison said that we know less than one millionth of one percent about anything: this book makes us wonder if we know even that much.



2) "Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask A Doctor After You're Third Martini" by Mark Leyner
Is There a Doctor in the House?
Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . .

•How do people in wheelchairs have sex?

•Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast?

•Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever?

•Why does asparagus make my pee smell?

•Why do old people grow hair on their ears?

•Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true?

. . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you.



3) "Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader" by Bathroom Reader's Institute

The 26th annual edition of Uncle John’s wildly successful series is all-new and jam-packed with the BRI’s patented mix of fun and information. Open up to any page and you may find an interesting origin (like the origin of the snowglobe) or a piece of obscure history (like the true story of the man who tried to repeal the law of gravity). You’ll also find weird news, urban legends, brain teasers, classic riddles, bizarre headlines, and of course, the incredible factoids at the bottom of each page. Here are a few of the perpetually pleasing articles awaiting you:
- The Lamest Excuses of All Time
- How to Survive on…Roadkill
- Astronauts Who Got Kicked Out of Space
- The Woman Who Was Her Own Twin
- Foiled by Technology: Dumb Crooks Edition
- The History of the Teleprompter, the Police Car, and the Fly Swatter
- “Jogging Makes You Dumber,” and Other Real Study Results
- The Lost Fortune of Abraham Lincoln
- Boxing Lingo
And much, much more!



4) "The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce

If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. There, a bore is “a person who talks when you wish him to listen,” and happiness is “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.” This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.

A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.

This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.



5) "Geek's Guide to World Domination: Be Afraid, Beautiful People" by Garth Surdem
TUNE IN. TURN ON. GEEK OUT.
Sorry, beautiful people. These days, from government to business to technology to Hollywood, geeks rule the world.

Finally, here’s the book no self-respecting geek can live without–a guide jam-packed with 314.1516 short entries both useful and fun. Science, pop-culture trivia, paper airplanes, and pure geekish nostalgia coexist as happily in these pages as they do in their natural habitat of the geek brain.

In short, dear geek, here you’ll find everything you need to achieve nirvana. And here, for you pathetic nongeeks, is the last chance to save yourselves: Love this book, live this book, and you too can join us in the experience of total world domination.

• become a sudoku god
• brew your own beer
• build a laser beam
• classify all living things
• clone your pet
• exorcise demons
• find the world’s best corn mazes
• grasp the theory of relativity
• have sex on Second Life
• injure a fish
• join the Knights Templar
• kick ass with sweet martial-arts moves
• learn ludicrous emoticons
• master the Ocarina of Time
• pimp your cubicle
• program a remote control
• quote He-Man and Che Guevara
• solve fiendish logic puzzles
• touch Carl Sagan
• unmask Linus Torvalds
• visit Beaver Lick, Kentucky
• win bar bets
• write your name in Elvish

Join us or die, you will.
Begun, the Geek Wars have



6) "5 People Who Died During Sex: and 100 Terribly Tasteless Lists" by Karl Shaw

All in perfectly bad taste

Prepare to be amazed, appalled, disgusted, and hugely entertained by this compendium of indelicate oddities. Nothing is too inane, too insane, too bizarre, or too distasteful for this incredible, seemingly impossible, but absolutely true collection of facts from across the ages and around the world.



7) "Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities" by Ian Stewart

Knowing that the most exciting math is not taught in school, Professor Ian Stewart has spent years filling his cabinet with intriguing mathematical games, puzzles, stories, and factoids intended for the adventurous mind. This book reveals the most exhilarating oddities from Professor Stewart’s legendary cabinet.

Inside, you will find hidden gems of logic, geometry, and probability—like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass (harder than you think), a pop-up dodecahedron, and the real reason why you can’t divide anything by zero. Scattered among these are keys to Fermat’s last theorem, the Poincaré conjecture, chaos theory, and the P=NP problem (you’ll win a million dollars if you solve it). You never know what enigmas you’ll find in the Stewart cabinet, but they’re sure to be clever, mind-expanding, and delightfully fun.

Museum Comes to Life Day!

Go and Check 

Out

Your

Local  Museum!

Museums have evolved over the years to include interactive exhibits. Technology has evolved to the point that these exhibits are possible. It makes places that were once filled with facts into a place that children can interact with the facts that they are learning. 

History of the Day

Watch the movie-"Night at the Museum"

County Cat

Learn About the Movie

Behind the Scenes-the Real Exhibits

National Pink Day!

Today is the Day

to

Celebrate

Pink!

While National Pink Day is an unofficial holiday doesn't mean that you can't celebrate it by wearing pink, eating something with pink on it or even adding pink dye to something that you are drinking. (recommend a clear liquid for the most use of the pink dye)

Learn more about National Pink Day:

http://nationaldaycalendar.com/2013/06/22/june-23-2013-national-pink-day-national-pecan-sandies-day/

http://www.wtvy.com/news/headlines/Unofficial-Holiday-of-June-23rd-National-Pink-Day-264208021.html

Food Ideas:

http://www.food.com/food-holidays/pink-day-0623

The color pink has been associated with organizations such as the Breast Cancer Awareness. They use pink ribbons to show either someone with breast cancer or a supporter. It is another reason to wear pink and not just on this one day a year but all year round. 

Superhero Friday!

Looking for a novel about your favorite superhero? Need to read about someone running around fighting crime? Here is a book list with that flavor in mind!
1) "Watchmen" by Alan Moore
This Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.

One of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller, WATCHMEN has been studied on college campuses across the nation and is considered a gateway title, leading readers to other graphic novels such as V FOR VENDETTA, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and THE SANDMAN series.



2) "Soon I Will Be Invincible" by Austin Grossman

Doctor Impossible—evil genius, would-be world conqueror—languishes in prison. Shuffling through the cafeteria line with ordinary criminals, he wonders if the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life. After all, he's lost every battle he's ever fought. But this prison won't hold him forever.

Fatale—half woman, half high-tech warrior—used to be an unemployed cyborg. Now, she's a rookie member of the world's most famous super-team, the Champions. But being a superhero is not all flying cars and planets in peril—she learns that in the locker rooms and dive bars of superherodom, the men and women (even mutants) behind the masks are as human as anyone.



3) "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon

The beloved, award-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a Michael Chabon masterwork, is the American epic of two boy geniuses named Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay. Now with special bonus material by Michael Chabon.

A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age.

4) "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident.

Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible.

He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same...



5) "Hero" by Perry Moore

The last thing in the world Thom Creed wants is to add to his father's pain, so he keeps secrets. Like that he has special powers. And that he's been asked to join the League the very organization of superheroes that spurned his dad. But the most painful secret of all is one Thom can barely face himself: he's gay.

But becoming a member of the League opens up a new world to Thom. There, he connects with a misfit group of aspiring heroes, including Scarlett, who can control fire but not her anger; Typhoid Larry, who can make anyone sick with his touch; and Ruth, a wise old broad who can see the future. Like Thom, these heroes have things to hide; but they will have to learn to trust one another when they uncover a deadly conspiracy within the League.

To survive, Thom will face challenges he never imagined. To find happiness, he'll have to come to terms with his father's past and discover the kind of hero he really wants to be.



6) "Batman-The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller

It is ten years after an aging Batman has retired and Gotham City has sunk deeper into decadence and lawlessness. Now as his city needs him most, the Dark Knight returns in a blaze of glory.

Joined by Carrie Kelly, a teenage female Robin, Batman takes to the streets to end the threat of the mutant gangs that have overrun the city. And after facing off against his two greatest enemies, the Joker and Two-Face for the final time, Batman finds himself in mortal combat with his former ally, Superman, in a battle that only one of them will survive. This collection is hailed as a comics masterpiece and was responsible for the launch of the Batman movies.

This volume collects Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1-4.



7) "Batman-The Killing Joker" by Alan Moore

Presented for the first time with stark, stunning new coloring by Bolland, BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE is Alan Moore's unforgettable meditation on the razor-thin line between sanity and insanity, heroism and villainy, comedy and tragedy.

According to the grinning engine of madness and mayhem known as The Joker, that's all that separates the sane from the psychotic. Freed once again from the confines of Arkham Asylum, he's out to prove his deranged point. And he¿s going to use Gotham City's top cop, Commissioner Jim Gordon, and his brilliant and beautiful daughter Barbara to do it.

Now Batman must race to stop his archnemesis before his reign of terror claims two of the Dark Knight's closest friends. Can he finally put an end to the cycle of bloodlust and lunacy that links these two iconic foes before it leads to its fatal conclusion? And as the horrifying origin of the Clown Prince of Crime is finally revealed, will the thin line that separates Batman's nobility and The Joker's insanity snap once and for all?

Legendary writer Alan Moore redefined the super-hero with WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA. In BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE, he takes on the origin of comics' greatest super-villain, The Joker —and changes Batman's world forever.

8) "Devil's Cape" by Rob Rogers

Heroes with a Southern Gothic edge.

If New Orleans has earned its "Sin City" nickname for its debauchery, then its nearby sister Devil's Cape has earned its "Pirate Town" moniker for the violence and blatant corruption that have marred the city since its founding. A city where corruption and heroism walk hand-in-hand, and justice and mercy are bought and paid-for in blood, Devil's Cape is a city like no other.

Devil's Cape is a novel like no other. It blends the gritty crime novel with a heavy dose of the supernatural and weaves a tale of superhuman heroes and villains. Briskly written and highly readable, Devil's Cape will appeal to a wide audience.



9) "Ex-heroes" by Peter Clines

Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap. The Mighty Dragon. They were heroes, using their superhuman abilities to make Los Angeles a better place.

Then the plague of living death spread around the globe. Billions died, civilization fell, and the city of angels was left a desolate zombie wasteland.

Now, a year later, the Mighty Dragon and his companions protect a last few thousand survivors in their film-studio-turned-fortress, the Mount. Scarred and traumatized by the horrors they’ve endured, the heroes fight the armies of ravenous ex-humans at their citadel’s gates, lead teams out to scavenge for supplies—and struggle to be the symbols of strength and hope the survivors so desperately need.

But the hungry ex-humans aren’t the only threats the heroes face. Former allies, their powers and psyches hideously twisted, lurk in the city’s ruins. And just a few miles away, another group is slowly amassing power . . . led by an enemy with the most terrifying ability of all.

Today in History!

Have you ever wondered what happened on any particular day in history? Well, here is a glimpse at the events that happened on today, June 19, in history!
987-Louis IV, crowned king of France

1179-The Norwegian Battle of Kalvskinnet outside Nidaros. Earl Erling Skakke is killed, and the battle changes the tide of the civil wars.

1205-Pope Innocent III fires Adolf I as archbishop of Cologne

1269-King Louis IX of Frances decrees all Jews must wear a badge of shame

1286-Rabbenu Mir of Rothenbur imprisoned in fortress of Ensisheim

1306-The Earl of Pembroke's army defeats Robert Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven.

1464-French King Louis XI forms postal service

1502-Emperor Maximilian I & England sign treaty of Antwerp

1572-Garrison under Adrian van Swieten occupy Oudewater

1586-English colonists sailed from Roanoke Island NC

1588-Spanish Armada heavily destroyed in storm at Coruna

1610-Samuel de Champlain and his French army defeat the Mohawk people at the Battle of Sorel in New France, present-day Sorel-Tracy, Quebec

1631-Peace of Cherasco: Charles de Gonzaga-Nevers becomes duke of Mantua

1669-Polish parliament selects Litouwer Michael Wisniopwiecki as king

1754-Albany Congress held by seven British colonies & Iroquois indians

1770-General Church of New Jerusalem established

Emanuel Swedenborg reports the completion of the Second Coming of Christ in his work True Christian Religion.

1778-Washington's troops finally leave Valley Forge

1807-Admiral Dmitry Senyavin destroys the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Athos.

1816-Battle of Seven Oaks between North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

1821-Battle at Dragetsani: Turkish army beats Greece

Decisive defeat of the Philikí Etaireía by the Ottomans at Drăgăşani (in Wallachia).

1825-Gioacchino Rossini's "Il viaggio a Reims" premieres

1829-Sir Robert Peel found London Metropolitan Police (Bobbies)

1835-New Orleans gives US government Jackson Square to be used as a mint

1846-1st baseball game (Cartwright Rules)-NY Nines 23, Knickerbockers 1

1861-Anaheim Post Office established

Francis Pierpont is elected provisional governor of West Virginia

1862-Slavery outlawed in US territories

1863-Battle at Middleburg Virginia (100+ casualties)

1864-CSS "Alabama" sunk by USS "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, France

Skirmish at Pine Knob Georgia

1865-Siege of Richmond, VA

Union General Granger declares slaves are free in Texas

1867-1st Belmont: J Gilpatrick aboard Ruthless wins in 3:05

1868-Maj Gen E R S Canby removes mayor of Columbia SC

1875-Formal opening of US Marine Hospital at Presidio

The Herzegovinian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire begins.

1889- Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Man with the Twisted Lip"

1893-Lizzie Bordon acquitted

1910-1st airship in service "Germany"

1917-King George V ordered members of British royal family to dispense with German titles & surnames, they take the name Windsor

1940-"Brenda Starr", 1st cartoon strip by a woman, appears in Chicago

German 7th Armoured division under command of Rommel occupies Cherbourg

1941-Romania orders Jews to evacuate Darabani

Famous Birthdays:

1566-James I Stuart, king of Scotland (James VI)/England (1567/1603-25)1606-James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton, Scottish statesman (d. 1649)
1608-Thomas Fuller, England, literary (History of the Holy War)
1623-Blaise Pascal, mathematician/physicist/religious writer (Pascal)
1633-Philippus van Limborch, remonstrants theologist/vicar
1741-Reinier Vinkeles, Dutch engraver/art collector


Famous Weddings:
1843-Philosopher Karl Marx (25) weds Jenny von Westphalen in Germany
1850-Swedish/Norwegian crown prince Charles weds Dutch princess Wilhelmina
1942-Actress Marilyn Monroe (16) marries first husband James Dougherty (21), a policeman
1953-Singer James Brown (20) weds Velma Warren at Trinity CME Church in Toccoa, Georgia
1976-King Charles XVI Gustaf of Sweden marries Silvia Renate Sommerlath in Stockholm Cathedral, Ist Swedish reigning monarch to marry since 1797
1999-Earl of Wessex Prince Edward (35) weds Sophie Rhys-Jones (34) at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle
2010-Crown Princess Victoria heir apparent of HM Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, weds Daniel Westling at Stockholm Cathedral


Famous Divorces:
2009-"Malcolm in the Middle" actress Jane Kaczmarek (53) divorces actor Bradley Whitford (49) after 16 years of marriage
2010-Backup dancer Dean Sheremet (29) divorces Grammy Award-winning singer LeAnn Rimes (27) after nearly eight years of marriage


Famous Deaths:
1312-Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, beheaded
1545-Abraomas Kulvietis Lithuanian reformer (b. 1509)
1759-Charles-Joseph-Balthazar Sohier, composer, dies at 31
1762-Johann Ernst Eberlin, composer, dies at 60
1768-Benjamin Tasker, Governor of Maryland (b. 1690)
1867- Maximilian I of the Mexican Empire is executed by firing squad in Querétaro, Querétaro at 34
1939-Grace Abbott, social worker (US Children Bureau), dies at 60
1953-Ethel Rosenberg, executed at Sing Sing, in 5 tries
Julius Rosenberg, NYC, 1st US civilian executed for espionage at 37
1986-Murray P Haydon, artificial heart recipient, dies in Louisville at 59

Asian/Middle East Fiction Book List

Looking for an Asian flavored book? Want to experience a new culture without ever leaving the U.S.? Pick up one of these books...

1) "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runneris an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.



2) "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini

Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.



3) "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.



4) "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.



5) "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.



6) "The White Tiger" by Aravid Adiga

A stunning literary debut critics have likened to Richard Wright’s Native Son, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8).

The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.

Recalling The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, The White Tiger is narrative genius with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.



7) "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

Crime Novel Book List

Feel a need for a thriller but want something other than James Patterson? Then this list can help you!

1) "Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane
The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.

2) "Mystic River" by Dennis Lehane

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened—something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.

Now, years later, murder has tied their lives together again . . .

3) "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

4) "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler

When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

5) "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett

A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

6) "Presumed Innocent" by Scott Turrow

Hailed as the most suspenseful and compelling novel in decades, PRESUMED INNOCENT brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial--including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you...long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.

7) "The American" by Andrew Britton

At thirty-three, Ryan Kealey has achieved more in his military and CIA career than most men can dream of in a lifetime. He’s also seen the worst life has to offer and is lucky to have survived it. But being left alone with his demons is no longer an option. The CIA needs him badly, because the enemy they’re facing is former U.S. soldier Jason March. Ryan knows all about March – he trained him. He knows they’re dealing with one of the most ruthless assassins in the world, a master of many languages, an explosives expert, a superb sharpshooter who can disappear like a shadow and who is capable of crimes they cannot begin to imagine. And now, March has resurfaced on the global stage, aligning himself with a powerful Middle East terror network whose goal is nothing less than the total destruction of the United States. Teaming up with beautiful and tenacious British-born agent Naomi Kharmai, Ryan intends to break every rule in order to hunt down his former pupil, whatever the cost to himself. As Ryan puts together the pieces of a terrifying puzzle, and as the elusive March taunts him, always staying one step ahead, he discovers the madman’s crusade is personal as well as political – and Ryan himself is an unwitting pawn. With the clock ticking down and the fate of the country resting uneasily on his shoulders, Ryan is caught in a desperate game of cat-and-mouse with the most cunning opponent he’s ever faced, one who will never stop until he’s committed the ultimate act of evil – a man who is all the more deadly for being one of our own.

8) "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.

Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess,a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.