10/30/17

Book of the Week (10/30/2017)

Ghost Stories From the Elm City by Kitty Mervine (N.H.? : K. Mervine, 2017).

With Halloween only a day away, it seemed fitting to post about a collection of local ghost stories by one of our talented Granite State authors. Kitty Mervine, author of both children's and adult books, offers a glimpse into the supernatural world of Keene, NH with her new book! The stories within "Ghost Stories From the Elm City" are accompanied by amazing illustrations by NH artist Noah Whippie that only add to the spookiness.
["Ghost Stories From the Elm City"] offers a peek at Keene, New Hampshire's paranormal history, featuring a ghostly cat, a zombie in search of a heart, and a skeleton driving way too fast! --Amazon.com

10/23/17

Book of the Week (10/23/2017)

The War has Begun by Charles E. Frye (CreateSpace, 2017).

Based on extensive historical and ancestral research, U.S. Army Veteran Charles Frye's book is the first in a series about NH native Isaac Frye, during the American Revolution. You can learn more about the series and the author's fascinating research findings in an interview with CultScoop Magazine.
If you've ever wondered what it would have been like to stand beside the men and women who fought for American independence, here's your chance. The War has Begun is the first book in the Duty in the Cause of Liberty series. The books follow Isaac Frye, a farmer from Wilton, New Hampshire, who responds to the early morning alarm of April 19, 1775, carried by Paul Revere and William Dawes. This story is true, and only the actual people who participated in the events with Isaac Frye are included as characters—no fictional characters were created to enhance or embellish the narrative. The books portray the American Revolutionary War from the perspective of the middle class, as they follow Isaac Frye, who served from the first day of the Continental Army’s existence through being in the last unit disbanded. No other man, including George Washington, served longer as an officer. The War Has Begun introduces Isaac and tells the story of how his commitment to liberty and eventually American independence shape unimagined sacrifices for himself, his family, and his town. -- Publisher's blurb.

10/18/17

LC Hosting an LAL Webinar for Educators

Join the Library of Congress Letters About Literature team on Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time for a one-hour webinar exploring 25 years of best practices of the Letters About Literature program. Certificates for CEUs will be available upon completion of the live program. Register here.

10/16/17

Book of the Week (10/16/2017)

Erin Bakes Cake: Make + Bake + Decorate = Your Own Cake Adventure! by Erin Gardner (Emmaus, Penn. : Rodale Books, 2017).

NH Lakes Region author and self-taught pastry chef, Erin Gardner returns with another fun and creative cake recipe book sure to make your mouth water!
Erin Gardner's cake recipes share a delicious, time-saving secret: they're all the same. Why play the guessing game of sifting through dozens of recipes when all you need are just a few that contain hundreds of variations--572, to be exact! The cakequations in Erin Bakes Cake teach you how to combine her cake, buttercream, cookie, and candy recipes in endless mouth-watering ways. Erin's cake recipes aren't sorcery--they're science. They all share similar ratios of ingredients that add tenderness, strength, or flavor. You don't have to be an expert. Everyone can learn to make a great cake!
Erin Bakes Cake provides the building blocks for constructing a great cake, and then offers endless ways those blocks can be reassembled. Erin shares the baking tips she learned as a professional pastry chef and wedding cake baker, what tools to use, how to perfect the cake's finish, and other tricks of the baking trade. She then shows you how to make gorgeous and intricately decorated cakes by elevating simple, but delicious, ingredients like candy, cookies, and chocolate. Erin's created cake designs that are festive, chic, and easy to recreate at home without the use of hard-to-deal-with fondant.
And best of all, you can make every recipe your own! The Any Veggie Cake cake can be transformed into a classic carrot cake, zucchini cake, or sweet potato cake. A creamy cake filling isn't limited to buttercream with the inclusion of recipes for caramel, ganache, marshmallow, and more. A chocolate birthday cake recipe can be reimagined as red velvet or chocolate toffee. Elements of crunch, like peanut brittle, honeycomb candy, or even cookie crumbles, can be sprinkled onto your cake layers for tasty added texture. --Water Street Bookstore website
Join Erin at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH on Wednesday, October 18, 2017 at 7:00 pm where she will be doing a Q&A plus a demonstration!

10/13/17

What Romance Did You Love?

We are taking a survey to decide which romance novel by a NH author we should feature in next summer's Route One Reads project. To participate in the survey go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Rt1RomanceNH
and let us know which of the dozen books we are considering (pictured above) you like best. You can only vote once, so consider your choice carefully! The survey will close at  11:30pm on Sunday, October 29, 2017.

10/9/17

Book of the Week (10/9/2017)

Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill (Harper Collins, 2017).

New Hampshire's own Joe Hill will be at Gibson's Bookstore on Tuesday, October 24th, 2017 at 7 pm to present Strange Weather: Four Short Novels.
A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill."One of America's finest horror writers" (Time magazine), Joe Hill has been hailed among legendary talents such as Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, and Jonathan Lethem. In Strange Weather, this "compelling chronicler of human nature's continual war between good and evil," (Providence Journal-Bulletin) who "pushes genre conventions to new extremes" (New York Times Book Review) deftly expose the darkness that lies just beneath the surface of everyday life.
"Snapshot" is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by "The Phoenician," a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap.
A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero's island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in "Aloft."
On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails--splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. "Rain" explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.
In "Loaded," a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.
Masterfully exploring classic literary themes through the prism of the supernatural, Strange Weather is a stellar collection from an artist who is "quite simply the best horror writer of our generation" (Michael Kortya). -- Publisher's blurb

10/2/17

Book of the Week (10/2/2017)

Bound by Ice: A True North Pole Survival Story by Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace (Honesdale, Penn. : Calkins Creek, 2017).
 
Granite State authors Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace have teamed up to bring us another engaging story in "Bound by Ice", which follows the story of the USS Jeannette. Both authors have been featured on "Book of the Week" for another powerful work, "Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights".
In the years following the Civil War, "Arctic fever" gripped the American public, fueled by myths of a fertile, tropical sea at the top of the world. Several explorers attempted to find a route to the North Pole, but none succeeded. Bound by Ice follows the journey of George Washington De Long and the crew of the USS Jeannette, who departed San Francisco in the summer of 1879 hoping to find a route to the North Pole. However, in mid-September the ship became locked in ice north of Siberia and drifted for nearly two years before it was crushed by ice and sank. De Long and his men escaped the ship and began a treacherous journey in extreme polar conditions in an attempt to reach civilization. Many, including De Long, did not survive. A riveting true-life adventure, Bound by Ice includes excerpts from De Long's extensive journals, which were recovered with his body; newspapers from the time; and photos and sketches by the men on the expedition. --Publisher's blurb