Title: Heroes: Volume One (Heroes Graphic Novels)

Authors:  Tim Sale, Jim Lee, Michael Layne Turner

Collection:  Teen Books

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the TV show “Heroes”.  The TV show was written around a comic book and so a graphic novel just makes sense.  There are thirty four complete stories inside this book based on the characters in the TV show.  The paintings used as props on the television show are included in this book before each chapter.  The novel is a ‘between the scenes’ look at the TV show.  It goes beyond what people saw on the screen and enhances their experience.  But you don’t have to have seen the program to enjoy this book.  Everybody will enjoy the exciting story about modern day heroes who use their special powers to save the world.

I would also recommend this book to manga fans.  I was impressed by the forward written by the Japanese actor, Masi Oka, who plays Hiro Nakamura on the show.  He talks about the impact of comics or Manga in Japan and how Japanese business men would get the latest installments of their favorite manga magazines and read all the way home on the subways and buses.

There is an interview at the end between the executive producer, Jeph Loeb, and the series writers, Aron Eli Coleite and Joe Pokaski.  The interview gives the reader (and the series watcher) extra value for their buck!  We find out this book is the result of an online comic series.  They worked in cooperation with the creator of the television series to produce a weekly Webcomic.  This book is well written and well thought out, and if one is not careful, they just might learn something new!

This blurb is from Amazon.com:

Written by Aron Eli Coleite, Chuck Kim, Joe Pokaski, Oliver Grigsby, Pierluigi Cothran, Andrew Chambliss, Harrison Wilcox, Jesse Alexander, Christopher Zatta, Mark Warshaw and others Art by Phil Jimenez, Michael Turner, Koi Turnbull, Marcus To, Peter Steigerwald, David Moran, Micah Gunnell, Travis Kotzebue, Jordan Kotzebue, Jason Badower, Staz Johnson, Steve Lejeune, Adam Archer, Mark Roslan and others Cover by Alex Ross This stunning softcover edition collects the amazing online comics based on the smash-hit, Emmy Award-nominated NBC show HEROES! This volume – featuring two stunning covers by comics legends Jim Lee and Alex Ross – also includes an introduction by Masi Oka (Hiro), all 34 chapters of Season One, and Tim Sale’s artwork as seen on the show. The comics included have been written and illustrated by some of comics’ and television’s top writers and artists, including Michael Turner, Phil Jimenez, Marcus To, and more!

This blurb is from the Heroes Wiki:

Much of the design of the collection is credited to JG Roshell of Comicraft. He decided to follow the basic design of 9thWonders.com, making the interior look like the “classic silver age comics, including aging the pages as if the comics have been around for years.” To prevent the long list of credits from being boring, he made the credits look like “those old classified ads for x-ray specs and whatnot” with clip art from Mostly Happy Clip Art of the 30′S, 40′S, and 50′s. The introduction is made to look like a “Bullpen Bulletins” page, and the interview at the end is designed to look like a letters column. The chapters are divided by Tim Sale‘s art from the show, presented as fake “covers” to 9th Wonders! comics.

A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author’s works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.

Title:  Finnikin of the rock

Author:  Melina Marchetta

Collection:  Teen Fiction

2008 Printz Award Winner Melina Marchetta crafts an epic fantasy of ancient magic, exile, feudal intrigue, and romance that rivets from the first page.

Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps. In a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the cusp of manhood, is compelled to join forces with an arrogant and enigmatic young novice named Evanjalin, who claims that her dark dreams will lead the exiles to a surviving royal child and a way to pierce the cursed barrier and regain the land of Lumatere. But Evanjalin’s unpredictable behavior suggests that she is not what she seems — and the startling truth will test Finnikin’s faith not only in her, but in all he knows to be true about himself and his destiny.

Be forewarned:  once you start to read this book, you will be unable to put it down.  Author Marchetta has created a tale of romance and adventure, but more importantly, by the end of the story, you will be enamored of all of the characters and their relationships with one another.  I couldn’t wait to begin the sequel, Froi of the Exiles.

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time.World War Zis the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Title: Tapestry of fortunes : a novel

Author:  Elizabeth Berg

Collection:  Adult Fiction

Cecilia, a motivational speaker always on the road, lost so much when cancer claimed her best friend  Penny. Their lives were so intertwined that to move ahead seems unthinkable. How can Cecilia give inspirational, feel-good speeches when she herself can not get out of her funk? How many years had Penny asked her to slow down and enjoy life in the moment? In a moment of clear thought, Cecilia knows it’s time to move on. She downsizes, sells her lovely home in Michigan, and moves in with three other women. She also decides to volunteer at a palliative care home and search for an old boyfriend. Things get interesting when the four women decide to take a road trip to look for answers to their life questions.

Elizabeth Berg is well-known for getting inside a woman’s head and putting the thoughts to paper for us to enjoy…

FICTION (Combined Print & E-BOOK)

INFERNO, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday.) The symbologist Robert Langdon, on the run in Florence, must decipher a series of codes created by a Dante-loving scientist.

AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED, by Khaled Hosseini. (Riverhead.) A multigenerational family saga centers on a brother and sister born in Afghanistan; from the author of “The Kite Runner.”

THE HIT, by David Baldacci. (Grand Central.) The government hitman Will Robie uncovers a serious threat as he attempts to take out a fellow assassin who has gone rogue.

DEEPLY ODD, by Dean Koontz. (Bantam.) Odd Thomas, who can communicate with the dead, must forestall a crime by discovering the three innocent people who have been targeted by an evil killer.

THE FOREVER OF ELLA AND MICHA, by Jessica Sorensen. (Forever.) When a new tragedy strikes Ella and Micha, one will make a choice that could break them apart forever.

ZERO HOUR, by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown. (Putnam.) Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala and the rest of the Numa team search for a physicist’s machine, buried in an ocean trench, that can cause deadly earthquakes; the 11th Numa Files novel.

WORLD WAR Z, by Max Brooks. (Broadway.) An “oral history” of an imagined Zombie War that nearly destroys civilization

SEA GLASS ISLAND, by Sherryl Woods. (Harlequin Mira.) With her two sisters heading for the altar, Samantha is finding it hard to ignore her feelings for Ethan, the local war hero.

SILKEN PREY, by John Sandford. (Putnam.) Lucas Davenport is drawn into the investigation of a Minnesota political scandal and the disappearance of an operative.

12TH OF NEVER, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. (Little, Brown.) A week after giving birth, Detective Lindsay Boxer returns to work to investigate some grisly murders.

NONFICTION (Combined Print & E-BOOK)

LEAN IN, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing.) The chief operating officer of Facebook urges women to pursue their careers without ambivalence.

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, by Phil Robertson with Mark Schlabach. (Howard Books.) The Duck Commander pays tribute to “faith, family and ducks.”

PROOF OF HEAVEN, by Eben Alexander. (Simon & Schuster.) A neurosurgeon recounts his near death experience during a coma from bacterial meningitis.

LET’S EXPLORE DIABETES WITH OWLS, by David Sedaris. (Little, Brown.) Essays from the humorist on subjects like French dentistry and a North Carolina Costco and his father’s dinner attire.

ELEVEN RINGS, by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty. (Penguin Press.) An autobiography by the coach who led the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers to multiple N.B.A. championships.

THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT, by Rick Atkinson. (Holt.) The final volume of the Liberation Trilogy describes the Allied victory in Europe, from D-Day in June 1944 to the German surrender 11 months later.

THE UNWINDING, by George Packer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux.) The collapse of American institutions, politics and culture and their replacement by organized money, told through the stories of ordinary people and significant figures.

WILD, by Cheryl Strayed. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing.) A woman’s account of a life-changing 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail during the summer of 1995.

DAD IS FAT, by Jim Gaffigan. (Crown Archetype.) The comedian’s life with five kids in a two-bedroom New York City apartment.

AMERICAN SNIPER, by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice. (Morrow/HarperCollins.) A member of the Navy SEALs discusses his childhood, his marriage and his battlefield experiences during the Iraq war. Kyle was recently shot to death in Texas.

From one of the most beloved authors of our  time-more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone-a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”   Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygie≠ the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice ™ and so on, as Bryson shows how each has fig­ured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposi­tion imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

At the Man with a Load of Mischief, they found the dead body stuck in a keg of beer. At the Jack and Hammer, another body was stuck out on the beam of the pub’s sign, replacing the mechanical man who kept the time. Two pubs. Two murders. One Scotland Yard inspector called in to help. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury arrives in Long Piddleton and finds everyone in the postcard village looking outside of town for the killer. Except for one Melrose Plant. A keen observer of human nature, he points Jury in the right direction: into the darkest parts of his neighbors’ hearts…

We have some great reading recommendations from a couple of literary locals – and many of the books have a connection to Boston and New England.

Good Reads For The Summer as selected by WBUR and their listeners.

FICTION (Combined Print & E-BOOK)

INFERNO, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday.) The symbologist Robert Langdon, on the run in Florence, must decipher a series of codes created by a Dante-loving scientist.

AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED, by Khaled Hosseini. (Riverhead.) A multigenerational family saga centers on a brother and sister born in Afghanistan; from the author of “The Kite Runner.”

THE HIT, by David Baldacci. (Grand Central.) The government hitman Will Robie uncovers a serious threat as he attempts to take out a fellow assassin who has gone rogue.

12TH OF NEVER, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. (Little, Brown.) A week after giving birth, Detective Lindsay Boxer returns to work to investigate some grisly murders.

DON’T SAY A WORD, by Barbara Freethy. (Barbara Freethy.) A reckless photographer helps a woman delve into the mysteries of her past.

SILKEN PREY, by John Sandford. (Putnam.) Lucas Davenport is drawn into the investigation of a Minnesota political scandal and the disappearance of an operative.

DEAD EVER AFTER, by Charlaine Harris. (Ace.) The telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse searches for the truth about the death of the former barmaid Arlene.

WHISKEY BEACH, by Nora Roberts. (Putnam.) A former criminal attorney who has been acquitted of his wife’s murder retreats to his family estate on a rocky New England cliff, where he is comforted by the house’s caretaker amid continuing danger.

BINDING AGREEMENT, by Kyra Davis. (Pocket Star.) Kasie has to figure out if her passion for the billionaire Robert Dade is leading her down the wrong path; Part 3 of “Just One Night.”

 ENDER’S GAME, by Orson Scott Card. (Tor/Tom Doherty.) Government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers.

NONFICTION (Combined Print & E-BOOK)

ELEVEN RINGS, by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty. (Penguin Press.) An autobiography by the coach who led the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers to multiple N.B.A. championships.

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY, by Phil Robertson with Mark Schlabach. (Howard Books.) The Duck Commander pays tribute to “faith, family and ducks.”

LEAN IN, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing.) The chief operating officer of Facebook urges women to pursue their careers without ambivalence.

PROOF OF HEAVEN, by Eben Alexander. (Simon & Schuster.) A neurosurgeon recounts his near death experience during a coma from bacterial meningitis.

LET’S EXPLORE DIABETES WITH OWLS, by David Sedaris. (Little, Brown.) Essays from the humorist on subjects like French dentistry and a North Carolina Costco and his father’s dinner attire.

THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT, by Rick Atkinson. (Holt.) The final volume of the Liberation Trilogy describes the Allied victory in Europe, from D-Day in June 1944 to the German surrender 11 months later.

MY GREEK DRAMA, by Gianna Angelopoulos. (Greenleaf.) A memoir by a lawyer who was instrumental in rescuing the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens from possible disaster.

CONTROL, by Glenn Beck and others. (Threshold Editions/Mercury Radio Arts.) An argument against gun restriction laws.

BOSSYPANTS, by Tina Fey. (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown.) A memoir from the former “Saturday Night Live” star and creator of “30 Rock.”

WILD, by Cheryl Strayed. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing.) A woman’s account of a life-changing 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail during the summer of 1995.