New Look for our Blog

We have just updated the template for our blog with a new look and feel. All the old content is still there we have just changed the layout and colours slightly.

We have also added a few new features. You can now search the library catalogue directly from the blog, subscribe to recent comments via RSS and see a list of websites added recently to Sutherland Shire Libraries del.icio.us bookmarks.

Have a look around and leave a comment to let us know what you think of the changes.

Happy 10th Birthday Pizza & Pages

Pizza & Pages 10th Birthday
This year is the tenth anniversary of Pizza & Pages, where our young adult readers get to munch their way through some yummy pizza while they find out about great new books at the library.

20 keen readers enjoyed tasty pizza generously donated by Taglia La Pizza (corner Glencoe St and Stapleton Ave, Sutherland).

Books featured on the night included Being Bee by Catherine Bateson and Don’t call me Ishmael by Gerard Michael Bauer. These books are both nominees for 2007 Children’s Book Week awards. Other books presented were In the Nick of Time by Robert Swindells, Singing for Mrs Pettigrew by Michael Morpurgo and I’m being Stalked by a Moonshadow by Doug Macleod.

Pizza Bingo was played and trivia questions answered with the winners getting to choose from the titles newly acquired by the library. There was something for everyone with books from a variety of genres including fantasy, short story collections, mysteries and some classic Tintin adventures

Our next Pizza & Pages night will be held at Sutherland Library in term 4. Keep your eye on our events calendar for the date.

Fiction Follies: August 2007

Fiction Follies is a monthly newsletter containing a selection of NEW fiction added to the collection of the Sutherland Shire Libraries. Click on the book title to reserve your copy.

New Mysteries

The return by Hakan Nesser
Nesser's latest contemporary police procedural, set in his Swedish homeland, is an excellent puzzler that will remind many of the Inspector Morse series. Publishers Weekly

A treasury of regrets by Susanne Alleyn
Freelance police investigator Aristide Ravel comes to the aid of Jeannette Moineau, an illiterate servant girl accused of poisoning the master of the house where she works, but his case is complicated by a household brimming with suspects and motives and by the deaths of additional family members, in a mystery set against the backdrop of revolutionary Paris.

Into the shadows by Shirley Wells
When a man wrongfully arrested for murder hangs himself, forensic psychologist Jill Kennedy, who helped put him away, moves to a sleepy village. But when the vicar’s wife is murdered, Jill discovers that village life isn’t the retreat she’d hoped for.

Murder on the dancefloor by Susan Kelly
A dangerous new drug has emerged into the nightclubs around Newbury. Entrium Trilenium, otherwise known as Entry, is easy to manufacture, looks deceptively like ecstasy, but is incredibly lethal. After the deaths of two young girls at a local nightclub, Superintendent Gregory Summers and his team believe that they’re after a small time drug dealer on a probable manslaughter charge. However, their investigations take a devastating turn when tragedy strikes close to home.

New Fiction

After dark by Haruki Murakami
A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.

Salt by Jeremy Page
A haunting, evocative portrait of three generations of a family by an exciting and inspired new voice in fiction. Salt is a family saga that explores the relationship between people and the landscape in which they live. Atmospheric and lyrical, Jeremy Page's debut novel is revelatory in its use of language. For fans of John Banville and Marilynne Robinson, Salt signals the introduction of a significant writer.

Tales from the town of widows by James Canon
The women of Mariquita – made widows when their men are swept away by the army or rebel forces – learn hard lessons about love and survival. Forced to grow in extraordinary ways, they challenge the tenets of male–dominated society, discover power with all its pitfalls and strive to create an entirely new social order, an all–female utopia.

Seizure by Erica Wagner
Janet grew up with her father; her mother, she was always told, died when she was three. But now she discovers she has inherited a house from her mother—who, she learns, died only recently. In a state of shock she travels north with the key: and finds an old stone cottage at the sea’s edge.

New Thrillers

Stalin’s ghost by Martin Cruz Smith
Moscow-based Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, in his outstanding sixth outing (after Wolves Eat Dogs), investigates a murder-for-hire scheme that leads him to suspect two fellow police detectives, Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman, both former members of Russia's elite Black Berets, who served in Chechnya. This masterful suspense novel casts a searing light on contemporary Russia. Publishers Weekly

Never fear by Scott Frost
Set in the suburbs of simmering Los Angeles, NEVER FEAR is a fast-paced thriller featuring Alex Delillo, detective and single mother. Seventeen years ago, three young women were murdered; their bodies dumped in the wasteland of the Los Angeles River. The serial killer was never found. Now, Lieutenant Alex Delillo, is forced to re-open the case after the brother she never knew existed, a private investigator, is found murdered. As Alex gets closer to the truth behind her brother's murder, alarming flashbacks from her childhood start to plague her and she realises that the truth may lie closer to her life than she could have ever imagined.

Truth catcher by Anna Salter
Breeze Copens is a forensic psychologist with paranormal abilities. When she must recommend that Daryl Collins be released from prison because on paper he is not a threat, she knows it’s a dangerous mistake.

New Family Sagas

Rough justice by Gilda O’Neill
The Flanagans, Tanners and Lovells all live on the top floor of a crumbling Victorian tenement in the heart of London's East End. It's 1936 and Britain is in the grip of the Depression. Nell Flanagan is a decent, hardworking woman, married to Stephen, a tough, heavy-drinking brute of a man, who works as a casual in the docks — when there's work available. Nell has hidden the abuse she has suffered at his hands from her young children, although most of the neighbours realise what's going on.

A step in the dark by Judith Lennox
A powerful family drama set in India and Scotland, from 1915 to the 1960s. It's 1915 when young Bess Ravenhart, recently widowed, leaves her baby son Frazer with her mother-in-law, Cora, while she sails from India to Britain to set up a home. But Cora has no intention of returning Frazer to his mother's care.

New Chic Lit

Falling out of fashion by Karen Yampolsky
In the bestselling tradition of The Devil Wears Prada, Karen Yampolsky's hilarious and disarmingly candid debut goes deep inside the glossy, glamorous, and completely ruthless world of magazine publishing, where bitchiness and betrayal are always in vogue, and this month's hotshots are just one dud issue away from a pink slip and a one-line career obit on Page Six.

The two Mrs Robinsons by Donna Hay
Anna lives with Oliver Robinson and their 3-year-old son Charlie. They met when she worked as a waitress at his restaurant; he had recently separated and she was a shoulder to cry on. But friendship turned to love. Now she juggles motherhood with part-time work and she couldn't be happier. Or perhaps she could? Oliver has never divorced his first wife Eve who is everything Anna is not.

* Note, many descriptions of books are taken from the publishers synopsis and websites.

Have you recently seen an interesting book that we don’t have? Visit our web site to Suggest an Item for the Library's collection.

Books Alive is on Again

2007 Books Alive Great Reads GuideEvery year a national campaign called Books Alive is run to ignite Australia's passion for reading. A major part of the campaign is the Great Read Guide. You can pick up your copy from any of our branch libraries.

The Great Read Guide is a collection of 50 remarkable books, selected by an independent panel of book industry experts from right around Australia, across a range of genres and styles: biography, crime, fantasy, history, science, children’s books and more. There is something for everyone in the 2007 Books Alive Great Read Guide.

A couple of the books from this year's Guide have sparked my interest.

The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards, a book that explores ramifications of a split second decision. A doctor, forced to deliver his wifes twins, realises that one of the babies has down syndrome. He orders the nurse to take the baby away to an institution and informs his wife that their daughter died.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. Any book with a title like this surely deserves a chance!

The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize by Peter Doherty, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine and Australian of the Year in 1997. A book that gives an insight in to the world of science and how scientists have contributed to our understanding of the world, answering questions such as why scientists and born again Christians can't get along in the process!

It's going to be a busy time for book lovers with all these books and our upcoming talk by local author Markus Zusak (more on this soon!)

I'm sure you can find something in the Great Read Guide that tickles your fancy. Be sure to leave us a comment if you read one of these books and let us know what you thought.

Free Online Tutoring is Back

YourTutor logoAfter few months hiatus, Yourtutor online tutoring service has returned to Sutherland Shire Libraries. Library members in years 4 to 12 can access one-to-one tutoring from home in an online classroom from expert tutors in a range of subject areas.

You can read more about this service in this post.

Tutors are available from 4pm until 8pm, Monday to Friday. To login visit our web site.

We would love to hear from you if you have tried YourTutor. Let us know what you thought by leaving a comment.