AHML Staff Choices

Check the catalog for this item.

Steven Lamb is an unhappy 13 year old living on the moors in England. He is bullied at school and ignored at home. His Grandmother is obsessed with her son who was killed by a serial killer 18 years ago. However, his body was never found

Steven hopes that if he can find the body it can bring peace to his Grandmother. He also hopes that his Mother, who keenly feels the loss of her brother and the affection of her Mother since that day, will come to love Steven.

So Steven begins to dig on the moor for the body of his Uncle. Some of the bodies of the children were found there and Steven is convinced his Uncle will also be found there.

When Steven gets discouraged he writes to the serial killer for help in locating the body. The serial killer is thrilled to get the letter from the boy and begins a very cryptic correspondence. When things don’t go as well as planned for the serial killer, he plans his escape to meet the unsuspecting 13 year old.

This is a wonderful character study of a boy looking for love from his family amidst all of the sadness.

Check the catalog for this item.

Knives at Dawn: America’s quest for culinary glory at the legendary Bocuse d’Or competition

The Bocuse d’Or might easily be described as the Olympics of food, except that that title is already taken, the IKA Culinary Olympics. But the Bocuse competition, named after famed French Chef Paul Bocuse, occurs every two years and is considered the most strenuous of the culinary competitions. The best finish for the Americans was sixth place.

In 2008, many noted American and French chefs got together to try and put together a team that had a better chance of winning. Fundraising and preliminary competitions were held. In the end the sous chef from the famed The French Laundry restaurant was chosen, Thomas Hollingsworth.

This is the story of what it took to compete with the tremendous dedication, creativity, and stress that comes with a competition of this stature. Andrew Friedman has access to all of the players involved and you read about the evolution of a dish from something plain to something magnificent.

A wonderfully engaging book about the haute couture of food competitions. If you like food challenge shows such as Top Chef, this may also pique your interest.

Check the catalog for this item.

Jonnes has created a very readable book about the building of the Eiffel Tower and the fight to get it built. But what really captures the interest is the subheading of Jonnes book: Where Buffalo Bill beguiled Paris, the artists quarreled, and Thomas Edison became a count.

Many European countries refused to participate in this World’s Fair because they felt that France would be showcasing the one-hundred year anniversary of the loss of the monarchy. Countries with monarchies, hello England, did not want to celebrate anything having to do with THAT anniversary.

Because of this controversy, France was worried about the failure of their World’s Fair. Everything came under tremendous scrutiny. So even though Gustave Eiffel was a well-respected engineer, there was still a fear that the Eiffel Tower was not the right monument to showcase France’s great achievements in the past century.

Enter the Americans. America was still the new kids on the block. (We don’t really get to be major players on the world stage until after the World Wars.) But it was the Americans who save the day and help to make the 1889 World’s Fair one of  the most exciting. Thomas Edison brings his phonograph to the fair. People hear recorded voice and sound for the first time. It is also the first fair to use Edison’s lighting . It is from this World’s Fair that Paris gets the moniker, “City of Lights.”

Buffalo Bill brings his show and sells out for six straight months, two shows a day. Annie Oakley is the big star as are the Sioux Indians. James MacNeil Whistler, famed for the painting nicknamed “Whistler’s Mother,” gets into a huff about the restriction of the number of paintings he can submit. Fights with other artists, including Gauguin, ensue.

A very engaging book about very creative people in the midst of life-changing times. There are pictures that help to show the story. If you’ve ever looked at the Eiffel Tower either in person or in pictures you may be unimpressed in a world of 1/2 mile high buildings. But this book will help you appreciate the building of it, the artistry, and a time long passed.

Check the catalog for this item.
Not a biography, but an appreciation of and a strong argument for Little Richard as the father of rock and roll. In Little Richard was the downbeat of Rhythm and Blues, the guitar driven country sounds, and pop lyrics, all in a subversive package. No wonder Pat Boone had to be be called in to whitewash Little Richard’s songs. Just looking at him you knew he was something else.

This is a fun and interesting book about a man who only was in the spotlight for two years before he found God and left rock and roll. (He comes back numerous times but never with the hits of that two year period where he changed rock forever.) Kirby takes the song Tutti Frutti from its beginnings as a subversive song in the gay culture to Little Richard’s first big hit. Many changes to the lyrics had to happen for it to be that hit.

What an incredibly creative time for music. Both Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley were big fans of Little Richard. Elvis sang one of Little Richard’s songs on his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. Little Richard never made it to Ed Sullivan.

Oh and remember when the Beatles would sing in She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!, the lyric, “and you know that can’t be bad, Wooooo.” The Beatles claim they stole the woo from Richard. Fun book that has you thinking about all of that wonderful music.

Check the catalog for this item.

Snow is the story of a late twenties/early thirties poet/writer who returns from political exile for his Mother’s funeral. While back home in Turkey, he is asked to go to a far eastern Turkish city to write about the recent spate of suicides among young girls. Using his initials as his identity, KA, tells himself that he is only going for the story of the girls, and not because he also knows that the love of his life also lives in that city.

The story takes place over three days. In that time KA is reunited with his love, talks to friends of the girls who suggest different reasons for the suicides, meets up with the many different political and religious groups fighting for control of the city and struggles with how living in the West has changed him and how it has not.

Snow continues to fall until it locks the city in the mountains. There is no way in and no way out.  And so the revolution begins with a theatre troop taking over the town. Lead by a man angry that he was not chosen to play Attaturk in the movies, he will show the people of this town what true tragedy is by performing a Turkish adaptation of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.

In it all KA looks at the snow with beauty and wonder and feels the poetic muse rise  between all of the meetings demanded of him by the differing political and religious groups. Each group would like for KA to tell the West what is happening in their town. Some want the West to see them as sophisticated and very much similar to Europeans, others want nothing to do with the West.

KA is pushed back and forth between groups when all he wants is to be with his love. An interesting book to read from the Western perspective, to see the struggles that other countries have with our way of life and how threatening it may be to them.

Check the catalog for this item.

Cake Wrecks would make a nice light funny book to give someone for this holiday season. Jen Yates has been collecting bad cake art for the past two years. Everything from misspellings on birthday cakes to misunderstandings between decorater and customer.

Chock full of the pictures of the cakes and comments to help with the fun, this book is a fast read. But you would be hard-pressed not to find something that will make you laugh. You’d be surprised how many cake decoraters can’t spell burthday, brithday, I mean, birthday. Great fun.

For anyone ordering a cake in the future, be afraid, be very afraid.

Check the catalog for this item.

Bryant and May on the Loose recounts the most recent events of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. Although they are on permanent hiatus, a headless body found in the environs of the work being done in anticipation of the 2012 London Olympics sets the group back in to motion. Thinking it is the work of gangs, nobody, including the Prime Minister wants this information to get out and ruin the building and rebuilding that is going on in London’s King’s Cross neighbourhood.

Like all of the Bryant and May mysteries you have to love London history which plays a pivotal role in every case. And the history of this case goes all the way back to pagan times as more headless bodies turn up in the area.

John May uses his relentless logic and understanding of human nature and Arthur Bryant uses his unusual interest in history and the occult to solve the murders. The head of Homeland Security has given them four days to solve the mysteries or their permanent hiatus will become a permanent ending. Can they do it?

Check the catalog for this item.

If only her uncles and others had waited to install Jane Grey AFTER Queen Mary and before Elizabeth, the line of ascension would be with the Grey family. But the populace would hear of no heir other than Mary, born of a true king and queen. The Sisters Who Would be Queen recounts in great detail the lives of the Grey sisters. Jane was the oldest, but Katherine and Mary were also considered such threats to Queen Elizabeth that she imprisoned them for almost all of their adult lives.

The subtitle of the book “A Tudor Tragedy” captures their lives completely. Katherine, the most unfortunate, fell in love with another royal and planned a secret marriage with him. Considered not as intelligent as Jane but the best looking of the sisters, Katherine who had no designs on the throne, still posed a threat because  there were people who held her as the true heir.

For this, Elizabeth threw her and her husband and their new baby in the Tower. They were able to bribe a guard and spend a few nights together creating another child. This enraged Elizabeth and she separated them from their children and each other once the second child was born. Katherine never again saw her children or her husband.

Mary Grey, hoping to avoid the same fate, married a man not of royal birth, a man considered well-below her. Because of this marriage she would be prohibited from ever taking the throne. Still, Elizabeth separated them and kept them imprisoned in far locations from each other. They, too, never saw each other again.

Its a different Queen Elizabeth that we get to see in de Lisle’s account of the lives of the sisters. This Elizabeth is frightened and vengeful and never sure of her place on the throne even though she serves for over 40 years. She never names an heir because she fears that the heir will be preferred over her.

This very detailed book notes all of the behind-the-scene machinations that occurred throughout Edward VI’s (Henry VIII’s sickly son) reign and beyond into the time of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. While it is good to be queen, it is never good to be almost queen.

Check the catalog for this item.

Eight chapters all focusing on a different aspect of Ms. Hempel, 7th and 8th grade English teacher. The first chapter focuses on her recent years as a teacher. The next chapter focuses on early years growing up. Third chapter is about her bridal shower of the previous year. Each chapter opens up the reader’s understanding of Ms. Hempel.

Ms. Hempel loves her students because she can see in them all of her potential at that same age. She wonders if they too will settle for something less than their potential. She watches them eagerly to try and find out where it went wrong for her.

Ms. Hempel Chronicles is the character study of a young woman who has reached a place in her life that is by all means successful but does not fulfill her hopes and dreams. How did she get here? This novel is for a reader who is willing to jump around in the narrative of someone’s life to see the layers slowly unfold.

This book would be good for book discussion groups and people in their twenties who could really identify with Ms. Hempel’s predicament.

Check the catalog for this item.

On July 14, 1518 in Strasbourg, Frau Troffea started dancing until fatigue overcame her for the night. After sleeping briefly, she continued dancing until her feet were bloody. By the end of July, over one hundred people had been affected by the dancing plague and many were dying from it.

In The Dancing Plague: the strange true story of an extraordinary illness, John Waller uses contemporary witnesses and records from Strasbourg that document this unbelievable event. What scientific causes were there, if any? What internal struggles or environmental causes could there be to make people dance to their death? How did it come to be called St. Vitus Dance?

John Waller has created a very readable book about the times in which the dancing plague occurred. How the beliefs of the people may have helped or hindered those afflicted. And could this event be the basis for Hans Christian Anderson’s tale The Red Shoes?

A great read for nonfiction book groups and those interested in learning more about living in the late medieval period.