by Jeff Kinney
Amulet Books | 224pgs
Release Date: October 12, 2009
Tweens and adults will delight in the fourth installment of Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Middle Schooler Greg Heffley has planned the perfect summer vacation: playing video games all day long, with the curtains closed. What could be better? Unfortunately, his mom has other ideas. Will her plans of outdoor activities (gasp!) and family bonding ruin Greg’s ultimate vacation? Readers will have to pick up the new book to find who wins this battle of the wills.
By James Patterson and Martin Dugard
Little, Brown and Company | Hardback 352pgs
Release Date: September 28, 2009
A new true crime story centered on the world’s most famous mummy arrives just in time for Halloween. Best-selling authors Patterson and Dugard pore over piles of forensic evidence, archaeologist files and ancient myths to discover a new theory about the murder of King Tut. The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King – A Nonfiction Thriller is told through three interweaving storylines: the authors’ forensic research, archaeologist Howard Carter’s discovery of Tut’s tomb, and The Boy King’s brief reign in Ancient Egypt.
Stephen King fans can’t wait to see what’s Under the Dome. Over the past couple weeks, the cover artwork for his new book Under the Dome has been revealed in stages at: stephenkingunderthedome.com. The final reveal will be on Monday, October 5. King conceived the idea for the cover, and Scribner art director Rex Bonomelli worked with artists in the U.S. and abroad to realize the vision. The artists used a combination of illustrations, 3D renderings and photographs to bring the cover to life.
Did you know that To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter, Catcher in the Rye and The Bible have all been banned books? The American Library Association is celebrating the freedom to read during Banned Books Week (Sept. 26−Oct. 3, 2009). Check out one of the titles on ALA’s banned book list, and exercise your First Amendment right to intellectual freedom.
Miami’s friendly neighborhood serial killer is back in Lindsay’s latest installment of the Dexter series. Fresh from his Parisian honeymoon, Dexter Morgan is enjoying a life of peaceful domesticity when a new killer shows up on his turf. Will the new husband and father be able to fend off the homicidal urges of his Dark Passenger and maintain a tranquil home life? Dexter fans around the world certainly hope not.
Blindspot opens in Boston on the eve of the American Revolution, during the spring of 1764. When portrait painter Stewart Jameson sets foot on the docs of Boston Harbor, he arrives not hoping for a new life, but running from an old one. Wanted in his homeland of Scotland for outstanding debts, he has come to the Colonies to escape jail time and find his only true friend. Accompanied by his mastiff, Gulliver, he quickly sets up a small artist studio on Queen Street and advertises for a young man to apprentice him in his art.
Central to The Plunder Room are four generations of men in the Duncan family. The patriarch, Colonel Edward Duncan has just passed on, and his grandson Randol is now tasked with upholding the family honor. “Like virginity…Once you lose…your honor, it’s gone…forever.” With this responsibility, comes a skeleton key to an upstairs bedroom. Among the rumored ghosts, The Plunder Room holds the Colonel’s entire history, stuffed into U.S. Army footlockers. But succeeding generations have done much to tarnish the family honor, and Randol is unsure if he is up to the task.
John Rebus takes his final bow as a Detective Inspector for the Edinburgh Police in Exit Music, Rankin’s 17th novel in the series. Ten days before he’s forced into mandatory retirement at age 60, Rebus and his partner Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke are called to the scene of a murder, apparently a mugging gone wrong. When the victim’s identity is revealed as Alexander Todorov, a dissident Russian poet exiled from his homeland, Rebus becomes a lot more interested.
by Jeff Kinney
Did you know that To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter, Catcher in the Rye and The Bible have all been banned books? The American Library Association is celebrating the freedom to read during Banned Books Week (Sept. 26−Oct. 3, 2009). Check out one of the titles on ALA’s 
