In the Spotlight...

	Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine & a Miracle / Brian Dennis This true story has everything a dog lover is looking for: loyalty, bravery and drama. Add a splash of patriotism and some strawberry Pop-Tarts and you’ve got yourself the feel-good picture book of the fall.   Nubs, so-named because his ears had been cut off to “make him a dog of war,” was a skinny, hungry dog with no owner when Major Brian Dennis discovered him one fall morning in Iraq. In short order, Marine and canine were inseparable. While on the base, Nubs and Brian walked guard duty together, and Brian gave Nubs love, food and many belly rubs. Whenever Brian had to leave the base, Nubs would chase his Humvee until he couldn’t run anymore. Time after time, Brian would leave and Nubs would follow, running until his body gave out.   Once, with a burst of determination, Nubs followed Brian 70 miles in the snow, from the border of Syria to the border of Jordan. One would think such dedication would earn Nubs a place by Major Dennis’ side forever, but there was one big problem. It was against the rules for a Marine to have a dog. They were reported to superiors and Brian was given four days to ‘get rid of the dog, or else.  (Check out the book to see what happened next...)
	Olive Kitteridge / Elizabeth Strout (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)  At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive's own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life-sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition-its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
	Last Night in Twisted River / John Irving In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.
	Sister Blackberry / (Barbourville resident) Melissa Newman Eighty-seven year old Viola Garland has secrets that have tormented her for over sixty years. She kept these secrets because she believed her family would be protected. When a skeleton is discovered at a Rayes County building site, the choice she made as a young woman threatens to come to light. She knows the lie has kept the family disjointed but she is sure the truth will destroy it. Set in 1936 rural Kentucky and Northern Ohio, Sister Blackberry is a story about women -- friends, sisters, mothers, daughters and granddaughters, and how their relationships are affected by secrets and lies of the past. When the truth surfaces, these women learn things about themselves and the family matriarch that shake each woman's idea of who she is and how she fits into the only family she's ever known.
	Nightlight: A Parody / Harvard Lampoon About three things I was absolutely certain. First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe. Second, there was a vampire part of him–which I assumed was wildly out of his control–that wanted me dead. And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me. And thus Belle Goose falls in love with the mysterious and sparkly Edwart Mullen in the Harvard Lampoon’s hilarious send-up of Twilight. Pale and klutzy, Belle arrives in Switchblade, Oregon looking for adventure, or at least an undead classmate. She soon discovers Edwart, a super-hot computer nerd with zero interest in girls. After witnessing a number of strange events–Edwart leaves his tater tots untouched at lunch! Edwart saves her from a flying snowball!–Belle has a dramatic revelation: Edwart is a vampire. But how can she convince Edwart to bite her and transform her into his eternal bride, especially when he seems to find girls so repulsive? Complete with romance, danger, insufficient parental guardianship, creepy stalker-like behavior, and a vampire prom, Nightlight is the uproarious tale of a vampire-obsessed girl, looking for love in all the wrong places.

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