Pines and Plains Libraries

For the Elm Creek Quilters, the day after Thanksgiving marks the start of the quilting season, a time to gather at Elm Creek Manor and spend the day stitching holiday gifts for loved ones. This year, in keeping with the season's spirit of gratitude, Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson Cooper is eager to revive a cherished family tradition. A recent remodeling of the manor's kitchen unearthed a cornucopia that once served as the centerpiece of...

"An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London...Tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best...

With her young son's potentially fatal neuroblastoma in complete remission, New York City medical examiner Laurie Montgomery returns to work, only to face the case of her career. The investigation into the death of CIA agent Kevin Markham is a professional challenge-and has Laurie's colleagues wondering if she still has what it takes after so much time away. Markham's autopsy results are inconclusive, and though it appears he's been poisoned, toxicology...

Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids, and a beautiful home in the suburbs of New York City. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control, the result is an act of violence so shocking that the brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they...

On looking : Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes is structured around a series of eleven walks the author takes with experts on a diverse range of subjects, including an urban sociologist, a well-known artist, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. She also walks with a child and a dog to see the world as they perceive it. What they see, and how they see it, reveals the startling power of human attention and the cognitive aspects of what it means...

"While trailing a Chinese nuclear attack sub, Jerry Mitchell, the captain of USS North Dakota, is shocked to see the Chinese boat torpedo a Vietnamese merchant ship. This blatant act of aggression is the opening gambit in a war that has blindsided the U.S. and quickly embroiled all nations in the western Pacific. These nations, bound together in the newly formed Littoral Alliance, have begun a covert submarine campaign aimed at crippling China's economy...

"Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal...

A memoir of Phil Jackson, the legendary coach of eleven NBA championships, with candid insights into the alchemy of leadership.

an Edinburgh philosopher and well-meaning intervener in the affairs of others -- makes a comment that suggests the kind of entertainment "The Lost Art of Gratitude" is going to be. "Somebody had told her," Isabel muses, "that the essence of a good still life was the feeling it inspired that something was just on the point of happening. What was about to happen here?" Not much, it turns out. This literary still life will go on for 56 more pages before...

"What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality? To some, it sounds impossible. But Nobel Peace Prizewinner Muhammad Yunus is doing exactly that. As founder of Grameen Bank, Yunus pioneered microcredit, the innovative banking program that provides poor people - mainly women - with small loans they use to launch businesses and lift their families out of poverty. In the past thirty years,...