Pick of the month

Each month we make our selection from new releases on DVD and CD and highlight the best new books or may select books on a theme.

Add your own reviews of items available from Hampshire Libraries using the library catalogue and read what other customers thought too!

Historical action,adventure and crime

Rory Clements "Traitor"
Moving from the Catholic heartlands of Lancashire to a vagabond camp in the heart of England, and from the deck of Admiral Frobisher's flagship off the Brittany coast to the secret meetings of Elizabeth's closest associates, 'Traitor' is award-winning writer Rory Clements' most intriguing and compelling novel to date.
Jude Morgan "The Secret life of William Shakespeare"
The story of how a glove-maker from Warwickshire became the greatest writer of them all. He is an ordinary man: unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband…and he is also a genius.
Regina O’Melveny "The Book of madness and cures"
Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16th century Venice: a woman who practises medicine. When her father, also a doctor, disappears on a mysterious journey she is no longer permitted to treat her patients and is forced to defy all convention to cross Renaissance Europe and find where and why he has gone.
Giles Kristian "The Bleeding land"
England 1642 and the rift between King and Parliament has widened. Armies muster, ready to fight for their religious and political ideals. Nothing is so destructive as civil war and for the Rivers family the raising of the Royal Standard heralds a conflict that threatens to tear them apart.
Jack Whyte "Rebel"
In the pre-dawn hours of August 24 1305 the outlaw William Wallace waits to be executed. He is visited by a priest who has come to hear his last confession. Packed with action, heroism, and vibrant historical detail, this is the Braveheart story as never told before.
Robin Oliveira "My name is Mary Sutter"
On the eve of the American Civil War Mary Sutter, a brilliant and headstrong midwife from New York, is dreaming of becoming a surgeon. Eager to escape the pains of a broken heart and a life in the shadow of her more beautiful twin sister, she travels to Washington to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded.
Cynthia Ozick "Foreign bodies"
The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale's life. Leaving her impoverished borough in 1950s New York, Bea escapes from the stigma of her divorce when she answers a plea from her estranged brother. Now she has left for Paris, to retrieve a nephew she barely knew.
Sangeeta Bhargava "The World beyond"
1855 Lucknow. As tensions simmer in the heat of colonial Lucknow, an English woman and an Indian prince defy their societies' prejudices to fall in love. But Rachel and Salim's world is about to be ripped apart; trouble begins when the British banish the king of Avadh and Salim is determined to recover what is rightfully his.
S J Parris "Sacrilege"
Summer, 1584. The Protestant Prince William of Orange has been assassinated by a fanatical Catholic and there are whispers that Queen Elizabeth will be next. Fear haunts the streets of London and plague is driving citizens away. Giordano Bruno, philosopher and spy, chooses to remain and finds that someone is following him.
Imogen Robertson "Circle of shadows"
Germany, 1784. Daniel Clode cannot say whether or not he killed the woman but what of the madness he feels, and how did she drown on dry land? Harriet Westerman knows Daniel is not a murderer; her sister would not have married such a man. She and the reclusive Gabriel Crowther must travel to save him from the axeman's steel.

World Language Book Choice

Ami Tomake by Samaresh Majumdar

A new collection of Bengali short stories. Published in India by Nirmal Sahityam

Samaresh Majumdar is a well known contemporary Bengali writer. He spent his childhood years in Duars, Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, India. He was a student of the JalpaiguriZillaSchool and completed his degree in Bengali from The Scottish Church College, Kolkata. His first story appeared in "Desh" (a Bengali magazine) in 1967. Dour (Run) his first novel was published in "Desh" in 1976.

Samaresh Majumdar has written about sixty novels and more than one hundred short stories. He won the Ananda Purashkar prize in 1982 and in 1984 won the Sahitya Academi Award for his novel Kaalbela.

May eAudiobook book of the month

Find out more about eBooks

Barry Unsworth "Morality play"

t is the late fourteenth century, a dangerous time beset by war and plague. Nicholas Barber, a young and wayward cleric, stumbles across a group of travelling players and compounds his sins by joining them. Yet the town where they perform reveals another drama: a young woman is to be hanged for the murder of a twelve-year-old boy. What better way to increase their takings than to make a new play, to enact the murder of Thomas Wells? But as the actors rehearse, they discover that the truth about the boy's death has yet to be revealed. . .

Titles for May 2012

There has been a trend in children’s publishing in recent years to reinvent the classics. Sometimes this takes the form of asking an author to write a sequel to a well-loved book. The other approach is to take something well-known and turn it on it’s head.

Here are some new sequels and alternative versions…but don’t forget the originals!

Laurence Anholt "Seriously Silly Stories"
A series of easy readers that provide hilarious alternatives to the usual fairy tales. Look out for Bleeping Beauty and the Silly Willy Billy Goats!
T S Eliot. "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats"
Not strictly a retelling , but this lovely edition illustrated by Axel Scheffler makes these classic poems available to a younger age range.
Frank Cottrell Boyce "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again"
A wonderful sequel , which captures all the humour and excitement of the flying car.
Hilary McKay "Wishing for tomorrow"
The wistful sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess
Charlie Higson "Young Bond series"
James Bond is as popular as ever, and Charlie Higson’s prequel series brings the hero to a teenage audience. Start the series with Silverfin.

May Music Choice

Leonard Cohen. Old ideas.
As with any album to which Leonard Cohen puts his name, Old Ideas is a work which displays great finesse. The music presented is gentle, even fragile, with backing vocals and instrumentation similar to that heard during his brace of UK concerts four years ago. But as ever, it is the author’s sense of poetic balance that renders this release as being a work of art.
Love2Club massive dance hits 2012.
Love to Club returns for its third outing, packed with club anthems including Dappy's "Rockstar", Flo-Rida's "Feelin Good" and Rihanna's "We found Love", plus exclusive brand new mixes of Pixie Lott and The Saturdays.
Benjamin Britten. The little sweep.
Written in 1949, The Little Sweep was conceived as the second part of ‘an entertainment for young people’, devised with the intention of introducing young audiences to the conventions and workings of opera.
Also included on the disc is Britten’s ‘Cantata academica’.

May Film Choice

War horse. Cert. 12.
From director Steven Spielberg comes War Horse. Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War, War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets - British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter - before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man's Land.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Cert. 12.
No plan. No backup. No choice. Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his elite team go underground after a bombing of the Kremlin implicates the IMF as international terrorists.
While trying to clear the agency's name, the team uncovers a plot to start a nuclear war. Now, to save the world, they must use every high-tech trick in the book.
The mission has never been more real, more dangerous or more impossible.
The Muppets. Cert. U.
Join everyone's favourite Muppets and an all-star celebrity cast in a comic adventure for the whole family. While on vacation in Los Angeles, Walter, the world's biggest Muppet fan, his brother Gary, and friend Mary uncover the diabolical plot of a greedy oil millionaire to destroy the Muppet Theatre. Now, the Muppet-loving trio must reunite Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and their friends to stage the greatest Muppet telethon ever and save their beloved theatre.
The artist. Cert. 12
Hollywood 1927. George Valentin is a silent movie superstar. The advent of the talkies will sound the death knell for his career and see him fall into oblivion. For young extra Peppy Miller, it seems the sky's the limit major movie stardom awaits. The Artist tells the story of their interlinked destinies.