Monday, November 30, 2015

Digital privacy and security reviewed in APC magazine this month


Image result for APC december

The December issue of Australian Personal Computer takes an in depth look at trends in internet crime and what measures you can take to protect your personal data online.

The issue also includes reviews of many of the most used security packages for Android, Windows and Mac and has a lot of simple advice such as how to protect yourself on public Wi Fi and why you might consider using a password manager.

APC is available in digital format through Press Reader in our eLibrary or in print in many of our branch libraries.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Prince of Shadows by Rachel Caine

Brilliantly written, this "novel of Romeo and Juliet" is the story of Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, during the famous Romeo and Juliet tragedy. It starts with a thief in the night, and a chance meeting with the beautiful Rosaline, Romeo's original love. It darkens with the acknowledgement of Mercutio's forbidden love - a hangable offence to be gay in fair Verona. A witch, a curse, lots of blood is shed...


Beautifully written, a compelling read, and a different take on the traditional story.

Websites to look at:
Rachel Caine
Prince of Shadows
Book trailer

Category: Fiction, author intended it as Young Adult Fiction

Publisher: Allison & Busby

Monday, November 23, 2015

Looking for something new to read?


Have you read everything your favourite author has written? Or maybe you're looking to explore new genres. Newcastle libraries have some excellent e-resources that can help.

Novelist Plus
Brimming with new book ideas for children and adults, Novelist Plus is a comprehensive guide to help you identify new authors and genres. Try the appeal mixer to find the style that you really enjoy.


Offering in depth analysis, reviews and plot summaries of fiction, the Literary Reference Centre is a valuable resource for students and serious readers.




 Who Else Writes Like...?
Login with you library card number to access this readers guide to adult fiction authors. With a variety of ways to search, including lists of award winners, Who Else Writes Like is a fabulous way to find a new book.



The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga



"The Rooster Coop - where hundreds of coloured hens and roosters are stuffed tightly into wire mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench - the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and the organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they're next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop."
Meet Balram Halwai from India, representative of India's poor. His narrative of this brutal and sarcastically witty novel, draws you in, right to the very end...



Also available in Large Print, Sound Recording and e-Book
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008
Donna  Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Ruby-Diamanté Dinosaur

Newcastle Region Library are very excited to announce a new staff member at our Wallsend District Library branch: Ruby-Diamanté Dinosaur!


Ruby-Diamanté was generously donated by Ms S Hall and the 2013 S1H students of Maryland Public School. She began as a wire frame on wheels, and was created with much love and care over 3 months, using papier-mâché, paint, and her absolutely gorgeous accessories.


Currently working in the Children's Librarian office, Ruby-Diamanté would love for you to come and say hello, and welcome her to her new role.

We are having a Dinosaur Storytime at Wallsend District Library on Wednesday 25 November 2015 at 10:30am to celebrate.

Don't forget Newcastle Museum have dinosaurs too! They currently have Tyrannosaurs – Meet the Family, an innovative, multimedia experience developed and co-presented by the Australian Museum. This exhibition runs until 28 February 2016.

Happy Dinovember!

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Good Reading - Summer Issue







The December issue of Good Reading magazine is ready for you to read!

Aussie favourite Fiona McIntosh is back with The Perfumer's Secret and an article she wrote for us about her research trips to France, during which she crafted her own fragrance. Professor Robert Power, an award-winning short story writer and acclaimed novelist, tells us about his latest semi-fantastical offering Tidetown and his work in Zimbabwe that inspired his characters. We're joined by Peter Garrett, who takes us on a tour of his bookshelf, and we also dip into a conversation with one of the world's most fascinating scientists. Leaf through our reviews and Summer Reading Guide to find your next book to enjoy in the sunshine, and for dog lovers, we've got two canine-themed articles featuring posing French bulldogs and a labrador detective called Monty.




Read the lastest issue of  Good Reading for free on your home computer or tablet just by clicking through to the eMagazines section of our website.



Donna    Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Download and stream music with Freegal







Freegal is fantastic! Library members can access over 8 million songs, including Sony Music’s catalogue of legendary musicians, many of today’s top artists, a brilliant retrospective collection, as well as music from around the world. You can stream up to 6 hours of music per day and download 3 songs per week.

It's easy to use, just login with your library card number and you're away. To find out more head to Freegal FAQs or to Freegal and get your groove on today!!!



Thursday, November 12, 2015

City of Orphans Series by Catherine Jinks

Catherine  Jinks is a four-time winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award, and has also won a Victorian Premier’s Literature Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Literature, the Ena Noel Award for Children’s Literature and an Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. In 2001 she was presented with a Centenary Medal for her contribution to Australian Children’s Literature.

The City of Orphans Series is a truly brilliant read. Described by critics as as possessing Dickensian qualities, this series is part adventure, part sci-fi. Engagingly written, with wry humor and enjoyable characters, the City of Orphans Series is available now at Newcastle libraries. The final two books - A Very Peculiar Plague and A Very Singular Guild are also available as e-books.

A Very Unusual Pursuit

Monsters have been infesting London’s dark places for centuries, eating every child who gets too close. That’s why ten-year-old Birdie McAdam works for Alfred Bunce, the bogler. With her beautiful voice and dainty looks, Birdie is the bait that draws bogles from their lairs so that Alfred can kill them. One life-changing day, Alfred and Birdie are approached by two very different women. Sarah Pickles runs a local gang of pickpockets, three of whom have disappeared. Edith Eames is an educated lady who’s studying the mythical beasts of English folklore. Both of them threaten the only life Birdie’s ever known. But Birdie soon realises she needs Miss Eames’s help to save her master, defeat Sarah Pickles and vanquish an altogether nastier villain.


A Very Peculiar Plague

Eleven-year-old Jem Barbary spent his early life picking pockets for a canny old crook named Sarah Pickles. Now she’s betrayed him, and Jem wants revenge. He also wants to work for Alfred Bunce the bogler, who kills the child-eating monsters that lurk in the city’s cellars and sewers. But Alfred is keen to give up bogling, since he almost lost his last apprentice, Birdie McAdam. When numerous children start disappearing around Newgate Prison, Alfred and Jem do join forces, waging an underground war. They 
even seek help from Birdie, dragging her away from the safe and comfortable home she’s found with Miss Edith Eames. Together they learn that there’s only one thing more terrifying than facing a whole plague of bogles – and that’s facing some of the sinister people from Jem’s past . . .




A Very Singular Guild

Twelve-year-old Ned Roach used to scavenge for scraps along the Thames riverbank. But the recent plague of child-eating bogles in London means that he’s now working as an apprentice to Alfred Bunce, the bogler.

 Alongside Jem Barbary and (sometimes) Birdie McAdam, Ned must lure bogles out of their lairs so that Alfred can kill them. And this means spending a lot of time in the city’s murky underground waterways – especially when Alfred is hired by the London Sewers Office to stamp out a deadly infestation.

But times are changing. As magic and folklore give way to the machine age, Alfred begins to face an uncertain future – while Ned and his friends find themselves threatened by an enemy from their past who’s even more dangerous than the bogles.



Tuesday, November 10, 2015

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham

A darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture—now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth

After twenty years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage is compelled to return to her wretched outback dusty town she was exiled from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. Tilly, a gutsy woman, decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses cannot be resisted by the women of Dungatar. Through her fashion business, her friendship with Sergeant Farrat—the town’s policeman, who has an unusual passion for fabrics—and a growing romance with Teddy, the local football star whose family is almost as despised as hers, she finds a measure of grudging acceptance. At the heart of this read, is the mother daughter relationship - reconciliation, forgiveness and love. Everything seems to be going along fine when all of a sudden everything turns upside down. It becomes clear that Tilly’s mind is secretly motivated: causing revenge on those who wronged her, in the most spectacular fashion.



"Mad Molly", Tilly's mum, had me laughing out loud with her honest, biting humour.
 Oh the dresses... they're so beautiful....

Available from Newcastle libraries and also available in Bolinda e-Audiobook format.

Thursday, November 05, 2015

What's new?

 

Our collection is growing all the time. Some recently acquired titles include:

Death by Water by Kenzaburo Oe




Kenzaburo Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." In Death by Water , his recurring protagonist and literary alter-ego returns to his hometown village in search of a red suitcase fabled to hold documents revealing the details of his father's death during WWII: details that will serve as the foundation for his new, and final, novel. Since his youth, renowned novelist Kogito Choko planned to fictionalize his father's fatal drowning in order to fully process the loss. Stricken with guilt and regret over his failure to rescue his father, Choko has long been driven to discover why his father was boating on the river in a torrential storm. Though he remembers overhearing his father and a group of soldiers discussing an insurgent scheme to stage a suicide attack on Emperor Mikado, Choko cannot separate his memories fromimagination and his family is hesitant to reveal the entire story. When the contents of the trunk turn out to offer little clarity, Choko abandons the novel in creative despair. Floundering as an artist, he's haunted by fear that he may never write his tour de force. But when he collaborates with an avant-garde theater troupe dramatizing his early novels, Kogito is revitalized by revisiting his formative work and he finds the will to continue investigating his father's demise. Diving into the turbulent depths of legacy and mortality, Death by Water is an exquisite examination of resurfacing national and personal trauma, and the ways that storytelling can mend political, social, and familial rifts.

Boiling Bill's Camping Guide to Australia by Cathy Savage & Craig Lewis

Newly updated, this second edition of the bestselling Boiling Billy’s Camping Guide to Australia is the complete guide to over 3,000 bush camping areas, over half of them free. This is your ideal guide to Australia’s national parks, state forests, conservation parks, the outback and more. Each campsite entry includes detailed information on facilities and activities, along with accurate access details and location descriptions. The guide includes 52 regional maps, over 180 detailed maps of national parks and reserves plus a 120-page Australia-wide road atlas. Boiling Billy’s is Australia’s most popular and trusted camping guide series, and you can be sure of practical, reliable and up-to-date information to help you get the best out of your travels and outdoor pursuits.




The Prince and the Porker by Peter Bently and David Roberts



Pignatius was passing the palace one day, when he saw ten fresh buns left to cool on a tray! Sneaking into the palace, looking for more treats, Pignatius tries on a wig and some clothes and the servants mistake him for the real prince! Of course the rein of this porky impostor can't last long, but when the actual prince returns, he saves Pignatius's bacon.


Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to live. All the doctors can do is give her drugs and hope they keep her alive. So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of the medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name. Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Brilliant, devoted, strange Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. The sickness catches up with her. Aza is lost to our world. And found, by another. Magonia. Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power. And she can use it to change the world. As she navigates her new life, Aza discovers that war is coming. Magonia and Earth are on the cusp of a reckoning. In Aza's hands lies the whole of humanity -- including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?



For more information on new titles or to browse the collection Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.