When Maisie Danger Brown applied for space camp, she just wanted to get away from home for a bit, see something new. She never intended to fall in love. And she never imagined stumbling into a frightening plot that has her and her new friends running for their lives while they try to manage the new superpowers they've accidentally developed.  

But there's no going back now--Maisie is the only thing that can save the human race from annihilation. In an action-adventure story that explores a confusing first love, dealing with a disability, and the difficulties of maturing (while saving the world!), this explosive book is sure to leave both longtime Shannon fans and avid sci-fi readers completely breathless.

Dangerous presents Shannon Hale (photo credit Kelly Sansom) in a new genre, but featuring the same brilliant storytelling and well-rounded characters for which she is known. Touted as a brand-new, rip-roaring superhero adventure, New York Times bestselling author of The Maze Runner trilogy James Dashner says of Dangerous: "This is one of the best books I've ever read. Ever."

Shannon Hale's first novel, The Goose Girl, was published in 2003 and won the Josette Frank Award. Her novel, Princess Academy, earned her a Newbery Honor, and her novel for adults, Austenland, became a major motion picture starring Keri Russell.

The North Shore Library is located at 6800 North Port Washington Rd., just north of Bayshore Town Center in Glendale.

Congratulations to Brandon Sanderson (photo credit Micah DeMoux), whose second book in The Stormlight Archive series, Words of Radiance, is the new #1 bestseller on The New York Times for hardcover fiction. We had a great time with Sanderson when he appeared for his kids' book last fall, and can vouch that all attendees were equally enthusiastic. 

In Words of Radiance, readers enter the world of Roshar, a world both  alien and magical, shared by humans and the enigmatic, humanoid Parshendi, with whom they are at war. Among those caught up in the conflict are Brightlord Dalinar Kholin, who leads the human armies; his sister Jasnah, a renowned scholar; her student Shallan, a brilliant but troubled young woman; and Kaladin, a military slave who, by the book's end, has become the first magically endowed Knight Radiant in centuries.

We will start giving out line letters at 5 pm. After the talk, there will be a signing, and following that, there will be another short talk, for our Orthodox Jewish friends who cannot arrive until 8 pm. And yes, Mr. Sanderson will personalize and pose for seated photos. See you then. 

Everyone who enjoyed the PEN Hemingway award winner, A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True will be pleased to know that Brigid Pasulka's second novel is finally out, a tale that takes place in the seaside village of San Benedetto, Italy.

The Sun and Other Stars is the story of Etto, a young man, immersed in grief by the loss of his twin brother and mother and now estranged from his father as well. But then a newcomer arrives, Ukrainian soccer star Yuri Fil, taking refuge in the small town from an international scandal, with his sister in tow.  The only problem? Etto could care less about soccer, and who better to help them hide? 

Publishers Weekly

"Have Angleworms attractive homes?
Do Bumble-bees have brains?
Do Caterpillars carry combs?
Do Ducks dismantle drains?"

April is National Poetry Month, so we're getting you ready with a discussion of Over the River and Through the Wood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children's Poetry co-edited by Marquette professor and noted poet Angela Sorby. If you love classic children's poetry, this talk will bring back old memories and help create new ones. 

Co-edited by Karen Kilcub, Over the River and Through the Wood is said to be the first and only collection of its kind, offering readers an unequaled view of the quality and diversity of nineteenth-century American children's poetry from famous names such as Ralph Waldo Emerson to less familiar figures like Christina Moody, an African American author who published her first book at sixteen.  

The anthology is complemented by period illustrations and includes work by poets from all geographical regions, as well as rarely seen poems by immigrant and ethnic writers and by children themselves.  

How could a species that numbered in the billions as late as 1860 completely disappear by 1914? What does that say about our current relationship with the natural world? With the centenary of the passenger pigeon's extinction quickly approaching, Joel Greenberg (photo credit Lindsay Wilkes) wanted to mark the event, which led to the writing of A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction and a broader hope that the anniversary could be a vehicle for informing the public about the bird and the importance that its story has to current conservation issues.

In fascinating detail, Greenberg explains that the pigeons' propensity to nest, roost, and fly together in vast numbers made them vulnerable to unremitting market and recreational hunting. The expansion of railroads and telegraph lines created national markets that allowed the birds to be pursued relentlessly. Human beings destroyed passenger pigeons almost every time they encountered them, and they used every imaginable device in the process.

Joel Greenberg is a research associate of the Chicago Academy of Sciences Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and the Field Museum. The Urban Ecology Center's Riverside Park location is at 1500 E. Park Place, about eight blocks west of Boswell.  

Join us for a suspenseful evening with local attorney and author Joe Ganzer, writing as J. Thomas Ganzer, as he presents his debut mystery novel, Chicago Secrets. Full of insider information from a man well-versed in the field, Chicago Secrets will take you on an adventure through the lengths to which an everyman goes when suddenly faced with his wife's secret life.

Joe Haise is a bland Assistant US Attorney in Chicago handling low-level fraud for the federal government. His stable job and stable marriage provide him a predictable, perhaps even boring, life. But one evening he scoops up his wife Tina's phone by mistake and reads a cryptic text from an unknown number.  

Joe's world descends into chaos when he pieces together several random events and discovers Tina is moonlighting as a high-priced escort for Chicago's jet set. In his fervor to uncover the seedy details of her secret life, Joe must confront a dark secret of his own. Can Joe use his knowledge of the law to manipulate those around him to do his bidding? And what could one do, a federal prosecutor no less, if one had no conscience?

It's only natural to have silence and secrets in your family when you're born on the same day that your brother died. At least, that's what it seems like for twelve-year-old Jewel in the new novel for folks ages eight and up called Bird. Add to that the fact that you're the only mixed-race family in your rural Iowa town, and well, life can get kind of lonely sometimes. But when a boy named John moves into her town, his courage and charisma immediately stand out and the two kids instantly click. 

John's presence, however, has an unsettling effect on her family. As the thick layers of silence in her family begin to unravel, Jewel finds that her life is not as stable nor her family's expectations as certain as she once thought. Suddenly, Jewel needs to choose whether to stay loyal to the person her family wants her to be or to claim her own identity, no matter the cost.

As part of the UWM series, "The Arab and American," Rabih Alameddine (photo credit Benito Ordonez) appears at Curtin Hall, 3243 N. Downer Avenue, as part of a talk and panel discussion. The author of five celebrated novels including The Hakawati, he divides his time between Beirut and San Francisco, and was a 2002 Guggenheim Fellow. 

His newest novel, An Unnecessary Woman, is a coming-of-age story in reverse, celebrating the singular life of an obsessive and passionate introvert, revealing Beruit's beauties and horrors along the way. It's a love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, a nuanced rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East. 

Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's "unnecessary appendage." Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone.    

In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. More in the Los Angeles Times. 

Reporter, filmmaker, political consultant, community activist, and the author of several books, Scott Jacobs brings his unique brand of humor to the Milwaukee Public Library's Mozart's Grove reading area for a talk and signing that will convince you that Wisconsin is not a state--it's a state of mind.

Just on the other side of Lake Wobegon lie the famous ski hills of Wisconsin, the jumping off point for Scott Jacobs' funny and poignant stories about growing up in the Midwest. In this wide-ranging collection of humorous essays, Jacobs turns a wry eye on Wisconsin's favorite pastimes, its plank road breweries, vacation resorts, and family reunions. Famous Ski Hills in Wisconsin is about the little things in life that matter-and some that don't.

Bill Janz, a career columnist for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes: "Jacobs shows us the evolution of a boy, a time, an era...He was a Wisconsin kid who typed his way into the future with great heart, adventure, and the gentleness of a dreamer."  

The Milwaukee Public Library is located at 807 W. Wisconsin Avenue. Mozart's Grove is a reading area off the main lobby of the first floor. 

In 1810, John Jacob Astor sent out two advance parties to settle the wild, unclaimed western coast of North America. More than half of his men died violent deaths. The others survived starvation, madness, and greed to shape the destiny of a continent.

Unfolding from 1810 to 1813, Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship, drawing extensively on firsthand accounts of the men who made the journey. Peter Stark is an adventurer and explorer with first-hand experience of the terrain depicted in Astoria. The author has paddled it, hiked it, climbed it, and is thus able to portray these harrowing situations with vividness and immediacy.

According to Patrick Reardon, reviewing it in the Chicago Tribune, it's the writing that rasies Astoria "above the level of a well-done historical adventure and help the reader get into a scene or understand the context or see relationships between participants and between then and now." He adds: "In Astoria, Stark tells a great American story. By adding such passages filled with insight and perspective, especially when they link his tale to other cultures and geographies, he tells a great human story."   

Peter Stark is a correspondent for Outside, he has written for Smithsonian and The New Yorker, among other publications, and has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. Currently living in Montana, Stark was born in Wisconsin and still has family in Lake Country. He is also author of several other books and editor of an anthology.  

Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library invites members to participate in a tour of "Edith Wharton's New York City," May 15-18, 2014, with an optional excursion to Wharton's restored estate, The Mount, in western Massachusetts, May 18-19. Library Director Paula Kiely will accompany the tour, which is provided by East Town Travel and led by Karen Bergenthal, a specialist in cultural and architectural trips.