Staff Picks
Check the blog every week for updates on what our staff is reading and watching and recommendations for our new and all-time favorite books and movies. What is your favorite book or movie? Post your answer in the comments section below. To see all previous Staff Picks posts, simply type "Staff Picks" in the search box at the top left of this blog and click the "search blog" button.

Five Skies by Ron Carlson - recommended by Stephanie
The tale of three men gathered high in the Rocky Mountains for a construction project that is to last the summer. Having participated in a spectacular betrayal in Los Angeles, the giant, silent Arthur Key drifts into work as a carpenter in southern Idaho. Here he is hired, along with the shiftless and charming Ronnie Panelli, to build a stunt ramp beside a cavernous void. The two will be led by Darwin Gallegos, the foreman of the local ranch, who is filled with a primeval rage at God, at man, at life. - BOOK JACKET

Hardscrabble Road by Jane Haddam - recommended by Gayle

When local Philadelphia radio host Drew Harrigan, known for his incendiary right-wing tirades, is arrested for illegal possession of prescription drugs, he implicates a homeless man in the drug buys and disappears into a locked rehabilitation facility. While Harrigan is away, beyond the reach of the media and the court, the homeless man so implicated, Sherman Markey, first sues Harrigan for defamation and false accusation and then he himself disappears. With Markey's court date coming up, a member for a legal advocacy group representing him approaches Gregor Demarkian for help in locating him. Demarkian, a retired FBI agent, thinking it will be a simple matter of making a few phone calls, soon finds himself in the midst of a complex maze of motives and actors. Almost as many people have reason for wanting Markey to disappear as do those who want him found. Among those are the Reverend Mother of a local Benedictine monastery, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and noted leftist academic, the lawyer representing Harrigan and an organization for the homeless, among others. When a body wearing clothes matching the description of those of the missing Sherman Markey is found, Demarkian realizes that someone is out to silence Markey - and may have already succeeded - and now he has to unravel a most complicated puzzle before the killer strikes again. -BOOK JACKET.

MOVIE WATCH:

The Wind that Shakes the Barley - recommended by Paul
Driven by a deep sense of duty and a love for his country, Damien abandons his burgeoning career as a doctor and joins his brother, Teddy in a dangerous and violent fight for freedom. As the Irish freedom fighters bold tactics bring the British to a breaking point, both sides finally agree to a treaty to end the bloodshed. But, despite the apparent victory, civil war erupts and families who fought side by side find themselves pitted against one another, putting their loyalties to the ultimate test.