Tag: SYNC 2017

Free Audiobooks: Final Week – SYNC 2017

Posted on by jill

Don’t miss out on downloading two free audiobooks through the SYNC 2017 program from AudioFile. You can download your audiobooks to the OverDrive app for free! This is the last week for the program, so be sure to download this week’s releases before the program ends on August 16, 2017.

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Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

Cassandra Clare meets Caribbean legend in this action-packed urban fantasy from a bold new talent.

Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra’s near-comatose abuelo begins to say “Lo siento” over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep, well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on.

Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order’s secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick’s supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family’s past, present and future. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: Book, E-Book, E-Audiobook, Audiobook

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.”

With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing — though absurdly comic — meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of 20th-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.” – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: Book

Free Audiobooks: Week 14 – SYNC 2017

Posted on by jill

There’s still time to download two free audiobooks a week through the SYNC 2017 program from AudioFile. Download your audiobooks to the OverDrive app for free through August 16, 2017! Sign up for email or text alerts from AudioFile to learn about the weekly releases or check back on our blog for regular updates.

Get your week 14 audiobooks here.

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Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott

A powerful tale of magic, love and revenge with a strong female lead set in fairy-tale Japan, this is Cinderella meets Memoirs of a Geisha. Trained in the magical art of shadow-weaving, 16-year-old Suzume is able to recreate herself in any form — a fabulous gift for a girl desperate to escape her past. But who is she really? Is she a girl of noble birth living under the tyranny of her mother’s new husband, Lord Terayama, or a lowly drudge scraping a living in the ashes of Terayama’s kitchens, or Yue, the most beautiful courtesan in the Moonlit Lands? Whatever her true identity, Suzume is destined to capture the heart of a prince — and determined to use his power to destroy Terayama. And nothing will stop her, not even love. – Goodreads.com

 

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt’s always wanted; convinced he’s lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist’s granddaughter that he realizes that the man’s ravings may, in fact, be true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: Book, E-Audiobook

Free Audiobooks: Week 11 – SYNC 2017

Posted on by jill

Get two free audiobooks a week through August 16, 2017, through the SYNC 2017 program from AudioFile. You can download your audiobooks to the OverDrive app for free! Sign up for email or text alerts from AudioFile to learn about the weekly releases or check back on our blog for regular updates.

Download your free audiobooks.

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Rebuttal by Jyotsna Hariharan

All Alex Dassan needs to do is win second place in the debate team finals. The second-place prize is a trip to the Nottingshire Retreat in London where she’ll have a chance to take a class with her writing idol, Mary Noelle Simmons. Alex knows that once she meets Mary her life will fall into place and her dreams of becoming a writer will be possible (and less scary). Nothing is going to stand in Alex’s way—especially not a dad who’s never home and a mom who left to go “find herself” in India. The only problem: With minutes before the competition and a missing debate partner, Alex is feeling a little desperate.

All Jeremy Beekman needs to do is pass AP biology. If Jeremy passes then he can get into medical school, become a doctor in 10 years, and keep his family together—he won’t disappoint his parents the way his brother did. The only problem: Jeremy spends more time on art and the AV Club than on his homework.

When Alex and Jeremy run into each other (literally!) before the debate team competition, they make an arrangement—if Jeremy helps Alex win the debate team finals, then Alex will tutor Jeremy in biology. What could go wrong?

What starts as an academic arrangement soon turns into a friendship where absent parents and burdensome expectations are confronted, dreams are dreamed bigger, and the debate team competition stakes are even higher. You may now begin your rebuttal. – Goodreads.com

 

Remember to Forget by Ashley Royer

Levi has refused to speak since the tragic death of his girlfriend, Delia, and can’t seem to come out of his depression and hindering self-doubt. Desperate to make a positive change in Levi’s life, his mother sends him to live with his father in Maine. Though the idea of moving from Australia to America seems completely daunting, Levi passively accepts his fate; but once he lands, he faces personal struggles and self-doubt at the same time he and his dad battle through resentment and misunderstanding. And then, while at therapy, Levi meets Delilah, a girl who eerily reminds him of someone he lost. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: Book

Free Audiobooks: Week 10 – SYNC 2017

Posted on by jill

Get two free audiobooks a week through August 16, 2017, through the SYNC 2017 program from AudioFile. You can download your audiobooks to the OverDrive app for free! Sign up for email or text alerts from AudioFile to learn about the weekly releases or check back on our blog for regular updates.

Download the free week 10 audiobooks.

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American Night: The Ballad of Juan José

by Richard Montoya

In this wild satire, a Mexican immigrant has a feverish dream while studying for his American citizenship exam. He meets a parade of characters ranging from Sacagawea to Teddy Roosevelt to Jackie Robinson who take him on a mind-bending, hilarious and poignant trip through American history. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: e-audiobook

My Name Is Not Easy

by Debby Dahl Edwardson

Luke knows his I’nupiaq name is full of sounds white people can’t say. He knows he’ll have to leave it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School things are different. Instead of family, there are students — Eskimo, Indian, white — who line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there’s some kind of war going on. And instead of comforting words like tutu and maktak, there’s English. Speaking I’nupiaq — or any native language — is forbidden. And Father Mullen, whose fury is like a force of nature, is ready to slap down those who disobey.

Luke struggles to survive at Sacred Heart. But he’s not the only one. There’s smart-aleck Amiq, a daring leader (if he doesn’t self-destruct); Chickie, blond and freckled, a different kind of outsider; and small, quiet Junior, noticing everything and writing it all down. Each has their own story to tell. But once their separate stories come together, things at Sacred Heart School — and in the wider world — will never be the same. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: book, e-book

 

Free Audiobooks: Week 9 – SYNC 2017

Posted on by jill

Get two free audiobook downloads a week through August 16, 2017, through the SYNC 2017 program from AudioFile. You can download your audiobooks to the OverDrive app for free! Sign up for email or text alerts from AudioFile to learn about the weekly releases or check back on our blog for regular updates.

Here are this week’s free audiobook downloads.

More About This Week’s Giveaways

the Witch's Vacuum Cleaner

The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner & Other Stories by Terry Pratchett

Do you believe in magic? Can you imagine a war between wizards? An exciting journey in an airship or down in a submarine? Would you like to meet the fastest truncheon in the Wild West?

The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner is the second fabulously funny short-story collection from the late acclaimed storyteller Terry Pratchett. A follow-up to Dragons at Crumbling Castle, this second batch of storytelling gems features stories written when Sir Terry was just 17 years old and working as a junior reporter. In these pages, new Pratchett fans will find wonder, mayhem, sorcery and delight — and loyal readers will recognize the seeds of ideas that went on to influence his most beloved tales later in life.

As Neil Gaiman says, “a Terry Pratchett book is a small miracle” — and The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner proves to be another miracle taking its place alongside Pratchett’s astounding and cherished body of work. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: Book, E-Audiobook

The Witches

The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff

The panic began early in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister’s niece began to writhe and roar. It spread quickly, confounding the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, husbands accused wives, parents and children accused one another. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.

Speaking loudly and emphatically, adolescent girls stood at the center of the crisis. Along with suffrage and Prohibition, the Salem witch trials represent one of the few moments when women played the central role in American history. Drawing masterfully on the archives, Stacy Schiff introduces us to the strains on a Puritan adolescent’s life and to the authorities whose delicate agendas were at risk. She illuminates the demands of a rigorous faith, the vulnerability of settlements adrift from the mother country, perched — at a politically tumultuous time — on the edge of what a visitor termed a “remote, rocky, barren, bushy, wild-woody wilderness.”

With devastating clarity, the textures and tensions of colonial life emerge; hidden patterns subtly, startlingly detach themselves from the darkness. Schiff brings early American anxieties to the fore to align them brilliantly with our own. In an era of religious provocations, crowdsourcing, and invisible enemies, this enthralling story makes more sense than ever.

The Witches is Schiff’s riveting account of a seminal episode, a primal American mystery unveiled — in crackling detail and lyrical prose — by one of our most acclaimed historians. – Goodreads.com

Check out Douglas County Libraries materials: Book, Audiobook, E-Book, E-Audiobook, Playaway, Large-Print Book