Union-Bulletin

Featured books will be available for the public today.

They can also be placed on hold online at wallawallapubliclibrary.org or call the library for assistance at 527-4550.

Featured books include:

Fiction

"Wunderkind," by Nikolai Grozdinski

In Bulgaria in the late 1980s, 15-year-old Konstantin's typical adolescent longing and anxiety clash against the oppression of a Communist society.

A brilliant young pianist, Konstantin is confined for most of each day and evening to the old, crumbling Sofia Music School for the Gifted. He is driven both by a desire to be the best and an urge to fail.

Isolated and unable to get close to the violin virtuoso Irina, he must exult in his small rebellions - smoking, drinking, and mocking Party pomp.

If Konstantin can truly master the piano and his own self-destructive urges, he might be able to deliver himself from his broken country.

"Zone One," by Colson Whitehead

A pandemic has devastated the planet and now there are two types of people remaining: the living and the living dead.

With the worst of the plague over, the provisional government in Buffalo, N.Y., encourages the return to a civilized state with therapy seminars, corporate sponsorships, and an uplifting anthem.

The resettlement of Manhattan is in progress, but pockets of infected squatters remain.

Teams of civilian volunteers clear out the more innocuous stragglers, those caught in a loop of repeating a task from their former life.

Mark Spitz is one of these volunteers, coping with Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder and, ultimately, the common human troubles of loss and loneliness.

Nonfiction

"In the Field, Among the Feathered: A History of Birders & Their Guides," by Thomas R. Dunlap

Author Thomas Dunlap, himself a birding enthusiast, presents an entertaining history of America's love affair with birds and their guidebooks from the Victorian era to the present.

The first generation of birdwatchers used opera glasses as the best available optics and identification was sketchy.

Birding became more attractive as America became more urban, and Peterson's first field guide in 1934 greatly increased accuracy.

By the 1960s, the environmental movement boosted conservation to a matter of human health and planetary survival.

Drawing upon his own experience and archival research, Dunlap explores the changes in balance between recreation and conservation.

"Sonia Sotomayor: The True American Dream," by Antonia Felix

Through exclusive interviews with former colleagues, family, friends, and teachers, biographer Antonia Felix reveals how a Puerto Rican girl from the South Bronx grew up to become America's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

Her path began with the values instilled by her parents and her dedication to working hard as a student, and continued with her work in the New York District Attorney's Office, in the private sector, and with humanitarian organizations.

She has a reputation for relying on reason instead of ideology and this biography sheds light on how she may form her Supreme Court rulings.

Others

"The Immortalists," by Kyle Mills; "Leela's Book," by Alice Albinia; "Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing," by Megan Smolenyak; "The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits," by Emrys Westacott.