Week Three Prompt

1. The fourth book in the Anita Blake series is The Lunatic Cafe published January 1996.
   
   I found this title by doing an author search for Hamilton, Laurell K. in Novelist.  I clicked on the Series tab and then chose the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series.
2. The majority of Barbara Kingsolver's fiction titles are leisurely paced.  One book I could suggest from the Read-alikes list for Prodigal Summer is The Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani.  The pace is fast and the storyline is character-driven. However, knowing that the reader specifically liked the descriptive writing style, a suspense novel such as The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen or The Miniaturist, a plot-drive historical fiction, by Kunal Basu might be worth checking out.
   
   In order to find the last two titles, I went out and did a search for books with a writing style of descriptive or lush that were fast-paced.
3. My first suggestion would be Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden about a girl sold into slavery and her journey from Japan to New York set in the early part of the 20th century.  The book was so popular it was made into a movie.  Another recommendation would be The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery.  It is a historical fiction set in late-nineteenth-century Japan about a tea advisor and an American girl, nine-year-old Aurelia who describes life as the tea advisor's servant.
   
   To find these titles, I did a search for Japan and used the refine options on the left hand side to choose Fiction titles for Adults - Genre Historical Fiction - Writing style - Richly detailed.
4. I may ask the patron more about why they liked Well-Schooled Murder.  It appears the patron likes suspense, but not violence or too much gore.  This tells me that they may do better with well-written witty mysteries.  A similar read would be the Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James mysteries by Deborah Crombie.  The first book in the series is A Share in Death.
   
   I used the Read-alikes list on the right hand side of the page after looking up the title Well-Schooled in Murder. I felt like some of the suggestions leaned more towards the violence and creepy-factor the patron didn't like.  I felt the Crombie series was the closest to the George series based on the deliminators (storyline, tone).
5.  I didn't really like the read-alikes I saw when I title searched World War Z.  I did a search for zombies, limited to adult fiction, and set the pace to fast.  One of the books that caught my eye was Omega Days by John L. Campbell.  The description lends itself strongly to the same sort of plot device used in World War Z and The Walking Dead.  I knew I was on the right track because World War Z was one of the read-alikes that came up under the title.

How I Find Books:

One of the sites that the librarians at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library reference daily is Fantastic Fiction. (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/).  We use it to help patrons find the next book in a series or other books/series a patrons' favorite author might have written.  We also reference the site (along with Amazon) to let patrons know when the next book in a series will be published.

I have begun to use Goodreads more, especially to help my teens find other books that interest them.  They seem to always want the latest and greatest.

While the Juvenile Series and Sequels database from Mid-Continent Public Library (http://www.mymcpl.org/books-movies-music/juvenile-series) contains children's selections, they have also included YA series and series as well as books that explode in popularity and end up spanning two or all three areas (Children's, Young Adult, Teens).