ADVENTURE

• Bandits of Corsica
• Beyond Mombasa
• Brass Bancroft of the secret service
• Brothers Karamazov
• King Solomon’s mines (1950)
• Northwest Passage (1940)
• Sniper

COMEDY

• 40 Carats
• Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• Brewster’s Millions
• Great Outdoors
• Hearts of the West
• National Lampoon’s Vacation
• National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation
• Only the Lonely
• Palm Beach Story
• Queen of Hearts
• Taming of the shrew (1967)
• What’s Up Doc?

DRAMA

• American Gigolo
• Beast of the City
• Bible Collection: Abraham
• Bible Collection: Moses
• Billionaire Boys Club
• Blue Gardenia
• Blue Lagoon
• Bluebeard (1972)
• Bright Young Things
• Coyote Ugly
• From Here To Eternity
• Gaslight
• Golden Voyage of Sinbad
• Hamburger Hill
• Ice Station Zebra
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Masters of Murder Collection
• Music Lovers
• Phaedra
• Poseidon Adventure
• Pumpkin Eater
• Summer wishes, Winter Dreams
• Sweet November
• Tap (1989)
• The Big Town (1987)
• Whisperers

FAMILY

• Adventures of the Wilderness Family
• Lost Treasure of Sawtooth Island
• Secret of Nimh

HORROR

• Sam Katzman: Icons of Horror Collection

SCI/FIC

• Day the Earth Stood Still
• Gremlins 2
• Journey to the Center of the Earth
• Mars Attacks!

ADVENTURE

• Boondock Saints II—All Saints Day
• Chronicle
• Déjà vu
• For the Love of Money
• Freelancers
• Girl from the Naked Eye
• Grey, The
• Hick
• Journey 2 –The Mysterious Island
• Lazarus Papers
• License to Kill
• Machine Gun Preacher
• Marvel’s The Avengers
• Recoil
• Red Dawn
• Safe
• Safe House
• Seeking Justice
• Snow White & The Huntsman

ANIME

• Supernatural – The Anime Series

COMEDY

• 2 Days in New York
• An Ideal Husband
• Bernie
• Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
• Breaking Wind
• Carnage (2011)
• Cold Souls
• Dark Horse
• Dictator
• Dr. Doolittle 3
• Friends with Kids
• Girl in Progress
• Hamlet 2
• Hysteria
• LOL
• Lola Versus
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Nate & Margaret
• Night We Never Met
• Parenthood
• Project X
• Safety Not Guaranteed
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
• Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World
• That’s My Boy
• Thin Ice
• This Means War
• Wanderlust
• What To Expect When You’re Expecting

DOCUMENTARY

• Dad’s In Heaven With Nixon
• ESPN Films 30 For 30 – House Of Steinbrenner
• Forbidden Lie$
• In The Garden Of Sounds
• Man Nobody Knew, The
•  Parking Lot Movie
• Public Speaking
• Waking Sleeping Beauty
• Woman With The Five Elephants (Germany)

DRAMA

• 4.3.2.1
• Agent Abbey
• All Things Fall Apart
• Amreeka
• Battlefield America
• Bel Ami
• Beyond the Sea
• Bible Stories: Barabbas
• Big Miracle
• Black Dahlia
• Blackbeard
• Corner, The
• Dark Tide
• Desert Flower
• Emperor of the North
• Flywheel
• For Greater Glory
• Genesis Code
• Great Gatsby
• Horseman
• Hustle & Flow
• Identical
• Jesse Stone—Benefit of the Doubt
• Lake effects
• Lucky One
• Meeting Evil
• My Son John
• Oranges & Sunshine
• Oscar And Lucinda
• Painted Veil
• Peace, Love & Misunderstanding
• People Like Us
• Rampart
• Savages
• Saving the Titanic
• Shaded Places
• Sin City
• Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
• Take This Waltz
• The Whisperers
• Turning Back
• Two Lovers
• Tyrannosaur
• Virginia
• Warrior’s Heart
• Woman in the Fifth
• Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7^th Day

FAMILY

• Adventures Of Tintin, The
• Andre
• Casper The Friendly Ghost Collection
• High School Musical China (Mandarin)
• Mayor Cupcake
• Robots
• Smitty
• Trail Of The Panda (Mandarin)
• We Bought A Zoo
• Zookomon (Hindi)

FOREIGN

• Aftershock (Mandarin)
• Artist, The
• City Of Life And Death (Mandarin)
• Di Dooni Chaar (Hindi)
• Human Resources Manager, The (Hebrew)
• I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive (French)
• Juche Idea, The (Korean)
• Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk, The (Cantonese)
•  Let The Bullets Fly (Mandarin)
• Love Crime (French)
• Mozart’s Sister (French)
• Octubre (Spanish)
• Once Upon A Warrior (Telugu)
• Sidewalls (Spanish)
•  Stool Pigeon, The (Cantonese)
• Strange Case Of Angelica, The (Portuguese)
• Women On The 6th Floor, The (French)
• World On A Wire (German)

HORROR

• 11/11/11
• Blood Beast Terror
• Cabin in the Woods
• Dean Koontz’s Intensity
• Intruders
• Kill List
• Piranha 3DD
• Raven
•  Woman in Black, The

SCI/FI

• Darkest Hour, The
• M.A.S.K.: The Complete Series
• Riverworld
• Runaway (1984)
• Starship Troopers:  Invasion

TV

• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• Breakout kings season 1
• Chuck—Complete 5^th Season
• Ice Road Truckers Complete Season 5
• Mad About You
• Miami Vice
• Midsomer Murders
• My Three Sons
• One Tree Hill
• Rat patrol season 2
• South Park Season 15
• Torchwood:  Miracle day
• Treme—Complete 2^nd Season
• True Blood—Complete 4^th Season
• Wiseguy—The Collector’s Edition

WESTERN

• Wyatt Earp’s Revenge

Q. These kids that are performing can really play that piano—how much do they have to practice?

A. At the International Institute for Young Musicians, they practice three to five hours a day. At home, their practice time will have to be fit in around homework and other responsibilities, so it will vary somewhat from day to day. It might range from two to six hours daily.

Q. Do they enjoy practicing? Do they do regular stuff like school and sports?

A. They are normal, bright kids who like sports, video games and chatting online. They are unique in that they have this special talent that requires them to focus much more intensely than is usual for students their age.

Q. What are the age ranges of the young people that attend the institute?

A. This year, our youngest is 11 and the oldest 18.

Q. Do think kids at the library might enjoy the program? After all, it is classical music, ugh!

A. What we always hear when audiences hear these young people is that they are amazed and enjoy every note. Good music is always good music, no matter what the genre.

Click for printable flier of the Institute’s schedule of events

Q. What can the audience expect at the program?

A concert of varied classical piano pieces, played by some of the top pre-college pianists in the world on the library’s Steinway piano.

Q. What is the Institute and when did it start?

A. I started our Summer Music Academy to provide world-class educational opportunities for top young pianists from across the globe. This is our 22nd season.

Q. Do the youngsters study other things besides piano at the Institute?  Do they have some time for fun, and if so what do they usually do around Lawrence?

A. They take other music classes and have time for recreational activity, shopping and hanging out–all the things young people like to do. But remember, for us musicians, making music is fun. It’s what we like to do. We consider ourselves lucky that our work is our hobby.

Don’t Fall off the Mountain—Shirley tells how she got started in show business and then miraculously became a movie star.

My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir—Here she dishes about her costars, directors, and herself.

Out On A Leash: Exploring the Nature of Reality & Love—Terry is Shirley’s dog & coauthor of this book.  A must read for every person who loves dogs!

The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit—Shirley walked this famous Catholic pilgrimage in Spain about 10 years ago.  This is riveting description of her journey, physically and spiritually.

I’ve read all of Shirley’s previous books and was excited to see she had something new out after a four year hiatus. I thought she might be concentrating only on movies nowadays.  I’ll blog about her film career later this year, when she’ll be appearing in a new movie called “Bernie”, costarring Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey.   Shirley hit retirement age back in 1999, so she’s pretty active for a septuagenarian!

Taraborrelli admits that writing a biography nowadays that people will actually read is a challenge, but he has succeeded admirably here.  Those of you too young to have seen Cleopatra or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? during their original theater runs will be entranced by the antics of “Liz & Dick”—they make “Brangelina” look tame by comparison. On a beach in Italy during a huge rainstorm that halted the filming of Cleopatra, an eyewitness reported that:

“Richard grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and pulled her toward the plaster façade of a palace wall, climbed a painter’s ladder and reached into a bucket.  From it he retrieved an open bottle of wine. . . [They] passed the bottle back and forth, laughing almost the entire time, passionately kissing.”

At that time they were both married to other people!  In spite of these escapades, Taylor and Burton achieved academy-award level performances in many of their films .  They had a blinding beauty and screen presence that outshines most of today’s movie actors.

Taraborrelli gives us an entertaining story, yet he extensively researched for accuracy, creating a work of historical significance.  The author maintains that Dame Elizabeth privately gave permission for people close to her to speak freely to him.  As with any unauthorized biography, the highs and lows of Taylor’s life are equally displayed, but his great admiration for this film icon is evident.

Direct from their Flint Hills home, the Tallgrass Express String Band is coming to the library on Sunday to help us commemorate the Kansas Sesquicentennial.

Bluegrass music personifies the Kansas Prairie, and the most beautiful prairie in the world is in the Flint Hills.

The band will sing and play many original songs written in traditional style about Kansas and the land and life of the Flint Hills. Topics include cowboys and ranch life, wildlife, Native Americans, and the beauty of the landscape.

The Tallgrass Express String Band is a four-member string band located in the heart of the Kansas Flint Hills and dedicated to traditional style string band music.

Other Kansas folk artists you may be interested in hearing on CD include Judy Coder, Kelly Werts, and Ann Zimmerman.

The event is free and open to the public. Come to the show and then check out some music CDs from your library.

He’s started a new ministry called the Revolution Church.  The unusual aspect of this Christian ministry is the viewpoint concerning many human actions usually condemned by more conservative Christians, especially the issue of “consenting adult” homosexuality.  The central message in his new book,  Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self, and Society, is one of inclusion.   Everybody has sinned, but grace is the way for Christians to get together and stop pointing fingers at this sin or that sin.  It’s a fascinating book to read with some pretty logical ideas that have more conservative Christians scrambling to condemn Jay and his arguments, primarily based on texts of Paul, Galatians, and innovative translations of both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  Bakker also writes about his own challenges to find peace and recover his faith.  He found that grace was the key; it inspired him to become a minister.

His title Fall to Grace is a repurposing of the1990 tv-movie about his parents’ ministry, “Fall from Grace”, which starred Kevin Spacey and Bernadette Peters. Jay Bakker definitely shows the reader that Christianity has just as many ways to look at human life as the other major religions, and shares his own story while offering encouragement for others to find and share faith as he explores the true nature of grace.

FICTION

Benjamin, Melanie. Alice I have been. 2009. (Deb) Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year-the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

Berenson, Alex. Faithful Spy. 2006. (Greg) “A well-crafted page-turner that addresses the most important issue of our time. It will keep you reading well into the night.”–Vince Flynn A New York Times reporter has drawn upon his experience covering the occupation in Iraq to write the most gripping and chillingly plausible thriller of the post-9/11 era. Alex Berenson’s debut novel of suspense, The Faithful Spy, is a sharp, explosive story that takes readers inside the war on terror as fiction has never done before.

Berenson, Alex. Ghost War. 2008. (Greg) CIA agent John Wells returns, in a novel that reaches beyond today’s headlines to foretell dangers yet to come, from the author of The Faithful Spy- “one of the best spy stories ever told” (The Wall Street Journal). Alex Berenson’s 2006 debut was one of the most acclaimed suspense novels of the year, “the best spy thriller in a long, long while” (The Kansas City Star). The Ghost War proves that he is no longer a brilliant newcomer but a master of the art. In The Faithful Spy, John Wells became the only American CIA agent ever to penetrate al-Qaeda, but his handlers became distrustful of him, and he of them.

Castillo, Linda. Pray for Silence. 2010. (Patti) Great graphically gory murder mystery, set in Ohio Amish country. Main character is a female police chief; she’s from there and grew up Amish but left after a tragic event.  She is able to work with the Amish community – she can speak their language and they trust her – a little. Second in the series; highly recommended.

Cleave, Chris. Little Bee. 2009. (Marta) A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers–one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.

Crais, Robert. Chasing Darkness: an Elvis Cole Novel. 2008. (Tanya) Elvis was a hero when he cleared an innocent man of a murder charge. But when that innocent man is found dead three years later holding photos of the victim, Elvis is the one on trial.

Cronin, Justin. The Passage. 2010. (Michelle) A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte can stop.

Evanovich, Janet. The Stephanie Plum Series. (Luella) Stephanie Plum is a young lady who becomes a bounty hunter.  You get a close look at her many cases.  There are 16 in this series at this present time and they are laugh-out-loud funny.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1967. (Anne) One of the most influential literary works of our time.   The masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women — brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul — this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

Gardner, Lisa. Live to Tell: a detective D.D. Warren novel. 2010. (Julie) When she was a little girl, Danielle’s father murdered her mother and siblings before killing himself. Although she never understood why she alone was spared, Danielle tries hard to make peace with her demons by helping other disturbed children in a secure psychiatric unit for children in a Boston hospital. Now she is horrified to learn that two other families have been annihilated and that there are links to the psychiatric unit where she works. It’s up to Sergeant D. D. Warren of the Boston Police Department to tie the strands together before the murderer gets to Danielle. Live to Tell, by Lisa Gardner, is a creepy, well-crafted thriller with a great didn’t-see-it-coming twist at the end.

Goolrick, Robert. A Reliable Wife. 2009. (Scarlett) Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for “a reliable wife.” But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she’s not the “simple, honest woman” that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed.

Guinan, Paul & Anina Bennett. Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel. 2009. (Susan) Great book.Highly recommended.  History of Boilerplate and all the famous people and events (think Forest Gump) that he was involved in.  The graphics are amazing.  The text is great.  The authors created this entire existence in text and images so completely that it would be easy to believe it to be true.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. 1929 (1992). (Tanya) Sam Spade’s partner is murdered while working on a case, and it is Spade’s responsibility to find the killer. In his search, Spade runs mortal risks as he comes closer to the answer.

Hannah, Sophie. The Wrong Mother. 2009 (Marta)  A chilling exploration of a mother’s unspeakable betrayal from the author of Little Face. Sally Thorning is watching the news with her husband when she hears an unexpected name-Mark Bretherick. It’s a name she shouldn’t know, but last year Sally treated herself to a secret vacation-away from her hectic family life-and met a man. After their brief affair, the two planned to never meet again. But now, Mark’s wife and daughter are dead-and the safety of Sally’s own family is in doubt. Sophie Hannah established herself as a new master of psychological suspense with her previous novel, Little Face. Now with accomplished prose and a plot guaranteed to keep readers guessing, The Wrong Mother is Hannah’s most captivating work yet.

Liss, David. Whiskey Rebels. 2008. (Greg) From the bestselling, award-winning author of “A Conspiracy of Paper” comes his most powerful historical mystery yet. Set in post-Revolutionary War America, “The Whiskey Rebels” is a superb rendering of a vivid and perilous age.

Mann, George. Affinity Bridge: a Newbury & Hobbes investigation. 2010. (Susan) First in a series. Victorian London, Newbury and Hobbes are similar to Holmes/Watson.  Hobbes is a woman who is more of an equal partner than Watson to Holmes.   Better than average detective series, with Steampunk elements dirigibles, fantastical inventions…and of course, zombies (called Revenants).

Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall. 2009. (Valerie) Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter’s efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price.

McEwan, Ian. Solar. 2010. (Terry) When Nobel prize-winning physicist Michael Beard’s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.

O’Malley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrim’s precious little life, Vol. 1. 2004. (Lissa) Scott Pilgrim’s life is fantastic. He’s 23 years old, in a rock band, between jobs, and dating a cute high school girl. Everything’s awesome until a seriously mind-blowing delivery girl named Ramona Flowers enters his life. This is the first volume of an excellent six volume series, which is the basis for the new 2010 movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Priest, Cherie. Boneshaker. 2009. (Susan) A stand alone novel.  Priest has a new book coming out in September, Dreadnought.  Boneshaker is an alternative US history.  Takes place in 1879.  Briar Wilkes and her son Zeke are not getting along.  Briar does not want to tell Zeke about his father and the machine that he created that destroyed Seattle.  The destruction caused a disease that creates zombies (called Rotters).  Zeke slips into the walled city with his gas mask and Briar follows him to bring him out. Many adventures ensue! Highly recommended.

Sanford, John.  Rough Country.  2009. (Patti) By the author of the “Prey” series; weaves in the main character from that series. But a standalone series set in remote Northern Minnesota with main character Virgil Flowers of the MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  Great murder mystery with police work and interesting characters; very well written.

Skyhorse, Brandon. The Madonnas of Echo Park. 2010. (Mark) A first novel. Brandon Skyhorse is Latino but took the last name of one of his five stepfathers. The people of the Echo Park neighborhood in LA tell their stories. Single chapters are given the voice of a single character. The chapters seem to scatter time and families—the author must have wanted this confusion, perhaps to reflect what people go through in Echo Park, but the reader may have some problems following character relationships and chronology. But the people live and breathe and die in these pages. Highly recommended.

Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain. 2008. (Marta) Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher’s soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe’s maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. 2009.  (Luella) The Help, the debut novel by Kathryn Stockett is about a young white woman in Jackson, who writes the stories of black women who work for white families in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 just before the Civil Rights revolution.  You get a bird-eye view of child-rearing, town gossip and race relations.  A great book.

Westerfeld, Scott. Leviathan. 2009. (Susan) First in a trilogy.  Second, Behemoth, is out in October.  Alternative history/Steampunk version of WWI.  Great story of the orphaned son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and a girl who disguises herself as a boy so she can become an airman.  Highly recommended.

NONFICTION

Arnell, Peter. Shift: how to reinvent your business, your career, and your personal brand. 2010. (Mark) Arnell is a highly successful company brand consultant who has lived much of his life as a morbidly obese man. He decided to try applying to himself some of his techniques of rebranding companies to make them more marketable. Nothing too extreme is the secret of his success—“new & improved” but not totally different. He managed to lose 250 pounds to become not a completely differently behaving person, but a new and improved person.

Hitchens, Christopher. God is not great: how religion poisons everything. 2007. (Valerie) Poses a case against organized religion that documents the myriad ways in which religion reflects human agendas and distorts sexuality and the perception of the origins of the universe, in a science-based analysis that considers the benefits of a secular world.

Iyengar, B.K.S. Yoga Wisdom & Practice. 2009. (Mark) Lots of pictures and careful explanations of yoga poses paired with kernels of wisdom and advice from legendary Yogi B.K.S. Iyengar. He explains that the reason he decided to add the use of “props” to help with yoga positions was because, as a student, he often had trouble trying to properly execute certain poses.

Kohn, Livia. Taoist Mystical Philosophy: The Scripture of Western Ascension. 1991. (Mark) A translation of a Taoist scripture first written down about 500 A. D., many hundreds of years after the Tao Te Ching.  This text borrows ideas from other religious philosophies of the day to bring similar  ideas of life after death and freedom from suffering; however, the central ideal of the mystery of the Tao and the balance of Yin and Yang remain primary in this philosophical text from China.

Wiseman, Liz. Multipliers: how the best leaders make everyone smarter. 2010. (Scarlett) “A thought-provoking, accessible, and essential exploration of why some leaders (called “Diminishers”) drain capability and intelligence from their teams while others (called “Multipliers”) amplify it to produce better results”.

The other aspect of the story that kept me reading was the setting; San Francisco has always fascinated me, and Muller is intimately knowledgeable of that city.   The story was pretty exciting as well, although I do admit that I don’t remember any details.  But of course, as many of you fellow readers understand, if you’ve read something you liked but cannot recall the story, it’s always fun to go back and read it all over again! Muller follows a typical mystery plot in most of her novels—McCone gets a case; McCone works on the case and nearly gets killed in the process; McCone saves the day in the end.

An unusual adventure of this “hard-boiled” lady private eye is in Muller’s recent novel, “Locked In”. Sharon McCone has been shot and paralyzed.  She’s aware but unable to speak or write, yet determined to help her friends and detective agency staff find her attacker.   True to her gritty determination, she’ll figure out a way to solve the case or die trying.  I recommend reading all of Muller’s “Sharon McCone” novels right from the beginning of the series.  Unfortunately, the library doesn’t currently own all of them because some are out-of-print, but we are able to obtain copies thru our Interlibrary Loan Service.  ILL costs one dollar per item, but these reads are worth it.  Some of my favorites include:

Edwin of the Iron Shoes—In Muller’s first novel, McCone is a young upstart at the All Souls Legal Cooperative.  A darling old lady who deals in antiques hires Sharon to protect her and her store.
Leave a Message for Willie—Flea Market salesman Willie is a friend of Sharon’s who fears for his life because priceless artifacts turn up in some stuff he’s about to put on sale.
Double—Sharon McCone runs into the “Nameless Detective”, author Bill Pronsini’s character, at a Private Investigator Convention in San Diego.  A woman falls off the top floor of the hotel, and the two realize that foul play was involved.
The Broken Promise Land—McCone’s brother-in-law is a famous country music star who starts receiving death threats.  Sharon jumps in to protect her sister’s family.
Wolf in the Shadows—Sharon meets Hy Ripinsky, a former CIA investigator, and falls deeply in love for the first time in her life.  Then Hy mysteriously disappears.

Vanishing Point–McCone is hired to investigate a very cold case (22 years!) of a housewife and artist who inexplicably disappeared in central California.

As far as other authors that are comparable to Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky is often recommended.  Her heroine V. I. Warshawski is exactly the same sort of determined but endearing private eye.  Margaret Maron and J. A. Jance similarly offer “hard-boiled” professional women who solve crimes.  Mystery authors that feature the streets of San Francisco would be good possibilities also, including Bill Pronzini and Stephen Greenleaf. The authors most similar in content to Muller include Nevada Barr and Laurie R. King, who write about determined female detectives living in the San Francisco area.