Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable Newer Books

Deweys Do Meet March 1st - Carol Bennett and Katie Myers announce the next Crawfordsville Library "Deweys Do" book club meeting March 1st at 6:30 p.m. in the Conference Room. Robert Parker's mystery "A Catskill Eagle" is the discussion topic. The introductory quotation from Herman Melville’s "Moby-Dick" warns, "And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces." New members are welcome to borrow a copy of "A Catskill Eagle" at the circulation desk.

Stephanie Barron's "The White Garden" a novel of Virginia Woolf features a landscape designer at Sissinghurst Castle with two goals: to recover from a personal loss, and to study the celebrated White Garden created by Woolf's friend Vita Sackville-West. The designer "makes a shocking find, namely Woolf's last diary, its first entry dated the day after she allegedly killed herself." Author Laura King writes, "This (novel) is a mystery in a garden: a garden in war; a garden beset by modernity; a ghostly white garden haunted by the dead."

"The Summer Kitchen" by Karen Weinreb makes a heroine of a mother forced away from wealth to work in a bakery patronized by her own friends. "The Bordeaux Betrayal" is Ellen Crosby's new "wine" mystery about Mount Vernon and a nearby Virginia vineyard. Allison Brennan's thriller "Cutting Edge" requires the FBI's domestic terrorism unit to stop a sadistic assassin. "The Careful Use of Compliments" is an Isabel Dalhousie novel by Alexander McCall Smith concerning an art auction quandary, namely two paintings attributed to a now-deceased artist at the same time, so are they forgeries?

Inspirational books are arriving often. "Creating Entrepreneurs" edited by Fred Kiesner offers ideas for insight into learning activities and methodologies to help new business owners pave their ways to success. Margaret Feinberg's "Scouting the Divine" describes her search for God in wine, wool, and wild honey, using Bible pages as portals to adventures. In "In Praise of Doubt" Peter Berger notices that religion is growing and thriving in the modern world of plurality, and that doubt can help groups resolve their differences. Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bright-Sided" thinks the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America. She promotes realism. Two volumes of collected writings by Joseph Campbell are "Pathways to Bliss" about mythology and personal transformation and "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" peering through centuries and showing how we're all connected. "Nightwatch: An Inquiry into Solitude" by Robert Rhodes tells of his spiritual journey and sojourn with the Starland Colony of Hutterites in Gibbon, Minnesota. "Change We Can Believe In" offers seven speeches from the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama.

In "The Relentless Revolution" Joyce Appleby writes a fascinating and centuries-long history of capitalism, showing it as a culture, important for its ideas and values, for its inventions and systems, and the framework for our lives in the modern economic world.

The first of four handwork books is Jennifer Chiaverini's "Elm Creek Quilts" inspired by the novels of the same name with 12 new patterns to share. "Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!!: the Complete Guide to Quiltmaking" is the second edition of the complete guide by Diana McClun holding 34 patterns and an expanded glossary and new index. "A Log Cabin Notebook" by Mary Ellen Hopkins points out that "You could easily dedicate your entire quilting life to this block and never repeat yourself." Thirty new designs to make and wear are collected in "Cool Crochet" by Melissa Leapman.