Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable Newer Books

Special Alert! Adam Rice is finishing up his Crawfordsville Library display about the earliest high schools in Montgomery County for the Upstairs Gallery Show opening this weekend. He's received several helpful items from readers. He will appreciate more treasures or papers about these schools that you'll let him copy for the local history archives. Remember too that as part of this project you'll be invited to write your memories down for future researchers to enjoy. The schools to be highlighted are Alamo, Bowers, Breaks, Coal Creek Central, Darlington, Ladoga, Linden, Mace, New Market, New Richmond, New Ross, Smartsburg, Waveland, Waynetown, and Wingate. This is the time to document your knowledge for the benefit of future local history buffs.

"The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman (1908)" by The Country Contributor Juliet Strauss reprints her columns in the Indianapolis News and the Ladies' Home Journal designed for women readers. The Rockville, Indiana native's memorial statue on one of her favorite trails in Turkey Run State Park (near the Inn) was dedicated in 1922.

This week, nonfiction covers all sorts of topics. "Barrel Racing for Fun and Fast Times" lists Sharon Camarillo's winning tips for horse and rider.

"The Meaning of Prayer" is a reprint of sermons by Harry Emerson Fosdick about ten values of praying. "God Hides in Plain Sight" by Dean Nelson shows how to see the sacred in a chaotic world, helping us realize that the mundane might actually be holy.

The book by Carol Berkin called "Civil War Wives" (Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, Julia Dent Grant) connects us to our national past and provides windows into a social and political landscape strangely familiar yet shockingly foreign. "On Hallowed Ground" is Robert Poole's story of Arlington National Cemetery emphasizing its history and value as our country's most sacred ground. Timothy Egan's "The Big Burn" tells about Teddy Roosevelt's heroic encounter with the largest-ever forest fire in America (1910's wind-caused Washington, Idaho, Montana inferno).

Fern Michaels' novel "Vanishing Act" begins when a women's sisterhood learns that one of its staunch supporters is the victim of an identity theft ring. Karen Robards' "Shattered" is about a missing person case in Lexington, Kentucky. "The Moon Looked Down" by Dorothy Garlock profiles a family who after escaping Nazi Germany to Victory, Illinois, becomes a target of suspicion. E. L. Doctorow's "Homer & Langley" is a "free imaginative rendering of the lives of New York City's fabled Collyer brothers", who became recluses and hoarders. "Navajo Night" by Carol Didier explores the possible relationship between a white woman and Navajo holy man on the Wild West frontier. In "Lone Star Woman" Sadie Callahan imagines competition between a neighbor and an heir who desire to take over the same abandoned ranchland. "The Pastor's Wife" by Jennifer AlLee deals with a wife who feels she's competing for attention with her husband's congregation. "The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag" is Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce mystery in which an eleven-year-old untangles two deaths separated by time. "So Much for That" by Lionel Shriver combines three contemporary issues about American health care with a marriage crisis (the husband wants to leave America for a Tanzanian island). Thomas Kennedy's "In the Company of Angels" shows a teacher experiencing comfort from two angels that he'll survive torture in Pinochet's Chile; this novel is one of four constituting the author's Copenhagen Quartet.