Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Summer Fun is Coming - "Readopoly" begins next Tuesday. It's the summer reading program for toddlers through teens, involving reading, crafts, family game night, story times, and special programs. Sign up begins June 1st at 9 a.m. The Crawfordsville Library will be closed Sunday and Monday for Memorial Day.

Religious relics around the world provide stories about life and varieties of faith in Peter Manseau's "Rag and Bone". Practical advice fills the 1,000-page "Getting Financial Aid" published by the College Board listing schools' offerings by states. "2010 Scholarship Handbook" shows sponsors of awards, internships and loans by subjects and donors.

"Native American Clothing" is an illustrated history by Theodore Brasser with beautiful photos of intricate tribal costumes. "North Korea, A Country Study" comes from the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. "An End to Suffering" is Pankaj Mishra's "part biography, part history, part travel book, part philosophic treatise".

Harley Pasternak offers "The 5 Factor World Diet" with 120 fat-burning easy-to-prepare recipes. James McManus writes about the game "Cowboys Full" the story of poker, from its roots in China, the Middle East, and Europe to its acceptance as a global and especially American phenomenon. "Nurture Shock" is "new thinking about children" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, asking what dangers affect children's lives, when children should be taught about race, where the brightest children are, and why kids are often cruel, thus getting to the core of how we grow, learn, and live.

"Terror by Night" by Terry Caffey is the true story of the brutal Texas murder that destroyed a family and the unusual events that restored peace to the small town. "Relieving Pain Naturally" by Sylvia Goldfarb is a guide to drug-free help. "The Talented Miss Highsmith" by Joan Schenkar is the secret life and serious art of Patricia Highsmith, "The Dark Lady of American Letters".

In Kate White's novel "Hush" a divorcing mother must lie to the police to justify her case for custody of her children. Alafair Burke's "212" finds a New York University sophomore threatened on a Web site and then murdered; a NYPD woman detective solves this by exposing the darkness beneath the glamorous surface of NYC. The Murder, She Wrote story "A Fatal Feast" by Donald Bain is based on the TV series dramas, this time zeroing in on a murder at Cabot Cove at Thanksgiving, while Jessica Fletcher's Scotland Yard friend is visiting. "Laughed 'Til He Died" is a Death on Demand story by Carolyn Hart; on an idyllic South Carolina island a mystery bookstore owner and her husband are plunged into a web of danger. Nevada Barr's "13 1/2" is a psychological thriller taking the reader from a mid-1970s Minnesota murder spree to a trailer park situation in Mississippi, then to post-Katrina New Orleans. "Deception" by Jonathan Kellerman is an Alex Delaware story and the offenders are teachers at a prestigious L. A. prep school. The plot reveals the bad and sad side of supposed idyllic rich living.

S.M. Stirling's science fiction story "The Sword of the Lady" takes place in post-apocalyptic United States; there a survivor hopes to understand the "Change" at Nantucket where he finds a beautifully made long sword to use.